Ffdshow FAQ - Page 138

Okay so I just got a new LCD and want to try this out. I downloaded ffdshow and MPC and followed the settings as best I could, but not sure if it made much difference.

I'm not stuck on MPC, just happened to be the 1st I downloaded.

I'm running a Pentium D 930 and Radeon X300 if that helps.

Is there a list of optimal settings I should be using?

look in the sticky's on this sub-forum

Henrik

How much better is the 7800 over an ATI X800 Mobility?

what is NVPP?

I think that means NVIDIA post processing.

I am having problems playing dvd's in zoom player. I recently installed zoomplayer, and used the setup sticky at the top of the page and I canplay AVI files fine so far. But when I try an ISO backup or the actual dvd, I get acess violation. Then the only way to close zoomplayer is through the task manager by ending the process. Pressing the close button does nothing. Neither will minimize or anything else. I uninstalled everything, redid it all again and same problem.




Edit: Reinstalled some codecs and tried again. Worked the first time. now it tells me on dvds:

Filter Connection Error
[DVD Navigato].ac3 --> [ffdshow audio decoder].in

Then goes on to say it failed to initialize DVD interface, filters needed for playback, or update DX. I am using DX 9.0c andI can play dvd's in Media player clasic.

Rydis,

I would go to Options and see which audio and Video decoders have been selected. Make sure that these are from same provider. Also, disable the ffdshow audio decoder.

Anyone getting incorrect aspect ratios with X264 encoded files? I seem to get the proper AR with VLC and then why I try MPC or Zoomplayer it doesn't size correctly. I've disabled resizing in ffdshow and have tried a couple different builds with no help. When I go into the info on the currently playing file it gives me the correct AR but doesn't seem to display it properly in any program I try besides VLC which bypasses ffdshow.

what codecs you using? try different video codecs and disable ffdshow see how it works.

It appears I solved my problem with screen tearing. I am not sure why it solved it but when I checked "Use Exclusive Fullscreen mode with the VMR9 Renderless Video Renderer" under Options-> Filter Control in Zoom Player Pro the tearing no longer happens. The only drawback to this is now when in Full Screen mode I can't use my mouse to right click and pull up the menu. Does anyone know why this is or can explain exactly what this feature in Zoom Player is?

Here is my setup
Zoom Player Pro
Nvidia PureVideo
ffdshow

Thanks,
Brian

IIRC renderless mode originally required exclusive fullscreen playback. This automatically disabled the mouse. The idea was that ZP needed total control of the display in order to properly execute renderless.

As far as I remember, anyway. That was a while ago and it's a bit fuzzy.

FYI to ATI users. The latest Cat drivers 6.6 have a bug with DVD's when their upscaled x 2. You loose the VMR9 colour setting for some reason. 6.5 Work fine however.

BoomerBrian,

It uses a a single flat '3d' surface to render the video on (IIRC it works like a game drawing a texture on a flat surface) so it uses the '3d' speed/features of your video card - hence less likely to tear.

The implementation of it for zoomplayer isnt a full implementation - more like a preview of a new feature that works well enough that it was included (also theatertek had it) in the 4.xx release of ZP.. Menus not drawing and staying on screen were one bug that hasnt been resolved yet. Context menus/menus generally will NOT stay visible (they are still there but get drawn over every frame - if your really good at knowing were your mouse is then you'll be able to fumble your way through as it flickers as your mouse moves).. You might have some luck pausing the video then trying to use the menu (works occasionally).. Your best off using the keyboard interface/remote control (thats what I do when I was using vmr9 renderless exclusive).

Cheers,
Bitey

Mr. Bitey,

Thanks for the information. I will program my remote to work with ZoomPlayer. I have ben trying Theatertek for the last week. It is a nice product. They have an OSD is full screen mode. I just don't know if I want to spend the money. I am assuming Zoom Player will have this feature soon. Of course if I program my Hauppage remote to work with ZP then I really won't care.

BoomerBrian,

No probs - you can customize the keys in ZP too, if thers a conflict with something else. So long as your remote can simulate keystrokes you should be fine, otherwise check out a program called HIP - i use it, and it works really well for me.

There is a preview (preview 6 of ZP 5.00) on the inmatrix website - check it out - its got some interesting new features.

