madVR - high quality video renderer (GPU assisted)

[Deboi]

A media player like "dune solo lite" can compete in quality with madVR?

[huhn]

watching aliasedAnime.png. nnedi3 wins in all cases.
when quadripling haruhi it doesn't really matter.

i have to quadruple and the new pixart can only do double. so my vote doesn't really count i guess.

i guess pixart 3 is better hard to tell.

[tranfa]

Thank you Madshi.

1) Done, I seem to have a similar bug to the one described previously on my Panasonic AX900, where the Win10 Ati Crimson driver recommends 4096x2160. But anyway, let's stick to 2160p, and see what happens.

2) Done. The issue is still there, introducing a 2160p29 or 30 puts in offside the p25...

3) How can I activate debug mode? I renamed the .ax files, I run the .bat file, and I get the error "file "madvr.ax" is missing" - but it's there...

Thank you for the patience...

Apparently the log was created anyway.

Please find it in attachment, the 25hz if I don't add 2160p29 and 30, the 30hz if I do.


Edit: sorry but I cannot attach for a temporary bug...

[cork_OS]

Anyway. Do you prefer 2 or 3?

Almost identical? IMHO the new NGU pixart 2 and 3 beat NNEDI3 quite noticeably in some of the images (e.g. kitchen, americanDad and castle).
It's hard to describe difference between 2 and 3. People prefer 3, and it seems a little bit sharper, so let it be 3.

Well, I mean overall look (naturalness + sharpness). Lines processing with every other picture except nature are definitely better with NGU or at least equal.

[madshi]

Problems with sluggish motion with Blu Ray movies on an LG B6 OLED

i cant get motion to be smooth with madvr and the LG OLED compared to what it looks like on the UHD K8500 player with the same blu ray.
i have tried different Hz but no difference.
tried switching smooth motion on/off but not better.

whats the problem with madvrs motion and LG OLEDs and why does it run so much smoother on an stationary player?
with my old 500M motion was perfect with madvr and as good as a blu ray player.
Please configure your HTPC to output the refresh rate natively, for Blu-Rays probably 23.976Hz or 24.000Hz, depending on the Blu-Ray. If motion is still not smooth, please check if the OSD reports any frame drops or repeats. If there are frame drops, maybe the queues are running dry? In that case you will have to lower the quality settings. Is your OLED 4K? In that case madVR has to upscale much more which costs more GPU power. So maybe your GPU is simply not fast enough for the settings you've chosen.

That'd be very neat, anytime is great!
If I forget, please feel free to remind me.

3) How can I activate debug mode? I renamed the .ax files, I run the .bat file, and I get the error "file "madvr.ax" is missing" - but it's there...
You should either run the batch, or rename the files manually, not both. Anyway, just make sure the file with the bigger size is named "madVR.ax". Then there should be a log on your desktop. Please zip it and upload it to some file upload host.

A media player like "dune solo lite" can compete in quality with madVR?
If the videos have the same resolution as your display (e.g. Blu-Ray on a FullHD display) then you may or may not notice a difference. madVR should produce better chroma quality, and better dithering quality, but it's not visible to everyone. If upscaling is involved, madVR should produce visibly better results.

Of course a lot depends on your viewing angle. If you have a small angle (too small display, or too far away), you might not notice any difference. The bigger the angle, the more visible any differences will be.

watching aliasedAnime.png. nnedi3 wins in all cases.
I don't disagree, this is the one image where nnedi3 does best compared to NGU pixart, but nnedi3 doesn't win everywhere in this image, either. It does render the arm of the glasses with less aliasing than the newer NGU pixart variants, but if you look at the outer line of the mouth, it's clearly more focused with NGU pixart compared to nnedi3. You can see that at the very bottom of the mouth, or at the top right corner. The lines are partially focused and partially blurred with nnedi3, while they're consistently focused with NGU pixart.

Well, I mean overall look (naturalness + sharpness). Lines processing with every other picture except nature are definitely better with NGU or at least equal.
Agreed.

[cyberscott]

=

Overall, I prefer NGU pixart 2/3 over the other options, but I can't decide if I prefer pixart 2 or 3. With some images I prefer 2, with some 3.

What are your thoughts?

The new pixart variants 2/3 are very similar. I've compared the sample pictures you provided and also looked at stills of my 480p anime collection, up scaled to 4k. They hold up well against nnedi3 and often match or even exceed nnedi13 in some cases. 1080p videos at 4k set with Very High looks good with the pixart 3 as well.
As far as what I'd choose, I'd go with pixart 3. It has a slight edge in sharpness (which I prefer) over pixart 2 but doesn't add too much more noise than pixart 2.

[70MM]

My video card is the 1080, are there any new cards since the 1080 which are better that one can use even higher madvr settings with?

[70MM]

JVC projectors have 3 panels, one for Red, Green and Blue each. So yes, your display is physically an RGB display.
.

madshi so does that mean if you are upscaling BDs to 4K with madvr one should stay RGB all the way to the JVC?

I have a lumagen Pro after the PC, I was told by them to always set the Lumagen to 422 as it works better that way. e.g. PC set to RGB > Lumagen 4:2:2 > Display 4:2:2

Can you tell me what way would you suggest please?

Im a projector person so only interested in the best results for BDs with a proj.

[Bloodred]

Here's a new NGU pixart test build:
[...]
Overall, I prefer NGU pixart 2/3 over the other options, but I can't decide if I prefer pixart 2 or 3. With some images I prefer 2, with some 3.

What are your thoughts?

