madVR - high quality video renderer (GPU assisted)

[Sebastiii]

Nice :)
Thanks.

[Frexxia]

Is there some sort of trick to get madTestPatternSource working? I've installed it, and 'The DirectShow filter "madTestPatternSource.ax" was registered successfully.' pops up, but it doesn't show up under External Filters in MPC-HC. If I try to open any of the *.ytp files I just get "Cannot render the file".

I'm sure there is something obvious I'm missing.

[thewildsun]

I had the same problem and I fixed it by changing my avr.

Such problems are quite specific to the setup and I had to go through a lot of trial and error before it got fixed.

Thanks for the suggestion. I tried a new AVR (from Denon to Marantz), and the problem actually became worse -- there was a hum even when the HTPC was idle. So it turned out this was a ground loop issue afterall, and perhaps the Marantz is more sensitive to the issue. I tested a cheater plug on the HTPC, and ran it, the AVR, and the amp all on separate power strips, and the hum went away. Going back to the Denon instead of the Marantz with this change, the GPU still whines but it doesn't get to the speakers anymore. I still need to figure out a permanent solution that doesn't involve cheater plugs, though.

Might make sense to double check that you don't have DPC latency issues. See here:

http://www.thesycon.de/eng/latency_check.shtml

I had these issues (plus occasional blue screens) on my rather old HTPC when I allowed the HTPC to dynamically clock the CPU down. Fixing the CPU at normal clocks all the time solved the issue for me.

Thanks for the suggestion as well. I did try checking DPC latency and there didn't seem to be any issues. As you can see above, this problem was most likely caused by a ground loop issue. The GPU itself does still whine, but perhaps that is normal GPU coil whine, which I can live with as long as it doesn't travel to the speakers anymore.

Also, I just wanted to report that it turns out that even with the updated PSU, I started getting the frame drop issue I mentioned before once again, but I was finally able to determine that it was caused by my anti-virus, BitDefender 2018. I have no idea why it does this, or why it causes frame drops only after playing something perfectly smooth for several minutes, but I was able to fix it by whitelisting the directories for PotPlayer, madVR, and LAV filters. Hope this helps someone.

[huhn]

IMHO the pixart image creator's intent was not to create low-res highly aliased images. They simply had no other choice, because the game consoles at the time didn't support any higher resolution. So they did the best they could, setting every pixel carefully by hand. However, if they had had the chance to use a higher resolution, they probably would have, and in the process they would have created images that would have been much less aliased.

Now it's a valid question if NGU AA is able to "interpret" the images in such a way that brings them nearer to the original image creator's intent or farther away. This is a topic that would probably be valid grounds for heated discussions. Personally, when re-playing old pixeart adventure games, I'd much rather have NGU AA upscaled images than nearest neighbor. But I suppose every user has a right to decide for himself. Generally saying that upscaling pixart with NGU AA does not honor the image creator's intent is IMHO not fair, at least I don't agree with that.

while it may not be intended back in the days pixel art games are created even today. and i'm pretty sure it is intended now.
Who in this thread cares about "most scalers"? The key question is what madVR can do with it.

FWIW, DVD sources are not even encoded in their native aspect ratio, so it's impossible to display DVDs without scaling them in at least one direction!

yes we have to scale them now but that was not the case with old CRT screen or even to some degree with LCDs and not the important part here it is the huge scaling factor with UHD screens.
it's not easy to make UHD picture for comparison they are usually to huge for image hoster.

here some screens:
native: https://abload.de/img/title06.mkv_snapshot_1eue5.png
NGU sharp high: https://abload.de/img/ngusharp71uf0.png
NGU AA: https://abload.de/img/nguaajau63.png
lanczos3: https://abload.de/img/lanczosnuuja.png

NGU sharp does some wonders on the background tiny blue red flags and half side of the white helmet(and way more) but it highlights compression artefacts and it is quite odd that some image parts are not sharp at all and some look pretty ok.
NGU sharp is known to work best with good source this source has nothing todo with good.

every other used scaler is significantly less sharp but has a more balanced image.
is NGU sharp sharper than the source image maybe? if not every other scaler makes it less sharp than the source.
scaling an image like this is at best a trade.

i used NGU high, let madVR decide except for downscaling i used SSIM 1D100 AR.

madVR 0.92.7 RCA 2 is effect on this image but it is not used because this is about scaling.

[xabregas]

Well, I've been recommending for months (years?) now to use Windows 8.1 instead of Windows 10, but only very few people listen to me.

That said, with 385.xx drivers it might have worked ok.

People want to keep up to date and sometimes things get worst.

Audio speaking. Since XP audio only got worst on new windows os. And windows 8.1 probably has the best desktop composition of them all.

I think windows 10 was made for centennials. Z people love to see their desktops full of flying windows or notes or photos. Videos coming from right to the left. I cant stand it. I like to control EVERYTHING on my machine. With windows 10 thats IMPOSSIBLE.

Anyways, madshi keep up the good work. We all love you. Its something to praise what you do for free. ;)

[pirlouy]

Well, I've been recommending for months (years?) now to use Windows 8.1 instead of Windows 10, but only very few people listen to me.
'cause you forgot to explain in detail what is that bad with Windows 10 (at least in 1st page). ;)
I'm quite confident your reason is justified, but as a basic user, I would need a really good reason not to use last Windows version.
And it's certainly not xabregas's nonsenses which will make me change my mind. For now, I have 0 problem with MPC+madVR or mpv.

