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[Stream_HD]

Hi All,

I cannot figure out why I cannot get my DVD collection to upscale to my 1080p Panasonic Viera TV.  If I play the DVD in my Panasonic Blu Rau player into the TV it automatically upscales it and looks great.  If I play the DVD in JRiver it doesn't upscale.

I went through the entire "Expert MadVR Wiki" to no avail.  I have told JRiver display settings to be on, off and custom.  I tried forcing desktop settings, 1080p @60 etc. no avail.  No matter what I do I literally get no difference in video output to my TV.  I told MadVR about my device and set it to output 1080p23, 1080p24, 1080p25, 1080p50, 1080p59, 1080p60.  Same DVD issue.  Additionally, CTRL + J does not bring up the debug screen shown on the Wiki but I am not sure how accurate that is since it seems to be a bit outdated.

Blurays look perfect and have for many years.  I am just now trying to get my old DVD collections working.  I have googled for 2 days reading all the threads but they haven't been able to resolve my issue as none of them seem to be a simple walkthrough to just get it up and running in the first place (unless it is, and mine just doesn't work).

Can someone please help describe what's the basic steps to tell JRiver that whenever it sees a DVD (480p, 720p for example), to output to 1080p?

I have run the MadVR Reset Default Settings Batch file to be prepared to start from scratch.

Thanks!

[wer]

Based on your description, it wouldn't surprise me if you're not actually using MadVR.  We'll cover that in a second.

First understand the most important thing: If your desktop is set at 1920x1080, and either display mode switching is disabled in MC/MadVR, or all the available display modes in MC/MadVR are 1920x1080 (as you said you did) then the video WILL be upscaled. It has no choice, because there is no lower-resolution video mode defined.

Now, let's ensure you're actually using MadVR.

Go to Options->Video in MC.  Make sure the "Zone to Configure" is the zone you want to play video in.

Ensure the "Video Mode" setting is set to "Red October HQ".  Select OK to dismiss the dialog.

Now play some video.

Right-click on the playing video and a menu will come up. Select DirectShow Filters, then select MadVR, if that option shows.  If it doesn't show, you're not using MadVR.

Selecting that option in the menu will give you the MadVR configuration dialog, and you can use it to set the keyboard shortcut to bring up the debug screen.

In MadVR Settings, navigate to User Interface->Keyboard Shortcuts, and modify the "debug OSD - toggle on/off" setting to be the key you want (like Ctrl+J). Click OK to save your settings.

Hit the OSD key you just defined. Once you have the OSD displayed, you can verify the display resolution MadVR is running at.

Since you seem new at this, I would recommend you let MC control changing the display mode, rather than trying to do it in MadVR.  It usually works better this way in my experience.

[Stream_HD]

Thanks so much for the quick response.  Here's where I am currently and what I have done.

After doing a complete reset of settings I was able to go into exactly how you stated, Options, Video and change to MadVR HQ Mode.  I made sure I was in the profile/zone I wanted to use.

I then started playing Bloodsport, an old DVD of mine from many years ago.  I was able to go to DirectShow Filters and MadVR was an active selection.  This was not the case prior to resetting and following your steps.

I was then able to setup the CTRL + J keyboard shortcut and it worked (which makes me believe what you said earlier that I wasn't even using MadVR).

I took a screenshot of what MadVR says was happening during playback as well as my current Zone/Video settings for review.  I also added my desktop video settings screenshot.

At this point, it plays, MadVR is detected and shows me it's settings during live playback.  However, no other settings are changed as of right now and so my DVD playback is only filling 50% of my 1080p TV.

I verified my desktop settings are 1920 x 1080 32-bit @24hz on the computer.  Inside of JRiver, I have the display settings auto change mode currently set to "off".

What would be the next steps to get it to actually upscale at this point?  Do I change that setting of auto change to "on"?

Thanks again for such a quick and helpful response!

[wer]

Ok, that makes sense, and I'm not surprised.  Good work on getting MadVR activated.

First a couple of facts:
1. Your video IS being upscaled
2. You caused the problem you see yourself by messing with something, perhaps without knowing it. Nothing is broken.

