ZP VMR9 Renderless mode, a work in progress - Page 7  

that's Andy's latest and it is by far the fastest of them all... on a P4

:cool:

If you want to playback H.264 content with ffdshow in ZP you need the february 2005 builds of ffdshow (and a fast PC). Otherwise, I agree.

Brian

I don't follow you completely. I am playing back here as well AVC (H.264) Nero compressed files with it without stutter (using the Nero Codecs with ffdshow as postprocessor).

What should be in there to improve it further ? Forget the question, this is not aother ffdshow-thread, but this here is anout the wonderful picture quality of the new renderless-mode of the outstanding Zoomplayer.

In case anyone else is interested with the February 2005 builds of ffdshow you do not need the Nero Codecs for playback of Recode2 or h.264 content. IMHO it is not as robust as the Nero Codecs when the CPU is maxed (so just don't max the CPU). The advantage is that it takes a little less CPU to use just ffdshow instead of both Nero codec and ffdshow. I use ffdshow alone as the codec in a custom media playback in ZP for h.264 content. However, even this solution requires a little more cpu than I have for 1280x720 Cinema AVC encoded content so I am still searching for a better playback option.

I am going to shut up now as I know this is way off topic.

On topic (a little) I assume the ZP Renderless mode be available for all content and not just DVD's?

Brian

http://ffdshow.leffe.dnsalias.com/andy2222/

I understand that the different versions of quartz.dll have different impact on the new ZP release. Blight have you as well tried this version:

http://support.microsoft.com/default...b;en-us;891220

Hi multiblitz,

the new version of quartz.dll mentioned by you seems to cure my problem with some videofiles, YUV Mixing mode and second monitor on the latest ZP test version ( I think it is the fourth test version) completely ! :)

However, since I am not using an English version, that hotfix did not install for me. I had to run it, then copy the quartz.dll from a temporary folder during the installation and replace quartz.dll manually.

Apparantly there is no German version of that hotfix yet so one has to disable Windows file protection and do it manually.

I have not experienced any negative sideeffects yet ( using that English version on my German Windows ).

Bye,
Alex

Blight,

For me, With media files zoomplayer works fine.
When I start it it goes fullscreen with no problems and when I pause the playing, I am always able to get the context menu.

My problem is only with dvd playing. For fullscreen I have to click right cursor, and for getting the context menu when in pause, I have to try a lot of times (pause, try menu, play, pause, try menu,play,pause, try menu,...) until the menu appears.

Are you doing anything different with media files and dvd files?

I just want to note that during playback it works flawlessly, it's just that these two things bore me a little...

midiboy, can you upload the new quartz.dll you extracted so that the rest of us has not to go through the same painful process ?

read this thread, stoked to give it a try

great work blight!

@multiblitz:

even when zipped, the quartz.dll is bigger than the maximum size allowed for an upload on this forum.

But the prozess is not painful. It is quite easy actually.

1. Download the hotfix.
2. Run it
3. If you are on an english system, everything is fine.
4. On other language systems you get an error message. Don´t acknowledge the error message yet !
5. Look for a new folder named something like "73907df33e002aa8ba302745" in the root directory of the last partition in your system. ( on my system the folder is created always on the last available partition )
6. Inside that folder you will find a subfolder with the quartz.dll inside.
7. Copy that file to a save location
8. NOW acknowledge the error message from the hotfix installation.
9. The new folder and all the content will be deleted.

10. Now replace the dll:

Download the Windows File Protection Switcher here
Run it, disable file protection
Then copy the quartz.dll into those two folders:

%windir%\\system32
%windir%\\system32\\dllcache (hidden and systemfolder)

enable file protection again if you so wish, however, it could be possible that windows will replace quartz.dll again if it has access to your windows installation cd.


If you wish to replace the file for all future windows installation you can do it easier than that:

As you can read in
this guide you can put the new quartz.dll (actually, the cabbed quartz.dl_) into the i386 folder of your windows installation base replacing the file in there. That way, you will install the new version every time windows is installed and don´t have to worry about file protection anymore. I have done it like that now (until a German hotfix arrives, so keep a backup of the original quartz.dll and quartz.dl_)

Hope this helps. It´s not really difficult !

:)

Bye,
Alex

midiboy, thanks for the good description of the process. Will try that as I run as well a german system.

I am testing this Renderless version of ZP with High Definition files and I'm very satisfied with the results. Great picture quality so far but... most TS files play nicely with my following combination of filters: File Source (Async)/ Elecard MPEG2 Demultiplexer/Cyberlink Audio Decoder 6+/Cyberlink Video Decoder v6+; however when I play MPEG2 HD files and using the same filters fast movements and pans sometimes are choppy and I even experience very short image freezes. Maybe I'm using the wrong combination but it works flawlessly with Transport Streams... Any advices???


