madVR - high quality video renderer (GPU assisted)

[thighhighs]

About Spline upscaling. I remember, Spline64 good vs Lanczos3, because Spline has less ringing/noise and it still sharp. But now we have AR-filter and Lanczos3 AR looks pretty fine for me (or Spline don't looks dramatically better). Anyway, Jinc AR win vs both.
So i think Lancsoz3 AR can replace Spline64/AR for users who like sharp image and Jinc can replace Spline36 for others (if gpu can handle Jinc).

[pirlouy]

As I already said in the past, thanks for the "let madVR decide", your default settings make sense (I use "medium" quality in "image upscaling").
Too bad I still have to choose "chroma upscaling" and "image downscaling" settings. :)

[Siso]

About Spline upscaling. I remember, Spline64 good vs Lanczos3, because Spline has less ringing/noise and it still sharp. But now we have AR-filter and Lanczos3 AR looks pretty fine for me (or Spline don't looks dramatically better). Anyway, Jinc AR win vs both.
So i think Lancsoz3 AR can replace Spline64/AR for users who like sharp image and Jinc can replace Spline36 for others (if gpu can handle Jinc).

Lanczos3 even with AR looks artificial for movies, spline36 or 64 looks more natural.

[cork_OS]

There is a bug still in 91.7 where you have a random profile, it displays a high or higher rendering time than "frame" but in reality it is lower.
It seems to happen with high frame rate material more often than not.
I've seen that bug in 91.6 (max stats lower than avg stats, no frame drops), but can't reproduce it now.

[thighhighs]

Lanczos3 even with AR looks artificial for movies, spline36 or 64 looks more natural.What about Jinc AR in this case?

[cork_OS]

1) Is the new upscaling settings page fine now?
New UI is very nice, but one thing confuses me: seems NGU AA and NGU Sharp share all upscaling settings. Is it bug or feature?

Is mixed NGU upscaling (AA->Sharp) abandoned or still planned?

[Siso]

What about Jinc AR in this case?

Jinc AR is better than spline, I love it, tho I can't use it...

[har3inger]

Yep, the new AR relaxed for downscaling after NGU doubling is what's causing the increased render time. When I set downscale to bicubic 60, all the builds render at the same speed.

This is kind of unfortunate, as the only one not using AR is bicubic 60 (bilinear doesn't count). For me, linear light on downscale after doubling has negligible impact on performance, but relaxed vs strict AR is quite substantial.

[Neo-XP]

Yep, the new AR relaxed for downscaling after NGU doubling is what's causing the increased render time. When I set downscale to bicubic 60, all the builds render at the same speed.

This is kind of unfortunate, as the only one not using AR is bicubic 60 (bilinear doesn't count). For me, linear light on downscale after doubling has negligible impact on performance, but relaxed vs strict AR is quite substantial.

It is a shame that you can't choose not to use strict AR anymore, because the "same as downscaling algo" option is gone. I hate strict AR, but I don't understand why this was removed for users who want to use it.
Same with the Lanczos3/4 (AR) vs Spline32/64 (AR) debate, they should both be available in the upscaling algos after doubling, because they are good for this, as Jinc also is.

It would be easier and clearer if settings for image doubling were in another page IMO (along with all the new quadrupling options and when they are activated).
This way you could choose "let madVR decide" or "same as upscaling/downscaling algo" for upscaling/downscaling algos after doubling.
You could also do almost the same for chroma doubling : "let madVR decide", "same as upscaling algo" or the all the new NGU variants.

It is kind of a bastard UI we have now with all settings for image upscaling on the same page, with mixed settings for new users and advanced ones.
I do not think the two can cohabit while making everyone happy, at least not like it is now. I totally understand how it works, but it just doesn't seem right.

Just my opinion again, don't take it too seriously :D

[Georgel]

I really don't understand how anybody could want nearest neighbor when looking at these results:

http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/202526

Anyway. If I could remove spline, that would solve the problem, but in my experience, whenever I remove something, somebody will cry. You see, I *thought* I would be safe removing such a dramatically bad algorithm like nearest neighbor, but even for that some users are crying. So you can bet with spline there would also be some.

Enough people have asked for nearest neighbor to return, so I'd like to do that, although I can absolutely not understand it, but I currently don't have the space necessary in the settings dialog, so right now I see no easy solution.


Then you might want to get a better GPU. If you do some research, it seems that there are GPUs that have no audible fan noise nor any high pitched buzzing noise or coil whine. IIRC there was even a GPU manufacturer who was willing to accept RMAs on GPUs which produced coil whine. You can probably exchange the GPU via Ebay without too much additional cost.


Or modify the "activate quadrupling drop down", that should also work.


Glad to hear that!

Seems you were spot on and features and such are wanted in madVR

Gotta wonder at this moment though, leaving them inside madVR does affect the complexity of programming?

Does it have any negative impact in your workflow when designing it?

[madshi]

There is a bug still in 91.7 where you have a random profile, it displays a high or higher rendering time than "frame" but in reality it is lower.
Can't reproduce it. Are you sure it's really a new bug in v0.91.7?

Because when you double, sharpen edges is applied, and when you double once more, sharpen edges is again applied. But when you quadruple in one step, sharpen edges is applied only once. I get this from the fact that doubling twice looks similar to quadrupling directly, in my sample. If anything, quadrupling directly looks better. But with sharpen edges and refine after every step turned on, doubling twice clearly looks sharper.
That's all correct, but what does that have to do with 8.0 or 16.0 which you mentioned?

Too bad I still have to choose "chroma upscaling" and "image downscaling" settings. :)
For now.

New UI is very nice, but one thing confuses me: seems NGU AA and NGU Sharp share all upscaling settings. Is it bug or feature?
I wasn't sure if it's better this way or separating the settings. Finally I decided to implement it the way it is now, so you can later quickly switch between e.g. NGU Soft, Standard and Sharp, with all other settings identical, so you can more easily compare which of the 3 different NGU sharpness levels you prefer.

