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Advanced MPC-HC Setup Guide

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#1 · (Edited)
Advanced MPC-HC Setup Guide (6/2015 update)

Introduction
This guide is about getting the best quality and performance out of the MPC-HC video player, allowing it to make the most out of your hardware. The guide has 5 main parts: installation, video decoding, audio, madvr configuration, and reclock(optional). The installation part is really easy, and if you really wanted to keep things simple, you can actually just use the installation section alone and be in decent shape. I’d recommend that for casual users that don’t want to read the whole thing. Also, feel free to add comments and questions in this thread. Two things I don’t cover are SVP and display calibration. I’m not interested in SVP’s functionality. If you want to learn more about display calibration, see http://www.avsforum.com/t/1471169/madvr-argyllcms .

What you need to download
1. MPC-HC x86 installer (http://mpc-hc.org/downloads/ )
- Considered one of the best directshow players for windows. I’m suggesting the 32 bit version since it is compatible with more things.
2. MadVR.zip ( http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=146228 )
- Considered the best video renderer, most of the quality improvements come from madVR.
3. Optional - Reclock ( from the stickied thread here http://forum.slysoft.com/forumdisplay.php?f=85 )
- Advanced software popular among videophiles, its main function is to provide extremely smooth video by better syncing the video with the display. Much more detail in the Reclock section.

Installation
Run the MPC-HC x86 installer. Note that it gives you the option to reset settings if you’ve messed around with other guides or codec packs, and want to start fresh.



Then, to install madVR, extract the zip file and run the install.bat for it. To tell mpc-hc to use madVR, open mpc-hc, press “o” for options, go to ouput, and select madVR under directshow video.



That’s it for installation. I’ll cover reclock in its own section, as you may or may not need to install it.

Video Decoding
To access the video decoding options, open mpc hc, press o for options, go to internal filters, and click Video Decoder at the bottom.



The important things to note here are the hardware acceleration options on the upper right side. In general, dxva copyback is the one to use to decode the video through your gpu. You also can use the “none” option if you want to use your CPU. Hardware acceleration lowers cpu usage on supported formats, such as 8 bit HEVC, 8 bit H264, VC-1, mpeg 2, etc, depending on the GPU and what is ticked in the video decoder options.

Audio
Windows Audio Setup
This subsection doesn’t deal with anything mpc-hc specific, but rather a windows audio setting that people often overlook that affects audio quality in general. Go to control panel, hardware and sound, and then sound. Right click on your sound device, and then go to advanced. My recommendation is 24 bit, 48khz.



Next, go back to the sound window. Right click on your sound device and this time select configure speakers. Set it up to match your speaker setup. If you are using spdif output, you probably don't have this option, and don't have to do this step.



It’s pretty straight forward.

Bitstreaming
This is mostly for people with AV receivers, allowing you to use the audio decoders in them. To access the bitstreaming options of MPC-HC, go to options, internal filters, and click Audio Decoder at the bottom. This opens the audio settings.



For analog, don't check anything. For a receiver connected by SPDIF, you usually can check Dolby Digital and DTS. For a receiver connected by HDMI, you usually can check all the options for bitstreaming.

Mixer
This is mostly for people having volume issues with multichannel audio. The low volume occurs when Windows downmixes your audio, and to avoid this, you can do a downmix within MPC-HC instead. To access the mixing options of MPC-HC, go to options, internal filters, click Audio Decoder at the bottom, then go to the mixing tab.



Select your speaker configuration and check the option in the upper right called “Don’t mix stereo sources” to leave mono and stereo audio untouched by the mixer. Don’t touch any of the sliders.


MadVR Config
To edit the madVR settings, first play any video in MPC-HC. Then right click in the video, go to filters,
then click on madVR, and click edit settings. This is also a great chance to make sure all the right filters are also showing up properly in the filters list.



Scaling
For image downscaling, catmull rom is the way to go. For chroma and image upscaling, Jinc with the antiringing filter is considered great quality, but requires a fast GPU. Similiarly, lanczos 3 taps with antiringing is considered good, but doesn’t require as much GPU performance. For modern intel GPU’s specifically, the dxva scaling options provide good quality with a very small performance hit.