Rubento

Yesterday I tested the latest ZP-renderless version from Blight on my HTPC and I also exchanged the quartz.dll. I´m using only ffdshow for sharpening and the 1280x720 goes from ATI 9800 via DVI to my Sim2 projector with the same native resolution.
After changing from overlay to VMR9 some weeks ago I got a significant better picture with softer colors, less noise and nearly no micro-stuttering with reclock.
But if I jump from VMR9 to VMR9 renderless I can´t really see an improvement.
What is the major advance of renderless and what I´ve to look for to see the different ?

Bernd

Hi Blight,

I can reproduce this, however, I don´t get freezes but a crash in mpegvideo.dll

Also, this only seems to happen if output color space in Dscaler is set to YUV2. If it is set to YV12, then everything seems fine, at least duing my limited testing just now ...

But you may write John about this so he can fix it in the upcoming 006 version ..;)

Bye,
Alex

Hi Bernd,

well, theoretically there should be no tearing and guys like Vern claim that picture quality is dramatically improved (at least thats what I have in memory, I am sorry if I quote incorrectly)

Since I am using a multimonitor setup and ZP´s renderless mode does not work on the second monitor yet I have not tested renderless mode much. The very limited experience on my first monitor which is a 1600x1200 TFT not really suited for video playback also did not show much improvement yet. Strangely enough I even had some tearing using renderless fullscreen mode so go figure ... :D

But I will refrain from posting any negative comments until ZP´s renderless mode is at least in beta and working on my second monitor.

Bye,
Alex

Hi again,

Upon rereading a bit on the relevant topics, supposedly motion is improved in renderless mode meaning smoother pans etc.

But maybe Vern can comment on the exact nature of the improvement he is seeing with renderless mode.

Bye,
Alex

Renderless mode itself does not improve image quality, although it is manditory for stutter and tear free playback at 1080I. What does significantly improve the image is VMR9, combined with NVidia's PureVideo enhancements and the latest NVidia decoders (and XP SP2).

Since VMR9 was unusable for me (severe frame drops and tearing) before renderless mode became available, renderless mode is the reason I now enjoy a clearer, more detailed image with no ringing or EE added by the HTPC.

And, yes Blight, you are going to have to rewrite your menus to be cleanly usable in renderless mode. Or provide a way to easily switch between renderless and standard VMR9 for set up

Vern

May be a little redesign of the Context navigator can do the job. I think that the navigators are a must have feature so they can do all the work. Simply configure the right mouse button to popup the context navigator and you end up with a context menu in renderless mode.

I'll see if I can reproduce this at the weekend.

John

I had a quick look last night and I get freezes too which is good, at first glance it seems to be something to do with dynamic reconnection on video size changes.

John

Blight,

Maybe my explanation was not clear enough...

The context menus are working with the current version when I pause the playing. The problem is that with media files they appear always when the image is paused and with dvds it's hard to do it. It was due to this that I have asked if you make anything different with dvds... The context menus working during the pause is enough for me.

Blight,

I don't want you to write a context menu for renderless mode, I was just curious that it sometimes work when the image is paused and sometimes don't. But maybe that's just a Microsoft problem...

What about Vern's suggestion, an easy way to switch between renderless and standard vmr9? This way we can use the standard context menus to setup the player and then just switch to renderless for the viewing...

"What about Vern's suggestion, an easy way to switch between renderless and standard vmr9? This way we can use the standard context menus to setup the player and then just switch to renderless for the viewing..."

couldn't this be automatic? when the context menu is wanted, switch VMR9 modes, then back again when it is closed....

:confused:

a switch would be a 'quick' fix but I'd rather see a custom context menu created. Sounds more solid to me rather than swapping modes - and possibly less things to go wrong too?

Renderless Mode is now working great for me. I have one problem though- the bottom of my screen flickers. Is anyone else seeing this? It only happens in renderless mode. Any suggestions? Thanks

Blight

The lock seems to happen after getting a weird error back from a call to GetBuffer in my world. Looking at my ocde and also testing with the sample VMR9Allocator. I'd guess the issue is your handling of the switch from windowed to Full Screen. I'm not sure how you've done this but I'd be careful to only mess with the DirectShow stuff in either the IVMRSurfaceAllocator9 or IVMRImagePresenter9 interfaces and make sure you call Change3DDevice with the new interfaces.

John