madVR - high quality video renderer (GPU assisted)

[el Filou]

For real movies , movie theatre and such, Should I use Ordered Diffusion , Error Diffusion 1 or 2 ? cause many people suggest Ordered , but Error 2 for Anime .

When should I enable Use Colored noise and Change dither for every Frame ?
You need to test and compare in order to decide what looks best to you.
Personally I can only see a difference between Ordered and Error Diffusion at up to 6-bit at normal vewing distances on film content. When using 8-bit I don't see the difference unless I have my nose on the screen.
I didn't test anime yet.

Colored Noise and Change Dither for Every Frame are just personal preferences, I personally can't stand them especially Colored Noise.

[Asmodian]

is Windows 8.1 as of now still more recommendable than windows 10 for 4k playback with madVR?

madshi still says the DWM is better in Windows 8.1 but all the new HDR features are only supported in 10 if that is important to you.

Windows 10 works perfectly for me with multiple displays running different refresh rates so I am not sure what the relative benefit of 8.1 would be, it is probably very minor or use case specific. Edit: Both are much improved over Windows 7.

Colored Noise and Change Dither for Every Frame are just personal preferences, I personally can't stand them especially Colored Noise.

I agree! Especially about colored noise! :angry:

[Siso]

I agree! Especially about colored noise! :angry:

My point exactly, I always uncheck use colored noise, the second option is ok.

[nevcairiel]

but all the new HDR features are only supported in 10 if that is important to you.

Thats not exactly true. With FSE you can get full 10-bit HDR output on Windows 8.1 as well, at least if using the private vendor APIs, which appears to work better on NVIDIA at least anyway.

On top of that, Windows 10 is playing a bit of a catch-up game with HDR. Microsoft is changing how HDR works every Windows 10 release, and the video drivers are only adapting to that slowly, leading to bugs (both in Windows and the drivers)
Windows 10 has some advantages, like the 10-bit fullscreen windowed mode, which is kinda neat, but it also has its share of issues still. Hopefully that changes over time, though.

[x7007]

My point exactly, I always uncheck use colored noise, the second option is ok.

what this colored noise looks like in movies ? why it's so bad ?

[JarrettH]

Video and stills already have a bit of colour noise. Is it more natural to have it on?

[Siso]

what this colored noise looks like in movies ? why it's so bad ?

It doesn't look good, most people are not using it.

[nevcairiel]

Dithering mostly depends on your screen, there is no universal answer - different panels make dithering noise look different. There is only one choice, to try and judge with your eyes. Theoretically Error-Diffusion is better, in practice however most people will never be able to tell any difference, and it costs quite a bit of performance.

[mparade]

When playing 4K 24fps HDR content I get continuously dropped frames with jerky playback, however average rendering stats is below 30ms. My display is an older 4K LG TV without HDR function, so I let madvr convert HDR to SDR.
I didn't have such problems with other content.

Any help would be appreciated.

[ryrynz]

Any help would be appreciated.

Help us help you..
SPECS.
OSD.

C'mon.. Your post was literally "Please help"

[Dewde]

I'm trying to play a 2880x2880 file on a 4k LG OLED, but I'm getting a black screen instead when going fullscreen on the TV. Sound plays, no image though, but if I move the mouse over the lower part of the screen, the MPC-BE playback bar appears fine.

The TV is connected via HDMI to the PC. The same file plays fine on my PC monitor when going full-screen on 1920x1200.

I'm using:
MPC-BE 1.5.1 (b2755)
LAV 0.70.2
madVR 0.91.11

All of the above are x64. Any idea what the problem could be? Could it be madVR?

[ryrynz]

Any display or custom modes set? Try resetting to defaults after backing up to help narrow it down.

[mparade]

Help us help you..
SPECS.
OSD.

C'mon.. Your post was literally "Please help"

Sorry, but I haven't reported here any problem yet.

Currently the following hardware, software are in use:

Kodi 17.3 Dsplayer version
Windows 10 64 bit OS
Nvidia Geforce GTX 1060 6GB
LAV 0.69.0.81
madVR 0.91.10
i3-6100@3.7GHz

During play my CPU is on 100% utilization, however I am using DXVA2 for hardware decoding.

Sorry for asking, but regarding OSD, do you mean a screen shot of rendering stats during play?

[ryrynz]

During play my CPU is on 100% utilization, however I am using DXVA2 for hardware decoding.


And that there is your problem. Doesn't matter what you're using to display video on, your CPU should never be running max utilization during playback ever.

