madVR - high quality video renderer (GPU assisted)

[mark0077]

madshi, using a 1024 x 768, 60fps clip I created for a charity event last year, and testing it now with madVR. With display at 60.00215Hz as detected in mpc-hc, I'm getting adropped frame or two every 20 seconds or so aswell as the odd delayed frame every few seconds also.

When a frame is dropped most of the time I notice the stats showing the render queue dropping down to 1-2 / 8, then a dropped frame, then it jumps back up to 7-8 / 8. Thats in windowed mode. In fullscreen exclusive mode, the render queue also will seem to drop down abit right before a dropped frame. Can I give any more details to help iron out these dropped / delayed frame issues with this high frame rate clip? Will be using a similar high frame rate clip in october so will be nice to have it play on the night as smooth as butter with the help of madVR.

[janos666]

I tried disabling Catalyst A.I. With it disabled the computer crashes the moment madVR switches to exclusive mode.

Strange, it doesn't crash for me with one single chip ATI card and disabled AI. What Cat. version is it?
I found my old thread on a different forum. Here (http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=297939) is the answer how to disable any multiGPU things without losing the AI compatibility profiles.
In short version: Locate this key ->
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Class\{4D36E968-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\0000\UMD
MVPU 31 00
and change it to 30 00
If it not works, you may want to use a key with different numbers here: 0000\UMD
I think it will be the highest existing number if you made full cleanups before driver updates. If you don't, well... It can be a much higher number too. (So, you may want to start with a proper cleenup and fresh driver install...)

[brokenmind]

I have trouble with exclusive mode and latest version of madVR; regardless of starting in fullscreen or just going to FS after starting a video, there's no switch to exclusive mode on second monitor (OSD stats are telling me: 'fullscreen windowed mode'). Player is always launched (windowed/in fullscreen) on 2nd monitor.

I have enabled the 'overlay covers the entire video area' option in ZP and of course 'automatic fullscreen mode' is enabled in renderer settings dialog. On 1st monitor exclusive is working excellent, thanks for all your hard work madshi.

With previous version 0.25 exclusive mode also worked on 2nd monitor. If you want to investigate and a log file might help you please find a zipped version here (http://www.mediafire.com/?gav6axb984eo7bb).

btw: anyone else experiencing this issue?

---
GPU: ATI Radeon HD3650 (CCC 10.6)
OS: Win7 Ultimate x32 / Aero: off
Player: Zoom Player + Reclock (vsync off)
Display resolution + refresh rate:
- 1st monitor: LCD 1280x1024 @ 75Hz
- 2nd monitor: (extended desktop) LCD-TV 1280x720 @ 50Hz

[janos666]

I could never get picture on my secondary display in exclusive mode. The picture always walks to the primary display as soon as exclusive mode is effective. I thought it's ok and FSE mode should work like this. I can't move a game to the secondary display. And a game will also turn of my secondary display. MadVR let it to show the extended desktop. But yes, I can't move the focus to another window on the secondary display or madVR will quit from FSE mode.

[Hypernova]

I could never get picture on my secondary display in exclusive mode. The picture always walks to the primary display as soon as exclusive mode is effective. I thought it's ok and FSE mode should work like this. I can't move a game to the secondary display. And a game will also turn of my secondary display. MadVR let it to show the extended desktop. But yes, I can't move the focus to another window on the secondary display or madVR will quit from FSE mode.

madVR is not like that though. Are you show the player is on 2nd display before you open the file? I can make it show on my 2nd display just fine. And with 0.26 I can' do whatever I want on the primary display while the second is on fullscreen exclusive too.

[janos666]

The start position doesn't matter here. If I go to fullscreen from the primary display then secondary display is free but madVR quits from the FSE mode as soon as I move the focus to a window on the secondary display.
If I go to FSE on the secondary desktop then it will show the last frozen image before the FSE change happened and the movie continues on the primary display.

It was my experience with the 0.25 version. It may changed in the 0.26, I didn't test it because I unplugged my secondary display when I tried to resolve my tearing problem.