Image Doubling
Image doubling gives higher quality than upscaling alone. Currently, the option with good performance and quality is the super xbr option, so I recommend that. Image doubling in general requires a fast gpu.


Display Modes
This subsection is basically for televisions that have a 23.976hz mode. MadVR can make the display switch refresh rates when needed. The default 60hz usually isn’t ideal for movies. To see what refresh rates your display supports, right click on your desktop wallpaper and go to screen resolution. Choose the display you watch videos on and go to advanced. Then go to the monitor tab and look at the listed refresh rates.



To have madVR automatically switch to the proper refresh rate, go to the devices section in madVR settings and choose the display that you watch videos on. Expand it, and then choose display modes. Check the option to change to matching display modes, and then list the important refresh rates your device supports in the box. The important refresh rates are 23.976, 24, 50, 59.94, 60, or multiples of these. The names of the non-integer refresh rates are shortened, so 23.976=23. Make sure you only enter refresh rates for the native resolution of the display (eg, don’t put in 720p values for a 1080p display). You can see the display’s refresh rate and the video frame rate while watching a video by pressing ctrl+j.



Smooth Motion
This is basically for 60hz computer displays and televisions that don’t support a 23.976hz mode. It is an alternative to setting a matching refresh rate through the display modes section. Enabling both doesn’t hurt anyway, since Smooth Motion is only used when needed by default. It causes a small performance hit, but on the bright side, you don’t get the screen going blank from a refresh rate change. It is listed under rendering.



Film Deinterlacing
This is mostly for DVD video and HDTV broadcasts. There are 2 types of deinterlacing available through madVR. Video deinterlacing for video sources and film deinterlacing for film sources. Film deinterlacing is also known as inverse telecine. Film mode is probably more appropriate for your DVDs and HDTV shows. Deinterlacing options are in the processing section. You have to disable automatic source detection and force film mode. Automatic source detection doesn’t work atm, it just defaults to video mode all the time. Film deinterlacing is not compatible with DXVA2 (native) video decoding atm.



How To Judge Performance
Press ctrl+j while a video is playing. You want the all the queues to be full or near full, with a low average rendering time. The rendering time has to be comfortably lower than the movie frame interval. Rendering performance varies depending on the resolution of the video, the resolution of the display, and the frame rate and bit depth of the video. You also want to make sure the dropped frame counter isn’t rising, though some dropped frames are inevitable at the start of playback. You can press ctrl+r to reset the counter after playback has stabilized.

Optional - Reclock
Who should use it?
This is mostly for people with 120hz/144hz computer displays or televisions with 23.976hz mode. Without reclock, you will have slight frame drops/repeats once in a while due to the frame rate not quite matching the refresh rate. Reclock will make them sync up exactly.



Reclock Requirements:
1. You shouldn’t bitstream with reclock. Reclock needs uncompressed audio to work.
2. You have to have set up display mode switching in madvr or have a 120hz/144hz computer display. Your video’s frame rate (or an integer multiple of the frame rate) has to be roughly near your refresh rate for reclock to be effective. So, for a 23.976 fps video, the display can be 23-24hz (multiple of 1), 119-120hz (multiple of 5), 143-144hz (multiple of 6).

If you meet this criteria, and you’re intrigued by the idea of even smoother video (since you aren’t limited to 60hz, you’re already smoother than most), continue reading this section.

Setting up Reclock
Install reclock using the installer. Note that you don’t need PowerDVD support, dsound support, Arcsoft TMT support, etc, just the program files. Then, go into lav audio and disable bitstreaming for all formats.



While in the audio settings, note the mixing tab. With reclock, we will use wasapi exclusive mode, which bypasses the Windows’ mixer (the one you saw in control panel>audio>configure speakers). This may cause issues if you are using integrated audio, so you will have to use lav audio to mix to your speaker configuration. Check "Don't mix stereo sources" to keep mono and stereo streams untouched. Don’t touch the sliders. If you have a dedicated sound card or an hdmi multichannel receiver, you can likely skip mixing here – specify speaker config through the sound card or receiver instead.



