Advanced MPC-HC Setup Guide

Installing The Decoders and Splitter
- To install LAV filters, download the .zip file, extract it to a folder somewhere, and run the 3 install files (audio, video, splitter).
- To configure mpc hc to use lav splitter, open mpc hc, press o for options, go to internal filters, and in the source filters box, right click and select disable all filters

- While we are here, go into the Audio Switcher subsection, and uncheck the box to enable it.



- Now, go to the external filters section. Select Lav Audio, Lav Splitter, LAV Video, set them to prefer.
- If you have Haali Media Splitter installed, you must add it to the list, but in this case, set it to block (you want to use lav splitter, not haali splitter).

Video Decoding
- Open the config for lav video by double clicking on it in external filters.
- The different GPU decoding modes are listed under hardware decoding in the upper right. Select nvidia cuvid for an nvidia gpu, intel quicksync for an intel gpu, and dxva2 copyback for an amd gpu. The one you plan on using should say "available" to the right of it after it has been selected.
- If you feel that your cpu is up to the task, you can select none.

Windows Audio Setup
- Go to control panel, hardware and sound, and then sound. Right click on your sound device, and then go to advanced. Here you can select the output format.
- 24 bit/48khz is a good value if you have 24 bit DACs.

- 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.
- If you have 2.1 computer speakers, select 2.0 and make them full range.

Optional - Advanced DTS and DTS-HD Decoding
- This is only for those who don’t bitstream DTS or DTS-HD.
- Search the arcsoft TMT folder for a file called dtsdecoderdll.dll. Then copy this file into the same folder that LAVaudio.ax is in.
- This will allow high quality DTS and DTS-HD decoding through LAV audio.

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 lav filters are also showing up properly in the filters list.


Scaling
- Under the scaling algorithms section, you can customize the scaling used.
- The defaults are fine for most people.
- A lot of people with high end graphics cards are using the Jinc scaler at 3 taps with the antiringing filter for chroma and image upscaling (though still using catmull rom for image downscaling), which is very gpu taxing.
- Alternatively, there is the option of dxva scalers for image upscaling and downscaling, and bilinear for chroma, which doesn't tax the gpu much and is a great choice for a low power gpu.


Display Modes
- madVR can switch different refresh rates to match the video's framerate.
- First see if your display supports other refresh rates. 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.
- If your display showed a 23hz mode, you can enter 1080p23 for example. The desired refresh rates are usually 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.
- You can check to see if the display's refresh rate changed by pressing ctrl+j while a video is playing; the refresh rate is listed at the very top.


Smooth Motion
- If you can't fully use the display modes feature of madVR, you may be interested in the smooth motion feature to remove judder.
- This is available through the rendering section of the madVR settings, under smooth motion.


Subtitles
Intelligent Subtitle Selection
- Go to external filters, and double click on lav splitter. Select advanced subtitle selection mode.
- If you are an english speaker, you will probably want to enter "eng:eng|f;eng:off;*:eng" (without the quotes) here.
- This will enable only forced english subtitles when english audio is present, and english subtitles when a non-english audio is present.
- This should generally lead to the correct subtitle choice, but if for some reason it doesn't, you can use the W key to toggle on/off subtitle rendering, and the S key to cycle through the different subs present in the file.


Subtitle Rendering Quality
- Go into MPC-HC options, Subtitles.
- Set the maximum texture resolution to that of your display, check allow animation when buffering, and uncheck round up to power of 2.

Optional - Reclock
Reclock can make videos smoother. Without reclock, you will have slight frame drops/repeats once in a while due to the frame rate not quite matching the refresh rate or intrinsic problems with the audio clock.


This can be fixed with reclock, but it has a few caveats:
1. You shouldn’t bitstream with it. That means you’ll need the dtsdecoderdll.dll for dts-hd. Reclock needs uncompressed audio to work because it modifies it for smoother video.
2. You have to have set up display mode switching in madvr so that your video’s frame rate is always near your refresh rate. Reclock will only modify the audio rate by a small amount, so it can’t work if there is a large disparity between the frame rate and the refresh rate.

If you meet this criteria, and you’re intrigued by the idea of smoother video, follow these steps:
- First, you can 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 lav audio’s settings, note the mixing tab. With reclock, we will use wasapi exclusive mode, which disables 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. Also, be sure to check "Don't mix stereo sources" if you want mono and stereo streams to remain untouched.
- If you have a dedicated sound card or an hdmi multichannel receiver, you can likely leave mixing disabled in lav audio – 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)


- 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 lav filters, run the 3 uninstall files, delete the old lav filters folder, put the new one its place and run the 3 install files. Remember to re-copy the dtsdecoderdll.dll file from arcsoft tmt if you were using it.
- 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.