Is mixed NGU upscaling (AA->Sharp) abandoned or still planned?
I don't know yet. Generally I prefer to work on direct quadrupling algos, because they have a much better quality vs speed ratio.

Yep, the new AR relaxed for downscaling after NGU doubling is what's causing the increased render time. When I set downscale to bicubic 60, all the builds render at the same speed.

This is kind of unfortunate, as the only one not using AR is bicubic 60 (bilinear doesn't count). For me, linear light on downscale after doubling has negligible impact on performance, but relaxed vs strict AR is quite substantial.
Which NGU quality level are you using? Which GPU do you have? Generally, the AR speed difference should not be that dramatic for GPUs with decent speed.

Anyway, you can always use the "use downscaling settings" option, then you have full control.

It is a shame that you can't choose not to use strict AR anymore, because the "same as downscaling algo" option is gone.
That's not true. It's available in v0.91.7.

Gotta wonder at this moment though, leaving them inside madVR does affect the complexity of programming?

Does it have any negative impact in your workflow when designing it?
Depends on the feature/option.

[Neet009]

madVR v0.91.6 released

Now I'd like to have your feedback about the following topics:

1) Is the new upscaling settings page fine now?
2) When disregarding speed, how would you rate NGU Anti-Alias Very High vs. NNEDI3 256-taps, for image upscaling?
3) When taking speed into account, how would you rate NGU Anti-Alias vs NNEDI3 at the various quality levels, for image upscaling?
4) Same as 2) and 3), but for chroma upscaling.

1. I agree that it maybe too many optoins, but it is fine and someone needs those options. IMO, it is easy to use in general.

2. According to my test, NGU AA very high beats NNEDI3 256 as a whole, especially for low-res aliased anime content. NGU AA makes line more focus and less aliasing as expected.

3. I found that NGU AA very high is slightly faster than NNEDI3 64 when zooming 200% without doing any upsaling or downscaling after luma doubling. However, when doing upsaling or downscaling after luma doubling, NGU AA very high is slightly slower than NNEDI3 64. I don't know why but it doesn't matter. I'll replace NNEDI3 with NGU AA on my settings.

4. For chroma upscaling, it's hard to tell the quality differents between NNEDI3 and NGU AA, but I can confirm that NGU AA med is faster than NNEDI3 16.

Graphics card:NV GTX1060 6GB (driver 373.06)
OS:win7 x64

Anyway, I like NGU AA and NGU sharp(2x and direct 4x), they keep good balance between quality and performance. Again, Thank you for your great works.

[Xaurus]

Can't reproduce it. Are you sure it's really a new bug in v0.91.7?
No, it's not a new bug, I said it is still present in 91.7. Apologies if it was unclear.
I can easily reproduce it, question is, how can I assist you with data?

[Bloodred]

Now I'd like to have your feedback about the following topics:

1) Is the new upscaling settings page fine now?
2) When disregarding speed, how would you rate NGU Anti-Alias Very High vs. NNEDI3 256-taps, for image upscaling?
3) When taking speed into account, how would you rate NGU Anti-Alias vs NNEDI3 at the various quality levels, for image upscaling?
4) Same as 2) and 3), but for chroma upscaling.

1) Yup, I like the increased control, especially being able to set NGU to explicitly do direct quadrupling
2) In order to test out NGU-AA I went back to my problem image with original NGU, the one I posted some time ago (480p anime source, soft image with a hand reaching for some cherries). NGU-AA still presents some fairly visible artifacts, especially on the outlines of the fingers. It's bad enough that it's visible while watching normally, when quadrupling 480p. NNEDI3 256 is clearly better in this case still, as the wavy/blotchy artifacts do not appear and the image looks much more natural. I haven't had the time to take screenshots and crop them again - but I'm sure you can reproduce the results based on the original I posted a while back. It's the same style of artifacts as normal NGU produces, but less severe.
3) I've done a simple 1080p > 2160p test, NGU-AA (vhigh) takes ~32ms while NNEDI3 256 takes 58ms (so unusable in real time), without touching any of the other settings. In my 480p config I find that NNEDI3 128, then 64 quadrupling is usable in real time and provides better quality that NGU-AA on that particular source I mentioned.
4) I haven't looked too closely at chroma settings, but generally speaking NGU-AA is faster and I have not noticed any image quality issues due to any NGU flavor here (those are restricted to NGU luma quadrupling).

[Arm3nian]

That's all correct, but what does that have to do with 8.0 or 16.0 which you mentioned?

I'm not sure how accurate saying 8.0 was. Just for curiosity, if my source was 1080, and I doubled to 4k, applied 4.0 sharpen edges, then doubled again to 8k, and applied 4.0 sharpen edges, would it or would it not be the same as directly quadrupling 1080 to 8k, and applying 8.0 (if available) sharpen edges?

I just wanted more sharpen edges to be available, and it is, by doubling twice, but wanted the same with direct quadruple. I find the extra sharpness useful when zoomed in on a decent quality decent resolution frame/image. Not that big of a deal, I can use sharpen edges in image enhancements, though not to the same potential.

[har3inger]

Which NGU quality level are you using? Which GPU do you have? Generally, the AR speed difference should not be that dramatic for GPUs with decent speed.

Anyway, you can always use the "use downscaling settings" option, then you have full control.



Sharp/High. Yeah, the GPU is a laptop one (AMD 8870m) and is decidedly kinda slow by today's standards. Still, works well enough as an HTPC via hdmi due to pretty low fan noise.

Yes, I'll be using "use downscaling settings" for full control. Makes the most sense.

[madshi]

2. According to my test, NGU AA very high beats NNEDI3 256 as a whole, especially for low-res aliased anime content. NGU AA makes line more focus and less aliasing as expected.

3. I found that NGU AA very high is slightly faster than NNEDI3 64 when zooming 200% without doing any upsaling or downscaling after luma doubling. However, when doing upsaling or downscaling after luma doubling, NGU AA very high is slightly slower than NNEDI3 64. I don't know why but it doesn't matter. I'll replace NNEDI3 with NGU AA on my settings.

