Advanced MPC-HC Setup Guide - Page 6

I just spent some time in front of the set. I normally don't run LAV CUVID for Live TV in WMC because I have had some weird video blink outs during commercials on CNNHD. I know some of this stuff is vodooo. That is why I was running PowerDVD 10 as my preferred video decoder in WMC, which is for me a dedicated Digital Cable TV and part time ATSC platform/PVR or both and not much else.

Anyway, just for grins I switched back to LAV CUVID in WMC and there were clear lip sync issue which I don't see outside of WMC... Did not see them with the GT 545. Windows Media Center really is weird when it comes to audio and live TV.... So Cyberlink is good in WMC on this rig... LAV CUVID is a WMC Live TV fail.

I use LAV CUVID and LAV Audio with madVR in MPC HC and in JR River. I only run MPC-HC as a quick test platform.

There is no simple on way is best recipe, that is for sure. My display is 82", I am sure the giant home projector setups really show the flaws.

ahh ok my bad. Ill try to get screens comparing renders with the same filters

Could someone explain the difference between a renderer and a decoder? Im not understanding the articles about the two

-Kevin

wiki: DirectShow

ffdshow ,lav video, core AVC, ArcSOft Video DEcoder are Transform filters.
MAdVR, EVR are renderer filters.

you need both of them for video playback.
you can compare video decoders with video decoders .
you cannot compare video decoders with video renderers.

ahh ok that makes much more sense. I was using VMR 9 renderless w/ffdshow filters before using madvr

About screenshots comparassions.
How do we know picture looks exactly the same for us from video renderer and from image viewer?

about this whole madvr vs others comparissons
i want to say only one thing.
If you cannot take measurements (actually no reason to do that)
Just Trust your Eyes.

I will also ask all the madvr experts how many LCD/plasma support the 4:4:4Full rgb ,the pc levels: 0-255 , and 8bit or higher conversion.

Can you give me some lg and panasonic (2011 models) examples , plz?

Eyes can be tricked.

The placebo effect is very real. If there is truly a difference you should see it in the screenshots. Even the Madvr creator uses zoomed in screenshots as his "proof" over at doom9.

While I agree that screen grabs should show differences in "static" IQ such as color space decoding, resolution, contrast, etc, much of the difference I see attributed to various renderers is motion-related. This will not be detectable from isolated screen grabs of single frames.

The part that puzzles me is why a render engine would even affect the "smoothness" of motion (a description I often see applied to madVR) outside of any framerate translation done in the renderer. If a 23.976 fps video is rendered and sent to a 23.976 fps display, I fail to see where apparent motion can be affected since the integrity of the frames should be unchanged. All the render engine should affect is static IQ, which should be visible in screenshots. In the cases where madVR is handling framerate conversions, then all bets are off.

I would expect there to be 4 main factors that influence the perceived video quality - the decoding of whatever codec is used (MPEG 4, VC-1, etc), any framerate translation performed (e.g. 3-2 pulldown), deinterlacing of 480i or 1080i material, and the rendering of the uncompressed frames into raster images to be played back by whatever playback software is used. This of course assumes the playback software is error free, which may not be the case (framerate synchronization or colorspace management being the normal suspects). Two of these are not in play for the playback of progressive material at its native framerate.

BTW, examination of the comparative screenshots reposted in this thread yields extremely subtle differences to my eye, so small as to be insignificant at any real-world viewing difference.

I should add that I am a newbie at HTPC (and Microsoft's Directshow architecture), but experienced in imaging software on other platforms, so I am trying to get a handle on this not from empirical experience with this particular software, but from a more abstract, architectural perspective.

What am I missing here?

Very, very subtle. I would not expect this sort of difference to be visible in video at normal viewing distances. Not to say the madVR image isn't better than EVR as far as the gradients go, but looking at the eyes, the EVR version appears ever so slightly sharper to me.

This is consistent with what I see in the highly magnified samples on the madVR site - smoother gradients at the expense of perceived micro-contrast or sharpness. Again, the madVR version may be more accurate, but given the realities of normal TV viewing, I'm not sure the EVR version wouldn't be seen as "better" since the eye is more likely to pick up on the sharpness than the being able to resolve the gradient differences.

Sorry, but this is incorrect comparison. EVR CP is able to process image in 32fp, HQ chroma sub-sampling and selectable level of dithering. MPC-HC tester builds for internal renderer fixes by Jan Willem.

My point is that even with HQ convertions by EVR CP I prefer madVR's picture anyway. Thats too bad actually cause I can't use madVR for 1080i videos (I'm an ATI user). Honestly, I hope Jan Willem will bring same quality to EVR CP some day.

Thanks for this guide. I can't wait to go home and test this out.

I have sharkcodec installed now. Should I un-install all codecs and start with the links on the first page?

Also I want to use this with media center and mediabrowser. I know that charkcodec has options for lavcuvid and lav audio, but I never figured out how to incorporated madvr even after following basic guides. Anyways, with this will it work easily with mediacenter?

Thanks

Vector Adaptive to be exact. Those 1080i have huge bitrate, so yes - I only care about GPU processing here. This is only possible with EVR/VMR for ATI users now.

Yea you can and I have tried this in the past, but with shark it apparently doesn't launch as external which I think is preferable. When I set it up to launch mpc externally I lost some convenience features like the resume button in mediabrowser and the fast forwarding (which could be a simple fix).

I guess I just like the idea of having it work internally instead of launching externally.

For those that are testing please post comparison pictures and I will photoshop them side by side at 100% and 50%.

For those with an older motherboard and CPU a Nvidia 440 with 1GB GDDR5 and using LAV CUVID may be the best route to improving video.

I have a Gigabyte EP45-UD3P motherboard and a core duo E7400 processor. I3, I5, I7 plus Sandybridge may provide a wonderful picture. But installing an $80 Nvidia 440 is a much less expensive and time consuming option compared to a new motherboard and processor.

Once the Nvidia 440 is installed it is my understanding that CUVID uses the NVidia card for graphics processing. And that resolves my older CPU's limitations. My impression is that MadVR, the LAV Splitter, LAV audio and LAV CUVID work well together. However, I would not discourage anyone from experimenting with EVR and ffdshow video deinterlacing.

Finally on the issue of smoothness and the issue of comparing individual frames. Smoothness to me means a film like motion quality where I do not see the pixel dots of video. My eyes prefer the film like look.

However, I would only share my experience with my equipment including graphics cards and the renderer and filters I have tried so far.

However, I do believe an advanced MPC-HC guide should recommend that LAV CUVID be tried for those with a Nvidia graphic card capable of taking advantage of thc card.

EVR Left, Madvr right



50%

Right is more unfocused/blurry to me.

so more info`s about this plz?

& this????

i use ATI & intel and i have interlaced material

Great! Let's see more screenshots!

So are the above screenshots as much difference in quality as we are going to see?

I am a little disappointed to be honest. There is just so much hype around Madvr I was hoping that I had it setup wrong and the difference was much greater.

Is still stand by my stance.

LAV+WMC is about 95% of perfect.
LAV+MPC-HC is about 95-97% of perfect.

To my eyes MPC-HC+Madvr is also about 97% perfect. No real gain on my system but obviously others are noticing a subjective improvement.

I think this is extremely YMMV.