[mparade]

I know, but I do not understand how this could happen using such a hardware and software configuration. In case of upscaling HD to UHD, the CPU average utilization is ~20% with high quality settings used. In case of no any doubling (when source is 4K, output is 4K) the CPU seems to be "exploding"...I assume madvr/LAV filters/Nvidia drivers has some problem with high bit-depth HEVC streams to decode/render them correctly.

[ryrynz]

No need to quote when replying directly after my post. UHD is generally quite demanding and you only have a dual core CPU which is insufficient for the tasks you require of it, you need to upgrade to a recent quad core at least.

[mparade]

Could be more demanding than doubling a HD source using the same fps, codec, bit-depth?

P.S.

I have never been noted not to quote when replying directly after a post (deleted the quotes). Furthermore, I do not really think it has much of interest (but surely can adapt to it if required). Anyway, thank you very much for the help.

[nussman]

@mparade: First of all you should update LAV filter and madVR.
Did you tried another player? i.e. MPC-HC or MPC-BE

[el Filou]

Video and stills already have a bit of colour noise. Is it more natural to have it on?I think the problem is that coloured noise is kind of an unwanted characteristic in digital media. When source media already has it it's because they were shot in very low light and the sensor of the camera was 'in way over its head' so to speak. Whereas film only did make the whole picture grainier when boosting speed, digital sensors start showing magenta or green noise which is visually much less pleasing. I guess coloured noise dithering gives the same look.

@mparade:
1. check in LAV Video properties the 'active decoder' during playback, to make sure that DXVA is indeed used. GeForce 1060 can't play VP9 10-bit (Profile 2), for instance, so if your HDR file is coming straight from YouTube it won't be decoded in hardware.
2. Check the queues in the OSD. When testing, I encountered situations where the rendering times were confortably below the frame time but either the decode or the present queues were not filling up and frames were being dropped.
3. Do you use Copy-Back? Try Native just for a test. On my system I can't watch 4K using Copy-Back. Your system is very recent but test it anyway, you never know.
Note: if you update to latest madVR version and LAV nightly, you can use DX11VA Native, which doesn't have the quality issues of DXVA2N.

[mparade]

I am going to update LAV filters and madVR now. Give you a feedback shortly. Only SMplayer could play correctly these 12-bit HEVC HDR files. According to the specs of my GTX 1060 and the latest Nvidia drivers this card does support 12-bit HEVC decoding: https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/981372/geforce-basics/which-gpus-support-hevc-a-k-a-h-265-/

[nevcairiel]

12-bit is not supported through DXVA, no matter what the hardware claims to support.

[mparade]

This can explain the jump up in CPU utilization.

Thank you.

EDIT: DXVA checker just have confirmed this. The question is when main12 will be supported by DXVA if ever, however my GTX 1060 does support main12 hardware decoding.

[x7007]

can anyone explain if we need to use this options ? both nvidia and amd ?

Disable ‘use a separate device for presentation (Vista and newer)’ option. Enable this though if you want to use the ‘smooth motion frame rate conversion’ feature below.
Disable ‘use a separate device for DXVA processing (Vista and newer)’ option.

Is this still correct ? do we need to disable it for only AMD cards and leave it for nvidia ? because I don't use Smooth motion frame rate conversion, would I need it for anything else ?

From my testing Smooth motion works even without both of them enabled .
Performance and rendering is the same .

What are this settings good for ?

[hannes69]

Hello to all fans of custom resolutions!
I have made a package of test videos (https://www.sendspace.com/file/rkwcqh) for testing the accuracy of / optimizing your custom resolutions.
The package includes test videos for all common video frame rates (23.976, 24.000, 25.000, 29.970, 30.000, 48.000, 50.000, 59.940, 60.000, 120.000).
The format is MP4, resolution 640x360, simple black video, with silent audio track.
The length is 4 hours for each test video.

I made this package because it offers some advantages for testing purposes:
- all common frame rates in one package
- 4 hours long, should be sufficient for necessary accuracy
- tested timestamps and frame rate accuracy (common video material can have all sort of timestamp quirks, there are videos out there with "wrong" 23.9760000 fps etc.)
- comparable bitrate etc because of black video, so constant GPU load
- the whole package has 7 MB file size because of black video, silent audio and RAR compression

Some hints for testing / optimizing custom resolutions:
- test at least the time for a normal movie, so something like 2 hours
- leave the computer alone while measuring (no mouse and keyboard actions)
- the involved computer clocks are influenced by temperature to a certain degree, so for accurate results you should aim for constant and "real-life" temperatures (warm up your computer and generate a GPU load similar when watching normal videos by using different madvr settings).