Oh, wait. It must be Reclock. It has an option to select the target display. I left this dropbox setting on it's default: automatic. It may chose the primary display when I launch the player on the primary display. (And it won't change when I move the player windows to the secondary display.)
By the way, I use Reclock because it has a WASAPI exclusive mode, 23.976>24fps speedup is useless (and may be dangerous) with madVR FSE mode.

[SundaY82]

Running 0.26 and fullscreen exclusive mode work just great with mkv files. But when I play xvid files exclusive mode doesnt work at all. Nothing happens when I play the xvid files, ie I cant see that it tries to switch to exclusive mode, it stays in window mode the whole time. If you want I can make some logs for you.

Another thing, at 1280x720 I'm unable to see the entire config screen, would it be possible to make it a bit wider instead?

GPU: Nvidia GT240 (257.21)
OS: Win7 Ultimate x64 / Aero: on
Player: Zoom Player + Reclock (vsync off)
Codec: CoreAVC(2.0) for mkv and ffdshow(rev. 3200) for xvid.
Display resolution + refresh rate (Clone mode, projector + computer monitor): 1280x720 @ 50Hz

[Hypernova]

The start position doesn't matter here. If I go to fullscreen from the primary display then secondary display is free but madVR quits from the FSE mode as soon as I move the focus to a window on the secondary display.
If I go to FSE on the secondary desktop then it will show the last frozen image before the FSE change happened and the movie continues on the primary display.

It was my experience with the 0.25 version. It may changed in the 0.26, I didn't test it because I unplugged my secondary display when I tried to resolve my tearing problem.

I think the start position does matter though. As madshi said several time that madVR doesn't support start on one but continue on other display yet. Also, that other problem with dual monitor is fixed with 0.26. You should try it first.

Another thing, at 1280x720 I'm unable to see the entire config screen, would it be possible to make it a bit wider instead?


He just answered this question a couple page ago that he will fix it when he get to redesign the config page.

[SundaY82]

Lol... just after the post above exclusive mode started working even for xvid files. I tried several files before the post and all xvid files failed to go into exclusive mode... but now they all work. So I'm not sure whats up but for now everything is fine. Or hmm, not sure if I had the projector on before when I tried... cant remember. I will let you know if this is the case, if not... then I have no idea, haven't changed anything.

[B.F.]

What error? Screenshot? What are your computer's specs and what media player and filters are you using?

Forgot about screenshot.
MPC-HC v.2217, no filters enabled.
Geforce 8500GT (driver v258.96), Pentium E 5300, Win 7 64bit.

If I disable exclusive mode it works without problems.

[namaiki]

madshi, I know I have complained before about madVR using a video resizing algorithm that is too soft (before when upscale was not defaulting to lanczos4), but today there was some guy who tried it and said that they preferred EVR-CP because it produced 'less noise.' (and at the time they didn't know that they could change the resizing algorithms - though, now they do :D)

Anyways, by default, before madVR was using a much more forgiving resizing algorithm for upscaling... Maybe you might consider switching back? ;_;
Feel free to forget this post, but sure was a weird encounter I had today.

[mark0077]

Hmm another problem this evening. Watching 23.976fps content at 23.976hz all is perfectly smooth in exclusive. Double clicking the window to get back to windowed makes frame rate drop significantly. Mpc and madvr report about half of the frames coming in are dropped. Back to exclusive and all is butter smooth. Will try to enable debugging and reproduce.

[LloydA]

I noticed the same, for me it happened a few revisions back. However, changing the resampling method from Lanczos to SoftBicubic solved the hiccups in windowed mode, so it seems that something changed in madVR that's now causing the resizer to be heavier on the GPU than before.

[6233638]

Hmm another problem this evening. Watching 23.976fps content at 23.976hz all is perfectly smooth in exclusive. Double clicking the window to get back to windowed makes frame rate drop significantly. Mpc and madvr report about half of the frames coming in are dropped. Back to exclusive and all is butter smooth. Will try to enable debugging and reproduce.Your GPU probably cant run the settings in windowed.

In windowed I can only use Bicubic 75, in FSE I can use Lanczos 4. FSE has much better performance.

[mark0077]

Hmm it never had an issue in the past and playing it again now its back smooth so its a niggle somewhere in madVR code with some combination of going in and out of exclusive / windowed, its a GTX 295 and Core i7 920 at 3.7ghz... Another slight niggle, is when going in and out of exclusive, the mpc-hc frame drop count resets to 0, not a big deal. Just an observation.