As an overall choice for which alternative to regular NGU should get into madVR, I'd say pixart 3. Personally I'm pretty sure I'd be happy if I'd get to choose between regular NGU and pixart 3, pixart 2 and the old version give up a bit too much sharpness IMO and although they may look a bit better in certain images it's very subtle, I can't find any example where pixart 3 fails dramatically or something. As a "set and forget" scaler for lower-res video pixart 3 is probably the best for me, as the sharper image is more welcome than somewhat better AA. To my eyes at least, blurriness is more bothersome than aliasing. As for 1080p > 2160p scaling, I'll keep to regular NGU vhigh.

[Anima123]

Unfortunately, my card cannot playback with NGU pixart very high fluently. Looking forward to the next release with Medium and Low settings.

[huhn]

I don't disagree, this is the one image where nnedi3 does best compared to NGU pixart, but nnedi3 doesn't win everywhere in this image, either. It does render the arm of the glasses with less aliasing than the newer NGU pixart variants, but if you look at the outer line of the mouth, it's clearly more focused with NGU pixart compared to nnedi3. You can see that at the very bottom of the mouth, or at the top right corner. The lines are partially focused and partially blurred with nnedi3, while they're consistently focused with NGU pixart.

yes these two lines look better with NGU. i can't disagree there.

[burfadel]

Out of the test images, best of the groups in my opinion:
Anime - aliasedAnimeNguPixArtNew3, but could do with a tiny bit of sharpening.
Amercian Dad animation - americanDadNgu, the others the lines were too thick and were less clear, however if they are sharpened americanDadNguPixArtNew3
Castle image - castleNGU, however castleNguPixArtNew3 isn't too bad despite like American dad the lines being too thick and less sharp.
--> half way between castleNGU and castleNguPixArtNew3 would be ideal
Clown pic - clownLanczosNgu, slightly more than box. Not sure what you mean by the using LancosNGU or box, is it downscaling after? Something like spline36 or jinc would be better for downscaling wouldn't it? Or blackman (essentially improved Lanczos)
Outdoor Kitchen - kitchenNguPixArtOld, fractionally not as clear as kitchenNgu, but much better antialiasing etc and clearer than the others. With slight sharpening it is the best of the lot (sharpen doesn't help the other images)
Gully nature pic - natureNguPixArtNew3 nicest overall from the group, handles some details better than natureNguPixArtNew2, and the nature of the picture the slight softness is nicer than NGU
Potatoes - potatoesNgu, the others just aren't as clear. However, with some sharpening potatoesNguPixArtNew3 basically looks the same as NGU
Soft Anime - softImageNguPixArtNew3, again with a little sharpen doesn't hurt :)
Clearer anime - suzumiyaNguPixArtNew3, again with a little sharpen :)

So overall, NGU Piaxart New 3 is seemingly the winner out of the options given. However, if I could mix it up, I would definitely go with about half way between PixArtNew3 and PixArtOld with some sharpening.

I realise sharpening can be added later, but I believe a sharpening post-process pass with an algorithm half way between PixArtNew3 and PixArtOld would be the best result considering just the resize itself. I just used the basic type sharpen as found in irfanview when comparing these images, it actually worked really well in these cases.

[Nevilne]

Honestly a sharpness parameter would be great, without it there are still cases when SXBR is good for cheap price.

[tranfa]

Apparently the log was created anyway.

Please find it in attachment, the 25hz if I don't add 2160p29 and 30, the 30hz if I do.


Edit: sorry but I cannot attach for a temporary bug...

Upload error regardless of the format, I asked the Admins to have a look into it.

[huhn]

just upload it some where else and make sure you are compressing it before you upload it.

[MariaX9]

not commenting on the pixart difference, but I noticed that my eyes almost every time preferred the standard NGU very high image. apparently I need a certain level of sharpness and focus, otherwise my eyes begin to hurt when switching over to the other images.

Me too, i like the standard NGU the most.

[cork_OS]

As for me only "soft" anime image looks more pleasant to eye with soft scalers like NGU pix 3. All other images from comparison bundle looks better with standard NGU.

[ryrynz]

Not a great deal of difference between newpix 2 and 3 but like everyone else I'm going with 3.
Like others, I really want it to be sharper and I need it to sharpen more areas like NNEDI3 does.. or madVR get another sharpen mode that picks up on more edges.
Looks like a worthy alternative to NNEDI3 now, still wouldn't replace it though.

[madshi]

Upload error regardless of the format, I asked the Admins to have a look into it.
As huhn and I have both suggested, please upload it (zipped) to some external file host. Attaching files to this forum doesn't work very well.

madshi so does that mean if you are upscaling BDs to 4K with madvr one should stay RGB all the way to the JVC?

I have a lumagen Pro after the PC, I was told by them to always set the Lumagen to 422 as it works better that way. e.g. PC set to RGB > Lumagen 4:2:2 > Display 4:2:2

Can you tell me what way would you suggest please?

Im a projector person so only interested in the best results for BDs with a proj.
I don't know what the Lumagen does internally. Maybe they have a reason for why they're suggesting YCbCr 4:2:2. You could ask them why. I suppose that they probably internally convert RGB input to YCbCr 4:2:2 for processing. I'm not sure why YCbCr 4:2:2 instead of YCbCr 4:4:4, though. If they're aiming for highest quality, they should do their processing in 4:4:4 instead of 4:2:2.

I can only say that you should configure your HTPC to output RGB. How you should configure the Lumagen is something you need to discuss with the Lumagen folks. If they don't do their processing in 4:2:2 that would be a big disappointment in my book, though.

My video card is the 1080, are there any new cards since the 1080 which are better that one can use even higher madvr settings with?
Well, the Titan, but it's too expensive to make sense. The 1080 Ti is supposed to be released soon, which makes more sense than the Titan. But honestly, I'm not sure if anything higher than 1080 is needed for madVR atm.

