Advanced MPC-HC Setup Guide - Page 5

Mindbomb, thanks for setting up this guide. I can't quantify that the picture and sound is better, but I know that, to my eyes and ears, it DOES look and sound significantly better than before. That's all that really matters I suppose.

As a comparison, I was previously using MPC-HC with just ffdshow. I followed Mindbomb's instructions explicitly (really isn't all that hard - it's laid out really well) and have the identical settings as explained. I am using Windows 7 64 bit, but used all the 32 bit downloads that were linked - works just fine.

Now, why it works better, I don't know. I am running 2 Radeon 4870's in crossfire, so my gpu is pretty good (maybe ran better than ffdshow on my cpu which is a quad 2.66 phenom...). Maybe it's the double framerate deinterlacing filter...Who knows. But, it looks clear and runs buttery smooth. It took maybe 15 minutes to set up, so give it a shot.

Again, kudos for making the guide - it works great!

Were people really having troubles with "smoothness"?

This is really the first I have seen and heard about this complaint. And I spend a lot of time on AVS.

I just wonder if there is something that I am not doing that I should be doing because out of the dozen or so HTPC that I have built locally here for friends (and check up on on a routine basis) I have never had anyone complain that it wasn't "smooth".

I ran the batch this time with no admin rights and restarted, still cant select MadVR in MP. Its grayed out any clues?

-Kevin

Extract madvr.zip into a folder_ say MadVR folder under C.
Right click on install.bat and select "run as administrator".

oh oops thought i was using the 32 bit but found i was using the 64 lol. Brb gonna download the 32

Worked perfect now time to check it out!

EDIT: wow. My eyes must not be tired today but Tron Legacy looks better with this. Ill try to take screens when i can.

How can i tell if i set up the ffdshow filter correctly? Should an icon show up in the tray like it usually does when I use ffdshow?

Plus I am unable to get subtitles working.

EDIT 2: Nevermind got them working by removing MadVR from the filters tab .oops lol

Excellent. Please do.

For those of you upgrading please take some screenshots before and after so skeptics like myself can be proven wrong.

Ok so let me try to get this straight. To switch back to ffdshow, should I just check VMR 9 Renderless in output and add ffdshow raw video filter / Video decoder in filters?

Edit: took some screens of the light bike scene. Ill upload asap. But I think my eyes are just tired but now I cant see a difference. Only a few scenes could a notice a very "bare" difference.

mindbomb for several reasons i have to use FFDshow Video decoder.
could you please tell me ( or show me some screenshots) with ffdshow settings optimal for madvr?
i want all the dirty work (post-prossecing and the conversions) happen at madvr.

Is it better to do your guide and add ffdshow raw video filter?
if yes where i put it? before or after lav video decoder?

one last question, why we use WMVideo Decoder DMO?

I currently have MadVR selected in outputs, ffdshow raw video filter selected in external filters along wiht lav splitter. Anything else you recommend?

Also a bit confused, should I also select lav video decoder in filters?

Thanks bro!

my bad! Was confused Thought LAV video was an alternative to madvr

Hmm. I am not trying to be an ass here. But this is similar to what I have read everywhere else.

It seems that Madvr is night and day for some and does nothing for many others. I just want to know the truth.

Screenshots help.

Madvr is a renderer filter ,
Lav video ( or ffdshow video that I use)
Is a transform filter / video decoder.
You need both filters for video playback.
Actually you need one more , the splitter
No reason for more advanced explanations.

ahh ok that makes sense. Well since installing madvr temps on the gpu have been higher than average but decent overall (64ish).

Only got one screen so far
first one is taken with ffdshow, second with madvr

Frame 57823, 23.976

ffdshow


madvr

Great pics and a great scene!

Can someone point me out to what I should be looking for? To my eye they look about the same after about 3 minutes of careful examination.

I can photoshop these side by side one another if anyone is interested if that would help.

I honestly cant tell myself. I think I thought it looked different because I went from watching pretty bright movies all day to tron lol

Nothing altered or shrunk/stretched/changed. Same png filetype as original.

FFDSHOW on left, MADVR on right.

Full 100% Scale



Image above scaled to 50% inside photoshop

@pokevin/assassin your screenshots either aren't labeled properly or you are not clear on the differences between a video renderer and a video decoder.

ffdshow = decoder + postprocessor/filter to do things like deinterlacing, deband, sharpen, audio downmixing, audio volume normalization, etc.
madvr = renderer (it also has built in video decoder for some formats)

To see a difference you need to compare renderer to renderer with the same decoders if possible. For instance ffdshow + EVR vs ffdshow + MadVR OR LavVideo + EVR vs LavVideo + MadVR, etc etc. Decoders as long as they are not broken generally should provide the same quality.

As I have mentioned previously, you won't notice much of a difference IMO with good sources and HD. You will begin to notice the difference more with SD and/or mediocre sources. The smoothness is what is most important for me, and the ability to use calibration data to further enhance the accuracy of the color gamut and grayscale.

I was referencing his post and his labels of the screenshots.