[iaTa]

23.976>24fps speedup is useless (and may be dangerous) with madVR FSE mode.

Why is that the case? I also use ReClock for WASAPI exclusive mode and fps synchronisation but I don't quite understand how madVR FSE will be able to provide perfectly smooth playback.

Should I completely disable fps adjustment in ReClock then?

[nevcairiel]

I finally got around to testing the exclusive mode today, and it seemed to work fine. However some of the stats puzzled me. Rendering time seems to have doubled on average, from 10-12ms to 20-23ms. I did however not notice any problems with playback. :)

[oddball]

Hmm. I now seem to be able to get smooth playback with .26 as long as I don't do anything else like web browse etc.

[nijiko]

Huh? What do you mean?

The setting window is larger than a 1024*768 screen...

[janos666]

Anyways, by default, before madVR was using a much more forgiving resizing algorithm for upscaling... Maybe you might consider switching back? ;_;
Feel free to forget this post, but sure was a weird encounter I had today.

Lanzcos causes ringing artifacts but SoftCubic is too soft (as I remember, it was the default until madshi figured out that he made a mistake). You should consider the Spline resizer. It is nearly as sharp as the Lanczos but it causes much less ringing artifacts. But it requires a relatively fast GPU, so my vote for the default is the BiCubic. And others will vote for something else. :)

[oddball]

Hmm. Any way to get subs from MPC-HC in D3D mode?

[Matthias Hutter]

@oddball: DirectVobSub works fine for me in Fullscreen Exklusive. Which itself works great, by the way.

[oddball]

@oddball: DirectVobSub works fine for me in Fullscreen Exklusive. Which itself works great, by the way.

I thought you might suggest that. But MPC-HC's subs are MUCH nicer/smoother looking. I set them at 1920x1080 and they look fantastic. If MadVR can't playback the high quality MPC subs it's a deal breaker because I watch a hell of a lot of anime. VobSub is kinda meh.

[nevcairiel]

madVR indeed does not support the MPC-HC subtitle renderer. You would have to use DirectVobSub or let ffdshow render the subs.

[Hypernova]

I thought you might suggest that. But MPC-HC's subs are MUCH nicer/smoother looking. I set them at 1920x1080 and they look fantastic. If MadVR can't playback the high quality MPC subs it's a deal breaker because I watch a hell of a lot of anime. VobSub is kinda meh.

If you read up a bit on this thread, madshi said several times that subtitle pin is on his todo list. You just have to wait if you need it. It's a con for madVR for now.

[mueslibrown]

Madshi - i really think you should publish some kind of roadmap which you update for each release otherwise you'll end with same requests being asked for even tho they are on your own to do list.

I'd also consider functionality that will not be appearing until a stable release (or whatever you deem suitable) and possibly the typical user you are aiming at so someone with a dedicated htpc playing only video and audio content is far different to someone who is skyping, reading emails and looking at media all at the same time.

By setting these expectations you might mitigate some of the more esoteric requests for now.

Also is there a simple user guide anywhere to explain options?

It may also be useful for users to include a header or footer with there setup for each post at least it would reduce the 'What system are you running questions' when a bug is identified. Maybe there is a better way of recording/managing bug reports and feature requests?

I'm no developer but just my thoughts having worked in the IT solutioning industry for many years. If you have already done this somewhere else or within the forum then apologies and excuse my ignorance.

Good work so far.

MB

[madshi]

if you share some of your thoughts of the future of madVR we can try to be more subtle in our requests and let you do your work without so much distraction
I prefer to keep most of my plans secret.

Using Windows 7 64bit, GTX 295 and just using one monitor at 1920 x 1080. Reminder, this is for the right click menu not appearing on first right click. It takes a second right click for it to work.
Yeah, I can reproduce this now, but it only occurs the first time madVR switches from exclusive to windowed mode for me. It seems that this first time Windows / Direct3D does a full "change graphics mode" processing with all the bells and whitles and this processing seems to close the context menu. The whole problem might go away when I implement support for switching to specific refresh rates. Until then I will ignore this problem.