[leeperry]

RCA@1 in combination with NGU Sharp "High" looks like a total winner on 960*540@1080p :thanks:

[Anima123]

Madshi,

Is RCA applied before IVTC, right? I wonder if you can let RCA be applied AFTER IVTC, since IVTC is really useful when playing back videos with 59.976 or 60 fps, in which case the original video can be decimated, to save limited GPU power to more crucial tasks.

Best Regards,
Anima123

[huhn]

IVTC is done with the CPU so you can blindly assume it is done before.

using RCA on it before IVTC should make it pretty hard to play IVTC.

[ryrynz]

Is there some sort of trick to get madTestPatternSource working? I just get "Cannot render the file".


Test with a 32 bit media player.

[jkauff]

I bought a very nice expanded color range 4K monitor, which arrived Saturday. It's going back Monday because my GTX 1060 6GB couldn't handle Blu-ray doubling without major frame drops.

I'll try again next time I upgrade the video card. Madshi was right, the picture was gorgeous.

EDIT: Just noticed the GTX 1080 11GB has come down in price. I assume that would do the job, but does anyone here know for sure?

[huhn]

my 1060 can do ngu sharp very high with normal chroma when upscaling 1080p23 to UHD.

so are you sure you didn't forget to change the nvidia power setting to adaptive?
and if you want tell people want you want to do no one can tell you if a 1080 can do X.

[jkauff]

my 1060 can do ngu sharp very high with normal chroma when upscaling 1080p23 to UHD.

so are you sure you didn't forget to change the nvidia power setting to adaptive?
and if you want tell people want you want to do no one can tell you if a 1080 can do X.
I guess you have a better 1060 than I do. Mine won't do doubling at the lowest settings without dropping frames.

All I want to do is simple doubling with NGU. And yes, I'm on Adaptive power setting.

[Razoola]

I guess you have a better 1060 than I do. Mine won't do doubling at the lowest settings without dropping frames.

All I want to do is simple doubling with NGU. And yes, I'm on Adaptive power setting.

I also feel there might be something off in your settings. I have a GTX980 and that can do doubling with NGU sharp high no problem. These cards are about even in preformance.

[huhn]

NGU low is pretty much free so can you make a screen of the OSD?

[Frexxia]

Test with a 32 bit media player.

Thanks!

There should be a warning that it doesn't work with 64 bit players somewhere.

[jkauff]

NGU low is pretty much free so can you make a screen of the OSD?
I found the problem. I had accidentally left RCA and RRN enabled (at 1). Disabling them got rid of the drops, so all is well now.

[ashlar42]

Not true at all. Actually, the better the source quality, the better NGU Sharp looks. E.g. have you seen these screenshots yet?

http://www.avsforum.com/forum/24-digital-hi-end-projectors-3-000-usd-msrp/1434826-projector-mini-shootout-thread-607.html#post54983374

These are from one of the best UHD Blu-Rays (in terms of detail and resolution) we have so far, and madVR's 1080p -> UHD upscale gets remarkably close to the UHD image, when talking about edges. Of course madVR can't invent texture detail which isn't there in the 1080p image. But edges upscaled to 4K look *so* much better than when displaying the 1080p image untouched.I surrender! I accept your opinion as true. And I'm not ironic or anything. I respect your knowledge in this field and rest assured that whenever I'll get the money to upgrade to 4K madVR will be there with me in getting the best quality possible on screen. :)
(I'll go have a look on AVS, thanks for the link)

[madshi]

while it may not be intended back in the days pixel art games are created even today. and i'm pretty sure it is intended now.
Maybe, I don't know. Are these pixel art games created today as aliased as those old low-res pixel art games? Or do they have smooth "anti-aliased" edges now?

yes we have to scale them now but that was not the case with old CRT screen or even to some degree with LCDs and not the important part here it is the huge scaling factor with UHD screens.
it's not easy to make UHD picture for comparison they are usually to huge for image hoster.

here some screens:
native: https://abload.de/img/title06.mkv_snapshot_1eue5.png
NGU sharp high: https://abload.de/img/ngusharp71uf0.png
NGU AA: https://abload.de/img/nguaajau63.png
lanczos3: https://abload.de/img/lanczosnuuja.png

NGU sharp does some wonders on the background tiny blue red flags and half side of the white helmet(and way more) but it highlights compression artefacts and it is quite odd that some image parts are not sharp at all and some look pretty ok.
NGU sharp is known to work best with good source this source has nothing todo with good.

every other used scaler is significantly less sharp but has a more balanced image.
is NGU sharp sharper than the source image maybe? if not every other scaler makes it less sharp than the source.
scaling an image like this is at best a trade.

i used NGU high, let madVR decide except for downscaling i used SSIM 1D100 AR.

madVR 0.92.7 RCA 2 is effect on this image but it is not used because this is about scaling.
Well, first of all we were originally talking about 1080p -> 4K upscaling, which is not the same huge upscaling factor as DVD -> 4K, but anyway.

I've one problem with your post: It's a comparison of NGU AA vs NGU Sharp vs NGU Lanczos. But it's *not* a comparison of NGU vs unscaled. Some users might think it is, because you provided the original untouched source image, but it's not. Why? Because in order to compare 2 images, both images need to have the same *viewing angle*. If you compare 2 images where one image covers a much smaller angle of your view than the other, then the one with the smaller viewing angle will almost always look sharper and less artifacty. But it's not a fair comparison, because we're not discussing watching 1080p content on a 25" 1080p display, compared to watching 1080p content on a 50" 4K display! What we're discussing is watching 1080p content on a 50" 1080p display, compared to watching 1080 content on a 50" 4K display. Do you agree? The 1080p and 4K displays will have the same viewing angle. So in order to do a fair comparison we also need to compare "screenshots" with the same viewing angle.