The new pixart variants 2/3 are very similar. I've compared the sample pictures you provided and also looked at stills of my 480p anime collection, up scaled to 4k. They hold up well against nnedi3 and often match or even exceed nnedi13 in some cases. 1080p videos at 4k set with Very High looks good with the pixart 3 as well.
As far as what I'd choose, I'd go with pixart 3. It has a slight edge in sharpness (which I prefer) over pixart 2 but doesn't add too much more noise than pixart 2.
As an overall choice for which alternative to regular NGU should get into madVR, I'd say pixart 3. Personally I'm pretty sure I'd be happy if I'd get to choose between regular NGU and pixart 3, pixart 2 and the old version give up a bit too much sharpness IMO and although they may look a bit better in certain images it's very subtle, I can't find any example where pixart 3 fails dramatically or something. As a "set and forget" scaler for lower-res video pixart 3 is probably the best for me, as the sharper image is more welcome than somewhat better AA. To my eyes at least, blurriness is more bothersome than aliasing. As for 1080p > 2160p scaling, I'll keep to regular NGU vhigh.
Out of the test images, best of the groups in my opinion:
Anime - aliasedAnimeNguPixArtNew3, but could do with a tiny bit of sharpening.
Amercian Dad animation - americanDadNgu, the others the lines were too thick and were less clear, however if they are sharpened americanDadNguPixArtNew3
Castle image - castleNGU, however castleNguPixArtNew3 isn't too bad despite like American dad the lines being too thick and less sharp.
--> half way between castleNGU and castleNguPixArtNew3 would be ideal
Clown pic - clownLanczosNgu, slightly more than box. Not sure what you mean by the using LancosNGU or box, is it downscaling after? Something like spline36 or jinc would be better for downscaling wouldn't it? Or blackman (essentially improved Lanczos)
Outdoor Kitchen - kitchenNguPixArtOld, fractionally not as clear as kitchenNgu, but much better antialiasing etc and clearer than the others. With slight sharpening it is the best of the lot (sharpen doesn't help the other images)
Gully nature pic - natureNguPixArtNew3 nicest overall from the group, handles some details better than natureNguPixArtNew2, and the nature of the picture the slight softness is nicer than NGU
Potatoes - potatoesNgu, the others just aren't as clear. However, with some sharpening potatoesNguPixArtNew3 basically looks the same as NGU
Soft Anime - softImageNguPixArtNew3, again with a little sharpen doesn't hurt :)
Clearer anime - suzumiyaNguPixArtNew3, again with a little sharpen :)

So overall, NGU Piaxart New 3 is seemingly the winner out of the options given. However, if I could mix it up, I would definitely go with about half way between PixArtNew3 and PixArtOld with some sharpening.

I realise sharpening can be added later, but I believe a sharpening post-process pass with an algorithm half way between PixArtNew3 and PixArtOld would be the best result considering just the resize itself. I just used the basic type sharpen as found in irfanview when comparing these images, it actually worked really well in these cases.
Honestly a sharpness parameter would be great, without it there are still cases when SXBR is good for cheap price.
Me too, i like the standard NGU the most.
As for me only "soft" anime image looks more pleasant to eye with soft scalers like NGU pix 3. All other images from comparison bundle looks better with standard NGU.
Thanks for your feedback, everyone.

So obviously most people prefer pixart 3 over the other two pixart variants, which is good to know for me. Now can you guys please confirm if you like pixart 3 better than NNEDI3 or not? You know, I'd like to get rid of NNEDI3 at some point, so it's an important question for me.

FYI, I'm not planning a sharpness setting for NGU pixart. However, for 4x upscaling there'd be the option of doing NGU pixart doubling, followed by standard NGU doubling. That would give you higher sharpness than doing NGU pixart doubling twice.

Not a great deal of difference between newpix 2 and 3 but like everyone else I'm going with 3.
Like others, I really want it to be sharper and I need it to sharpen more areas like NNEDI3 does.. or madVR get another sharpen mode that picks up on more edges.
Looks like a worthy alternative to NNEDI3 now, still wouldn't replace it though.
In your suzumiya image I clearly prefer NGU pixart 3 over NNEDI3, don't you?

Can you please post images where you still prefer NNEDI3?

NGU pixart 3 is now usually sharper than NNEDI3, see e.g. Castle or AmericanDad images. So I'm wondering why you still want more sharpening for NGU pixart, while you seem to be happy without additional sharpening for NNEDI3?

Thanks...

[MariaX9]

Thanks for your feedback, everyone.

So obviously most people prefer pixart 3 over the other two pixart variants, which is good to know for me. Now can you guys please confirm if you like pixart 3 better than NNEDI3 or not? You know, I'd like to get rid of NNEDI3 at some point, so it's an important question for me.

FYI, I'm not planning a sharpness setting for NGU pixart. However, for 4x upscaling there'd be the option of doing NGU pixart doubling, followed by standard NGU doubling. That would give you higher sharpness than doing NGU pixart doubling twice.


Never used NNEDI3 since NGU, so yeah NNEDI3 can go.

[burfadel]

NGU pixart 3 is now usually sharper than NNEDI3, see e.g. Castle or AmericanDad images. So I'm wondering why you still want more sharpening for NGU pixart, while you seem to be happy without additional sharpening for NNEDI3?

Thanks...

The Pixart3 is the best of the lot overall, although the old pixart is close. It is better than NNEDI3.

So maybe a half way point between pixart 3 and the old pixart, if possible? For the sharpness I don't mean a strong sharpness, adaptive sharpness, or anything like that, I just mean a basic sharpen pass at the end to clear up the picture a bit without the need for further sharpening. In fact, the type of sharpening I'm referring to isn't an option under the post-process sharpen methods.