New Problem: Every second or third time I come out of true fullscreen mode however, I also get an mpc-hc video freeze. Audio continues perfectly in the background, just the video output stops on one frame, and mpc-hc window becomes unresponsive.
Hmmm... This might be fixed in the next build, but I'm not sure.

First of all, big thanks for this renderer. I tried madVR a couple of months ago, but gave up because I couldn't get smooth playback. I decided to give the latest build a shot, and now there's no going back to anything else. (On a side note, big thanks for eac3to as well. I've been reading these forums a lot recently, and I think without you, our HTPC's would not be as nice as they are today.:thanks:)
:)

Anyway, not sure if this is a bug or not, but if I use the Windows "Larger" text I don't get the "exclusive" or "Windowed" messages (I also don't get the madVR seek bar). I'm using madVR in MPC-HC.
That's weird. The "Larger" text should not have much effect on madVR. Can anybody else reproduce this problem?

If I use XhmikosR's ffdshow rev 3527 (20100808) then I got BSOD when madVR going out of exlusive mode.
Ouch!

0.26 behaves excellently now in FS Exclusive mode.

Right click menu also appears and stays visible as it should.

Simply put, perfect. Thank you Madshi :thanks:
:)

Yes, it is a dual chip card. And anything is possible. But it shouldn't be a problem. Unless the executable has a Crossfire profile the second GPU shouldn't come into play. In fact, it shouldn't even be on.
Well, anyway, as I said, I think the final exclusive rendering path should fix the problem for you.

madshi, using a 1024 x 768, 60fps clip I created for a charity event last year, and testing it now with madVR. With display at 60.00215Hz as detected in mpc-hc, I'm getting adropped frame or two every 20 seconds or so aswell as the odd delayed frame every few seconds also.

When a frame is dropped most of the time I notice the stats showing the render queue dropping down to 1-2 / 8, then a dropped frame, then it jumps back up to 7-8 / 8. Thats in windowed mode. In fullscreen exclusive mode, the render queue also will seem to drop down abit right before a dropped frame. Can I give any more details to help iron out these dropped / delayed frame issues with this high frame rate clip?
Please wait for the final exclusive mode rendering path which is not implemented right now. If the problem still occurs then, we may have to think about how to find out the cause of the problem - provided that your PC is fast enough. Does dialing down the scaling/quality options help at all? Maybe your GPU is simply not fast enough? Sounds weird that it only occurs sometimes, though...

I have trouble with exclusive mode and latest version of madVR; regardless of starting in fullscreen or just going to FS after starting a video, there's no switch to exclusive mode on second monitor (OSD stats are telling me: 'fullscreen windowed mode'). Player is always launched (windowed/in fullscreen) on 2nd monitor.
Weird. I'll need a log - but with the next build (which is not out yet), not with the current build.

Forgot about screenshot.
MPC-HC v.2217, no filters enabled.
Geforce 8500GT (driver v258.96), Pentium E 5300, Win 7 64bit.

If I disable exclusive mode it works without problems.
What graphics mode are you using (resolution, refresh rate, interlaced/progressive)? Are you using PowerStrip?

madshi, I know I have complained before about madVR using a video resizing algorithm that is too soft (before when upscale was not defaulting to lanczos4), but today there was some guy who tried it and said that they preferred EVR-CP because it produced 'less noise.' (and at the time they didn't know that they could change the resizing algorithms - though, now they do :D)

Anyways, by default, before madVR was using a much more forgiving resizing algorithm for upscaling... Maybe you might consider switching back? ;_;
Lanzcos causes ringing artifacts but SoftCubic is too soft (as I remember, it was the default until madshi figured out that he made a mistake). You should consider the Spline resizer. It is nearly as sharp as the Lanczos but it causes much less ringing artifacts. But it requires a relatively fast GPU, so my vote for the default is the BiCubic. And others will vote for something else. :)
Yeah, everybody has his own favorite scaling algorithm, as I've always said. Whatever default I'm using, some people will not be happy. @namaiki, if I switch back to SoftCubic, tomorrow there will be another guy, disliking madVR because it's too soft.