Happy testing and optimizing ! :cool:

[Dorohedoro]

Please I need help, no matter what I do I never get the optimized resolutions, every time I push the button there is only the window with the instructions, even after waiting 30 minutes... what exacly I have to do? because I think I'm missing something.

[Sarlaith]

After the instruction screen, click ok and watch A movie for atleast, 10 minutes and 10 seconds using Your favorite media player. The longer the better.
Stop the movie and click optimize again.

[digitech]

which is the best OS for a HTPC and obviously to be used with MAdVR, windows 8.1 or windows 10 and why?
im planning to install a new OS from scratch so i apprecciate that you can help me to take the right decision

[Dorohedoro]

After the instruction screen, click ok and watch A movie for atleast, 10 minutes and 10 seconds using Your favorite media player. The longer the better.
Stop the movie and click optimize again.

I did that and the instruction screen showed again.

[Asmodian]

I did that and the instruction screen showed again.

Do not adjust the playback at all during this time. Start something playing, go fullscreen, and then do not touch anything for at least 10 min 10 sec. It is better to wait a bit longer too.

[Dorohedoro]

I'm doing that, madvr is not recording the data :-( I'm not touching anything during playback and Im playing the file in exclusive fullscreen. And also I created the custom resolution (1080p23hz) In the madvr tool.

I have a nvidia 1060 card in win7.

I know Im doing something wrong, but I dont know what it is...

[Asmodian]

Do you have madVR switching to the custom resolution automatically? I found that this helps.

[Dorohedoro]

umm no, but there is nothing to swich, the custom resolution is active one. I will try it though.

[Asmodian]

I would try starting from another resolution and have madVR change to the custom one. After optimizing you can turn off madVR's display mode switching.

[mrmojo666]

It's normal. Madshi hasn't implemented deinterlacing for D3D11 DXVA yet.

as suggested by MP forum user , i got deinterlacing woking by forcing my gpu in "hw device to use:" dropdown .

[Anima123]

I have encountered some kind of freeze with madVR FSE mode, it happened before keep skipping video (immature buffer I guess), and it can always be repeated if skipping enough times.

The configure of madVR are with NGU Soft, the freezes seems less prone to happen when there's no need to do scaling, e.g., playing back 1080p content with 1080p resolution.

Anyone suffer the same?

Edit: When the freeze happened, I'll have to use Ctrl-Alt-Del to switch to administrator account to kill the player using Task Manager.

Edit2: As comparison, I also tested 'basic' madVR settings, with Jinc upscaling in my case, and it didn't trigger the freeze no matter what. So My guess is that it is NGU specific. And I hope madVR can look into this (might be a bug) when he have time.

Edit3: OK, this time, I am able to narrow down the culprit to NGU-4x, since as I tried NGU-AA (no 4x mode yet), no freeze to trigger.

[nevcairiel]

as suggested by MP forum user , i got deinterlacing woking by forcing my gpu in "hw device to use:" dropdown .

That disables D3D11 Native mode, and uses Copy-Back, which doesn't yield you the performance advantages of Native mode, and should be quite similar to DXVA2 Copy-Back mode.

I wonder if the message in LAV Video isn't clear enough on that, maybe it needs better wording? Its not a "fix" to select a device, it just avoids the issue by being inefficient :)

[Dorohedoro]

I would try starting from another resolution and have madVR change to the custom one. After optimizing you can turn off madVR's display mode switching.

Ok I will, thanks!

[ashlar42]

Hello to all fans of custom resolutions!
I have made a package of test videos (https://www.sendspace.com/file/rkwcqh) for testing the accuracy of / optimizing your custom resolutions.Thanks a lot! Much appreciated!

[mparade]

@mparade: First of all you should update LAV filter and madVR.
Did you tried another player? i.e. MPC-HC or MPC-BE

MPC-HC by using it's default decoding settings and setting the renderer to madVR could play back the main12 files correctly (without dropping frames and saturating my cores!)

I assume that MPC-HC is using NVIDIA CUVID instead of DXVA2 as the default video decoder, that may be the reason. I could not check it because I do not know MPC-HC at all (prefer Kodi GUI) and the settings windows of the older version of LAV filters in Kodi seem to be damaged on my machine (most part of the windows are missing, filled with grey).

[70MM]

Can someone tell me which of the three settings on the video card we should really use please.
I have the 1080 Ti

Adjust Image Settings with preview
* Let the 3D application decide
* Use the advanced 3D image settings
* Use my preference emphasizing: Quality

[Clammerz]

* Let the 3D application decide
That one.