4. For chroma upscaling, it's hard to tell the quality differents between NNEDI3 and NGU AA, but I can confirm that NGU AA med is faster than NNEDI3 16.
Thanks!

I can easily reproduce it, question is, how can I assist you with data?
I'm not sure how I can fix it without being able to reproduce it myself, unfortunately. Is it just a statistics glitch in the OSD? Or does it actually affect playback quality/smoothness? If it's just a statistics glitch, I suppose I'd rather ignore it for the time being, seeing that I can't seem to reproduce it on my PC.

2)[/B] In order to test out NGU-AA I went back to my problem image with original NGU, the one I posted some time ago (480p anime source, soft image with a hand reaching for some cherries). NGU-AA still presents some fairly visible artifacts, especially on the outlines of the fingers. It's bad enough that it's visible while watching normally, when quadrupling 480p. NNEDI3 256 is clearly better in this case still, as the wavy/blotchy artifacts do not appear and the image looks much more natural. I haven't had the time to take screenshots and crop them again - but I'm sure you can reproduce the results based on the original I posted a while back. It's the same style of artifacts as normal NGU produces, but less severe.
I've tested with that image again, and here are my findings:

Lanczos and even Jinc produce exactly the same artifacts (and Jinc is known to be the most natural and aliasing-free linear scaler!). I think that says a lot. The artifacts do seem to come from the source, considering that even Jinc shows them.

However, NNEDI3 does seem to be able to smooth them out. So my judgement right now is that for extremely soft and wide edges, NNEDI3 manages to apply some Anti-Aliasing, too, while NGU AA is "only" on the same level as Jinc with such edges.

Do you agree with this? If so, it means that NGU AA does not introduce any artifacts on its own, it just has lower AA capability than NNEDI3 for extremely soft & wide edges. That's a very important finding, IMHO, because if NGU AA introduced such kind of artifacts (even if the source doesn't have them!), that would be a major problem. A lower than expected AA capability in some cases is of course not a nice finding, but it's a much less dramatic problem than introducing new weird artifacts into the image.

So now the question would be how you would rate NGU AA vs NNEDI3 with a broader set of sources, not just this one image. Which do you prefer then?

I'm not sure how accurate saying 8.0 was. Just for curiosity, if my source was 1080, and I doubled to 4k, applied 4.0 sharpen edges, then doubled again to 8k, and applied 4.0 sharpen edges, would it or would it not be the same as directly quadrupling 1080 to 8k, and applying 8.0 (if available) sharpen edges?

I just wanted more sharpen edges to be available, and it is, by doubling twice, but wanted the same with direct quadruple. I find the extra sharpness useful when zoomed in on a decent quality decent resolution frame/image. Not that big of a deal, I can use sharpen edges in image enhancements, though not to the same potential.
Ah, now I see that your 4.0 and 8.0 numbers were meant to be sharpening strengths? That wasn't at all clear before. I thought you were talking about 4.0 and 8.0 scaling factors or something.

The sharpening after the first doubling has much more effect than sharpening after quadrupling. So if you don't sharpen after doubling but only after quadrupling, just doubling the sharpening strength won't achieve the same effect. However, increasing the sharpening strength even more might introduce sharpening artifacts. The key difference is that sharpening algos look at the pixel neighborhood of a specific size. If you sharpen after doubling, each pixel covers more of the original image than after quadrupling. So practically the pixel neighborhood when sharpening after doubling is bigger than when sharpening after quadrupling. Which explains why sharpening after doubling is more effective. However, using a larger neighborhood also bloats more.

Anyway, a potential solution to this problem might be to modify the sharpening algorithm itself to use a bigger pixel neighborhood when sharpening after quadrupling (instead of doubling). However, that would make the sharpening slower.

I think it would be better to pick a sharper upscaler than to try to sharpen the image. If you like sharp, use "NGU Sharp" and get rid of the extra sharpening algos. If that's still not sharp enough for your taste, then try sharpening the image before upscaling it (see image enhancements).

Sharp/High. Yeah, the GPU is a laptop one (AMD 8870m) and is decidedly kinda slow by today's standards. Still, works well enough as an HTPC via hdmi due to pretty low fan noise.

Yes, I'll be using "use downscaling settings" for full control. Makes the most sense.
JFMI: What is the difference in render times when you switch from Medium to High NGU? And what is the difference when you switch from strict to relaxed AR downscaling?

And can you see a difference in sharpness, when using strict vs relaxed AR? In some images I've found it to be quite noticeable.

[Xaurus]

I'm not sure how I can fix it without being able to reproduce it myself, unfortunately. Is it just a statistics glitch in the OSD? Or does it actually affect playback quality/smoothness? If it's just a statistics glitch, I suppose I'd rather ignore it for the time being, seeing that I can't seem to reproduce it on my PC.
Yes exactly, it shows a false rendering time in the OSD. Playback is not affected, however the point is that it can show higher rendering times than what the frame time is - thus one would expect frame drops, but there are none to be found.

In order to have the "proper" rendering time shown, I am forced to change the algorithm for chroma, and then back to what it was.

Some other person said he also saw this bug. Would be excellent to get rid of it since it's quite confusing.

[-sTi-]

I have some problems with assigning keyboard shortcuts in the latest version(s).
I want to do the following: assign a key to get Softcubic 70 luma upscaling (for low quality sources) and one for Lanczos3 AR (for HQ sources; my Intel HD 4600 cannot handle anything more advanced).
This worked in the madVR versions before the redesigned luma scaling options, but now assigning "softcubic" does not work any more . The available choice for keyboard shortcuts is just "cubic" without further choice. The strange thing is that at first the "cubic" shortcut worked but only produced the "bicubic" variant. After I manually changed the dropdown in the luma scaling options to "softcubic" the key I assigned to "cubic" is ignored when pressed.

What can I do to get the desired "softcubic" shortcut?

[FreeFall]

madshi,

Is the new upscaling settings page fine now?

It would be nice if we could choose what to do with chroma when doubling. For example being able to disable chroma doubling and simply select an upscaler to use, or to be able to select what algorithm to double chroma with (NGU Low, Med, High, Very High / Jinc AR, Lancos AR / NNEDI3 16-256 neurons ect).

