Video Upscaling?

[Striker:WG]

So, I'm fairly new to the 4K TV experience and i'm wondering if anyone out there is currently doing any form of software based upscaling on their video playback to help improve the quality of lower resolution video files?

Even my TV signal from my Shaw STB is only recorded at 1080i (limitations of the HDPVR) and I would love to do something to enhance the picture quality to take full advantage of my 4K TV.

I run the desktop at 4K, so I imagine something needs to be configured in the LAV decoders or additional software may be required (if its even possible at all?).

I remember FFDShow had a bunch of on-the-fly video processing options that could be applied to enhance video quality, so I could switch back to that instead of LAV.

Just wondering what everyone else is doing!

Any input is appreciated!

[Malfunction]

The best thing you can do is sit further back from the screen. You can't add data that isn't there. If you have a really large screen, there's a significant difference between 1080i and 4K. You need at least a 43" screen to see any difference at all.

[trk2]

Originally Posted by Malfunction

You can't add data that isn't there.

This isn't true, data is being added whenever you play back a video at a greater resolution than the source. This is also why native resolution output switching features on Sage extenders exists, because the video processing on receivers or TVs can be better at upscaling than the extenders.

I also used to appreciate the upscaling processes you can use with ffdshow. As far as I'm aware those features have not been duplicated in LAV and unfortunately ffdshow development was abandoned many years ago. For decoding and upscaling your STB capture, ffdshow would still work but you may run into issues if you every try to play back a video using more modern formats.

The best solution would be to add support for madVR.

[Striker:WG]

Interesting. I haven't heard of MadVR before, i'll have to play around with it.

Do you think it is as simple as installing and editing my sageclient.properties file to update the following line from:

videoframe/video_render_filter=EVR

to

videoframe/video_render_filter=MadVR

?

[trk2]

No, I don't think it will be that easy. There was user on the github who got it to work by setting Sage to the default renderer and then setting the merit for MadVR to highest. You can read that here. I never managed to get it to work. You can set the merits using graphstudionext.

[Striker:WG]

oh yeah, I could see that working. I've messed with merit values before to control which decoders are used.

Despite setting things very specifically in Sage, the Microsoft DTV-DVD decoder often forces its way into the mix and messes with stuff on one of my systems.

Thanks for the idea!

[trk2]

Good luck. If you get it working, let me know you did it!

[Malfunction]

Originally Posted by trk2

This isn't true, data is being added whenever you play back a video at a greater resolution than the source. This is also why native resolution output switching features on Sage extenders exists, because the video processing on receivers or TVs can be better at upscaling than the extenders.

I also used to appreciate the upscaling processes you can use with ffdshow. As far as I'm aware those features have not been duplicated in LAV and unfortunately ffdshow development was abandoned many years ago. For decoding and upscaling your STB capture, ffdshow would still work but you may run into issues if you every try to play back a video using more modern formats.

The best solution would be to add support for madVR.

You can make 4 pixels out of one, but basically you've made a pixel that's 4x the size.

[Tiki]

Originally Posted by Malfunction

You can make 4 pixels out of one, but basically you've made a pixel that's 4x the size.

That’s the simplest way to do upscaling, but there are many algorithms that try to be more intelligent about it by also looking at the surrounding pixels (and possibly also adjacent frames). So if the original pixel was black, when it splits into 4 new pixels it doesn’t have to make them all black. That’s why some upscalers are better than others.

Of course it’s not like the movies where the CIA is able to take a single blurry image of a car where the whole license plate was only 1 pixel to start with and do some magical processing to suddenly zoom in and read all the characters on the license plate.

[trk2]

Originally Posted by Tiki

Of course it’s not like the movies where the CIA is able to take a single blurry image of a car where the whole license plate was only 1 pixel to start with and do some magical processing to suddenly zoom in and read all the characters on the license plate.

Enhance!