[SamuriHL]

So I'm apparently an idiot LOL. I had set a specific GPU in the LAV settings after selecting D3D11. So it was obviously in CB mode. I've since changed it to auto and am now getting no playback whatsoever. I really have no idea what is happening here and I don't know if this or the LAV thread is the right place to report it or even what info is needed. I'm trying to play either a ripped blu-ray MKV or directly off the blu-ray. Display is set to 23.97113Hz, composition rate is 23.970Hz, smooth motion is off (settings), D3D11 fullscreen windowed mode (10 bit), NV12, 8 bit, 4:2:0 (DXVA11), movie is 23.976 fps, movie 1920x1080, 16:9, draw 0,0,1920,1080, touch window from inside, chorma->NGU AA (med), vsync 41.72ms, frame 41.71ms, matrix BT.709 (says upstream), primaries BT.709 (says upstream), limited range (says upstream), deinterlacing off (dxva11), decoder queue 16, upload queue 8, render queue 8, present queue 1, dropped frames 0, repeated frames 0, delayed frames 0, presentation glitches 0, rendering 12.12ms, present 0.14ms

I restarted a blu-ray I was watching earlier that's at the end credits and it shows exactly 1 frame and is just frozen there. Clearly I've done something wrong here and I'm not entirely sure what. If more information is needed I'll be glad to provide whatever is necessary. This is a 1060 GPU running on Win 10 latest insider build (16281) with latest nVidia driver reinstalled after the windows build update. Using JRiver MC23. If I set it to the nVidia card it'll use D3D11 cb and play just fine.

[Sebastiii]

That disables D3D11 Native mode, and uses Copy-Back, which doesn't yield you the performance advantages of Native mode, and should be quite similar to DXVA2 Copy-Back mode.

I wonder if the message in LAV Video isn't clear enough on that, maybe it needs better wording? Its not a "fix" to select a device, it just avoids the issue by being inefficient :)

Yep the message on LAV Video is clear enough, but like we can't for now have deinterlace with D3D11 native right ? :)
Thanks.

[aufkrawall]

Yes, but this is up to madVR, not LAV Filters. No ETA given. ;)

[azzuro]

hello, madshi

i come for an feedback about a crash on madHcCtrl.exe on last madvr release.

this issue appear on 2 computer, with different hardware but with last Win10 public version.

the crash appear when edit and apply the setting in the displaymode-refreshrate section.

using madvr 0.92.2

[Grimsdyke]

The package includes test videos for all common video frame rates (23.976, 24.000, 25.000, 29.970, 30.000, 48.000, 50.000, 59.940, 60.000, 120.000)

Thank you !! Are these test files hard to create ?? I am asking because I would need one at 47.952 hz.

[huhn]

no they are not hard to create: http://avisynth.nl/index.php/BlankClip

but what is the point of a 47p file? even if you are using 47p you are very unlikely to encounter 47p files so just use a 23p file.

[tony359]

Hi there,
I am experiencing a weird issue with the Test Patter Generator (TPG). I ran a calibration using DisplayCAL yesterday and all was good. It didn't look right so I tried running a verification but when I put the TPG to full screen there is no output - black screen with a mouse cursor. It worked fine in full screen the first time I calibrated.
I tried several times and indeed the TPG just refuses to show any content when in full screen. All seems ok when running in a window. MadVR works fine in Exclusive mode when using MPC-HC.
This is a freshly install system, Ryzen based, GTX 1050Ti with latest drivers.

Something I am not sure I am doing right: when selecting "fullscreen" the TPG window does not really go full screen so I usually force it by pressing ALT-ENTER. Am I doing that right, have I "broken" something by doing that?

I cannot run this in a window as this is a projector and the reflected light from the status bars etc would spoil the low level readings.

Thanks for your help.
Tony

[jmonier]

I'm doing that, madvr is not recording the data :-( I'm not touching anything during playback and Im playing the file in exclusive fullscreen. And also I created the custom resolution (1080p23hz) In the madvr tool.

I have a nvidia 1060 card in win7.

I know Im doing something wrong, but I dont know what it is...

FWIW, I have the same problem (and in other versions of Windows as well and I'm also using a GTX1060). I have, on occasion, gotten further but I haven't been able to do it reliably and mostly my experience is the same as yours.

There are still bugs to be fixed in madVR and there are bugs as well in the Nvidia drivers so I'm just waiting before I try again.

[Dorohedoro]

Thank god Im not alone, because no matter what I do madvr is not gathering the data.