upscaling standard dvd movies to 1080p using ffdshow and your htpc - Page 9

You must use an external player like Zoom Player or MPC-HC x86 (MPC-HC x64 doesn't work)

As front-end you can use Media Portal + Moving Pictures and External Player or Media Center + Media Media Browser and External Player.

My system is only W7 x64!

and run with:

Media Portal
Moving Pictures
My Movies
Zoom Player
ffdshow
avsynth (upscaling and doubling frame rate scripts)

Bye

Yeah I've tried it with MediaPortal, however would prefer to use the built in Media center hence why I asked 8:13 if he would consider doing an x64 version.

8:13
We're on a new beta now (MC16). Let me know if you'd like a license for testing. I'm jimh at jriver. It has madVR support.

Jim

Here's a download link:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/inde...0638#msg420638

and a link to the thread on madVR:
http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=62727.0

Thanks again to madshi for his excellent work.

please forgive me and i apologise if i seem to lazy to trawl this post

i simply want to improve video quality for playback of sd dvd and avi's to something like the SimHd facility say in TMT but using MPC HC
i find the initial right up extremely complicated and wondered is there an easier way or perhaps a download with everything already done?

also, why do i need to mess with the audio to improve the video only?

cheers guys and be gentle with me please

I have for about 2 years now and with your script am a happy video junkie

Good question, would like to know that myself... FWIW, my website statistics says that "madVR.zip" was downloaded about 5000 times in January 2011 and about 7500 times in February 2011.

madshi
as your online could you please point me in the direction of an easy guide for newbies on getting the best out of your renderer?
i have installed it along with MPC HC alone, found the hack to get it to play dvd's, but no matter what settings i use from the tray icon menu i cannot see any difference in PQ. that is increased sharpness or noise reduction
am i doing something wrong or do i need ffdshow as well?
i use win7 and have an ATI 4650 card with a 100" screen

thanks for your time and keep up the good work

The difference in PQ between different settings is often only visible in specific scenes.

E.g. if you change scaling algoriths, you need to look at scenes where there are sharp and high contrast edges/lines. With e.g. 8-tap Lanczos you should get a lot of ringing (white/black halos) around such edges. With e.g. Mitchell-Netravali there's practically zero ringing - unless it's already in the source. However, Mitchel-Netravali is less sharp than Lanczos, and shows more aliasing (visible pixels).

Or when changing chroma upsampling algorithms, you need to use scenes where chroma upsampling problems are especially obvious. The best scenes for that are red fonts on black background (e.g. as found in Highlander).

Generally some people expect miracles from madVR and expect to be blown away with a dramatically improved image quality over other renderers. That's too high expectations, IMHO. madVR does most things better than most other renderers, but the visible differences can be small - depending on the scene. FWIW, whenever I say things like that in the madVR doom9 thread, some madVR users insist that the difference is dramatic for them. Oh well...

madVR does not artificially sharpen images or try to do noise reduction. That's not really the intention of madVR. The intention is to reproduce the source material with the highest possible accurateness. I may at some point add algorithms for sharpening and noise reduction, but for now such algorithms are not part of madVR.

If you don't see much of a difference between madVR and VMR/EVR then that means that in your specific setup VMR/EVR do a decent job with normal scenes. There might still be differences in specific scenes, though. Furthermore, madVR has some extra features other renderers don't have. E.g. madVR switches between windowed and exclusive mode on the fly, while with other renderers you have to choose the mode before you start the video and you can't change it during playback at all. Or madVR recovers faster after seeking than many other renderers. Or madVR works better with very high refresh rates (e.g. some CRT users are using 120Hz).

Anyway, my recommendation is to simply try different renderers and pick the one that works best for you. If EVR/VMR work better for you, that's fine with me. But you may want to test madVR in a couple of months again, cause I do plan to add many more features/improvements in the near future.

P.S: There are some setup recommendations here:

http://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php?topic=62727.0

Thanks

I have tried the settings for a Core I3 as suggested earlier in this thread. I am still seeing 80% cpu usage with video stuttering while the audio bitstreams fine. I have 8gb of ram and this is via HDMI to an AV receiver->Plasma TV. Any suggestions?