[Striker:WG]

MadVR installation on a bare metal install using an HP ProDesk 600 G1 SFF

Approximate time to complete: 3 Beers

1. Download Windows media creation tool: https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/soft...load/windows10
2. Create bootable USB and install Windows 10 ver 2004. Check for updates. Disable UAC. Reboot accordingly.
3. Install Chrome or Firefox
4. Download MadVR: http://madshi.net/madVR.zip (available from madvr.com)
5. Install MadVR
   1. Extract Zip from step 4
   2. Move files to a location like C:\Program Files\MadVR
   3. Run C:\Program Files\MadVR\Install.bat by right-clicking and choosing "Run As Administrator"
6. Download LAV Filters: https://github.com/Nevcairiel/LAVFil...ses/tag/0.74.1
7. Install LAV Filters
8. Ensure all 3 components (LAV Splitter, LAV Video Renderer, LAV Audio Render) are all set to display their tray icon when used
9. Download GraphStudio: https://www.videohelp.com/software/GraphStudio
10. Change Render Merit values
    1. Graph menu
    2. Insert Filter
    3. Find Filter MadVR
    4. Change Merit to "Merit Preferred +2"
    5. Click Property Page
    6. Change MadVR properties to ensure "Use Tray Icon" is enabled. Adjust other MadVR settings to preference.
    7. Find Filter "Video Renderer" (if listed twice, do for both)
    8. Change Merit to "Merit Do Not Use"
    9. Find Filter Microsoft DTV-DVD Video Decoder
    10. Enable the "Blacklisted" option
11. Reboot
12. Render a video in GraphStudio to validate that MadVR is default.
13. Download latest SageTV x64 Windows client: https://bintray.com/opensagetv/saget...agetvwin/9.2.2
14. Install SageTV x64 client
15. Ensure SageTV DeMuxer is disabled via registry key (create key if it doesn't exist) Computer\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\WOW6432Node\Frey Technologies\Common\DirectShow\EnableSageTVStreamDemux = 0
16. Ensure Sage is set to use LAV filters and Default Renderer
17. Play same video in Sage. Confirm that MadVR tray icon appears.

[CptKirk]

Striker,

You should create a new thread for the MadVR installation. This is too good to get lost down in the middle of another thread topic.

[trk2]

I agree with Jim that you should post a separate thread specifically on this topic. Maybe in the Sage Github Development section so that one day we might have an easier configuration.

We both followed the same process but it doesn't work on my setup. madVR works fine and I've been using it for years with mpc-hc and mpc-be. Can you clarify how you are verifying in graphstudio? If I create a graph with lav and madVR everything works as expected. However Sage behaves like when I create a graph with Video Renderer, madVR doesn't load and I get audio but no video.

[sacrament055]

I followed the instructions as shown and seems to work fine for h264, etc the only issue I'm having is that my MPEG2 files .TS will only show in a small corner of the screen when I'm using MADVR renderer. If I switch to EVR it shows correctly. Both instances are using LAV for audio and video.
One thing to note is that SageTV does not show me that it's using LAV Splitter for MPEG2 files and I'm not sure how to foce it to use it instead of whatever it's trying to use by default. (No tray icon for LAV splitter when using MPEG 2)

[KryptoNyte]

Originally Posted by trk2

Enhance!

Enhance ...

[Striker:WG]

sure, once we get the steps ironed out, we can create a new thread where the final instructions are stickied to the top.

In graph studio, I go to File > Render Media File then I find a video file and see how graph studio renders the graph. If I see what I want happening, then Sage should do the same when I use the default renderer setting in Sage.

I confirm that this is actually happening by running Sage in windowed mode, playing the same video file and confirming that I see the LAV and MadVR icons appearing in the tray.

I just got a new SSD for my system, so I reinstalled Windows and redid the same steps and it worked for me.

The key steps are in setting the Video Renderer merit values to "Do Not Use 0x002000000" and for whatever reason, the Video Renderer is listed twice, so I set the merit on both of them. I then set the merit on MadVR to "Merit Preferred +2 0x008000002". I then set the Microsoft DTV-DVD Video Decoder to "Blacklisted" as I never want that to be used. I find that particular filter worms its way into graphs even when you have set the merit to never use.

I haven't adjusted all of my settings yet, so maybe I still need to set something else, but at the moment, when I try to playback a previously recorded TV stream from a .TS file, it crashes Sage.

For those who are experienced with MadVR, any tips on the best settings to use for optimal results?