Hmm another problem this evening. Watching 23.976fps content at 23.976hz all is perfectly smooth in exclusive. Double clicking the window to get back to windowed makes frame rate drop significantly. Mpc and madvr report about half of the frames coming in are dropped. Back to exclusive and all is butter smooth. Will try to enable debugging and reproduce.
Maybe the new frame dropping logic (soon to come) will help avoid such problems, but I'm not sure...

23.976>24fps speedup is useless (and may be dangerous) with madVR FSE mode.
Why is that the case?
It is not the case. madVR exclusive mode does not have anything to do with speedup/slowdown.

I finally got around to testing the exclusive mode today, and it seemed to work fine. However some of the stats puzzled me. Rendering time seems to have doubled on average, from 10-12ms to 20-23ms. I did however not notice any problems with playback. :)
As I said before, please ignore the exclusive mode rendering statistics for now. They are probably wrong...

The setting window is larger than a 1024*768 screen...
As I said before, the settings dialog will be fully redesigned sooner or later. Until then I will not do any (bigger) changes to the settings dialog.

Madshi - i really think you should publish some kind of roadmap which you update for each release otherwise you'll end with same requests being asked for even tho they are on your own to do list.
I'm aware that publishing a roadmap might reduce the feature request posts. But still, I don't really want to publish a roadmap or even a list of planned features. Most of my future plans are secret and I want them to stay that way. You'll have to live with being surprised once in a while when a new feature comes out (like automatic exclusive <-> windowed mode switching).

I hope that people understand that the time for posting feature requests has generally not really come yet. I have a list of things I want to do before madVR reaches v1.0. And that will be the time when I'll be ready to talk about feature requests.

[leeperry]

I have a list of things I want to do before madVR reaches v1.0. And that will be the time when I'll be ready to talk about feature requests.
what's on the table before we can whine for new features? improve the exclusive mode, that's it?

and let us know if you ever come up w/ a donation paypal address. :thanks:

[madshi]

what's on the table before we can whine for new features?
Just read the first sentence of my previous post.

[leeperry]

Just read the first sentence of my previous post.
Yeah, OK..."when it's done" :p

[SantinoSan]

I set up madVR to render the video from MPC-HC and the video is very choppy. MPC reports between 18 and 20 fps. My CPU is right around 60% while playing and physical memory is under 50% utilized. If I change renderers to EVR custom Pres, then the video plays very smoothly.

I am not sure what to do now to troubleshoot. Any ideas?

Thanks
Santino

[ryrynz]

That's weird. The "Larger" text should not have much effect on madVR. Can anybody else reproduce this problem?


I had this same problem. I had my text at 125% on a windows 7 64bit system with a Radeon 5750 running catalyst 10.7. I changed the text to normal and then the seek bar made an appearance. I changed the text back 125% and the seek bar was still working as normal making me wonder if it was something specific to my system.

[ryrynz]

What graphics card are you running it on?
Have you tried less intensive resizers?

I set up madVR to render the video from MPC-HC and the video is very choppy. MPC reports between 18 and 20 fps. My CPU is right around 60% while playing and physical memory is under 50% utilized. If I change renderers to EVR custom Pres, then the video plays very smoothly.

I am not sure what to do now to troubleshoot. Any ideas?

Thanks
Santino

[SantinoSan]

I am running on an ATI 4550. I did try changing the resizers and it made no difference. The GPU never registered any usage above 0% while running with madVR, while it would read around 30% when using DXVA with EVR.

[jeremy33]

Hi and thanks for this very good renderer.

Is it possible to have an option to disable luma / chroma up/downsampling because I upscale the video with ffdshow ?

[TinTime]

The luma won't be resampled if you pass in video with the native resolution of your display to madVR.

On the other hand chroma has to be resampled as madVR only accepts YV12.

[Gser]

For some reason the seek bar is not showing up in either of the modes. I have an ati 5870 and using MPC-HC.

[ryrynz]

Having about 20 dropped frames a second on my HTPC with madVR 0.26. I reinstalled the graphics drivers, HPC-HC, FFDshow etc no change. I am using a HD5750 with Cat 10.7, playing back in any other renderer is fine. On my other x64 windows 7 system with a HD4890 there are no issues with the same file.

It's running fine on SD content. I'm playing back a H264 1280x720 movie and that's when it's dropping the frames. Changing resizers to nearest neighbor, unticked 3DLUT and no change in performance.