So how can we do a fair comparison? It's actually simple: We use a digicam/DSLR to shoot an image of the unscaled source, and we shoot it in such a way that the unscaled source covers the whole digicam frame. Then we shoot an image of the upscaled image, again in such a way that the upscaled image covers the whole frame. This way we get a relatively fair comparison how the upscaled vs unscaled images look like, when seen at the same viewing angle.

Unfortunately there's a catch here: Your unscaled DVD image has a distorted aspect ratio, so I had no choice but to correct the aspect ratio by upscaling. I've used the same algos for AR correction, and for upscaling.

Here are the results, straight out of the digicam, no processing other than simple cropping:

digiCamNativeRes.png (http://madVR.com/doom9/upscalingVsOriginal/digiCamNativeRes.png) - | - digiCamUpscaled.png (http://madVR.com/doom9/upscalingVsOriginal/digiCamUpscaled.png)

Please make sure your browser doesn't zoom these!

Due to technical limitations (physical resolution of my monitor) it's a relatively small upscaling factor, but I'm pretty sure the results would have been identical (or even more in favor of the upscaled version) with a bigger upscaling factor.

Please feel free to repeat this test yourself!

Is RCA applied before IVTC, right?
IVTC is done with the CPU so you can blindly assume it is done before.
^ IVTC first, RCA after.

I surrender! I accept your opinion as true. And I'm not ironic or anything. I respect your knowledge in this field and rest assured that whenever I'll get the money to upgrade to 4K madVR will be there with me in getting the best quality possible on screen. :)
Thanks, appreciate that. Also check out my reply to huhn above, it might confirm things for you.

FWIW, there is more to this than just the question whether upscaling is useful or not. E.g. if the 1080p display has better native contrast, overall you might still be better off with the 1080p display than with the 4K display. So 4K isn't always better than 1080p.

[huhn]

Maybe, I don't know. Are these pixel art games created today as aliased as those old low-res pixel art games? Or do they have smooth "anti-aliased" edges now?
this game got sales in the millions:
https://abload.de/img/stardewm6u3m.png


Well, first of all we were originally talking about 1080p -> 4K upscaling, which is not the same huge upscaling factor as DVD -> 4K, but anyway.

I've one problem with your post: It's a comparison of NGU AA vs NGU Sharp vs NGU Lanczos. But it's *not* a comparison of NGU vs unscaled. Some users might think it is, because you provided the original untouched source image, but it's not. Why? Because in order to compare 2 images, both images need to have the same *viewing angle*. If you compare 2 images where one image covers a much smaller angle of your view than the other, then the one with the smaller viewing angle will almost always look sharper and less artifacty. But it's not a fair comparison, because we're not discussing watching 1080p content on a 25" 1080p display, compared to watching 1080p content on a 50" 4K display! What we're discussing is watching 1080p content on a 50" 1080p display, compared to watching 1080 content on a 50" 4K display. Do you agree? The 1080p and 4K displays will have the same viewing angle. So in order to do a fair comparison we also need to compare "screenshots" with the same viewing angle.

So how can we do a fair comparison? It's actually simple: We use a digicam/DSLR to shoot an image of the unscaled source, and we shoot it in such a way that the unscaled source covers the whole digicam frame. Then we shoot an image of the upscaled image, again in such a way that the upscaled image covers the whole frame. This way we get a relatively fair comparison how the upscaled vs unscaled images look like, when seen at the same viewing angle.

Unfortunately there's a catch here: Your unscaled DVD image has a distorted aspect ratio, so I had no choice but to correct the aspect ratio by upscaling. I've used the same algos for AR correction, and for upscaling.

Here are the results, straight out of the digicam, no processing other than simple cropping:

digiCamNativeRes.png (http://madVR.com/doom9/upscalingVsOriginal/digiCamNativeRes.png) - | - digiCamUpscaled.png (http://madVR.com/doom9/upscalingVsOriginal/digiCamUpscaled.png)

Please make sure your browser doesn't zoom these!

Due to technical limitations (physical resolution of my monitor) it's a relatively small upscaling factor, but I'm pretty sure the results would have been identical (or even more in favor of the upscaled version) with a bigger upscaling factor.

Please feel free to repeat this test yourself!

my real problem is scaling in general is not a pure positive effect which will make images better.

the image i post you looks odd with NGU sharp because some parts get sharp after scaling and other don't and this results in a odd look just look at the ship the "mast" they are super sharp compared to the rest of the image which is odd because it is clearly not in focus.

[Razoola]

Maybe, I don't know. Are these pixel art games created today as aliased as those old low-res pixel art games? Or do they have smooth "anti-aliased" edges now?

The purists of pixel art games would not use any type of smoothing, they would much rather have the jaggies. The only thing that would interest them would be scanline filters maybe providing it does not compromise pixel accuracy.

I'm not sure any type of generated scanlines (like done in emulators) would be wanted in madVR unless there is video content out there that would look better on an old Low Khz arcade game type monitor than todays panels.