Thanks for this info, these are very exciting times indeed!!!

Hello all once again.

I have been having a problems with ffdshow as of late and I need some help.

First. I had a ATI 5750 and I switched to a 6950.
When I changed my drivers My codecs somehow got unregistered. No biggy. I just uninstalled ffdshow and reinstalled it. I had always used the packs from this thread with no problems before. I used the one on the front page. Not sure how old, but the post was updated recently so I went with that.

Here is my problem.
I cannot get smooth playback @24Hz anymore.
75Hz.. smooth no dropped frames. *On my desktop monitor.
60Hz.. OK but I really hate the pull down. *On my TV.

Before, I always had to make the TV primary and disable the desktop. I would expect that is because of the frequency mismatch. No problems there.

Now, even after I disable the desktop monitor, I still get loads of frame drops @24Hz.

This new video card has played just fine @24Hz before. When I first got it, I was using the old driver version and the playback functioned normally.

So changes.
Video Driver.
ffdshow version.

The reason I changed the driver to begin with was because games don't function properly on the old one. I guess it's the price of being an early adopter.

Anyone have any ideas what might be my problem?

I managed to hit upon a setting that works and I'm not sure I like it. Previously, I had used EVR custom with NV12 at 24Hz with no problems. For some, reason this version of the driver or this version of ffdshow will not do that anymore. Now, I must use RGB32 high quality conversion and VMR9 and that adds nearly 100ms of audio offset. Nothing that can't be fixed through the audio tab. Just annoying.

The color space also looks off now somehow. Could be a mental defect but some movie scenes I remember being full daylight, now seem to look cloud covered. I'm not seeing any problems when I check with a pattern by eye. That's not saying much.

Out of curiosity, how much will this whole process improve/enhance the video quality of the internal upscaling and post processing of a pioneer kuro. I’m quite impressed with the picture quality as it is streaming standard definition video from my server via a popcorn hour and a tvix. probably on par with my oppo dvd player. however, I’m now ready to upgrade to a htpc (i3, h55 itx mobo, sg07 mini itx case, xbmc). if this will significantly increase picture quality, from what I’ve read so far I’ll probably need a discreet gpu (no gaming involved) – what’s the go these days, ati or nvidia. cheers

Try pressing Ctrl+J to get the OSD. Or in MPC-HC right click the video window and check whether madVR is in the filter list. If it is and you still get no madVR icon in the tray bar, try manually starting madHcCtrl.exe. Then check the tray icon settings. Maybe you accidently turned the tray icon off?

jriver doesn't really do anything to madVR. If you get crashes with jriver + madVR then that shouldn't affect madVR with other media players. If the crash is caused by a specific jriver beta, you could try going back to an older jriver beta.

thanks for your reply 8:13. do you really think the i3-530's intergraded graphics will be able to handle madVR. I am planning on getting an ATI hd5670 in the next couple of days so that should maybe put my mind to rest. would the basic or less cpu intensive frame interpolation be OK with the i3, hd5670 and madVR as the video renderer (considering madVR is GPU assisted). thanks

Then madVR was not used by MPC-HC. Make sure the decoder outputs YV12 or NV12. Otherwise madVR will refuse the connection.

If you see "video renderer" in the filter list then madVR is definitely not used. That's a fact. So now the question is why it isn't used. Try running "install.bat" again, and don't remove/rename the madVR folder after you've done that. Also make sure you run 32bit MPC-HC, not 64bit. Also, if you've reinstalled win7, you may have to manually install DX9 because win7 doesn't ship with DX9, as far as I remember? Or was it Vista? Not sure...

Weird. Anyway, glad to hear it's working again.

anybody followed the instructions found here

http://www.homecinema-hd.com/pack-in...tion-1_en.html

how does this compare?
for a beginner i found it relatively easy as this is not for the faint hearted

trouble was that with MadVR it crashed and without the PQ was way too sharp and looked bad on 100" screen

on another note what is the script above and how do you use it?