If you open the pixart3 images in Irfanview, available here:
http://www.irfanview.com/

and select image from the menu and sharpen, then pixart3 is the best out of all of them. Like I said it is only a subtle sharpen, but makes a massive difference. It is so effective that for the potatoes it actually makes pixart3 better than NGU. With the sharpen, the only image that looks a bit better is the outdoor kitchen scene with the old pixart, with the barbecue aliasing.

So it doesn't need a adaptive sharpen, edge sharpen or anything like that, just subtle sharpening using the most basic filters as a final pass, and if that can be done Pixart3 would be a real and clear winner.

[ryrynz]

In your suzumiya image I clearly prefer NGU pixart 3 over NNEDI3, don't you?


I still prefer NNEDI3 64 neurons or higher for the sole reason that NNEDI3 is sharpening more lines within the image and the lines are darker. NGU newpix 2/3 thins lines a touch more but it's not sharper on the suzumiya image (representative of low res anime content) and NNEDI3 128 and 256 are even sharper still and are superior (and IMO probably impossible to beat) on this image. If NGU newpix 3 picked up on stuff other than just thick lines it probably would be a win. But I see a big difference still between NNEDI3 256 and NGU newpix 3. Sure the performance requirement for NNEDI3 is high but like I said, I think in order to topple NNEDI3 you need to rework the core of NGU.. for some NGU is good enough, and yes NGU newpix in some areas works better than NNEDI3 as you pointed out to huhn but it's not quite there for me., but nice improvement none the less..

[madshi]

The Pixart3 is the best of the lot overall, although the old pixart is close. It is better than NNEDI3.

So maybe a half way point between pixart 3 and the old pixart, if possible? For the sharpness I don't mean a strong sharpness, adaptive sharpness, or anything like that, I just mean a basic sharpen pass at the end to clear up the picture a bit without the need for further sharpening. In fact, the type of sharpening I'm referring to isn't an option under the post-process sharpen methods.

If you open the pixart3 images in Irfanview, available here:
http://www.irfanview.com/

and select image from the menu and sharpen, then pixart3 is the best out of all of them. Like I said it is only a subtle sharpen, but makes a massive difference. It is so effective that for the potatoes it actually makes pixart3 better than NGU. With the sharpen, the only image that looks a bit better is the outdoor kitchen scene with the old pixart, with the barbecue aliasing.

So it doesn't need a adaptive sharpen, edge sharpen or anything like that, just subtle sharpening using the most basic filters as a final pass, and if that can be done Pixart3 would be a real and clear winner.
The pixart2 build was between old and pixart3, though much nearer to pixart3. I'm not sure what irfanview's sharpening does, probably it's roughly similar to LumaSharpen in madVR.

I still prefer NNEDI3 64 neurons or higher for the sole reason that NNEDI3 is sharpening more lines within the image and the lines are darker. NGU newpix 2/3 thins lines a touch more but it's not sharper on the suzumiya image (representative of low res anime content) and NNEDI3 128 and 256 are even sharper still and are superior (and IMO probably impossible to beat) on this image.
I'm confused. Where exactly do you see NNEDI3-256 to be better on the suzumiya image compared to pixart 3? Here's a direct comparison:

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/201202

I've marked places where I could see a difference at 100% view. I've marked the differences in the NNEDI3 image. Red circles are where NGU pixart 3 looks better to me. Green circles is where NNEDI3 looks better to me. Gray circles are where I could see a difference but couldn't say which one was better. This comparison is with NNEDI3-256, btw. You must be disagreeing with my judgement here? Did I miss to find some circles? And which circles do you disagree with?

If NGU newpix 3 picked up on stuff other than just thick lines it probably would be a win. But I see a big difference still between NNEDI3 256 and NGU newpix 3.
But where!?!? I don't see NNEDI3 picking up anything NGU pixart 3 doesn't. And IMHO NGU pixart 3 looks better on the suzumiya image. But I'm willing to change my mind, if you can point me to where you see NNEDI3 win with a big difference?

[Werewolfy]

Here's a new NGU pixart test build:

http://madshi.net/nguPixArt.zip

Actually, the zip contains 2 different test builds. Both builds are almost identical to each other and to the previous build with only one key difference: The NGU "very high" algorithm has been tuned. The "low", "medium" and "high" algorithms haven't changed at all. So if you want to test the new builds, please use "very high" for all your tests.

The new builds have slightly different priorities to before: The old NGU pixart test build put highest priority on anti-aliasing capabilities, which proved to be working well. However, it resulted in some artifacts sometimes, and in results maybe not always looking very natural. The tuned NGU pixart "very high" algo now compromises a little bit. I've traded in a bit of anti-aliasing capability for more natural looking results and more sharpness. The 2 new builds are very near to each other. One build has ever so slightly higher anti-aliasing abilities, the other one is ever so slightly sharper.

Included in the zip is also a little image quality comparison, with screenshots taken with: NNEDI3-256, standard NGU very high, the original NGU pixart very high, and the 2 new NGU very high variants. Please check out the images and let me know which algorithm you prefer. Please also double check with your own content to verify your preferences.

Here's my own subjective quality evaluation, based on the screenshot images in the zip:

anti-aliasing abilities: NGU-pixart-old > NGU-pixart-2 > NGU-pixart-3 > NNEDI3-256 (see kitchen and americanDad images)
natural look: NGU-pixart-3 > NGU-pixart-2 > NNEDI3-256 > NGU-pixart-old (see potatoes and suzumiya images)
sharpness: NGU-pixart-3 > NGU-pixart-2 > NNEDI3-256 > NGU-pixart-old (see castle and americanDad images)

Overall, I prefer NGU pixart 2/3 over the other options, but I can't decide if I prefer pixart 2 or 3. With some images I prefer 2, with some 3.