[madshi]

this game got sales in the millions:
https://abload.de/img/stardewm6u3m.png
Euuw, not sure why anybody would create such aliased ugliness today.

my real problem is scaling in general is not a pure positive effect which will make images better.

the image i post you looks odd with NGU sharp because some parts get sharp after scaling and other don't and this results in a odd look just look at the ship the "mast" they are super sharp compared to the rest of the image which is odd because it is clearly not in focus.
You are correct in saying that upscaling algorithms aren't perfect. But I'm sorry to say, you're completely missing the point. You are comparing images with a different viewing angle!!! Because you're looking at the upscaled images in 100% view on your PC, and comparing them to the original unscaled image in 100% view on your PC. Until you understand this crucial point there's no reason to discuss any further. Please do a fair apples to apples comparison, using the same viewing angle for unscaled vs upscaled images, and I'm sure you'll finally see that upscaled is overall noticeably better, even though upscaling algorithms are admittedly not perfect.

[Razoola]

Euuw, not sure why anybody would create such aliased ugliness today.

There is big money to be made here, esp games on old arcade systems. Games by NG DEV.TEAM for Neo Geo as an example sell for over 400 euro a pop. Those are at a resolution of 320x224 and look graphically really impressive...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMix_9cesik

[mparade]

It seems to be a case of 1080p movie on 1080p screen, so why should madVR double? Did you activate supersampling? If so, it might make sense if you make screenshots of your doubling settings page. Also please make sure that the profile you want to be active is actually active (shown in "bold" font) in this situation.

madVR should double because I have HD material this case, my display is with 4K resolution and I do not want the display to upresize the source. I haven't activated supersampling, I would like madVR to double the 1920x1080p source to 4K resolution. The correct profile is actually active during play. Screenshots were being uploaded here:

http://s1.toldacuccot.hu/letoltes?sid=e46d82b232b15fe634fb453009761334

[mparade]

Can't say anything about that without seeing a screenshot of what you mean. madVR is usually not responsible for the player GUI, unless the player uses the madVR GUI/OSD APIs.

I am using JRiver 32bit with it's own madVR and LAV version installed. Screenshot what I meant is uploaded here:

http://s1.toldacuccot.hu/letoltes?sid=8df734c75af80c98c96b50e77ac24d11

GUI is mixed up only after returning from HD play. Returning from 4K play is without any GUI problem, as it can be seen from the screenshots above.

[mparade]

Which issue are you talking about? Not doubling? Or mixed up GUI?

mixed up GUI. After I had changed the renderer in JRiver from madVR (Red October HQ) to the standard one (Red October Standard), there was no mixing up anymore.

[Werewolfy]

madVR v0.92.8 released

http://madshi.net/madVR.zip

* added 3 new "reduce compression artifacts" strength steps between 1-4
* removed deblock option "don't reduce texture detail", wasn't useful
* replaced old "reduce random noise" strengths 1+2 with a new strength 1
* fixed: key for increasing "reduce random noise" strength stopped at 5
Not much time for madVR atm, so just some smaller algo tweaks.

Thanks for the new "reduce compression artifacts" strength steps. I can confirm right away that even strength 1 does make a difference without damaging the picture.

Concerning "reduce random noise", strength 1 is a good choice now if you want to remove a little bit the noise without the details destruction of higher strengths. But it's still not my cup of tea, too much details are blurred during the process.

RRN off vs RRN 1 (http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/122090)

Look at the writing on the sheet of paper. I suppose there's nothing you can do with this type of algo. I hope that someday you will bring multi-frame noise filter, that would be awesome :o

Euuw, not sure why anybody would create such aliased ugliness today.


Well, it's far from being the only example. There are still A LOT of "such aliased ugliness" today.

Terraria (https://abload.de/img/p146ssx.png)
TowerFall Ascension (https://abload.de/img/p259s1d.jpg)
Hyper Light Drifter (https://abload.de/img/p32ws5k.png)
Shovel Knight (https://abload.de/img/p4szsrd.png)

I could show you a lot more videogames like that, that's just some examples. Their aliased look are clearly made on purpose and any upscalings other than Nearest-Neighbor alters the developper's intention. I'm a big fan of NGU for movies and animes but I will never use any "real" upscaling on pixel arts. I hate what they do on this type of content.

I hope that someday you will bring back Nearest-Neighbor into the GUI, it's the way these games are meant to be played and obviously watched.

[huhn]

Euuw, not sure why anybody would create such aliased ugliness today.
it made him a couple mills so not sure i would argue with that.

You are correct in saying that upscaling algorithms aren't perfect. But I'm sorry to say, you're completely missing the point. You are comparing images with a different viewing angle!!! Because you're looking at the upscaled images in 100% view on your PC, and comparing them to the original unscaled image in 100% view on your PC. Until you understand this crucial point there's no reason to discuss any further. Please do a fair apples to apples comparison, using the same viewing angle for unscaled vs upscaled images, and I'm sure you'll finally see that upscaled is overall noticeably better, even though upscaling algorithms are admittedly not perfect.

sorry your digicam example doesn't count too your screen is scaling so we can't do this properly except with a CRT and a lot of work.

so let's compare lanczos with NGU sharp. while NGU sharp is i guess generally better than lanczos is looks like it is getting out of focus because soem part get really sharp and other not. so i'm just choicing an lesser evil that's not a general increase in image quality in my book. do the good out weight the bads i'm pretty sure it is still just a trade in my book.

i was just disagreeing that upscaling is generally better.
i have to upscale it anyway so...