Probably overkill but I would have liked to have tried out NGU Anti-Alias Very High for both luma and chroma, the current presets are too limited for my use.


When disregarding speed, how would you rate NGU Anti-Alias Very High vs. NNEDI3 256-taps, for image upscaling?

NGU Anti-Alias is pretty close to NNEDI3 now, you've done a great job with it, depending on the source it can be a little too aggressive at removing aliasing which can produce images that have a flat digital look to them. Overall I still prefer NNEDI3 because it's more balanced, keeps more of the image noise / detail intact.


When taking speed into account, how would you rate NGU Anti-Alias vs NNEDI3 at the various quality levels, for image upscaling?

NGU Anti-Alias is almost twice as fast, image doubling 1.2x (quadrupling disabled) PAL interlaced DVD upscaled to 1080p (Geforce GTX 1070) NGU Anti-Alias Very High preset (luma and chroma) ~8.8ms vs NNEDI3 256 neurons / very high preset chroma ~16ms.

I vote to keep NNEDI3 as I don't think NGU Anti-Alias can replace it just yet, highly recommended as a faster alternative though.


Cheers.

[Paul Tronc]

Hello,

I can switch from GTX960 to R9 380 for free. I know that the 380 has an hybrid hevc decoder, but I don't know the real impact on my setup. I mainly read H264 1080p blurays, but I have started encoding my movie stock to HEVC.

Is it worth switching to R9 380? I have a 1080p projector, my render time is globally ok but I use 60Hz frame interpolation so sometimes the render time is borderline. The frame interpolation is managed by the CPU so it doesn't interfer with madvr AFAIK.

[Schwartz]

When selecting doubling instead of scaling, the option 'any (more) scaling' is pretty limited while this is effectively still an important option. It's missing Catmull, Spline, Mitchell. The last two are particularly useful, Mitchell for SD and Spline for general-purpose when Jinc or AR are too expensive. Most of the stuff listed is AR, so choices are effectively made for us. It's not terrible, but I much preferred the old behaviour when it was still a toolbox. Anyway.. I can only repeat that same sentiment so many times so I'll tip my hat now. ;)

[huhn]

Hello,

I can switch from GTX960 to R9 380 for free. I know that the 380 has an hybrid hevc decoder, but I don't know the real impact on my setup. I mainly read H264 1080p blurays, but I have started encoding my movie stock to HEVC.

Is it worth switching to R9 380? I have a 1080p projector, my render time is globally ok but I use 60Hz frame interpolation so sometimes the render time is borderline. The frame interpolation is managed by the CPU so it doesn't interfer with madvr AFAIK.

hybrid decoder is the last thing you want when using madVR.

i don't know which card is faster for madVR but the difference is not going to be a big one.

[-sTi-]

I have a Laptop connected via HDMI to a Panasonic Plasma TV. The dual screen is set up as "extend" (not "duplicate") in Windows 10. I have set up the Laptop to use the NVIDIA 950m instead of integrated Intel graphics when using MPC-HC.
When the refresh rate of the TV is set as 50Hz in Windows graphics control panel everything works fine (the Laptop screen stays at its native 60Hz and MPC-HC running on the TV plays at 50Hz). However, as I use smooth motion, I would like to have the TV run at 60Hz (IIRC this was recommended earlier in this thread).
The problem is I can change this setting in Windows and the playback then starts fine with MPC-HC and madVR in full screen mode (also the correct 60Hz setting is displayed), but if I then e.g. press the right mouse button during the movie the whole TV screen goes black and the video refuses to play after this. Not good. But it gets even worse: If I then try to exit full screen mode with "Alt+Enter", also the Laptop Screen goes black and I can't see anything any more.
Does anyone have an idea what could cause this strange behavior?

[madshi]

Yes exactly, it shows a false rendering time in the OSD. Playback is not affected, however the point is that it can show higher rendering times than what the frame time is - thus one would expect frame drops, but there are none to be found.

In order to have the "proper" rendering time shown, I am forced to change the algorithm for chroma, and then back to what it was.

Some other person said he also saw this bug. Would be excellent to get rid of it since it's quite confusing.
Well, there's a "secret" probably only devs know: Sometimes you can add a new feature in 2 hours, but sometimes it takes 2 days to find a simple bug. So would you rather want me spending my time chasing an elusive bug which only affects a measurement number in the OSD, and which I can't reproduce on my own PC (which makes it extra hard to fix)? Or would you rather have me add new features like direct quadrupling NGU AA, or NGU Soft/Standard instead? If I asked users for a vote, I'm pretty sure what the majority would want.

I have some problems with assigning keyboard shortcuts in the latest version(s).
I want to do the following: assign a key to get Softcubic 70 luma upscaling (for low quality sources) and one for Lanczos3 AR (for HQ sources; my Intel HD 4600 cannot handle anything more advanced).
This worked in the madVR versions before the redesigned luma scaling options, but now assigning "softcubic" does not work any more . The available choice for keyboard shortcuts is just "cubic" without further choice. The strange thing is that at first the "cubic" shortcut worked but only produced the "bicubic" variant. After I manually changed the dropdown in the luma scaling options to "softcubic" the key I assigned to "cubic" is ignored when pressed.
Sounds like a bug. I'll check if I can reproduce it.

Is the new upscaling settings page fine now?

It would be nice if we could choose what to do with chroma when doubling. For example being able to disable chroma doubling and simply select an upscaler to use, or to be able to select what algorithm to double chroma with (NGU Low, Med, High, Very High / Jinc AR, Lancos AR / NNEDI3 16-256 neurons ect).

Probably overkill but I would have liked to have tried out NGU Anti-Alias Very High for both luma and chroma, the current presets are too limited for my use.
I understand, but the reason why I limited the chroma options is because it was very evident from reading the madVR thread that a very high number of users was running madVR with very bad settings (too high chroma settings, too low luma settings). So I've made this decision to "help" users, especially noobs, to use sane settings. Of course I could change the dropdown box to include all the various algorithms, but you can bet that many users would start using crazy configurations again. Furthermore, all the available algorithms could be used either with or without AR, without or without sigmoidal light. So the dropbox would get crazy long.