What are your thoughts?

Only based on your comparison pictures : I prefer pixart 2, it seems thats this one has better anti-aliasing abilities on the aliasedAnime image. 3 is just a little bit sharper on some pictures but it has more aliasing.

Pixart beats NNEDI3 on most of your pictures, I'll try to test on some Anime your test build to see if that's still the case on my sources.

[burfadel]

If pixart2 is between pixart 3 and old, then pixart3 is the winner, however a sharpen pass will help tremendously. I believe the sharpen of irfanview is really basic, like sharpen in avisynth where it sharpens the whole image without using edge detection etc. The nature of the picture with pixart3 lends itself to responding really well to it. Surely a clarifying pass with a basic sharpen like that would be okay to do?

Seems the only complaint with pixart is the sharpness, and a basic sharpen like in Irfanview fixes that. What do others think?

[Damien147]

Thank you Madshi.

1) Done, I seem to have a similar bug to the one described previously on my Panasonic AX900, where the Win10 Ati Crimson driver recommends 4096x2160. But anyway, let's stick to 2160p, and see what happens.

2) Done. The issue is still there, introducing a 2160p29 or 30 puts in offside the p25...

3) How can I activate debug mode? I renamed the .ax files, I run the .bat file, and I get the error "file "madvr.ax" is missing" - but it's there...

Thank you for the patience...


I reproduced your problem and by adding p50 solved it.



EDIT:So your resolution is 3840x2160?Then try :

3840x2160p24, 3840x2160p25, 3840x2160p29, 3840x2160p30, 3840x2160p50

or

2160p24, 2160p25, 2160p29, 2160p30, 2160p50

[wasper]

This is it, my first post.

First, I had so much fun trying to understand all the MADVR setting even if my wife just doesn't understand why!!! I'm reading many posts for a while and it's really great to see how smart people could be. Well, enough a**-kissing.

Still, I'm having some questions that I wasn't able to figure out.

I'm using MediaCenter with Intel NUC. Mainly, I'm upscaling DVD to 1080p as my gpu/cpu is not able to step directly to 4k with double frame rate produced by DXVA deintrelacing. The TV has a correct upscaler and do the rest. It's kind of a two times upscaling process. Don't know or not if I should avoid this.

Anyway, my question is about color space. If I'm using film mode, the color space seems to work fine for all the image upsacler available (dxva, jinc, spline, etc...). In video mode, color space is fine only if I'm using DXVA. As soon, as I'm changing to software upscaler, the color space seems to get compressed between 16-235 even though everything is set to 0-255(gpu, madvr, tv). Is this a bug or I'm missing something? I have an old DVD movie in 4:3 native but shooted in 16:9. The black bar in the movie are totally black in film mode but grey in video mode if using dxva deinterlacer without dxva image upscaler. To resume, color space seems wrong if I'm using deinterlacing with CPU image upscaler.

Second question is about IVTC. How does a dvd player or a blu-ray will play a film telecined to 29.97? Will it deintrelace like video mode and play it at 29.97p or it will use kind of ITVC to play it back at 24fps (probably not as tv must accept this refresh rate)?

I'm having a DVD that will play ok in video mode but with some jitter on some sequences. It will not jitter on film mode. However, with my hardware blu-ray player, it is also playing fine... Could the jitter in video mode related to some clock deviation that are not present in film mode and totally inexistant on hardware player? I'm not using reclock or videoclock. Smooth motion is also not used for this DVD.

Sorry about the bad english :scared:

[Bloodred]

Now can you guys please confirm if you like pixart 3 better than NNEDI3 or not? You know, I'd like to get rid of NNEDI3 at some point, so it's an important question for me.
I'd be fine with that, I like the look of pixart 3.

However, for 4x upscaling there'd be the option of doing NGU pixart doubling, followed by standard NGU doubling. That would give you higher sharpness than doing NGU pixart doubling twice.
That actually sounds very interesting, I'd really like to see how that turns out since in my experience regular NGU had the most visible issues when quadrupling.

[cork_OS]

Now can you guys please confirm if you like pixart 3 better than NNEDI3 or not? You know, I'd like to get rid of NNEDI3 at some point, so it's an important question for me.
I don't need NNEDI3, and NGU pix 3 looks good. But, just to be honest, NNEDI3 32 vs. NGU pix medium tweaked may have different relation.

[huhn]

I'm using MediaCenter with Intel NUC. Mainly, I'm upscaling DVD to 1080p as my gpu/cpu is not able to step directly to 4k with double frame rate produced by DXVA deintrelacing. The TV has a correct upscaler and do the rest. It's kind of a two times upscaling process. Don't know or not if I should avoid this.
in term of quality it would be better to output at UHD but i don't think a nuc can do that.

Anyway, my question is about color space. If I'm using film mode, the color space seems to work fine for all the image upsacler available (dxva, jinc, spline, etc...). In video mode, color space is fine only if I'm using DXVA. As soon, as I'm changing to software upscaler, the color space seems to get compressed between 16-235 even though everything is set to 0-255(gpu, madvr, tv). Is this a bug or I'm missing something? I have an old DVD movie in 4:3 native but shooted in 16:9. The black bar in the movie are totally black in film mode but grey in video mode if using dxva deinterlacer without dxva image upscaler. To resume, color space seems wrong if I'm using deinterlacing with CPU image upscaler.
check the gpu driver video settings.