[madshi]

Concerning "reduce random noise", strength 1 is a good choice now if you want to remove a little bit the noise without the details destruction of higher strengths. But it's still not my cup of tea, too much details are blurred during the process.
Yeah, it is what it is.

There is big money to be made here, esp games on old arcade systems. Games by NG DEV.TEAM for Neo Geo as an example sell for over 400 euro a pop. Those are at a resolution of 320x224 and look graphically really impressive...
Well, it's far from being the only example. There are still A LOT of "such aliased ugliness" today.

Terraria (https://abload.de/img/p146ssx.png)
TowerFall Ascension (https://abload.de/img/p259s1d.jpg)
Hyper Light Drifter (https://abload.de/img/p32ws5k.png)
Shovel Knight (https://abload.de/img/p4szsrd.png)

I could show you a lot more videogames like that, that's just some examples. Their aliased look are clearly made on purpose
it made him a couple mills so not sure i would argue with that.
Alright, you guys win. I still think that I would personally prefer having these upscaled with NGU AA instead of nearest neighbor, but I suppose it's a matter of taste.

Well, you probably won't want to constantly use nearest neighbor upscaling, so using a keyboard shortcut to activate it on demand should do the trick, shouldn't it?

madVR should double because I have HD material this case, my display is with 4K resolution and I do not want the display to upresize the source. I haven't activated supersampling, I would like madVR to double the 1920x1080p source to 4K resolution.
Fair enough, but it seems that madVR thinks that the display mode is actually 1920x1080, and not 4K. I'm not sure if that's actually true, or maybe it's because of your very high DPI setting. Do you use refresh rate / display mode changing in either madVR or J.River somewhere? If so, try disabling that, then activate 4K mode manually, that might solve the problem.

I am using JRiver 32bit with it's own madVR and LAV version installed. Screenshot what I meant is uploaded here:

http://s1.toldacuccot.hu/letoltes?sid=8df734c75af80c98c96b50e77ac24d11

GUI is mixed up only after returning from HD play. Returning from 4K play is without any GUI problem, as it can be seen from the screenshots above.
It looks like the display mode switched from 4K to 1080p.

sorry your digicam example doesn't count too your screen is scaling
No no no - my screen was *not* doing any scaling!!!

Maybe I didn't explain well. In order to shoot the "unscaled" image, I displayed your DVD image in MPC-HC with 100% view (called "normal size" in MPC-HC, resulting in 1024x576), using a display mode which matches the physical resolution of my LCD monitor. So every DVD pixel was displayed by one LCD pixel. Well, not really, because of Aspect Ratio correction. But if we ignore AR correction, it was a 1:1 pixel match. Then I took my digicam, used optical (!) zoom to shoot the image. So (other than AR correction) no digital zoom/scaling was applied by anyone. Not by madVR, not by the display, not by the digicam, not by the photo editor, by no one.

In order to shoot the "upscaled" image I simply switched MPC-HC from "normal size" to "touch from inside", changed the optical zoom in my digicam and shot the image again.

This way we have 2 images which very fairly compare unscaled vs upscaled, using the optical zoom in my digicam to get the same viewing angle. Got it?

we can't do this properly except with a CRT and a lot of work.
Apart from AR correction, we absolutely can do it properly. See above.

so let's compare lanczos with NGU sharp. while NGU sharp is i guess generally better than lanczos is looks like it is getting out of focus because soem part get really sharp and other not. so i'm just choicing an lesser evil that's not a general increase in image quality in my book. do the good out weight the bads i'm pretty sure it is still just a trade in my book.

i was just disagreeing that upscaling is generally better.
You cannot draw any conclusions without doing a proper apples to apples comparison, using the same viewing angle. I believe if you did a proper apples to apples comparison, you would completely change your mind.

[raymondjpg]

After applying the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update 1709, madVR display rate switching appears to be working with MPC-HC 1.7.13 64 bit, but stats appear to indicate an incorrect refresh rate. For example 23.976 fps source material is showing a refresh rate of 29.97. I have the same issue with both madVR v91.11 and v92.8.

Can someone point me to what is causing this, and suggest a solution? I haven't seen anything obviously wrong in the madVR setup. Display rate switching is set for 1920x1080 resolution.

TIA.

Edit: The issue appears to be a result of Intel HD Graphics Iris 640 driver v4749 installed by Microsoft's implementation of the Windows 10 Fall Creators Update 1709. While at some point this driver version may have been available for download from Intel I could find no trace of it there today. Reverting to an earlier driver version that I knew was working well with Windows 10 v1703 has resolved the stats issue. N.B. from what I could establish from the Intel HD Graphics control panel the madVR refresh rate switching was working correctly with the Iris 640 driver v4749, and it was the stats display that was not.

[ryrynz]

Concerning "reduce random noise" it's still not my cup of tea, too much details are blurred during the process.


Reduce Random Noise is more like, make this picture ever so slightly softer to hide what we think might be noise, need multi frame processing for the real deal so I won't personally ever use RRN.
Gimme a Spatial-Temporal Denoiser though and I'm all over it because those results are godly.

[leandronb]

I did a fresh windows install but i still have some problems.
Using the option "Use D3D11..." solves the black screen, but when i leave fullscreen the player just shows the last image before it went fullscreen, but the audio is still playing.
Also when i hover the mouse on the seek bar the video starts dropping frames. Is there a solution or any setting to solve this?