The way I know your video is being upscaled is by the line that starts "scale" in the madvr osd.  The second set of coordinates (1043,511) are beyond the bounds of 720x480.

The reason you are seeing what you're seeing, your video not filling the screen, is because you have ZOOMED OUT on the video. You did this some time in the past, and MC remembers the setting.  This is indicated by the line immediately below the scale line.  See how it says "-56%" ?  That's your problem.

The best way to fix this is to clear the "Playback Info" tag for the file.  This is where MC memorizes your playback settings (including zoom level) for each individual file.  Deleting the contents of that tag will set the playback settings for the file to defaults, and default is to fill the screen.

Clear that tag, play the file again, and you will see your screen is filled.  If you zoomed some other file, you will have to clear the tag for that file too.

Learning how to configure and optimize MadVR is an exercise in itself.  Getting it optimized can be complicated. I can tell from the OSD your settings probably aren't optimized for your computer. You are new to this. You should walk before you run, so I don't think you should spend a lot of time trying to do things in the MadVR settings yet.

My advice to you would be to disable letting MadVR change the resolution and refresh rate, by unchecking the "switch to matching display mode" setting in MadVR options, and instead let MC do that. This is configured in Option->Video->Display Settings->Display Settings automatic change mode.

If you set this to OFF, all video will be scaled by MadVR to your desktop resolution, and will be displayed at the desktop refresh rate.

That is a good starting point. It will always work, and you can ensure all your videos are scaled correctly. But displaying movies at the desktop refresh rate is sub-optimal.  So to go further, change that setting to Custom.  Then set all the options below that to use the same maximum resolution supported by your display, with the matching refresh rate for each format. For example, set FILM (24fps) to 1920x1080 32bit @ 24Hz. (Make sure the last setting, DEFAULT, is Desktop Settings.)

In this way, 24fps movies will be displayed at 24fps, which is good, and the image will be upscaled when needed.

Letting MC control the mode switching is more reliable than letting MadVR do it, and you are less likely to make mistakes that will confuse you and send you back here asking for help to figure out why your screen is black.

I hope this helps...

[Stream_HD]

Thank you so much for the detailed response.  From all the things you said, I was able to find what I had done.  If you right click the video window while playing there's a setting to choose fit to window, 100% or 200%.  I was afraid that ""fit to window" was actually "stretching it".  I now realize that I correctly had "keep aspect ratio" checked and not "stretched".  With that proper setting, I really did want to keep it at "fit to window".  As soon as I did this, the window popped up and instantly told me it was scaling from 720x480 -> 1920X1080.

I also took your advice of keeping all of my MadVR settings set at the default and turned off the auto change under options, video, display.

The good thing is knowing that when I had this working originally, it was actually correct but I was scared I was "stretching" it when in fact, I wasn't.  I put the DVD in my Blu Ray and then played the ISO in JRiver and flipped back and forth between the 2 of them and they look identical.  Thanks so much for making sense out of all the clicking and settings I was overwhelming myself with.

At this point, with everything at defaults 5 DVD's worked flawlessly so far so I feel really good these settings at least work.  I am attaching a screenshot of the new DEBUG values.

Right behind this reply, I will be trying the custom setting and changing all the values per your response to see how that goes.  At least at this point, you have helped me get to a very workable system and a ground floor understanding while fine tuning more over time.

Thanks and will let you know how it looks with the new customer settings!

[wer]

I'm glad you have your problem sorted out...

I'll give you one additional piece of advice. No extra charge.

You're going to need to spend some time learning how to read an interpret the MadVR diag screen.  It is telling you important things.

It is telling you that your computer system, as a whole, is not fast enough to display video with MadVR at those settings at that resolution.

See the line that starts vsync? It indicates you have 16.68ms to display a frame.

Look at the 3 lines under average stats, towards the bottom. The sum of those three stats must remain less than 16.68ms, or you will have problems (dropped frames) which create visual glitches in the motion of your video playback.  Your total is 26.09.

If those times continue, you will see the dropped frames count constantly increasing. That's bad.
(If you see "repeated frames" constantly increasing, that means you're playing at the wrong framerate. Also bad. With correct playback, a few seconds after playback begins, you will see both "dropped frames" and "repeated frames" stop increasing and remain constant.  There are always a few, just as playback begins.)

