madVR - high quality video renderer (GPU assisted)

[zn]

Will this work on popular integrated video card Intel GMA X3100/X3000?

[noee]

Here is some SD feedback, upscaled to 1080P, playback on a 1080P monitor. All of my source playback is AVC MKVs, 23.976fps.

XPSP3, Reclock, ATI HD2600 XT, CCC9.2, using MPC_HC's internal decoders.

I used the following settings to create the 3DLUT:

Input_Bit_Depth          8
Input_Video_Format       NTSC_DVD   YCbCr
Output_Bit_Depth         16
Output_Video_Format      sRGB      RGB_Video

With default upscaling, I get substantial tearing at 24Hz. Switching to 3tap Lanzcos or Spline helps. Haven't tried any other settings. When I switch to 60Hz, the tearing goes away. Vsync correction with Reclock does not seem to help so far.

Image detail is outstanding, I can't seem to see that EVR-CP is any smoother, but I have some 1080P home videos (AVCHD) and I will build a 3DLUT for those and try with those next.

[tetsuo55]

Would it be possible to get DXVA working with madVR?

You would obviously loose some of the extreme quality, but it could never be worse than VMR9/EVR

[haruhiko_yamagata]

Great work, specially the dithering is impressive. ffdshow's output is inferior just because it does not have dithering. I'm sure ffdshow converters calculate in 10bit and round to 8bit.

With "Allow output format change during playback" checked and "Connect to compatible filters only" unchecked,
I found two issues,

• I cannot toggle resize during playback.
• I cannot play DVD at all (DVD: Macrovision Fail) whichever the decoder is.

Reconnecting filters is the most difficult and important step in DirectShow.
Each video renderer has its own API to reconnect, and most open source DirectShow filters have workaround for each video renderer. This is a big mess. I don't want to add new workaround in ffdshow.
Please simulate one video renderer's behavior so that we don't have to code too much.
Also please document how to reconnect with your video renderer.
You may want to check out our svn and read Tffdecoder.cpp TffdshowDecVideo::reconnectOutput (which is a mess) or DScaler5's DSVideoOutPin.cpp.

My video card is nVidia 7900GS.

[Dark Shikari]

Originally Posted by haruhiko_yamagata

Great work, specially the dithering is impressive. ffdshow's output is inferior just because it does not have dithering.

As I'm currently stuck with a burnt out graphics card, I have to output in RGB16 and as far as I can tell it most definitely has dithering.

@Dark

this is not about dithering to RGB16, but dithering from YV12 (i.e. floating point) to RGB24/32. What you observed is something totally different, namely GDI dithering from RGB24 to RGB16.

[Mark_A_W]

Originally Posted by madshi

madVR getting united with MPC HC is not in the cards, because I want madVR to be media player independent. You know, although personally I'm using MPC HC for now, some people prefer ZoomPlayer.

But as explained in the first few posts of this thread, I'm planning to work on motion smoothness.

--------------------

Can I get some specific feedback, please? I'm especially interested in playback smoothness? Do you guys get stuttering with madVR? Or is your graphics card fast enough? How smooth or non-smooth is motion display for you currently? Especially if you set display refresh rate to 1:1 match with the source frame rate? Are the Beliyaal special builds a lot smoother for you, or only slightly so? Thanks!

I'm one of those who prefer Zoom Player, but Beliyaal's MPC HC builds are definitely smoother for me. It's enough to make me jump ship (but I am getting a glitch about once per hour).

With Beliyaal's build the Reclock tearing test line has less "micro" judder than Haali Renderer in ZP.

My setup:

Q6600
HD2600XT
Vista32
CRT monitor/projector running 1920x1080 interlaced at 95.904hz exactly.
CoreAVC for AVC
FFdshow using WMV9 decoder for VC-1
(Therefore no DXVA...ever!!)
Ffdshow doing RGB HQ for Haali Renderer
Reclock
Madflac for Flac (of course )

With MadVR I get slight stutters and tearing. The tearing is odd, there are about 5 little tears, rather than the more normal big single tear towards the top of the screen (I get that with EVR back on XP).

If you can get it as smooth as Beliyaal's MPC builds, I'll be as happy as a pig in poo. It really sets the standard.

[leeperry]

Originally Posted by Mark_A_W

test line has less "micro" judder than Haali Renderer in ZP.

from my experience, ZP's HR presenter just doesn't work.
MPC's HR presenter is far better(KMPlayer uses the same "borrowed" code).