When disregarding speed, how would you rate NGU Anti-Alias Very High vs. NNEDI3 256-taps, for image upscaling?

NGU Anti-Alias is pretty close to NNEDI3 now, you've done a great job with it, depending on the source it can be a little too aggressive at removing aliasing which can produce images that have a flat digital look to them. Overall I still prefer NNEDI3 because it's more balanced, keeps more of the image noise / detail intact.
Can you upload a couple of video frames (just a PNG file should suffice) where you prefer NNEDI3? I only need the original (unscaled) image.

I vote to keep NNEDI3 as I don't think NGU Anti-Alias can replace it just yet, highly recommended as a faster alternative though.
How about chroma upscaling. Can I remove NNEDI3 there, at least?

Is it worth switching to R9 380?
I don't know. If the R9 380 is noticeably faster in games, it will probably also be noticeably faster with madVR. However, latest AMD drivers on Windows 10 seem rather unstable, from the reports I'm seeing here in this thread.

When selecting doubling instead of scaling, the option 'any (more) scaling' is pretty limited while this is effectively still an important option. It's missing Catmull, Spline, Mitchell. The last two are particularly useful, Mitchell for SD and Spline for general-purpose when Jinc or AR are too expensive.
As usual, I'm willing to reconsider, if you can show me screenshots that prove your point. I highly doubt that after doubling Catmull, Spline or Mitchell would be any better than Bicubic60. You can create comparison screenshots by doubling first, then save a screenshot with exactly 2.0x scaling factor. Then load the screenshot PNG into the media player and turn off doubling. That way you can use Catmull, Spline or Mitchell after doubling.

I have a Laptop connected via HDMI to a Panasonic Plasma TV. The dual screen is set up as "extend" (not "duplicate") in Windows 10. I have set up the Laptop to use the NVIDIA 950m instead of integrated Intel graphics when using MPC-HC.
When the refresh rate of the TV is set as 50Hz in Windows graphics control panel everything works fine (the Laptop screen stays at its native 60Hz and MPC-HC running on the TV plays at 50Hz). However, as I use smooth motion, I would like to have the TV run at 60Hz (IIRC this was recommended earlier in this thread).
The problem is I can change this setting in Windows and the playback then starts fine with MPC-HC and madVR in full screen mode (also the correct 60Hz setting is displayed), but if I then e.g. press the right mouse button during the movie the whole TV screen goes black and the video refuses to play after this. Not good. But it gets even worse: If I then try to exit full screen mode with "Alt+Enter", also the Laptop Screen goes black and I can't see anything any more.
Does anyone have an idea what could cause this strange behavior?
Sounds like a GPU driver issue. You could try turning off fullscreen exclusive mode. That will probably fix the problem. However, you will need to make sure that playback is still perfectly and reliably smooth afterwards. Normally, fullscreen exclusive mode is the most reliable mode for smooth playback.

[Xaurus]

Well, there's a "secret" probably only devs know: Sometimes you can add a new feature in 2 hours, but sometimes it takes 2 days to find a simple bug. So would you rather want me spending my time chasing an elusive bug which only affects a measurement number in the OSD, and which I can't reproduce on my own PC (which makes it extra hard to fix)? Or would you rather have me add new features like direct quadrupling NGU AA, or NGU Soft/Standard instead? If I asked users for a vote, I'm pretty sure what the majority would want.
madshi, please spend your time on what you think is best for madvr. Since it seems this bug was relatively unknown, I am happy to have brought it to the surface. If it will be fixed sooner, that's great, if it will be fixed later, that's great too. :D

[omarank]

* added NGU Anti-Alias algorithm, intended as a potential NNEDI3 replacement


madshi, although NGU Anti-Alias is a definite improvement over other NGU pixart versions, my eyes still seem to like NNEDI3 better. Please see this screenshot comparison (http://www.mediafire.com/file/ndgb7ntwngsu8t6/screenshot_comparison.zip).

I think you should not drop a good upscaler like NNEDI3. Before NGU came, NNEDI3 was unarguably the best image doubler in madVR in terms of image quality. People have been using it for several years without any complaint about quality. Even if NGU Anti-Alias was miles better than NNEDI3, still you shouldn’t be replacing it. NNEDI3 may be considered as a good fallback option for image doubling, just like Random dithering is in the choice of dithering algorithms.

[aufkrawall]

I don't manage to see why the NNEDI3 result would be better.
With my cartoon example, it's very obvious that NNEDI3 suffers the problem of connecting lines which shouldn't be connected, unlike NGU AA.

[Bloodred]

I've tested with that image again, and here are my findings:

Lanczos and even Jinc produce exactly the same artifacts (and Jinc is known to be the most natural and aliasing-free linear scaler!). I think that says a lot. The artifacts do seem to come from the source, considering that even Jinc shows them.

However, NNEDI3 does seem to be able to smooth them out. So my judgement right now is that for extremely soft and wide edges, NNEDI3 manages to apply some Anti-Aliasing, too, while NGU AA is "only" on the same level as Jinc with such edges.

Do you agree with this? If so, it means that NGU AA does not introduce any artifacts on its own, it just has lower AA capability than NNEDI3 for extremely soft & wide edges. That's a very important finding, IMHO, because if NGU AA introduced such kind of artifacts (even if the source doesn't have them!), that would be a major problem. A lower than expected AA capability in some cases is of course not a nice finding, but it's a much less dramatic problem than introducing new weird artifacts into the image.

I hadn't even thought to try Jinc, but yes, after having a look at the image it produces I agree. NGU AA doesn't introduce the artifacts by itself. As you've said though, NNEDI3 does a better job with on this source, but NGU AA doesn't add anything bad to the image by itself, which is what I thought at first. NNEDI3 256+256 is quite clearly better, but too slow by far for realtime usage. NNEDI3 128+64 however is slightly faster than NGU AA vhigh (26ms vs. 28ms) and still provides a better image.