Second question is about IVTC. How does a dvd player or a blu-ray will play a film telecined to 29.97? Will it deintrelace like video mode and play it at 29.97p or it will use kind of ITVC to play it back at 24fps (probably not as tv must accept this refresh rate)?
depends on the player setting and the DVD.
a soft telecine DVD and a proper player can IVTC the signal easily.

I'm having a DVD that will play ok in video mode but with some jitter on some sequences. It will not jitter on film mode. However, with my hardware blu-ray player, it is also playing fine... Could the jitter in video mode related to some clock deviation that are not present in film mode and totally inexistant on hardware player? I'm not using reclock or videoclock. Smooth motion is also not used for this DVD.
and we don't know if you are changing the refresh rate to match the source refresh rate.
hard to say.

[Magik Mark]

Madshi,

We welcome innovation on image fidelity. I have been an avid Nnedi3 user. I watch a lot of HD sources. So for, nothing beats Nnedi3 64 chroma upscaling.

Comparing it to NGU, all variants, Nnedi3 still sharper, finer and depthful. Image may appear a little bit smaller because of finer lines.

It is more natural and faithful to the original.

I think what NGU lacks at the moment is depth. Maybe we can achieve this by making the lines finer

[Arm3nian]

I like pixart 3.

I also tried pixart 3 with luma sharpen in upscaling refinement, and think it looks pretty good. Gives added sharpness without the nasty artifacts that regular NGU produces with low quality sources, and does better than using luma sharpen with nnedi3. Maybe those who wanted a sharpness slider on ngu pixart can use this as an alternative.

[burfadel]

From what I can find, the sharpen as used in Irfanview applies unsharp sharpening to the image. Unsharp sharpenining is also available from the effects list (ctrl + E). Unsharp sharpening to 1 (weak) produces nice results on all the pixart3 images. Using limitedsharpen or adaptivesharpen won't be as 'good' for this blurring because they operate on different principles. For those that don't know what unsharp is, google it :). If looking at images just keep in mind the strength of the filter they used, I'm suggesting it should be used with a weak setting.

Since the upscaling amount is a fixed amount (2x or 4x), having it built in with a fixed value wouldn't be a bad thing as the strength of the unsharp filter required would always remain the same. The purpose of this sharpen would not be to actively sharpen the image, it would be just to remove the softness introduced by the upscaling.

Pixart3 is preferred over the original pixart because it may be fractionally clearer, but like in the case of the outdoor barbecue handle it has bad aliasing. That type of aliasing isn't noticeable in the other pics, but I can think of many scenarios where the aliasing would be noticeable. For example, maybe car racing? The old pixart was far better with antialiasing.

Now once unsharp (weak) is used, the old pixart is the winner because it is sharper and clearer than the others without the aliasing!

So my new choice, which wasn't an option :) is pixartold in all cases, with a weak unsharp filter.

[ryrynz]

Should 704x480 upscaled to 1920x1200 when using NGU, show the following? NGU very high > NGU High < SSIM1D100 AR? Just wondering why there's downscaling if its supposed to be doubling.. I've reset madVR to defaults. Is the OSD correct?

[nevcairiel]

Should 704x480 upscaled to 1920x1200 when using NGU, show the following? NGU very high > NGU High < SSIM1D100 AR? Just wondering why there's downscaling if its supposed to be doubling.. I've reset madVR to defaults. Is the OSD correct?

Its quadrupling (or doubling twice) and then scaling down to target, seems perfectly normal to me.

[ryrynz]

Ah so it's all baked into the presets. Anything medium and above is actually quadrupling..

Madshi, when looking at the doubled images of Suzumiya it's near impossible to spot any differences between them and Beyond Compare also backs this up with very little changes so I won't refer to those examples.
What I see on my own screen is quite different, what screen res do you use? Here's another comparison below.

This one (http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/201273) is from the anime Full Metal Panic! and shows the levels of sharpness difference between NNEDI3 256 and NGU newpix3, screencapped at 1920x1200
It doesn't really show much else with with regards to handling aliasing or blurry lines etc but you'll see all the lines here are much more in focus, especially the eyes and the radio, knobs etc. with no detriment to the image quality that sharpening afterwards would usually add in the form of haloing.

This is what I see consistently when comparing the two. I've also noticed that using screenshotcomparison doesn't seem to show the exact level of change visible when viewing fullscreen.. so would recommend the ol' F11 on it.

In this case after using sharpen edges refinement of 1.5 after upscale gives a somewhat similar image, but even after that NNEDI3 is still sharper in other background areas. Even at 2.0 the background lines are still sharper using NNEDI3 256 and unfortunately sharpen edges is now oversharpening some lines now which doesn't make it a worthwhile alternative choice to NNEDI3 for anime IMO.

With the aliased anime examples I still prefer NNEDI3 overall, strangely NGU newpix 3 is sharper here but it's kinda to the detriment of the image, with it looking overall too sharp, especially around the mouth and glasses predominately.

[pose]

This one (http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/201273) is from the anime Full Metal Panic!
Sup with the difference in color/brightness? Can i have source image please? :)

[ryrynz]

Sup with the difference in color/brightness? Can i have source image please? :)

There isn't really anything really to speak of..Probably due to the upscaler differences + chroma and maybe your monitor?

http://www.filedropper.com/theguyikindalikeisasergeant Use the first frame for comparison.

[Cinemancave]

So I have a really strange problem that only occurs when playing 4k-material: My GTX 1080 doesn't clock up to its normal reference clock speed off around 1700 MHz, but stays at 800 MHz. This makes playback off 4K stuttery. When I playback 1080p upscaled to 4K the clock speed go up to 1700 MHz, as they should. I can't get my head around what's causing this :S

Does anyone know how to force clock speed on the Geforce 10x0-series?