Again, is smoothness really an issue? I haven't really seen this mention or complained about here at AVS until this thread.

For myself it is. I've seen it mentioned in these forums and on doom9 as well. It affects me and I mentioned in a previous post why, I don't know what causes my composition rate to change to 30hz instead of 60hz which is what it is supposed to be and that causes massive stuttering. Also Aero on in Win7/Vista is generally known to cause smoothness issues, but you need to keep Aero on to not get tearing when using online streaming through Flash/Silverlight for example.

MadVR gives you more than just smoothness as has been mentioned. It gives a myriad of choices for different scalers for different levels of sharpness or softness (EVR only gives bilinear and bicubic), it handles proper chroma upsampling which is a problem for ATI cards, it supports CMS for calibrated displays, it does dithering in the renderer for max quality, it let's you adjust gamma ramp to various levels, etc etc etc.

Gotcha. As stated this hasn't been an issue on any of the HTPCs that I have built for friends and family. Obviously it must affect some and not affect others.

Yeah, it might be something with drivers maybe? I don't know what causes this in my system. But even without this bug, you can see the smoothness is not perfect with EVR and the choppiness can be noticed easily when you are used to butter smooth video.

Did you see this thread? I wonder if that would have any effect?

Doubt it, since that's a decoder and not a renderer. The decoder doesn't cause the composition rate to change, and EVR's D3D Fullscreen Mode + disable desktop composition doesn't work as well as MadVR's Full Screen Exclusive Mode (FSE). I suspect it's a driver issue perhaps but since I don't currently own an Nvidia card, I can't really test this theory. It's also very easy to confirm the issue is occurring. The video gets very choppy when in windowed mode or if I were using EVR, I just do CTRL+J to open up MadVR's OSD, and I can see the composition rate is 30.000Hz It should be at 60.000Hz

I also don't have a sandybridge CPU, I use an AMD Phenom II X4 945 @ 3.7GHz

I just moved from a GT 545 to a GTS 450 on my main HTPC which is an i3 Clarkdsale, intel mainboard and intel SSD. Now I moved a Ceton out of my HTPC and put it in a dedicated Sandy Bridge. I can tell you the PC now does video much more smoothly, is it because the Ceton is off the bus, is it because the GTS 450 does the deinterlacing better.. and decodes faster I don't know, maybe all of the above. What I did not expect is that Live Digital Cable TV looks much more like it is was off my Tivo than what my Ceton has looked like. I believe that PC is using Cyberlink PD DVD 10 with Hardware deinterlacing.. Noticeably smoother. In JR Rvier I was watching one of my most challening MKVs.. from a DVD that the bit flags for film, movie are wrong. Anway, while the GTS 450 running LAV CUVID still gets the cadence wrong I am amazed at how much smoother it plays even playing it wrong. I have only ever seen one set top box get it right, clever deinterlacer in that one. My Iscan DUO can't get it right. I have the high end Toshiba HD DVD on a shelf somewhere, it could get it right, if you set it to film mode.... most even when set to a manual mode would jump to the wrong mode, I guess reading the flags.. definitely torture test. Lots of edges on bias to create a mess. Love the content though... between the bad edits, the wrongs flag and a color pallette that is super easy to turn muddy... it goes from totally unwatchable with poor playback to tolerable when it is done very well. It looks good on the GTS 450 with madVR.. Too bad LAV CUVID can't make sense out of the cadence and the flags either... still, it is the best I have ever seen it rendered off a PC.

I have to verify levels with the new GPU as they seem a bit off now, but it is just smoother, oh and it does madVR clearly better because I can make out lots of detail in test source material that I am very familiar. Text like lyrics on papers in front of musicians was readable for the first time in certain scenes. That was more than the subjective thing. Lots of little details that were previously not idenitfiable were clear as a bell.

I don't know the why's I can only report the observances. I really like the GT 545 as it was a quiet single slot Nvidia solution and the video looked much nicer than a GT 430 did running madVR in this same box.

So I started off with the Clarksdale iGPU then discovered madVR and moved to Nvidia. Don't get me wrong the Intel ideo has a nice look to it, it can't handle madVR and while a pain in some ways because it is not appliacable to WMC just produces video in another class from EVR. My display is pretty big, so improvements show.

Anway, I think the GTS 450 is as powerful a GPU as I am willing to go to at this time in an HTPC because I think the powerconsumption, noise and cost requirements for the more powerful GPUs start to reach the diminishing returns point for HTPC. I got the GTS 450 for $89. I was quite surprised that the EVGA GTS 450 was actually quieter than the EVGA GT 545. All in all it was a nice upgrade and I have a very good home in another HTPC client for the GT 545.

The more I read the more I am convinced that this is extremely important. Maybe the most important.

As an aside I tried ATI 5450, NVidia 430 and Intel iGPU and the Intel drivers were by far (and I mean by far) the best, most stable and most reliable drivers out of the bunch for my particular setup.

I still use the 430 in my testing rig. The 5450 and my old HTPC was given to a new home.