EDIT: Did some testing here.
When i put mouse pointer at seek bar on fullscreen the present queue goes from 6-7/8 to 1-2/2, there is no dropped frames on stats but the video is clearly stuttering.
Also when i disable switch to matching display mode, the video plays normally on fullscreen or windowed, but if i enable the switch to match display mode, when i leave fullscreen at 24hz it just shows a static image on video player.

[khanmein]

I did a fresh windows install but i still have some problems.
Using the option "Use D3D11..." solves the black screen, but when i leave fullscreen the player just shows the last image before it went fullscreen, but the audio is still playing.
Also when i hover the mouse on the seek bar the video starts dropping frames. Is there a solution or any setting to solve this?

EDIT: Did some testing here.
When i put mouse pointer at seek bar on fullscreen the present queue goes from 6-7/8 to 1-2/2, there is no dropped frames on stats but the video is clearly stuttering.
Also when i disable switch to matching display mode, the video plays normally on fullscreen or windowed, but if i enable the switch to match display mode, when i leave fullscreen at 24hz it just shows a static image on video player.

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/10/25/announcing-windows-10-insider-preview-build-17025-pc/

We fixed the issue where if you RDP into a PC running this build with certain GPU configurations, when you go to sign in to the PC locally it will appear stuck at a black screen with only the cursor available

We fixed an issue where toggling some DX9/DX10/DX11 games between windowed and fullscreen (for example using Alt + Tab) could result in the game window become black on certain PCs.

[huhn]

No no no - my screen was *not* doing any scaling!!!

Maybe I didn't explain well. In order to shoot the "unscaled" image, I displayed your DVD image in MPC-HC with 100% view (called "normal size" in MPC-HC, resulting in 1024x576), using a display mode which matches the physical resolution of my LCD monitor. So every DVD pixel was displayed by one LCD pixel. Well, not really, because of Aspect Ratio correction. But if we ignore AR correction, it was a 1:1 pixel match. Then I took my digicam, used optical (!) zoom to shoot the image. So (other than AR correction) no digital zoom/scaling was applied by anyone. Not by madVR, not by the display, not by the digicam, not by the photo editor, by no one.

In order to shoot the "upscaled" image I simply switched MPC-HC from "normal size" to "touch from inside", changed the optical zoom in my digicam and shot the image again.

This way we have 2 images which very fairly compare unscaled vs upscaled, using the optical zoom in my digicam to get the same viewing angle. Got it?
the image is still upscaled by 42 % but i got what you did there.
and don't worry i watched them

just taking the image without AR correction and 2x NN and x2 NGU sharp should be better than this i guess.

even with NGU sharp i can see the gaps between the pixels.
You cannot draw any conclusions without doing a proper apples to apples comparison, using the same viewing angle. I believe if you did a proper apples to apples comparison, you would completely change your mind.
that was my conclusion.

so i'm just choicing an lesser evil that's not a general increase in image quality in my book. do the good out weight the bads i'm pretty sure it is still just a trade in my book.

and just to be sure you used add grain for NGU didn't you? the image looks a lot more details and that's something a scaler can't do.
there is a reason i ask you if you could add add grain for other scaler. not the creators intend but what ever doesn't look unnatural on an old DVD.
EDIT: if add grain was really used plz don't redo the screens that looks time consuming.

[ashlar42]

My two cents about nearest neighbor. If it's still in madVR and accessile through a programmable key, why not getting it back in order to use it for profiles? Maybe with a (useful for pixelart and old videogames) note beside it?

It's still there for image downscaling (where I don't see how and when it could make sense).

I couldn't care less, personally, about it. But if I watched, for whatever reason, lots of stuff like that, not having it available for profiles would irritate me. :D

[leeperry]

not having it available for profiles would irritate me
open a paypal dispute and demand a full refund :sly:

[huhn]

the image upscale page is pretty much full and AFAIK this stuff is time consuming.

before something like this is added i would prefer a scaler like RAVU or something like that. pretty sure there are more user that find this scaler useful than NN.

[madshi]

I did a fresh windows install but i still have some problems.
Using the option "Use D3D11..." solves the black screen, but when i leave fullscreen the player just shows the last image before it went fullscreen, but the audio is still playing.
Also when i hover the mouse on the seek bar the video starts dropping frames. Is there a solution or any setting to solve this?
See khanmein's reply.

Also, which GPU and driver version is this? If Nvidia, DON'T use 387.xx or 388.xx, use 385.xx, please.

the image is still upscaled by 42 % but i got what you did there.
Only in X direction. Y res stays the same. So it's much less than 42%. If you say an image was upscaled by 42%, usually people mean both X and Y.

just taking the image without AR correction and 2x NN and x2 NGU sharp should be better than this i guess.
I agree that without AR correction would have been better. I'm pretty sure it would have increased the quality gap even further in favor of the upscaled image.

Why would 2x NN have been better, though? This whole discussion is about whether upscaling helps or harms image quality. So if I want to create digicam shots to prove my point, I *have* to create shots that show unscaled vs upscaled. If I had upscaled both (with NN vs NGU) I would have only compared NN vs NGU, I would not have compared unscaled to upscaled!

If you want to compare NN vs NGU, we can do that very easily and directly in madVR without using a digicam.

even with NGU sharp i can see the gaps between the pixels.
Yes. Which is a good thing because it proves that my digicam isn't half bad. The photos faithfully show what my LCD monitor does, when displaying your DVD image unscaled vs upscaled. The photos show that displaying the content unscaled suffers more from the (sub)pixel grid of my LCD monitor than when using upscaling. The same effect exists when comparing 1080p content on a 1080p vs 4K display.

