Advanced MPC-HC Setup Guide - Page 32

my queues whatever they are just reading from the stats are like 7-8/8 for upload and render, 11-12/12 for decoder and 2-3/3 for backbuffer. the graphics card is 570 nvidia, and i got the reclock as wasapi like the guide says. it may be the sound card thats pricking it, im using x-fi and it has its own control console that has features such as crystalizer and eax thats on, which goes against what wasapi is doing right?

edit: tried it in audio creation mode, audio still jumpy. same video works fine with other players, so its reclock to blame?

system default works, so i tried 200ms for the prebuffer, seems to make the sound pauses less sever but they are still there in the same spots on the video. Which way to go, high or low with prebuffers, are they taxing on hardware?

Hey guys, I just installed MPC-hc yesterday following this guide, configuring it as an external player to Media Browser. The LAV filters show up in the filters menu when playing video, audio is bitstreamed, etc. Two questions/issues I'm encountering:

1. When a blu-ray rip with DD starts getting played, I hear a loud pop sound before the audio starts playing (this is every video file w/DD it seems) The specific blu-ray rip actually kept popping/skipping randomly throughout the first few minutes I was watching the file until the audio disappeared completely. Video was fine and smooth. What would be causing the audio issues?

2. I tried using madvr and I had hw acceleration set to none since I only have an intel card right now. Playing the a 1080P blu-ray MKV it seemed to be dropping frames. It definitely wasn't smooth. I have 8 GB of RAM and a quad core intel processor. I thought the processor would be strong enough to do madvr w/out acceleration? Video was smooth going through EVR

Also, is there a way to

a) prefer the surround sound track always, if two tracks are present

b) "load" subtitles so I can enable them with the remote, but don't 'activate' them unless I tell it to? Basically, I want subtitles available always, I just don't want them displaying by default.

not sure if you have same issue as mine, audio for me doesnt disappear, it just skips and pops.


I increased pre-buffer to 700, didnt work so i increased pcm latency to 60% didnt work either. turned off other options like vsync, nothing seems to work as far as reclock is concerned. Should i change the locked option that keeps the original audio?

Reclock works when I change "original speed" to auto in the properties, and when i did that it acted like a schizophrenic and throughout the video it constantly changed between 24 fps and 59 fps (the original video is 29.970 fps and i got nvidia cuvid deinterlace on). this is what it looked like: http://i.imgur.com/S9HaK.jpg?1 when it switches between framerates thats when the audio skips in this attempt. There may be a sync problem because of it. After testing several times, I think the "slave reference to clock..." option is the culprit as it works when set to original speed as well when this is unchecked. And for some reason, when original speed is locked and "slave" is unchecked, it sees the video as 23fps even when the video is 59, bearing in mind that lav deinterlace is used.

edit: it plays each section of the video differently, intro and credit especially are 59fps while most of the inbetween main section is 23fps, thats what reclock indicates, dont know if thats normal and yeah its like that even when all deinterlacers are off. its so confusing, its probably the video itself that has those changes.

thanks for the help, ive been messing with all the options and i can say that lav deinterlacer isnt the cause or any of that, but I have to ask, i realized there are two maybe three deinterlacers working at the same time or one overriding the other; the lav cuvid, the madvr deinterlace in its config, and nvidia forceware control panel has its deinterlacing option ticked which happens to also be inverse telecine. Now which is used and which one aint is anybody's guess, the stats say deinterlace off regardless yet i see no interlacing. Am i supposed to have lav decode and deinterlace or is it madvr that should do the work? Also dont know if its related but im getting crazy high present glitches and frame drops, i cant tell that its happening with my eyes, just the numbers indicating its not fluid, there are madvr options that limit it however. Overall the image quality looks good though just trying to find a solution to that slaved to reference clock, im guessing its vital.

I stumbled onto this guide late last night and this is the only part I got tripped up on:



I'm still getting the blasted Macrovision failed error. This is a result of the mpeg2/libavcodec setting in ffdshow constantly setting itself back to disabled. I tried installing ffdshow with all of the video and audio components unticked and with mepg2 ticked. I have also unticked mpeg2 in the LAV video decoder settings.