[huhn]

change the power setting in the nvidia control panel to adaptive not optimal

[madshi]

Only based on your comparison pictures : I prefer pixart 2, it seems thats this one has better anti-aliasing abilities on the aliasedAnime image. 3 is just a little bit sharper on some pictures but it has more aliasing.

Pixart beats NNEDI3 on most of your pictures, I'll try to test on some Anime your test build to see if that's still the case on my sources.
Thanks. Looking forward to your impressions with your own sources.

If pixart2 is between pixart 3 and old, then pixart3 is the winner, however a sharpen pass will help tremendously. I believe the sharpen of irfanview is really basic, like sharpen in avisynth where it sharpens the whole image without using edge detection etc.
From what I can find, the sharpen as used in Irfanview applies unsharp sharpening to the image. Unsharp sharpenining is also available from the effects list (ctrl + E). Unsharp sharpening to 1 (weak) produces nice results on all the pixart3 images. Using limitedsharpen or adaptivesharpen won't be as 'good' for this blurring because they operate on different principles.
You seem to think that unsharp masking would be some special high quality sharpening. It's not. It's the most simple sharpening you can think of. Actually LumaSharpen is doing exactly the same, just optimized for highest GPU speed, and with some simple limiting to reduce ringing artifacts.

Pixart3 is preferred over the original pixart because it may be fractionally clearer, but like in the case of the outdoor barbecue handle it has bad aliasing. That type of aliasing isn't noticeable in the other pics, but I can think of many scenarios where the aliasing would be noticeable. For example, maybe car racing? The old pixart was far better with antialiasing.

Now once unsharp (weak) is used, the old pixart is the winner because it is sharper and clearer than the others without the aliasing!
The main reason why I tuned the original pixart algo is not the missing sharpness, but real interpretation errors and a less natural look to it. These problems can't be fixed with sharpening.

It's true that the original pixart had a great anti-aliasing capability, but overall I believe pixart 2/3 are clearly better.

It's kind of a two times upscaling process. Don't know or not if I should avoid this.
Generally it's better to avoid duplicate processing. However, if you upscale from DVD to FullHD resolution with madVR, that's the most important part, so I think it's still better to do that than to send the low-res image to the TV.

Anyway, my question is about color space. If I'm using film mode, the color space seems to work fine for all the image upsacler available (dxva, jinc, spline, etc...). In video mode, color space is fine only if I'm using DXVA. As soon, as I'm changing to software upscaler, the color space seems to get compressed between 16-235 even though everything is set to 0-255(gpu, madvr, tv). Is this a bug or I'm missing something? I have an old DVD movie in 4:3 native but shooted in 16:9. The black bar in the movie are totally black in film mode but grey in video mode if using dxva deinterlacer without dxva image upscaler. To resume, color space seems wrong if I'm using deinterlacing with CPU image upscaler.
madVR tries to avoid using DXVA processing if at all possible, because often the GPU drivers do fancy things to the video when using DXVA. Avoiding DXVA is possible when using film mode, but not when using DXVA deinterlacing, obviously. This is the cause of those color shifts. As huhn already suggested, check the GPU control panel. There are many options there. Probably one related to "dynamic range" or "content type" or similar might be responsible for this problem.

Second question is about IVTC. How does a dvd player or a blu-ray will play a film telecined to 29.97? Will it deintrelace like video mode and play it at 29.97p or it will use kind of ITVC to play it back at 24fps (probably not as tv must accept this refresh rate)?

I'm having a DVD that will play ok in video mode but with some jitter on some sequences. It will not jitter on film mode. However, with my hardware blu-ray player, it is also playing fine... Could the jitter in video mode related to some clock deviation that are not present in film mode and totally inexistant on hardware player?
madVR currently only supports film mode or DXVA deinterlacing. DXVA deint is *not* video mode. It's a black box. madVR sends the interlaced frames/fields into DXVA and gets progressive frames back. What DXVA does internally, madVR doesn't know. Most GPU manufacturers try to auto detect if the source is video or film, often even per pixel, and try to apply a proper deinterlacing method for that. Unfortunately due to how the DXVA interface is designed, the output is usually double frame rate, even for film sources, which means you can't play the result at 24Hz, and you often have 3:2 pulldown judder baked into the DXVA output.

Hardware DVD/Blu-Ray players have a processing chip built in which does the deinterlacing. Depending on the chip, deinterlacing quality can vary between good and bad. Better chips are often able to deinterlacing film content correctly, some can even IVTC for 24fps output. How good that works will vary from player to player.

Generally, applying IVTC can be very easy, or it can be very tricky, depending on the content. Some content is really 24fps, but just with flags for 60i output. Such content is extremely easy to output in 24fps. Other content is encoded as 60 different fields, either with or without flags that indicate which fields belong together. Yet other content might constantly switch between different encoding modes. madVR's film mode understands every of these variants and tries to produce perfect 24fps. It usually works pretty well. Hardware DVD/Blu-Ray players usually have no problem with the easier encoding variants, but might stumble with more difficult situations.

DXVA deinterlacing is implemented by the GPU manufacturer. So it will vary, depending on whether your GPU is Intel, AMD or NVidia. I think Intel used to have the worst deinterlacer, but I'm not sure if that's still true. In any case, DXVA can't decimate. So if you know that the source is telecined film, it's strongly recommended to use film mode.

We welcome innovation on image fidelity. I have been an avid Nnedi3 user. I watch a lot of HD sources. So for, nothing beats Nnedi3 64 chroma upscaling.

Comparing it to NGU, all variants, Nnedi3 still sharper, finer and depthful. Image may appear a little bit smaller because of finer lines.

It is more natural and faithful to the original.