[Thunderbolt8]

another thing, the subtitles field is greyed out in mpc-hc when rightclicking into the picture, while its selectable with haali (already reinstalled vsfilter after replacing the mediaplayer .exe file)

[STaRGaZeR]

Originally Posted by madshi

Can you describe that weirdness for me? Is there some visible corruption? Or is the image just squeezed for a short time?

Yep, that's it. Also the image is frozen for 0.3 seconds or so.

Originally Posted by madshi

That will require a combined effort on my side and MPC-HC side, but it should be possible to do. One problem is that I think the best place for some shaders would be in YCbCr space and madVR could offer that to custom shaders, while VMR/EVR can not. So MPC-HC currently does not support YCbCr shaders.

BTW, forgot to mention: Subtitle rendering is currently not supported. That needs to be added, too.

No problem if the shaders are custom, but it'll be nice if they could be managed (toggle, change between them, etc.) with keyboard or remote controller shortcuts.

Originally Posted by madshi

That's already planned.

Cool.

[TinTime]

My first impressions...

Testing
I thought the best way to test madVR would be to sit down and watch a movie all the way through, rather than trying lots of different clips.

Hardware
Athlon X2 5000, Nvidia 8600GT (512MB) feeding 1080p plasma telly (DVI to HDMI) at 24Hz (23.998Hz according to ReClock).

Software
Win XP SP3, Zoom Player, CoreAVC with CUDA enabled, ReClock in S/PDIF passthrough mode. Er, and madVR

Source file
mkv ("Revenge of the Sith" if anyone cares), 1024x576 h264, DTS audio. Encode from a PAL DVD but a/v slowed to 23.998Hz (prior to playback) to match my refresh rate as reported by ReClock.

Installation
No problems here - worked as advertised, but I guess those having difficulties were using Vista.

Playback
Initial brightness levels were off for me so there was a brief interlude where I went from "What on earth is cr3dlut?" to generating a new 3D LUT (PAL DVD to RGB Video)
I then watched the film. As I said above the source file frame rate matches the display refresh rate.
So after 2hrs+ I'm happy to report that playback was smooth for me - no stuttering, no tearing. General image quality is as good as I've ever seen, although I need to calibrate my display or play around with different 3D LUTs to get the levels correct (low blacks are currently too bright). EDIT - changed output format from sRGB to Blu-ray and this sorted it. I need to read up on cr3dlut. If I use VMR9 or Haali at 24Hz (but not 50Hz or 60Hz) I get occasional tearing and stuttering when I first start playback which can be fixed by pausing the video. This never happened with madVR. Not bad for v0.1 beta
No problems either running madVR and CoreAVC CUDA at the same time, although I haven't tried any HD video yet.
STaRGaZeR mentioned weirdness when going from windowed to fullscreen. When I do this there is a split second where the windowed image is displayed within the fullscreen image - I think. It is for a split second so it's kind of hard to tell, and not a problem as far as I'm concerned unless it's a symptom of a bigger issue.

Conclusions
Very impressive and no problems for me on my system so far. I went on a bit of a clicking frenzy, trying all the resizers and turning performance options on and off at random, and none of the settings caused any crash.
And so to the inevitable feature request... In the future you mentioned adding support for user switching between 3D LUTs. I have absolutely no idea whether this is possible or not, but what would seem to be ideal for playback purposes would be to flag mkv files somehow to indicate to madVR which 3D LUT to use when playing it back. Perhaps the appropriate LUT could be attached to the mkv and madVR would load it from there? That's for further down the line anyway.

So that's it for now - another quality product

[yesgrey]

Originally Posted by Rectal Prolapse

madshi, have you tested this with neuron2's VC1/AVC CUDA decoder, or coreavc's CUDA? That can get you back some h/w acceleration.

I've tested this, but it did not worked fine. My card is a GF8600GT 256MB, but I think it's not lack of GPU power, it seems to be some kind of "fighting" for resources between CoreAVC with CUDA and madVR. One user with a GF 8600GT 512MB reported good results, so, perhaps it's only a "fighting" for graphics card memory (mine has only 256MB)...

Originally Posted by STaRGaZeR

List of things to improve to make it perfect for me:
- Improve load time. It's not that slow but if it can be improved...

It's in our plans adding compression for the 3DLUT files to reduce size and (hopefully) improve load time.

Originally Posted by madshi

I'm planning to add support for 10bit and 16bit output modes once Windows 7 arrives.

Some graphics cards seems to already support 10bit output mode when using fullscreen (Belyiaal add that to mpc-hc evr-cp).