It's an important argument that displaying 1080p content untouched on a 1080p display doesn't faithfully represent the 1080p content, because many displays don't have perfectly rectangular pixels with 100% fillrate, and even more importantly, many displays have RGB subpixels that are positioned next to each other, so they don't cover the same area. This subpixel positioning can introduce additional aliasing/combing artifacts that aren't even in the source image, as seen in my digicam shots! So when showing a 1080p frame on a 1080p display, actually image quality gets lost due to the gaps between the pixels and the placement of the RGB subpixels. These problems of imperfect display technology are nicely reduced by upscaling the 1080p image to a higher resolution. And my digicam photos show that quite nicely.

so i'm just choicing an lesser evil that's not a general increase in image quality in my book. do the good out weight the bads i'm pretty sure it is still just a trade in my book.
Yes, it's a trade. But the positives *FAR* outweigh the negatives, IMHO.

and just to be sure you used add grain for NGU didn't you? the image looks a lot more details and that's something a scaler can't do.
Yes, but I also used it for the AR corrected image (which was AR corrected by doing NGU Sharp + Grain + SSIM1D downscaling), so it's still a fair comparison.

there is a reason i ask you if you could add add grain for other scaler.
Yes, it's on my to do list.

[xabregas]

I did a fresh windows install but i still have some problems.
Using the option "Use D3D11..." solves the black screen, but when i leave fullscreen the player just shows the last image before it went fullscreen, but the audio is still playing.
Also when i hover the mouse on the seek bar the video starts dropping frames. Is there a solution or any setting to solve this?

EDIT: Did some testing here.
When i put mouse pointer at seek bar on fullscreen the present queue goes from 6-7/8 to 1-2/2, there is no dropped frames on stats but the video is clearly stuttering.
Also when i disable switch to matching display mode, the video plays normally on fullscreen or windowed, but if i enable the switch to match display mode, when i leave fullscreen at 24hz it just shows a static image on video player.

Same problem here. I reverted to windows 8.1. Guess what?? Problem solved and it didnt hurt. Windows 10 is a bug and when we think the bug is solved like in 1703 version they invent a fall creator evil update to show us the bugs they came up in 6 months of work and introduce new amazing options like the sleeping light and the gpu tab in task manager. In 4 months i believe everything will be fine and you will have 1/2 months of no bugs until the spring/summer creators update.

[huhn]

Only in X direction. Y res stays the same. So it's much less than 42%. If you say an image was upscaled by 42%, usually people mean both X and Y.


a problem with % numbers . based on the total pixel count it is more than 42 % more pixels. sorry no clue how to make it more clear.

I agree that without AR correction would have been better. I'm pretty sure it would have increased the quality gap even further in favor of the upscaled image.

Why would 2x NN have been better, though? This whole discussion is about whether upscaling helps or harms image quality. So if I want to create digicam shots to prove my point, I *have* to create shots that show unscaled vs upscaled. If I had upscaled both (with NN vs NGU) I would have only compared NN vs NGU, I would not have compared unscaled to upscaled!

If you want to compare NN vs NGU, we can do that very easily and directly in madVR without using a digicam.

which means we are at the fillrate problem again. but the digicam has other issues one of the mast of the ship nearly disappears on the NGU sharp digicam image (i guess the shutter time was to long the image is pretty bright in general) and this is not the case with the normal upscaled image. so it is not 100% faith full. the unscaled image get's some damage in this place too but it is not that extrem.

we could argue about that forever because it never really fair to compare to different image sizes. maybe with 2 CRT next to each other but i'm pretty sure we will still find issues in that setup.

Yes. Which is a good thing because it proves that my digicam isn't half bad. The photos faithfully show what my LCD monitor does, when displaying your DVD image unscaled vs upscaled. The photos show that displaying the content unscaled suffers more from the (sub)pixel grid of my LCD monitor than when using upscaling. The same effect exists when comparing 1080p content on a 1080p vs 4K display.

It's an important argument that displaying 1080p content untouched on a 1080p display doesn't faithfully represent the 1080p content, because many displays don't have perfectly rectangular pixels with 100% fillrate, and even more importantly, many displays have RGB subpixels that are positioned next to each other, so they don't cover the same area. This subpixel positioning can introduce additional aliasing/combing artifacts that aren't even in the source image, as seen in my digicam shots! So when showing a 1080p frame on a 1080p display, actually image quality gets lost due to the gaps between the pixels and the placement of the RGB subpixels. These problems of imperfect display technology are nicely reduced by upscaling the 1080p image to a higher resolution. And my digicam photos show that quite nicely.
it a RGB pixel type correction still on your to do list? (it has a specail name i didn't remember c... correction)
Yes, but I also used it for the AR corrected image (which was AR corrected by doing NGU Sharp + Grain + SSIM1D downscaling), so it's still a fair comparison.
u have to supersample the the image to add grain or madVR will use jinc.
supersampling isn't indicating it is doing it in one way only so we can't really call that image unscaled anymore.

and add grain clearly benefits from a higher resolution. with is a clear plus for your argument.

Yes, it's a trade. But the positives *FAR* outweigh the negatives, IMHO.

fine by me. i guess we are done with the topic now?