Cheers,
Bitey

My problem is that my 16:9 plasma has 1024*768 resolution. If i resize in ffdshow on xvid i can resize 16:9 material to the 4:3 1024*768 and then send it out 1:1 pixel perfect to the plasma that will display it with correct aspect ratio since it's pixels are rectangular.

but when resizing anamorphic dvd:s the aspect ratio will not change no matter what aspect ratio the resolution i change to has! That means i will have to resize the picture again to make it more narrow using the 16:9 scaling function of media player classic. I've noticed in test patterns of resolutions (DVE) that this additonal scaling will introduce artifacts - more specicifally horizontal lines will be messed up...

How can i corret the aspect ratio within ffdshow rather than having the media player do it afterwards?

Whats the latest ffdshow version compatible with avisynth and limited sharpen? The one I am using doesnt work.
Regards

Renderless exclusive doesn't really work very well with ZP - as others have said it's still quite beta. I find with ffdshow hard at work, tearing becomes quite a problem at times, thus renderless+exclusive becomes necessary. Media Player Classic's version doesn't really work either.

Unfortunately, only WMP and Theatertek implement it properly, and WMP has other problems with ffdshow. I ended up buying TT, which is fairly good value as it includes the Nvidia DVD decoder.

Is there any point in using ffdshow + TheaterTek without resizing (in other words, letting the video card upscale to the monitor's resolution)? I'm hoping to use denoise3d on compressed video, but I don't know if it's worth having ffdshow disable hardware acceleration.

Ideally I would use Lanczos in ffdshow, but I'm running a laptop that can't handle software upscaling.

I read all the posts of this thread (6 hours), and I learned about everything (thanks to Owen).


I tested the last celt-druid version and the last Milan version (SSE-2 both case).

I use Overlay.

With a pentium M780 (2.26ghz), I am able to play with Denoise3D AFTER a Lanczos2 (1280,720) (I cropped before a PAL source to 640x360) in order to get a x2 resize).

Owen, do you finally get good values for denoise3D after resize?
and which values for L, C and T do you prefer?

(I can change C and L with these ffdshow version unlike with andy's preview one)

thanks

Fjhdavid,

Yes, you will get better results if you aply denoise 3D AFTER risize (you have updated your post and your question has disapeared).

I am not sure how and why you perform your cropping on your source, your image with a resize 2x will not look better that a non croped x2 resize downscaled by your videocard to your 1280x720 desktop/output,
however you will lost details, that even with a lanczos resize will not be able to bring out.



Owen, All,

this is a long time that I have not upgraded my ffdshow config, I was just using the folowing config:
- denoise 3D L=0 C=0 T=3 HQ-checked (that remove some little noise)
- lancsoz2 x3 resize with L0.4 C=0
on PAL and NTSC, in VRM9 TT2.4.1.4 YU2 mixing renderless fullscreen mode (not sure all exact terms, but all theatertek user will understand)

it was almost one year that my FFDSHOW config has only changed due to TT improvment with VRM9 fulscreen that brings a big step further into PQ quality improvment, and so I have just reduced my original lanczos2 L=2 to L=0.4 for having even a sharpen picture with less artefacts.

so... Owen, after so much time enjoying my dvds, I have decided to have an extensive looks on all forum to see if there was news into the PQ improvment research, and found your reply on LimitedSharpen AVISYNTH script: I have decided to have a look on it and I found that there was again some room to improve PQ!

I know that you do not consider AVISYNTH scripts to be a real part of FFDSHOW, and to be developed into this thread, but the truth is the folowing: FFDSHOW is no more the best solution to improve DVD's PQ anymore.

The folowing AVISYNTH scripts that I used inside FFDSHOW (i still need it for Theatertek), brings more quality that the ones inside FFDSHOW.
I use right now all AVISYNTH scripts:
- MT (for multi threading)
- lanczos resize(1280, 720)
- hqdn3d(1)
- limitedsharpenfaster
- colomatrix (for fixing the colorspace for VRM9 output)
so I do not use anymore any of the implemented filters of FFDSHOW, and the result is outstanding! I do not thought that there was room to improve the PQ, but the results are here:
-it removes the Halo arround sharpen object
-it sharpen the image without amplyfying the noise.

So my conclusion is:
- when FFDSHOW will integrate all the matrix algorithms that are used into those AVISYNTH scripts?

best regards,

(lastly edited because I forgot to describe the hqdn3d script into my list of script i use, i am just not sure if i run it before or after lanczos resize)

so are you using hqdn3d AFTER resize?

why did you say that TT is better than ZP ? for overlay? for VRM9?