Configure MPC-HC to use reclock as the audio renderer by going to options, output and selecting reclock as the audio renderer.


Open the configure reclock shortcut from the start menu. Choose Wasapi for PCM, choose best sinc interpolation for quality, choose 24 bit padded to 32 for format, and uncheck “output mono to front channels” if you have a center speaker (5.1 configs, etc). You may also have to set a 48khz sampling rate here, depending on if you run into weird videos that don’t use the standard 48khz and your hardware isn’t tolerant of the sampling rates.


And that’s all. You’ll should see the green reclock icon in the taskbar while videos are playing, indicating that reclock is doing its thing.

Updating Software
You can update MPC HC by just running a newer installer. Your settings will carry over. For madVR, run the uninstall.bat, delete the old madVR folder, put the new one in its place and run the install.bat. For reclock, run the uninstaller, and then the new installer.
 
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#802 ·
i have a little question: is there any software or hacks that allow mpc, lav, and madvr to use more gpu than cpu than the way they are normally configured? I've tried lowering the setting in madvr, changing buffers, unchecking 10bit output for 10 bit h264 but my cpu is still using 70-80 percent in fullscreen, while my 550ti is only 30 percent. i have a e6500 and a 550ti, i think i should be using the gpu as much as possible since the cpu is not quite beefy enough. so im looking for any way to max out gpu
 
#803 ·
If you already use CUVID decoding with enabled HW Deinterlacing in LAV, then thats all you can really off-load to the GPU.

The settings in madVR only affect GPU load, so you should leave them all on defaults.



Such a high cpu load is unusual for hardware decoding, though.

Sounds a bit like you either need to activate CUVID decoding, or the file you were testing with is not compatible with HW decoding.
 
#804 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by Nevcairiel /forum/post/21717743


If you already use CUVID decoding with enabled HW Deinterlacing in LAV, then thats all you can really off-load to the GPU.

The settings in madVR only affect GPU load, so you should leave them all on defaults.



Such a high cpu load is unusual for hardware decoding, though.

Sounds a bit like you either need to activate CUVID decoding, or the file you were testing with is not compatible with HW decoding.

If you have a processor that is up to the task of decoding is there any real advantage to using cuvid?
 
#806 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by Ruiner /forum/post/21718439


Under what circumstances would this occur?

HW Decoding only supports 4:2:0 8-bit files, so if you get one of those animes that already use 10-bit encoding, it won't work.


Blu-ray material should all be compatible, as do 90% of all other movies, but just have to rule it out.

It also depends on your hardware of course, some older GPUs only support H264, but newer ones support VC-1 and MPEG2 as well.
 
#807 ·
@nev the file is question is 10bit so that may be the answer all other files leave cpu at 10-20 percent, while gpu is still 30 percent. does cuvid work if 10 bit output is unchecked? or is it a matter of the file being 10bit itself? i think you have answered this in your previous post but im not sure if im reading it right.
 
#808 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by manuetdeo /forum/post/21720906


@nev the file is question is 10bit so that may be the answer all other files leave cpu at 10-20 percent, while gpu is still 30 percent. does cuvid work if 10 bit output is unchecked? or is it a matter of the file being 10bit itself? i think you have answered this in your previous post but im not sure if im reading it right.

It depends on the file itself, not the output. 10bit files cannot be decoded by hardware (yet)
 
#809 ·
First of all this guide ROCKS!

I have been using MPC for a long time with ffdshow, avisynth scripts etc... I have to try again today but unless my eyes were deceiving me yesterday, the quality is amazing! The color, detail , everything looks super.

I am planning to read the whole thing but I was wondering if there is a recommended card or cards list?

I only do 1080p bluray ripped to my main server and unless I am blind , this gives better quality than my Samsung player.

So, I have a HD2400Pro (maybe HD2600Pro need to verify).

Any recommendations?



The reason I ask is because, I am not sure if its a card issue but it looks more like a sync issue where it is playing very smoothly then suddenly it hiccups and then goes fine again. My project is running at 48fps (47.9xx) and I tried with Reclock as well. It apparently could be just at the beginning or for some movies only but I did this too late so couldnt try a lot. I will have to verify. I had to use DXVA (native) for this card or it would be a stutter fest.
 