So now the question would be how you would rate NGU AA vs NNEDI3 with a broader set of sources, not just this one image. Which do you prefer then?

I've tried it out with other 480p and 720p sources (no 1080p because that's entirely NGU Sharp territory for me, haven't been disappointed yet). This also means that it was always quadrupling. Overall I'd say NGU AA is a good replacement for NNEDI3. For the most part I can get equivalent image quality if not slightly better for the same render time. I imagine if you add direct quadrupling for NGU AA the performance advantage for NGU AA will only become much higher - which is nice, that translates to less fan noise. In general I'd say that NGU AA appears to be slightly sharper than NNEDI3, which I prefer for all the sources I've tried other than the one mentioned above.

NGU AA is overall better than NNEDI3 I think, but not universally better. Also I'd love to see direct quadrupling for NGU AA. :D Direct quadrupling 720p content with NGU Sharp is pretty great!

[madshi]

madshi, although NGU Anti-Alias is a definite improvement over other NGU pixart versions, my eyes still seem to like NNEDI3 better. Please see this screenshot comparison (http://www.mediafire.com/file/ndgb7ntwngsu8t6/screenshot_comparison.zip).
Did you compare with a number of different sources? All other users so far seem to prefer NGU AA *overall*, although NNEDI3 might win with some sources.

FWIW, in your comparison image, some of the lines are better anti-aliased by NNEDI3, but the dress of the girl is clearly sharper in the NGU AA image.

I think you should not drop a good upscaler like NNEDI3. Before NGU came, NNEDI3 was unarguably the best image doubler in madVR in terms of image quality. People have been using it for several years without any complaint about quality. Even if NGU Anti-Alias was miles better than NNEDI3, still you shouldn’t be replacing it. NNEDI3 may be considered as a good fallback option for image doubling, just like Random dithering is in the choice of dithering algorithms.
The thing is that many users have stability problems with NNEDI3/OpenCL. Problems range from graphical corruption, over Windows 10 updates removing OpenCL support up to crashes. Also, if I could remove NNEDI3, I could get rid of all the ugly OpenCL code.

Anyway, I won't remove NNEDI3 immediately, if there are several users opposed to it.

I would like to thin out the options dialog, though, so I'd still like to know if anybody were shocked if I remove NNEDI3 as a *chroma* upscaling algorithm? The list is too long for my taste, and considering that chroma upscaling is less visible than luma, and most users seem to prefer NGU AA over NNEDI3, it shouldn't do too much harm?

With my cartoon example, it's very obvious that NNEDI3 suffers the problem of connecting lines which shouldn't be connected, unlike NGU AA.
Yes. From my internal list of test images, 3 are very clear wins for NGU AA, one is a clear win for NNEDI3, and all others are a wash, with maybe NGU AA being slightly better in most of them. To me it seems NGU AA wins overall, although NNEDI3 might win in some cases.

I hadn't even thought to try Jinc, but yes, after having a look at the image it produces I agree. NGU AA doesn't introduce the artifacts by itself. As you've said though, NNEDI3 does a better job with on this source, but NGU AA doesn't add anything bad to the image by itself, which is what I thought at first.
Same here. Glad we cleared that up. And I'm happy that NGU AA is not responsible for adding those weird artifacts.

NNEDI3 256+256 is quite clearly better, but too slow by far for realtime usage. NNEDI3 128+64 however is slightly faster than NGU AA vhigh (26ms vs. 28ms) and still provides a better image.
With this specific image, yes. It's the only one in my test set where NNEDI3 clearly wins.

I've tried it out with other 480p and 720p sources (no 1080p because that's entirely NGU Sharp territory for me, haven't been disappointed yet). This also means that it was always quadrupling. Overall I'd say NGU AA is a good replacement for NNEDI3. For the most part I can get equivalent image quality if not slightly better for the same render time. I imagine if you add direct quadrupling for NGU AA the performance advantage for NGU AA will only become much higher - which is nice, that translates to less fan noise. In general I'd say that NGU AA appears to be slightly sharper than NNEDI3, which I prefer for all the sources I've tried other than the one mentioned above.

NGU AA is overall better than NNEDI3 I think, but not universally better. Also I'd love to see direct quadrupling for NGU AA. :D Direct quadrupling 720p content with NGU Sharp is pretty great!
That mostly matches my own findings, but I haven't tested a whole lot of different sources yet, to be honest.

[ryrynz]

How about chroma upscaling. Can I remove NNEDI3 there, at least?


NGU AA has become better, it's almost as good as NNEDI3 overall, some may prefer it even because of it's sometimes slightly thinner lines and extra sharpness (in my testing it's sharper most times now) however NNEDI3 still creates better blended lines and NGU AA still is at it's core NGU and has that NGU-like appearance which looks a bit raw/truer to the source which NNEDI3 is great at improving on. Also TBH I think I prefer High to Very High.

I really need to have this deliver something like NNEDI 256 visuals or better at similar or lower performance to consider it a replacement.. Like I said, to best NNEDI3 I think it needs a bit more than some fine tuning. But for most It's probably good enough now.. Maybe focus on some of those other issues in the tracker now? :P

[leeperry]

How about chroma upscaling. Can I remove NNEDI3 there, at least?
I'm sorry that I don't have much time these days to scrutinize 400% magnified test patterns but yes I don't see any good reason to keep NNEDI3 chroma upscaling as I've personally never liked its artificial look. Reconstruction Soft + SR2 is all I need, to me NNEDI3 really only excels at detecting edges as a low-res hopeless luma doubler but as time allows and you guys do the nitpicking I'll do my homework and roll all new NGU variants eventually.

[madshi]

NGU AA has become better, it's almost as good as NNEDI3 overall, some may prefer it even because of it's sometimes slightly thinner lines and extra sharpness (in my testing it's sharper most times now) however NNEDI3 still creates better blended lines and NGU AA still is at it's core NGU and has that NGU-like appearance which looks a bit raw/truer to the source which NNEDI3 is great at improving on.
Thanks for your feedback.