[nsnhd]

So when showing a 1080p frame on a 1080p display, actually image quality gets lost due to the gaps between the pixels and the placement of the RGB subpixels. These problems of imperfect display technology are nicely reduced by upscaling the 1080p image to a higher resolution.

Madshi, how can I upscaling 1080p image on a 1080p display, I can do the chroma upscaling only ?

[huhn]

you can super sample but that doesn't fix the issue madshi is talking about. the gap and the subpixel will not change even when you supersample.

you need a screen with a higher resolution.

this should be the same issue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screen-door_effect

[DragonQ]

I have a new machine that only has Intel HD 530 graphics (Core i5-6500) and I can't seem to get MadVR working well with MPC-HC 1.7.13 at all. I'm not looking for great upscaling or anything, in fact all I really want is smooth motion; bicubic scaling is fine for me. I can't avoid tonnes of dropped frames and presentation glitches even with very low settings though.

Here's a screenshot playing a 1080p50 file (well, 1080i/25 deinterlaced by LAV) at 1080p60. Rendering times look fine for smooth playback, yet none of the queues is filling. Turning off smooth motion doesn't improve matters, and I've tried D3D9, D3D9 overlay, and D3D11. Enabling the "separate devices" options causes out-of-order frames so I've avoided those. Even fullscreen exclusive mode doesn't help.

Is there something obvious that could cause this?

[huhn]

could you upload the screen somewhere else?

[DragonQ]

could you upload the screen somewhere else?

https://i.imgur.com/z7sw8DA.png

[huhn]

the screen is really clear about the problem.

you are not decoding fast enough. this is 1080p50 which is not part of a broadcast standard i know
is this software deinterlanced and what codec is that file? madVR usually get the information if it is VC-1, mpeg2, h264 and maybe other but this information is missing.

[DragonQ]

the screen is really clear about the problem.

you are not decoding fast enough. this is 1080p50 which is not part of a broadcast standard i know
is this software deinterlanced and what codec is that file? madVR usually get the information if it is VC-1, mpeg2, h264 and maybe other but this information is missing.

As I said above:

Here's a screenshot playing a 1080p50 file (well, 1080i/25 deinterlaced by LAV) at 1080p60.

The codec is AVC. You are right that CPU usage maxed out when using avcodec, which is why the decoder queue isn't filling up. I tried DXVA2 native and CPU usage is much lower, and the decoding queue is at maximum, but it still has the same problem: rendering time is way too high. I don't really understand this, surely this CPU and IGP are perfectly capable of decoding such video files?

Using EVR things are way better, aside from the judder caused by the 50/60 fps mismatch. 20% CPU usage using DXVA2 native, 50% using avcodec. Why would the CPU usage be so much higher with madVR?

[leandronb]

https://blogs.windows.com/windowsexperience/2017/10/25/announcing-windows-10-insider-preview-build-17025-pc/

We fixed the issue where if you RDP into a PC running this build with certain GPU configurations, when you go to sign in to the PC locally it will appear stuck at a black screen with only the cursor available

We fixed an issue where toggling some DX9/DX10/DX11 games between windowed and fullscreen (for example using Alt + Tab) could result in the game window become black on certain PCs.

See khanmein's reply.

Also, which GPU and driver version is this? If Nvidia, DON'T use 387.xx or 388.xx, use 385.xx, please.




Same problem here. I reverted to windows 8.1. Guess what?? Problem solved and it didnt hurt. Windows 10 is a bug and when we think the bug is solved like in 1703 version they invent a fall creator evil update to show us the bugs they came up in 6 months of work and introduce new amazing options like the sleeping light and the gpu tab in task manager. In 4 months i believe everything will be fine and you will have 1/2 months of no bugs until the spring/summer creators update.

Seems like i will either downgrade to windows 8.1 or wait for an update. I think i will go for the first option since i just installed and setup everything as i like, would be too time consuming going back.
I am a nvidia driver 388.00, i will downgrade to 385, what does it change?
I will either have to use 60hz to play movies or just deal with the current issues. I think i can live with the small stuttering when using seekbar and the frozen image after leaving fullscreen.

[huhn]

lavfilter can hardware deinterlance. but i take your answer as software deinterlancing try it without check the CPU load is hardware decoding used.

is ffdshow used?

what so ever the issue is that madVR doesn't get the frames in time. there could be a lot of reasons for that and i'm not sure what it is.
i don't see a reason a i5 6500 can decode a 1080p AVC stream without a problem.

you edit your post can you make a screen with DXVA native your old screen had 8 ms rendertimes.

[Razoola]

I have a new machine that only has Intel HD 530 graphics (Core i5-6500) and I can't seem to get MadVR working well with MPC-HC 1.7.13 at all. I'm not looking for great upscaling or anything, in fact all I really want is smooth motion; bicubic scaling is fine for me. I can't avoid tonnes of dropped frames and presentation glitches even with very low settings though.

Here's a screenshot playing a 1080p50 file (well, 1080i/25 deinterlaced by LAV) at 1080p60. Rendering times look fine for smooth playback, yet none of the queues is filling. Turning off smooth motion doesn't improve matters, and I've tried D3D9, D3D9 overlay, and D3D11. Enabling the "separate devices" options causes out-of-order frames so I've avoided those. Even fullscreen exclusive mode doesn't help.

Is there something obvious that could cause this?

The first step if I were you is to play 50fps content at 50Hz and not 60hz. This step along will give you more processing cycles per frame. Set madVR up to change refresh rate as needed.