I think what NGU lacks at the moment is depth. Maybe we can achieve this by making the lines finer
Are you talking about regular NGU or about the new NGU pixart 2/3 builds? If you're talking about the new pixart builds, can you show some screenshots which demonstrate what you're saying?

I like pixart 3.

I also tried pixart 3 with luma sharpen in upscaling refinement, and think it looks pretty good. Gives added sharpness without the nasty artifacts that regular NGU produces with low quality sources, and does better than using luma sharpen with nnedi3. Maybe those who wanted a sharpness slider on ngu pixart can use this as an alternative.
Good to hear!

Should 704x480 upscaled to 1920x1200 when using NGU, show the following? NGU very high > NGU High < SSIM1D100 AR? Just wondering why there's downscaling if its supposed to be doubling.. I've reset madVR to defaults. Is the OSD correct?
Ah so it's all baked into the presets. Anything medium and above is actually quadrupling..

Madshi, when looking at the doubled images of Suzumiya it's near impossible to spot any differences between them and Beyond Compare also backs this up with very little changes so I won't refer to those examples.
What I see on my own screen is quite different, what screen res do you use? Here's another comparison below.

This one (http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/201273) is from the anime Full Metal Panic! and shows the levels of sharpness difference between NNEDI3 256 and NGU newpix3, screencapped at 1920x1200
It doesn't really show much else with with regards to handling aliasing or blurry lines etc but you'll see all the lines here are much more in focus, especially the eyes and the radio, knobs etc. with no detriment to the image quality that sharpening afterwards would usually add in the form of haloing.

In this case after using sharpen edges refinement of 1.5 after upscale gives a somewhat similar image, but even after that NNEDI3 is still sharper in other background areas. Even at 2.0 the background lines are still sharper using NNEDI3 256 and unfortunately sharpen edges is now oversharpening some lines now which doesn't make it a worthwhile alternative choice to NNEDI3 for anime IMO.
I think your test is probably flawed because your processing chain when comparing NNEDI3 and NGU pixart probably differs. It's kind of my "fault", though. The problem is that currently madVR starts using NGU pixart quadrupling earlier (at a smaller scaling factor) than with NNEDI3. Furthermore, only the NGU very high preset currently uses the new tuned pixart algo. So if you use quadrupling, you're getting the tuned pixart only for the doubling, but not for the quadrupling step, which will still be done with the old pixart medium setting, only. I think it's very likely that these differences are causing the pretty dramatic difference in sharpness you're seeing. Which is actually a good thing because it means when solving the flawed test conditions, there's a good chance you might change your mind about NGU pixart.

As I said before, I'm going to redesign the settings once more in the next build, which should then hopefully make it easier for you to compare the algos in a fair way. Right now you need to take extra care that you're comparing apples to apples.

Can you please try the following:

1) Either just double the image instead of scaling to 1920x1080.
2) Or alternatively: Double the image, make a screenshot, then load the screenshot into MPC to double another time, or this time to fit the screen.

Only if you carefully double check that the processing chains are identical (except for switching NGU and NNEDI3), you're doing a true apples to apples comparison. Also you have to avoid NGU quadrupling right now because you'll not get the new tuned pixart algo for the 4x step right now. You can double check the processing chain by checking the OSD (Ctrl+J). The up and downscaling algos must be perfectly identical, and for NGU every time "very high" must be used. For NNEDI3 every time 256 taps should be used.

[Cinemancave]

change the power setting in the nvidia control panel to adaptive not optimal

Thank you sir!

[madshi]

Should 704x480 upscaled to 1920x1200 when using NGU, show the following? NGU very high > NGU High < SSIM1D100 AR? Just wondering why there's downscaling if its supposed to be doubling.. I've reset madVR to defaults. Is the OSD correct?
P.S: I've double checked: With your sample, when upscaling to 1920x1200, the current madVR builds gives you the following processing chains:

NNEDI3-256 > Jinc AR
NGU-veryHigh > NGU-high < SSIM1D100 AR

So basically you're comparing apples to oranges.

[ryrynz]

So basically you're comparing apples to oranges.

Good to know. How far off is this new build? I might just wait for that.

[madshi]

I don't know, could be a week, or 2 or 3 or 4. Can't you switch MPC to "Double Size" for a quick comparison test? That will give you apples to apples.

[Werewolfy]

Thanks. Looking forward to your impressions with your own sources.


I did some tests and I find NGU pixart way better than NNEDI 3 256 neurons on most videos. It's sharper, more focus and sometimes it seems that NNEDI3 produce some artefacts.

But I find it very tricky to choose between pixart2 and 3... Pixart 2 has better anti-aliasing capabilities and pixart 3 is sharper and a little bit more natural sometimes. On some scenes I prefer 2 and on other scenes I prefer 3... I don't really know which one to choose honestly.

[madshi]

That's what I like to hear! :) I've had a hard time myself deciding between pixart 2 and 3, that's why I've asked for feedback. FWIW, I may have found a way to create a hybrid which gets near to the best of both pixart 2 and 3. Not sure yet, though.

[xyndv]

Can the maximum limits in image enhancements/upscaling refinement be raised? I find that anti bloating softens the image quite a bit, and I can't compensate enough with more sharpness.

[Warner306]

Can the maximum limits in image enhancements/upscaling refinement be raised? I find that anti bloating softens the image quite a bit, and I can't compensate enough with more sharpness.

Have you tried using a lower value of anti-bloating (e.g. 25%)?

[andybkma]

madshi, does mVR work more efficient and/or use less gpu load/resources if aero is on or off on a Win7 64 bit system with a low powered laptop gpu (Nvidia 650M)? I have been using mVR for years & years with aero turned off but would like to know if turning aero on would help out mVR. Thanks