Would be nice to have some frames (PNG before scaling) so I can actually see what you're talking about. So far during all the pixart test builds you've just shown me one image where I could see a difference at all, and in that image I think NGU AA looks better now than NNEDI3. Then you talked about prefering NNEDI3 because it was sharper. Now you say NGU AA is overall sharper, but you still prefer NNEDI3. Really would like to see a few frames where you see NNEDI3 win.

Like I said, to best NNEDI3 I think it needs a bit more than some fine tuning.
I wish you would leave the development decisions to me. Why are you trying to tell me that I need to change the NGU AA core, when you don't even know what the core of either NGU or NGU AA is exactly? The cores of NGU and NGU AA are quite different. If you double with NNEDI3 or NGU AA, you'll see that both have a half pixel shift, while NGU Sharp has not. That should already tell you something...

I'm sorry that I don't have much time these days to scrutinize 400% magnified test patterns but yes I don't see any good reason to keep NNEDI3 chroma upscaling as I've personally never liked its artificial look. Reconstruction Soft + SR2 is all I need, to me NNEDI3 really only excels at detecting edges as a low-res hopeless luma doubler but as time allows and you guys do the nitpicking I'll do my homework and roll all new NGU variants eventually.
K, thx.

[70MM]

For Chroma Upscaling which is better, NNEDI3 or NGU?

[har3inger]

@madshi:

I use a 10 bit 1280x720 video (software decoding, so no extra GPU stress) to kind of benchmark the "worst case" scenario for running upscaling to 1080p.

There is a noticeable difference in detail reconstruction/artifacts from medium to high, and an extremely large difference in render time. With relaxed bicubic 150 AR LL and NGU high, I'm getting 33-35ms render times. With NGU medium, I get 22ms. There's not a big difference in sharpness between the two, probably because scale factor is 1.5x. All the NGU levels look very different on my other computer with a 1440p display, where the scale factor is 2x. Chroma is reconsoft, all save performance features are unchecked, dithering is non-ED. No image refinements checked either.

There's a very small difference in sharpness between relaxed and strict for me, roughly similar to the difference between low and medium NGU. Render times are similarly small, representing a 2ms difference (which in my case pushes me just over acceptable timings).

For lulz, I tried bicubic 150 no AR with LL for downscaling after NGU high. I'm kind of ashamed to say that... it looks really quite nice. I'll stick with it a while and see if I run into any obvious problems with it, but for my 30 seconds of testing on my 15" laptop screen it's looking very nice. Will have to see if it holds up on the TV. If anyone likes using some of the image refinement sharpen settings, I'd recommend them trying bicubic 150 downscaling (if applicable) instead as a cheaper and good looking alternative.

[webs0r]

madVR v0.91.6 released
Now I'd like to have your feedback about the following topics:

1) Is the new upscaling settings page fine now?
2) When disregarding speed, how would you rate NGU Anti-Alias Very High vs. NNEDI3 256-taps, for image upscaling?
3) When taking speed into account, how would you rate NGU Anti-Alias vs NNEDI3 at the various quality levels, for image upscaling?
4) Same as 2) and 3), but for chroma upscaling.

1) I like it very much. Best UI yet.
2) Didn't test
3) I prefer NGU AA - my test was NGU AA high vs NNEDI 64 quadrupling, looking at 100%. (On my card this was equivalent render times). Pretty hard to split tbh - minor differences in parts of the image that I was neutral on, but then found a spot where I preferred NGU AA.
4) Could not tell the difference. I'll take NGU as equivalent but with faster performance.

Super job!

[Magik Mark]

Anyway, I won't remove NNEDI3 immediately, if there are several users opposed to it.

I would like to thin out the options dialog, though, so I'd still like to know if anybody were shocked if I remove NNEDI3 as a *chroma* upscaling algorithm? The list is too long for my taste, and considering that chroma upscaling is less visible than luma, and most users seem to prefer NGU AA over NNEDI3, it shouldn't do too much harm?



Madshi,

We watch a lot of HD sources. Right now, nothing beats NNEDI3 64 for chroma upscaling. Please do not remove this.

For users with displays 60" or higher, it produces the cleanest image I have ever seen. Images look so natural and sharp. Maybe if you are an anime lover, this may not be the case but for non-anime videos NNEDI3 does wonders

[Thunderbolt8]

Wewho is "we"?

[madshi]

@madshi:

I use a 10 bit 1280x720 video (software decoding, so no extra GPU stress) to kind of benchmark the "worst case" scenario for running upscaling to 1080p.

There is a noticeable difference in detail reconstruction/artifacts from medium to high, and an extremely large difference in render time. With relaxed bicubic 150 AR LL and NGU high, I'm getting 33-35ms render times. With NGU medium, I get 22ms. There's not a big difference in sharpness between the two, probably because scale factor is 1.5x. All the NGU levels look very different on my other computer with a 1440p display, where the scale factor is 2x. Chroma is reconsoft, all save performance features are unchecked, dithering is non-ED. No image refinements checked either.

There's a very small difference in sharpness between relaxed and strict for me, roughly similar to the difference between low and medium NGU. Render times are similarly small, representing a 2ms difference (which in my case pushes me just over acceptable timings).

For lulz, I tried bicubic 150 no AR with LL for downscaling after NGU high. I'm kind of ashamed to say that... it looks really quite nice. I'll stick with it a while and see if I run into any obvious problems with it, but for my 30 seconds of testing on my 15" laptop screen it's looking very nice. Will have to see if it holds up on the TV. If anyone likes using some of the image refinement sharpen settings, I'd recommend them trying bicubic 150 downscaling (if applicable) instead as a cheaper and good looking alternative.
Ah ok, those 2ms make sense for relaxed vs strict AR.

1) I like it very much. Best UI yet.
2) Didn't test
3) I prefer NGU AA - my test was NGU AA high vs NNEDI 64 quadrupling, looking at 100%. (On my card this was equivalent render times). Pretty hard to split tbh - minor differences in parts of the image that I was neutral on, but then found a spot where I preferred NGU AA.
4) Could not tell the difference. I'll take NGU as equivalent but with faster performance.
Thx!