There are exactly two ways to fix a problem like this: make your settings less demanding so that the computer needs less time to prepare the frame, or make your computer faster, so it can do more work in the 16.68ms available.

Your MadVR settings are already modest. Not much room to decrease them. You could improve performance, at the expense of quality, by changing your image upscaling algorithm from Lanczos to DXVA2 or Bilinear.  If you mess with the MadVR settings, you will have to experiment, stopping and restarting playback after each change to see how the stats respond.  As I said before, learning how to optimize MadVR is a whole thing in itself.  You will need to spend a lot of time googling it.  You can also refer to this guide: https://wiki.mikejung.biz/index.php?title=MadVR
and to this: https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/MadVR_Expert_Guide
and to this: https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1709584


But I think something else is at play. Based on the system configuration you have in your signature, I should think your processor and video card are adequate to run MadVR at these settings.  The problem may just be you don't have enough RAM in your system. 4GB is a paltry amount for Win7x64. 8GB is a practical minimum.  You should upgrade your amount of RAM, going to 8 or 16GB, just for general system performance.  With that done, you may find you can actually INCREASE your MadVR settings to improve visual quality. But as it stands, that's out of the question.

Good luck...

[zoom+slomo]

Thank you so much for the detailed response.......and will let you know how it looks with the new customer settings!

How do your DVDs look now via madVR? Please also check out my thread. https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,132706.0.html

I'm glad you have your problem sorted out...

I'll give you one additional piece of advice. No extra charge.

You're going to need to spend some time learning how to read an interpret the MadVR diag screen.  It is telling you important things.

It is telling you that your computer system, as a whole, is not fast enough to display video with MadVR at those settings at that resolution.

See the line that starts vsync? It indicates you have 16.68ms to display a frame.

Look at the 3 lines under average stats, towards the bottom. The sum of those three stats must remain less than 16.68ms, or you will have problems (dropped frames) which create visual glitches in the motion of your video playback.  Your total is 26.09.

If those times continue, you will see the dropped frames count constantly increasing. That's bad.
(If you see "repeated frames" constantly increasing, that means you're playing at the wrong framerate. Also bad. With correct playback, a few seconds after playback begins, you will see both "dropped frames" and "repeated frames" stop increasing and remain constant.  There are always a few, just as playback begins.)

There are exactly two ways to fix a problem like this: make your settings less demanding so that the computer needs less time to prepare the frame, or make your computer faster, so it can do more work in the 16.68ms available.

Your MadVR settings are already modest. Not much room to decrease them. You could improve performance, at the expense of quality, by changing your image upscaling algorithm from Lanczos to DXVA2 or Bilinear.  If you mess with the MadVR settings, you will have to experiment, stopping and restarting playback after each change to see how the stats respond.  As I said before, learning how to optimize MadVR is a whole thing in itself.  You will need to spend a lot of time googling it.  You can also refer to this guide: https://wiki.mikejung.biz/index.php?title=MadVR
and to this: https://wiki.jriver.com/index.php/MadVR_Expert_Guide
and to this: https://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1709584


But I think something else is at play. Based on the system configuration you have in your signature, I should think your processor and video card are adequate to run MadVR at these settings.  The problem may just be you don't have enough RAM in your system. 4GB is a paltry amount for Win7x64. 8GB is a practical minimum.  You should upgrade your amount of RAM, going to 8 or 16GB, just for general system performance.  With that done, you may find you can actually INCREASE your MadVR settings to improve visual quality. But as it stands, that's out of the question.

Good luck...

Regarding the RAM in the OP's system, do mean video RAM (4GB in that Nvideo 1650 card) and/or the 16GB  system RAM? I'm no expert but I don't think you can add VRAM to a card, certainly not like you can to a motherboard. My new HTPC build will have an Intel 1290T 10 core CPU. With 16GB and that Nvidia 1650 card how easily could madVR upscale DVDs to 1080p? How good might they look on a late model Panasonic 50" plasma TV from 11 feet away? As good as if they were upscaled by my Oppo 95 player? As good as if upscaled by a box like the Kramer VP-424? Please also check out my thread. https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,132706.0.html Thanks!