I have installed the latest version of everything in the OP (all of them are 32 bit versions) and followed the setup instructions for each of them. I do have all the transform filters in MPC HC unticked though (via a different guide). Ticking mpeg2 and mpeg2 in the transform filters doesn't change anything though. I do not have any additional codecs or codec packs installed (including CCCP). System specs are as follows:

Windows 7 64-bit
Biostar TA-990FXE
Phenom II x4 930 (OC'd to 3.5 GHz)
G.Skill DDR3-1600 (2x4 GB running at 666 because of the CPU)
AMD/ATi 6870 2 GB (using CCC 12.1)


What am I missing as I am at a total loss as to why the ffdshow video decoder instantly reverts its mpeg2 setting back to disabled? I'm sure it's a simple fix but for the life of me I can't discern what it is.

For clarification, the setting for mpeg2 in the ffdshow video decoder keeps instantly disabling itself. The DVD Decoding box stays checked tough.

Actually nevermind. I've had to go back to EVR Custom since you apparently can not adjust contrast and brightness with madVR and it is unfortunately clipping the black levels at 19 and white saturation at 234 which is far to soon on both of those. If support is ever added to adjust the contrast and brightness I'll migrate back to madVR.

In case anyone is wondering why I don't just handle this through my display's OSD, I am using a U2311H which is also serving the role of video playback so having its OSD set for desktop colours trumps having it set for video colours. I suppose I could always set its OSD to video colours and then use the CCC to correct the desktop colours but that's really a backwards way to go about it even if the end result would be the same.

Just wanted to let everyone know that I resolved the issue I had with ffdshow video decoder refusing to remember its settings. This is apparently an issue in the builds starting this past March. The build from February doesn't have this issue. While this doesn't mean a lot to me right now due to the lack of contrast and brightness adjustments in madVR, I figured I would post the resolution in case anyone else runs into a similar problem with the ffdshow video decoder refusing to hold its settings.

This however did not resolve the issue with the Macrovision failure so I don;t know what the deal is with that/

When i tried that it worked and played fine, but I'm still trying to piece the puzzle together and see why deinterlace was a problem even though im not entirely sure if it was the only culprit, heres why. I tested again with HW deinterlace like before, the problem came back as expected, but i tried to apply different madvr settings that others used in this thread and doom9, still nothing until at one point it started working well again with no dropped frames. In order to find out what was bothering it before, i turned everything back to default settings and ones in this guide and it still works fine, as if it never had any problems at all the way it shouldve worked in the beginning. I'm really baffled, and now Im just trying to get it on purpose to stutter again so i know what to avoid in case it happens again in the near future. A bug? A hardware flaw? enabling and disabling the same things over and over again couldve ticked up something. I can say though present glitches show errors all the same no matter what i do. Anyway thanks for these suggestions.

I actually tried doing it via the video card's control panel but it didn't make any changes. I dug around in the madVR settings but I didn't see any brightness or contrast settings. I saw the 3dlut option but I have no way to make use of that nor do I have a way to make use of the yCMS option. I just need to make some very slight tweaks to the brightness and contrast using a slider bar when using madVR.


Even then it's sort of a moot point as I can not get it to workaround the Macrovision error and I'm not going to change the output setting each time I switch from DVDs to video files nor do I have any desire to use two different players. As such I'm really not able to use madVR for the time being.

Last night I even tried adding the fddshow audio processor to the external filters and setting it as preferred in conjunction with the ffdshow video decoder and I still could not get past the Macrovision error. I'm just at a total loss on why the bypass isn't working for me.

I have one single question, feel free to answer it elaborate or short.

I have an AMD 6950 GPU. Do I need to buy an Nvidia graphics card instead for maximum PQ when using the components of this guide (more specifically - LAVs video decoding) or will software decoding attain the exact same quality?


The reason I ask is because I've seen some forum posts claiming that AMD cards should GTFO and Cuvid makes Nvidia superior for all video playback...

I would like it a bit more elaborate than that though. With my own logic there should be no difference since you should be able to do more or less the same thing with software as long as you have an capable enough CPU. But I've seen people claiming that because Cuvid can access the CUDA core bla bla bla it would provide superior picture quality. So I thought it would be best to hear it out, thinking that Nvidia might provide some kind of superior algoritm for scaling, de-interlacing, decoding or whatever.