[sacrament055]

Originally Posted by Striker:WG

sure, once we get the steps ironed out, we can create a new thread where the final instructions are stickied to the top.

In graph studio, I go to File > Render Media File then I find a video file and see how graph studio renders the graph. If I see what I want happening, then Sage should do the same when I use the default renderer setting in Sage.

I confirm that this is actually happening by running Sage in windowed mode, playing the same video file and confirming that I see the LAV and MadVR icons appearing in the tray.

I just got a new SSD for my system, so I reinstalled Windows and redid the same steps and it worked for me.

The key steps are in setting the Video Renderer merit values to "Do Not Use 0x002000000" and for whatever reason, the Video Renderer is listed twice, so I set the merit on both of them. I then set the merit on MadVR to "Merit Preferred +2 0x008000002". I then set the Microsoft DTV-DVD Video Decoder to "Blacklisted" as I never want that to be used. I find that particular filter worms its way into graphs even when you have set the merit to never use.

I haven't adjusted all of my settings yet, so maybe I still need to set something else, but at the moment, when I try to playback a previously recorded TV stream from a .TS file, it crashes Sage.

For those who are experienced with MadVR, any tips on the best settings to use for optimal results?

I had the same experience but I noticed when I was running sage windows with "Default" (MadVR) it will play instead of crash but only in a small window in the corner. Changing from "Default" to EVR makes things play normally again. For the moment it means I'll be toggling between them to watch OTA TV versus movies.

[Striker:WG]

yeah, I'm very confused at the moment. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, I got a new SSD for my test system.

If I throw the old platter drive in the system and boot from there, I get the same experience as you, a small window in the top left corner for TV playback.

If I use the installation on the new SSD, Sage crashes when I try to playback recorded TV.

I've tried resetting things to defaults which hasn't helped. I noticed that on the platter system, I had MadVR in c:\Program Files\MadVR\ while on the SSD I was in c:\Program Files (x86)\MadVR\ so I tried moving and re-registering it, but that didn't change the end result.

[Striker:WG]

After several reboots and mucking about, I've gained some clarity.

In Sage, you need to be set to "default" for not only the Video Renderer, but also the H264 video decoder filter.

If I set the H264 to specifically use LAV, then Sage will crash.

If I set the H264 to use Default, the TV playback works, but appears in the small window in the top left corner. I also notice that the LAV video decoder is not appearing in the system tray and the Sage logs indicate that Microsoft DTV-DVD Video is still being used.

I tried a few methods to completely remove DTV-DVD from my system, but then Sage just crashes on the TV playback. It really seems to want to use the Microsoft codec as part of its graph. This may also be related to why it is appearing in such a small window, but that is just a guess at this point.

[trk2]

Originally Posted by Striker:WG

The key steps are in setting the Video Renderer merit values to "Do Not Use 0x002000000" and for whatever reason, the Video Renderer is listed twice, so I set the merit on both of them. I then set the merit on MadVR to "Merit Preferred +2 0x008000002". I then set the Microsoft DTV-DVD Video Decoder to "Blacklisted" as I never want that to be used. I find that particular filter worms its way into graphs even when you have set the merit to never use.

Thanks, this confirmed that I had everything configured correctly. Unfortunately for me Sage will not use madVR even though it is the default renderer as demonstrated in graphstudio unless someone sees something in the attached screenshot.

In regards to the crash when playing back H264 have you tried windowed overlay mode or fullscreen exclusive mode:

enable windowed overlay (Windows 7 and newer): [Disabled] Only available on Nvidia and Intel GPUs. Uses a low level overlay method which bypasses the GPU LUT (monitor profile) so madVR emulates it when using this option, this is done in 16-bit so madVR can provide better quality than the GPU. Overlay also bypasses the OS to a large extent; screen-shots are not possible. D3D9 Only. Incompatible with 'fullscreen exclusive mode'.

enable automatic fullscreen exclusive mode: [Enabled] madVR has exclusive access to the display, nothing else can draw to the display without dropping out of this mode. This is the most stable mode for madVR because it has the most control over when and how video frames are displayed. There is a slight flicker and delay as madVR enters and exits this mode. Required for 10 bit in Windows 7 or 8.