#810 ·
sapphire makes a 6670 1gb gddr5 that is passively cooled for $100.


that should be fine for this for the most part. Might have problems with 1080p60.


also asus makes a passive gt 430 that is cheaper if you want to go the nvidia route, but I'm not sure if it is fast enough for some extreme cases. You might have to play around with scaling or deinterlacing, or overclock.
 
#812 ·
Hi!

I've Win7 x64 Ultimate, HD4890OC with the latest Ati drivers.

Everything has been set according to the first post in this thread.


But I'm missing subtitles with .mkv and .mp4 etc files!

I've tried to rename them according to movie file, putting to subfolder (subs) and played with the settings.

I tried fin:fin as also fin:fin||f;fin
ff;*:fin, don't actually know how to set it right...


W and S keys seem to have no function, at least during playback.


Are .srt and .sub subtitles supported?


Any tips are welcome!
 
#813 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by MlNDBOMB /forum/post/21724245


sapphire makes a 6670 1gb gddr5 that is passively cooled for $100.


that should be fine for this for the most part. Might have problems with 1080p60.


also asus makes a passive gt 430 that is cheaper if you want to go the nvidia route, but I'm not sure if it is fast enough for some extreme cases. You might have to play around with scaling or deinterlacing, or overclock.

Well one thing I noticed..if I uncheck the option to go to exclusive mode when going to full screen then there are no hiccups, the movie runs smoothly all the way. I wonder what that option does and what am I missing..

Any ideas?
 
#814 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by Peakki /forum/post/21727589


Hi!

I've Win7 x64 Ultimate, HD4890OC with the latest Ati drivers.

Everything has been set according to the first post in this thread.


But I'm missing subtitles with .mkv and .mp4 etc files!

I've tried to rename them according to movie file, putting to subfolder (subs) and played with the settings.

I tried fin:fin as also fin:fin||f;fin
ff;*:fin, don't actually know how to set it right...


W and S keys seem to have no function, at least during playback.


Are .srt and .sub subtitles supported?


Any tips are welcome!

Options>playback> check autoload subtitles.


other than that, use up to date lav filters, madvr, and mpc hc.
 
#818 ·
I have two questions about audio.


1) Has anyone been able to get 7.1 audio using analog output? I can set it to 7 channels and doing the THX test within the X-FI configuration panel works fine but the movies only play using 5.1 instead.

2) Is using reclock going to degrade the sound quality of DolbyHD and DTS HD soundtracks?


Thanks!
 
#819 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by chheber /forum/post/0


I use MPCHC (1.6.0.4014) on my HTPC and just started using the LAV filters (0.48). It seems if you use LAV (or any external filter?) MPCHC can't "remeber file poistion" anymore? If so it makes the HTPC useless IMO.

What do you mean by this? I find my HTPC very usefull with LAV and MPC-HC.
 
#820 ·
It's a setting in MPCHC and is self-explanatory isn't it? Anyway, it makes it so you can resume video at the timestamp you closed it.


edit:

Seems the reason was the way I "exited" MPCHC with EventGhost, by killing the process. I changed it to ALT+X and it now remembers the position fine while using LAV. I don't remember why I setup the process way 2-3 years ago.
 
#823 ·
Question on MPC-HC speed up and slow down keys..


Do these only adjust the video frame rate or is it both video and audio?


The reason I ask is because it seems that sometimes the two get out of sync. It was especially bad last night with my rip of J. Edgar. Maybe it was a bad rip, but I had to keep stopping the movie to adjust the audio offset. By the end of the movie I had it at 8000ms!
 
#826 ·

Quote:
Originally Posted by Luis Gabriel Gerena /forum/post/0


I have two questions about audio.


1) Has anyone been able to get 7.1 audio using analog output? I can set it to 7 channels and doing the THX test within the X-FI configuration panel works fine but the movies only play using 5.1 instead.

2) Is using reclock going to degrade the sound quality of DolbyHD and DTS HD soundtracks?


Thanks!

Aren't most tracks 5.1? Do you have your pre/pro / receiver set to use pl2x?
 
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