8:13, now that you have madVR installed and working again, is it working with J. River Media Center?

If you continue to have crashes, please use Help > Logging inside Media Center and send a crash log to matt at jriver dot com (that's me).

Thanks.

i would be extremely grateful if someone could take the time to explain how i can achieve the following in simple terms. try as a may i am having exstreme difficulty in understanding this thread especially when referring to 'scripts'. what are they and where do they go etc?

i would very much like to:

1 improve sd dvd for display on a 1080p projector
2 apply some form of noise reduction to avi files

audio just needs to be output in 5.1 for Reclock to work

thats it!
i use TMT for all my hd needs
i have tried to avoid ffdshow etc but have come to the ned of my patience after spending weeks trying to get a decent sd picture with the standalone software available like pdvd etc

i managed to get madvr working but see very little improvement in sharpness
also followed another tutorial here:
http://www.homecinema-hd.com/pack-in...tion-1_en.html
but its result is way over the top when displayed on a huge screen

thanks very much in advance and please be gentle with a newbie

thanks 8:13 i will give this a go tonight

as you appear knowledgeable and sorry to be off topic but have you noticed that applying DXVA totally screws up sd dvd? i have confirmed this on different machines/OS/ATI and Nvidia using MPC HC along with all the normal players like TMT and PDVD
it gives a weird shimmer/artifacty problem

hi

copied your instructions and put this in the Aviscript box

setmtmode(2)
video=ffdshow_source()
A=video
B= a.SeeSaw_JD()
C = b.limitedsharpenfaster(strength = 11).limitedsharpenfaster(strength = 11)
return c
distributor()

got dreadful audio delay and shimmer over video

what am i doing wrong

couldnt load dvd's from folders so used later mpc is this ok?

hi
not sure if its the cpu as i have run the frame doubling no problem

will try again

thanks

ps frame doubling is not for me despite being obsessed with smooth motion. it just dosnt look right. actors look like they are walking 1.5 faster plus there are some nasty ringing. pity!

setmtmode(2, 16)
video=ffdshow_source()
A=video
setmtmode(2)
super = A.MSuper(pel=2, hpad=8, vpad=8, levels=4, rfilter=2)
backward_vec = MAnalyse(super, isb=true, blksize=16, levels=4, search=3, searchparam=3, plevel=0, badrange=(-28), sadx264=6)
forward_vec = MAnalyse(super, isb=false, blksize=16, levels=4, search=1, searchparam=3, badrange=(-18), sadx264=6, dct=120, pnew=120)
A.MBlockFps(super, backward_vec, forward_vec, num=FramerateNumerator(A)*2, den=FramerateDenominator(A)*1, mode=1)
last.blendfps(120, aperture=2.0)
GetMTMode(false) > 0 ? distributor() : last

8:13 when I set all values to 120 I have 99% perfect playback with no blurring or artifacts cpu at 46% disable avisynth 13% must be at the promise land Don't now why it works but I don't know how it could
be much better. Input appreciated. What would be the script with Mflow?

That is why I am asking you. I get no error message and cpu usuage is higher
so I know it is a working script. As a joke I set the script to those settings and know i have a better picture.. Look forward to trying the new script and will let you know.

This script seems to work better with my setup. The new one has more doubling effect but very choppy blurring. Still playing with settings on the new script and
have implemented some changes to this for the better.
setmtmode(2, 16)
video=ffdshow_source()
A=video
setmtmode(2)
super = A.MSuper(pel=2, hpad=8, vpad=8, levels=4, rfilter=1)
backward_vec = MAnalyse(super, isb=true, blksize=16, levels=4, search=3, searchparam=3, plevel=0, badrange=(-28), sadx264=6)
forward_vec = MAnalyse(super, isb=false, blksize=16, levels=4, search=1, searchparam=3, badrange=(-18), sadx264=6, dct=5, pnew=751)
A.MBlockFps(super, backward_vec, forward_vec, num=FramerateNumerator(A)*2, den=FramerateDenominator(A)*1, mode=1)
last.blendfps(120, aperture=2.0)
GetMTMode(false) > 0 ? distributor() : last