I presume then that this is not the case and I can start using LAV and happily using software decoding?
I do have an properly calibrated $20k home cinema and I've been using madVR since its start and been an avid fan of the ffdshow and MPC projects so I am not the random niblet with the random question, but I've decided to try LAV out after hearing many good things about it and just wanted to be certain that I get the most out of it. I would not have had any problems buying a new GPU if I will gain anything out of it in regards of PQ for video playback.

JockeII: With modern PCs with the latest software (drivers, filters, etc.) there should be zero difference between AMD and NVIDIA. Also, be aware that h264 specification requires all decoders (hardware and software) should be bit identical in their decoding output (before color conversion and levels expansion). mpeg2 decoding is not bit identical but everyone should be close in PQ anyways.

The biggest differences may be in deinterlacing performance and quality - hard to say which is better. With that said, using software mpeg2 decoding + LAV filters + YADIF deinterlacing on my NVIDIA card has been near-perfect for HBO mpeg2 broadcast caps lately and I'm very happy with it now - it rivals my Panasonic BD55 player.

Another factor - ATI's HDMI audio with later/latest drivers does not have the silent streaming bug, where sounds are missing the first second of sound when you first start a player or when a windows sound is played. NVIDIA still has this bug (workaround is to run a silent directsound player in the background).

Setting Devices>Dell U2311H>Colour & Gamma to enabled, pure power curve at 1.85 and Devices>Dell U2311H>Calibration to Disabled resolved the black level issue as it now clips at 16 where it should.

The white saturation still clips at 236 which is technically where it should but I have always set the white saturation to clip has high as the display will allow. Devices>Dell U2311H>Properties was set to PC levels (0-255). Out of curiosity, I changed it to TV levels (16-235) and I suddenly had 0-255 showing on playback. I'm not entirely sure why they are reversed. However doing this absolutely ruined the gamma and turned reference black into grey with no way to correct it despite adjusting the gamma options here and in the Colour & Gamma section. I'm not sure what the issue here is but given that the white saturation doesn't need to go past 235, it's rather moot. Thank you for taking the time to point these areas out though as well as making this thread.


Do you have any idea on why the Macrovision workaround is refusing to work? I still view a lot of SD content (480i) so it would be great if I get madVR to function at all times rather than just on video files.

Thanks, just the answer I was looking for.


On another note, regarding the discussion of RGB levels. On my TV/projector I have it set to 16-235, likewise in MadVR and ffdshow. There is also a setting for it in the AMD drivers, which let me choose RGB and another option (Y/CB/CR?). I am not talking about a Video setting, but rather how the GPU outputs the entire picture. RGB should be the correct setting in this case I believe since that should be what the renderers etc expect a computer to output, but then you can also choose RGB with limited or full range. If I change to limited (16-235) darks will be grayish. Why it is like this? Because renderers etc expect a computer to always output RGB full range? You do not have this option in Nvidia Drivers.

nvidia drivers do have the option to output full range, yet it still looks wrong when I do so. Also LAV video got some settings to choose between limited, full, and untouched or something, I'm thinking whatever you pick they should all need to conform to the same standards thats if they dont have different implementations, but keeping nvidia out of it might be for the better, its full range is too vibrant and artifical from my experience.

As for deinterlacing, for me madvr doesnt seem to run right, im gonna look for more interlaced videos to test it with, because the fps crawls to a jutter when only using madvr. Yadif and cuvid are alike, my fps drops were solved by tempararly switching to yadif cant explain it.

We are not talking about the same thing, if the Nvidia drivers haven't changed a lot in the last half year. You can choose to output video rendered by Nvidia in Full and Limited Range, and you can also choose to output the entire screen in either RGB 4-4-4 (full range) or YXXXX (don't remember exactly what it is called). But in AMDs drivers you have the same options for video, but for outputting the entire screen you have two YXXXX (with 4-4-2 I think) and RGB 4-4-4 Full and Limited.

Anyone who can explain this?

And btw, RGB range has nothing to do with vibrant and artificial, either you get it right or you get black crush or washed out picture.

When you say entire screen, you don't mean anything related to forceware? I don't know anything about it. But I got a question about nvidia's desktop color setting, does that affect videos? It says it doesnt, but it clearly does a little, not as profoundly as the video settings. I don't care for the accuracy of colors for the desktop so I would like it as vibrant as it can be, shamefully though it messes with the videos.

I have 1 question, what's the benefit of using LAV-Video decoder over other video decoder like fffdshow?