What are your parameters for hqdn3d and LS?

I will check it tomorrow.

for avisyth:
- hqdn(1) (that require less cpu than a 2 or 3 parameter, and is sufficient for my taste)
- LSF is x=1 y=1 s=30 without overshoot parameter
and if i remember my latest script I use, I place hqdn3d after resize.
but i got some ocasional stutter, that are for me inacceptable, and so maybe i will either try to
- overclock my p4 3.4ghz
- will perform more test to use a ffdshow resize before avisynth script (maybe I will go back on andy's ffdshow to just complete the fastest lanczos resize before AVISYNTH).

by the way in my previous ffdshow config, after the VRM9 renderless option that appears in latest version of theatertek, I got best PQ in "FFDSHOW only" by placing denoise 3D before resize, and use my CPU power on a x3 resize instead.

I do not say that theatertek is better than zoom player, because I have not tested both.

Overlay vs vrm9
Prior my latest avisynth config, my test shows a better pq with vrm9 renderless.
Now my first tests shows that the difference is not visible. Extended test will confirm one or the other.

Regards,

My two cents after many tests on a Sanyo PLV Z3 videoprojector with bigsize image.

With the last ffdshow-SSE2 from Milan (16 july 2006 on freecodec) in the following order:

- x2 lanczos(tap 2) resize in ffdshow (L=0 and C=0)
- Blur&NR denoise 3D in ffdshow with L=1 C=2 and T=6 (I follow Owen suggestions) for AFTER denoise
- LSF (smode=3, strength=70 with no overshoot but automatic soft (soft=-1))

For my computer denoise3D and Lanczos are faster in the last ffdshow build than with avisynth

For overlay I just tweak the PC brightness (no contrast, no gamma correction). I tested them with DVE and it seems ok.

For happy dual-core owners, the MT plugin is really efficient (I saw it on another computer) and you gain 30% of speed with LSF.

all these settings look really perfect for a lot of DVD at any time.

The only things I would like to drop is: on some very moving fast and dark objet I have blocks.
Do you have any ideas about to remove them?

PS: for me the Andy ffdshow version doesen't work very well with ZP pro 4.51, sometimes it quits, sometimes I have no images...
and the problem is that there is no way to change L and C in order to denoise3D AFTER lanczos

So you resize before Blur&NR and LSF? I thought you were supposed to resize after applying all of your filters.

Hi there,

Did anyone manage to apply LimitedSharpen (or LimitedSharpenFaster) realtime on 1280*720p sources ?
I have an X2 3800+ @ 2*2500Mhz, and even using MT() did not help, I'm still a bit too short (I get around 20-22fps, so not that far from the 24fps I should get...)

Thx !

Anyone got a suggestion of which versions of ffdshow/avisynth/MT to use for a dualcore Pentium? I've got a standard version running at present with 3x lanc, bit of luma sharpening, blur/denoise and sometimes others, and the cores are at 40%/80%. Very occasionally with stop/starting it will settle properly at 60/60, but most of the time it's unbalanced, and after trying lots of versions I still can't find one that splits the load properly.

Another question... still on 1280*720p sources, why is that when I resize to 2560*1440, I have don't have access to color control anymore ?
On TT the slide bars do nothing, and on ZP, they are all set to unsupported (brightness, contrast, hue, saturation...).
It works without a problem using a 1920*1080 resize !

PS: I tried 2 ffdshow versions, same result

Fjhdavid,

denoise3d in ffdshow is not the same as hqdn3d within avisynth..

If you want to use another denoiser after LSF then put it in avisynth (after LSF)

Can you describe these blocks? are they countours of square blocks?

Boomerbrian,
Resising before LSF is the best, but you need a huge amount of CPU to pull it off

BangoO,
You could, but it runs like a dog on most peoples pc's - the people whom can get LSF to run after resize would be ok, but for most of us with <4Ghz machines its just not possible - its just a matter of cpu.

arfster,
There is a version of ffdshow that allows multithreading (it didnt work on my HT system tho), that would be the one to try. Alternatively you can use the MT plugin for

BangoO,
Dont know about the colour bars - try asking blight over on the inmatrix forums (for zp)

Cheers,
Bitey