Originally Posted by madshi

Or is the image just squeezed for a short time?

I also see this.

Originally Posted by madshi

BTW, forgot to mention: Subtitle rendering is currently not supported. That needs to be added, too.

Yes, It would be good. Currently I have to keep using ffdshow's subtitle rendering.

[Thunderbolt8]

regarding speed: I played a few HD remuxes now with madVR and ffdshow on my system (c2d @2800, 400MHz bus + 7600GT). most stuff starts around 30fps and then very(!) slowly pends down to little above 24fps (but mostly doesnt reach 23.9 fps). but the picture is actually never really fluid and theres can also a very little audio delay perceived. guess my hardware is a little too slow, at least for v0.1. seems to be a little faster with coreavc instead of ffdshow, but not as fluid as ffdshow or coreavc with haali.

edit: another little things, step forward (right arrow button) in mpc also doenst work yet

[leeperry]

Originally Posted by TinTime

In the future you mentioned adding support for user switching between 3D LUTs. I have absolutely no idea whether this is possible or not, but what would seem to be ideal for playback purposes would be to flag mkv files somehow to indicate to madVR which 3D LUT to use when playing it back. Perhaps the appropriate LUT could be attached to the mkv and madVR would load it from there? That's for further down the line anyway.

well, one LUT for SD/one for HD would do IMHO(like <1024 horizontal>)
noone can guess if you're watching US, PAL or HDTV gamut stuff...so shortcuts in the start menu would enable you to change that(by renaming/decompressing), because having (2x96)x3 is nearly 600MB of LUT data.

PS: or maybe they could be compressed?

[yesgrey]

Originally Posted by leeperry

because having (2x96)x3 is nearly 600MB of LUT data.

That's why we want to add compression...
For example, a 96MB 3DLUT file compressed with winrar at the best compression method could end up to a size of only... 640kB!...

[racerxnet]

Using MPC-Hc I get a macrovision failure when opening a disk.

MAK

Win XP SP2
DX updated
ATI 3850 ATI 9.2 drivers
C2 Duo 6320

[leeperry]

Originally Posted by yesgrey3

That's why we want to add compression...
For example, a 96MB 3DLUT file compressed with winrar at the best compression method could end up to a size of only... 640kB!...

yeah that's what I use atm on my ramdisk(decompressing if I wanna go PAL/NTSC/HDTV), but it takes 2/3 seconds to unRAR...I'd rather waste 200MB of RAMDISK than wait 3" before each movie opens

plus MPC's major point is that it takes 100ms to open up, KMPlayer is so darn slow...my benchmarks are available here : http://www.kmplayer.com/forums/showthread.php?t=11629

PS: oh well, 2x96 of LUT is fine...forget what I said, just setting one LUT for SD/one for HD and we'd be all set

[TinTime]

Originally Posted by leeperry

well, one LUT for SD/one for HD would do IMHO(like <1024 horizontal>)
noone can guess if you're watching US, PAL or HDTV gamut stuff

You're right that you can't guess. I know when I create an mkv file what it is though. That's why I thought that if I can tag the mkv in some way (BT.601 or BT.709 I suppose) that madVR could then pick up on this and choose the LUT accordingly. No manual selection then and no assumptions based on resolution.

But as I said before I've got no idea if this is feasible or not, and this is a purely selfish idea based on how I'd like my HTPC to work

Originally Posted by yesgrey3

That's why we want to add compression...
For example, a 96MB 3DLUT file compressed with winrar at the best compression method could end up to a size of only... 640kB!...

Sounds good - thanks for your work too on the LUT side of things!

[leeperry]

Originally Posted by TinTime

You're right that you can't guess. I know when I create an mkv file what it is though. That's why I thought that if I can tag the mkv in some way (BT.601 or BT.709 I suppose) that madVR could then pick up on this and choose the LUT accordingly.

indeed a tag in the filename would be great, like no tag=SMPTE-C otherwise [EBU]/[REC.709]

[cyberbeing]

Could you make a small change so the properties settings are retained? It would be nice to not have to change the settings every time I load a video.

Another thing that would be nice is some simple statistics that show the achieved framerate, actual framerate, jitter, sync offset, and frame drops (is madVR able to drop frames or does it never drop frames?).

Originally Posted by madshi

BTW, forgot to mention: Subtitle rendering is currently not supported. That needs to be added, too.

Subtitles are currently working perfectly with VSFilter auto-loading.