We watch a lot of HD sources. Right now, nothing beats NNEDI3 64 for chroma upscaling. Please do not remove this.

For users with displays 60" or higher, it produces the cleanest image I have ever seen. Images look so natural and sharp. Maybe if you are an anime lover, this may not be the case but for non-anime videos NNEDI3 does wonders
Have you tested the new NGU Anti-Aliasing algorithm yet? It produces results that look very similar to NNEDI3. Most users find it actually even better than NNEDI3.

[cork_OS]

I wasn't sure if it's better this way or separating the settings. Finally I decided to implement it the way it is now, so you can later quickly switch between e.g. NGU Soft, Standard and Sharp, with all other settings identical, so you can more easily compare which of the 3 different NGU sharpness levels you prefer.
Sharing setting between 3 different NGU sharpness levels is definitely reasonable, but as you've said NGU AA has different core.
I don't know yet. Generally I prefer to work on direct quadrupling algos, because they have a much better quality vs speed ratio.
It would be great to have NGU AA 4x. But what about scale ratio above 4x (sextupling, octupling etc.)? Like NGU AA 2x > NGU Sharp 4x < Bicubic 150?

Also I would like to ask several theoretical questions, if you allow:
1. Is madVR completely spatial (except dither patterns)?
2. In madVR all work is done via GPU shaders, but most avisynth filters, for example, are CPU based. Are you knowingly avoid to use CPU heavy algos (by design), or modern multicore CPUs just less fit in real-time image processing?

[FreeFall]

madshi,

Can you upload a couple of video frames (just a PNG file should suffice) where you prefer NNEDI3? I only need the original (unscaled) image.

Here is a clip of a poor quality VHS encode:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/r23lsv9w1ycxpfn/Test%20Clip.zip?dl=0

It's a tough call, this shows how good NGU Anti-Alias Very High is vs NNEDI3 256, cleans up more of the aliasing. I think I just like the slightly noisier image NNEDI3 outputs with this video, have a look and see what you think.


How about chroma upscaling. Can I remove NNEDI3 there, at least?

Others will have to chime in and vote but I would keep it, more options are a good thing.


Cheers.

[omarank]

Did you compare with a number of different sources? All other users so far seem to prefer NGU AA *overall*, although NNEDI3 might win with some sources.

FWIW, in your comparison image, some of the lines are better anti-aliased by NNEDI3, but the dress of the girl is clearly sharper in the NGU AA image.
Yes, it’s not just one source. I too agree with the consensus that NGU AA is overall better than NNEDI3. However, NNEDI3 produces somewhat clean looking images which look more natural and are easier on the eyes, with low quality SD sources especially. NGU AA may be sharper or may have less artifacts, but NNEDI3 looks smoother. Anyway, as you are not removing NNEDI3, we can close this.

I would like to thin out the options dialog, though, so I'd still like to know if anybody were shocked if I remove NNEDI3 as a *chroma* upscaling algorithm? The list is too long for my taste, and considering that chroma upscaling is less visible than luma, and most users seem to prefer NGU AA over NNEDI3, it shouldn't do too much harm?
I don’t find NNEDI3 too useful for chroma upscaling when Jinc and Reconstruction Soft are available. So I have no problem if you remove NNEDI3 chroma.

[Schwartz]

Edit: Cleared this up a bit.

Two things. When selecting a certain image doubler and the doubler does not meet the required scaling factor, extra upscaling settings are discarded in favour of Jinc AR.

Secondly, super-xbr seems to always activate no matter what scaling factor you set it at.

NNEDI for chroma seems a bit excessive yeah. But I've had good experiences with super-xbr 50 for chroma. It's soft and very clean. Bicubic AR seems fine, but maybe consider un-greying the chroma option for image doublers?

[Betroz]

Just installed the newest MadVr. From a pure image quality point of view, which offers better quality NGU Anti-Alias or NGU Sharp? (for both Chroma Upscaling and Image Doubling)
My GTX 1080 card is fast enough to run any of them at Very High, I just can't deside which one is superior.

[nevcairiel]

Just installed the newest MadVr. From a pure image quality point of view, which offers better quality NGU Anti-Alias or NGU Sharp? (for both Chroma Upscaling and Image Doubling)
My GTX 1080 card is fast enough to run any of them at Very High, I just can't deside which one is superior.

As so many things in life: It depends.

If you have a high-quality source (ie. artifact free), then NGU Sharp is likely going to be better.
On sources with artifacts, NGU Anti-Alias is superior, since it manages to hide certain amounts of artifacts, while NGU Sharp would emphasize them to some degree.

[sheppaul]

As so many things in life: It depends.

If you have a high-quality source (ie. artifact free), then NGU Sharp is likely going to be better.
On sources with artifacts, NGU Anti-Alias is superior, since it manages to hide certain amounts of artifacts, while NGU Sharp would emphasize them to some degree.

Just want to do it automatically... :)

[YGPMOLE]

Disabling the hardware acceleration in the LAV Video Deocder should leave the stream decoding to the CPU (even for H265 and HEVC 10bit), plus setting the software deinterlacing should release madVR to do it, saving all the GPU power for the scaling algos and its quaity.

I was wondering: don't would be that useful for all the GPUs (not only the weakest), assuming that an actual CPU is enough powerful for DVDs, BDs and MKVs?

[pirlouy]

No.
Upscaling tasks use shaders.
Decoding & deinterlacing use another part of the GPU.

[YGPMOLE]

Thanks for the explaination, Pirlouy.

But they however contribute to the total amount of the power consumption by the GPU and in my case - due to a known issue of the AMD RX480 on some old Mobo (they absorb to much current from the PCI slot instead from the 8pin connector) - I discover that doing so I could save some power consumption and some extra heating of the GPU, preventing the PC from going into blank screen and freezing during the vision of some contents when the madVR settings are high.

[har3inger]

Just want to do it automatically... :)

Could always set to switch between profiles with a single hotkey. Play the video, eyeball the quality, press 1 or 2 depending on which you want more.