I cannot find any info on using the debug version, I assumed it would be as simple as rename the file and copy the obvious log
file. Still just says 0.26 in the madVR window and there is no log when installed.

GPU load is 90%, that's obviously the cause for the dropped frames, overdrive didn't affect performance, I will continue to test.

[leeperry]

I assumed it would be as simple as rename the file and copy the obvious log file.
yup, it'll be standing on your desktop.

[oddball]

I'm having trouble getting this to play back smoothly with MadVR for some reason. It's smoother with CUDA off in CoreAVC but not 100%. Other sources I can now playback with MadVR fine. CUDA or no CUDA. Odd.

http://www.mediafire.com/?ocdyxzfd0yvb4og

[ryrynz]

Rendering performance for my HD4890 1GB on the 720 H264 file is about 55% resizing up to 1680x1050. So it would make sense that the HD5750 512MB resizing to 1920x1080 is having a much harder time.
I thought performance was better than this though, I have been mostly playing back SD content so perhaps I underestimated just how hard the GPU has to work in order to achieve an upscale to 1920x1080 from 1280x720 using Lanczos4 and Softcubic100.

yup, it'll be standing on your desktop.

Cheers Lee.

*Update* Changed the screen resolution to 1280x720 and resizers to bilinear, GPU is till at 90%, weird considering the screen resolution is now the same as source file.

Tested with version 0.11/0.12 and Bilinear upscaling, downscaling and resampling offer smooth performance with GPU at 50%
Cranking it up to Lanczos4 and Softcubic100 still offers acceptable performance at around 80% and frames are only dropped on startup.

0.13 is where things get incredibly slow displaying the 720 H264 vid, setting all to bilinear the GPU is still at 90% and frames drop like crazy.

Madshi, let me know if you would like a log.

[ryrynz]

oddball, perhaps your having the same issue as I am, check your GPU usage with GPU-Z

[BeNooL]

Hi and thanks for this very good renderer.

Is it possible to have an option to disable luma / chroma up/downsampling because I upscale the video with ffdshow ?

Bonjour Jeremy33

This would be counter productive as MadVR's purpose is to do this convertion in the most precise manner possible.
If you take a look at the screenshots in the 1st page you'll see the kind of quality difference you can expect.

You can still use FFDshow for other processing but stay in YV12.

[BeNooL]

I am running on an ATI 4550. I did try changing the resizers and it made no difference. The GPU never registered any usage above 0% while running with madVR, while it would read around 30% when using DXVA with EVR.

I'm using an ATI 4550 too and it works fine with MadVR doing anything (SD to HD) scaling to 1920x1080 60Hz.

Catalyst 10.6 and MPC-HC 1.3.2099.

[oddball]

Hope this is not a stupid question. How do I find out the stats like frames dropped, vsync etc in MadVR?

[namaiki]

Ctrl+J ten characters

[oddball]

So tiny. Any way to make the text bigger. I have to get out the magnifying glass.

[pirlouy]

Great, as specified, no tearing anymore ! :thanks:
It is now my official renderer.

[BatKnight]

Hi,

I have the fullscreen refresh-rate autochange enabled at MPC-HC, so when I play a 23.976fps file, the refresh rate changes from 60Hz to 24Hz when I go fullscreen. Everything ok for now.
After being fullscreen and at 24Hz, if i rightclick my mouse to open the menu of MPC-HC then madVR goes to Windowed mode and the refresh rate goes back to 60Hz and never returns to 24Hz, not even if I un-fullscreen and fullscreen it again. It changes to exclusive mode if I leave my mouse alone, but the 24Hz is lost until I restart the player.

This doesn't happen with EVR Custom, for example.
Any ideas?

Bat

[dansrfe]

madshi, I have two feature requests.

1) An option to downsize to half resolution on initial file open when resolution of source file is > resolution of screen.

2) I have mixed feelings about the "Sharpness" option in Haali Renderer. I like the look it provides when upscaling from a regular dvd resolution or files around that resolution to 1920 x 1080. However, afaik the sharpening can increase noise or create other problems can it not? Anyways please share your thoughts on this.

Thanks.