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[Hendrik]

JRVR, or JRiver Video Renderer, is our new in-house cross-platform video renderer, introduced in MC28.

You can find general information about JRVR here on the forums, or on the wiki.

Development continues for MC29, with a lot of improvements already here, and more to come!

Enhancements in MC29

Dolby Vision support
  - Support for Dolby Vision Profile 5 (which would otherwise play in wrong colors)
  - Support for Dolby Vision Metadata in Profile 7 and 8 to enhance the HDR10 image for improved quality
  - No Dolby Vision capable display required, all processing is done in JRVR

Improved HLG HDR support
  - HLG can now be converted to HDR10 for pass-through to the TV

Improved HDR Tonemapping
  - New and re-designed algorithms for a more consistent experience

Shader Caching
  - Significantly reduces startup latency by caching shaders, instead of re-compiling them for every video

Quality, Performance, and compatibility improvements across the board
  - Support for rotated videos (eg. mobile phone recordings taken in portrait)
  - DVD playback now uses hardware deinterlacing
  - Zero-copy hardware decoding for improved performance on integrated graphics (iGPUs)
  - Improved dithering and color handling
  - New performance options for low-end systems

Subtitle Improvements
  - Entirely re-designed subtitle support for playback reliability and performance improvements
    - Subtitles are rendered on a worker thread now and properly pre-rendering several frames in advance
    - Video has priority, and will avoid droping frames due to missing subtitles, worst case subtitles might be missing or delayed
  - Significantly reduced CPU and GPU usage with subtitles by only handling the actual area with subtitles, instead of the full frame
  - Bitmap subtitles (Blu-ray, DVD, TV) are no longer scaled in software, and instead handed to JRVR for final processing
  - HDR menus and subtitles on UHD Blu-rays are now properly color mapped
  - Significant performance improvements for SSA/ASS subtitles, allowing playback of even the most complex subtitle streams

And we're not done. These are only the changes so far in Media Center 29.  More on the way.

Further Reading
Additional information about JRVR in MC29 is available here:
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,131974.0.html

[Hendrik]

<reserved for future changes>

[flac.rules]

This sounds very good, can you give a bit if a rundown on what dolby vision support actually means? The whole thing is a a bit confusing to me, what happens if a movie has dolby vision, I play it on MC, and output it to a display that

A. Supports HDR10 and is 1000 Nits max
B Supports HDR 10 and DV and is 1000 nits max.
C. Is SDR (lets say 200 nits max?)

And how is the 3 different from the same situation on a 1. HTPC with madVR, 2. A UHD-blu-ray player.

Sorry for the newbie questions, but while i think i grasp HDR as a concept reasonably well the technical implementation is not super-clear for me.

[Hendrik]

A and B are identical. Dolby Vision support in the TV is not required, and not used. And C is just like any other HDR file, the content is converted to SDR.
madVR would not use Dolby Vision at all, and just give you the HDR10 fallback image (or in case of Profile 5, something unwatcheable). A Blu-ray player would let the TV do the DV processing instead of doing it itself.

JRVR does all Dolby Vision processing itself. The data is used to improve the HDR10 image, and then send it to the TV - as normal HDR10, so no special support in the TV is required (nor used if present).

Not all features of Dolby Vision are used yet, for example the Enhancement Layer (EL) from Blu-ray discs cannot be used yet (only Blu-rays remuxed into MKV are supported, and only partially as well, eg. only metadata, no enhancement layer), and other metadata to aid in the conversion to SDR or a HDR-HDR conversion (to a lower brightness) are not used yet.

[flac.rules]

A and B are identical. Dolby Vision support in the TV is not required, and not used. And C is just like any other HDR file, the content is converted to SDR.
madVR would not use Dolby Vision at all, and just give you the HDR10 fallback image (or in case of Profile 5, something unwatcheable). A Blu-ray player would let the TV do the DV processing instead of doing it itself.

JRVR does all Dolby Vision processing itself. The data is used to improve the HDR10 image, and then send it to the TV - as normal HDR10, so no special support in the TV is required (nor used if present).

Not all features of Dolby Vision are used yet, for example the Enhancement Layer (EL) from Blu-ray discs cannot be used yet (only Blu-rays remuxed into MKV are supported, and only partially as well, eg. only metadata, no enhancement layer), and other metadata to aid in the conversion to SDR or a HDR-HDR conversion (to a lower brightness) are not used yet.

Ok, thanks, I think i understand how it works. I am very happy to see all the improvements in JRVR, it certainly seem to be one of the main reasons to upgrade.

[lello]

- Color calibration through ICC profiles, and 3DLUTs

When will this be available?

[Hendrik]

Calibration is likely the next big topic to address. Soon™

[HTPC Videophile]

Hendrik, any plans in the pipeline for adding automatic cropping/black bar detection and removal/image stretching to fill the whole screen as in MadVR ? if yes then by what time could we expect that feature. I like to utilize every inch of my screen(sans the black bars ) even at the cost of stretching the video 

[Ekpen]

Hendrik, any plans in the pipeline for adding automatic cropping/black bar detection and removal/image stretching to fill the whole screen as in MadVR ? if yes then by what time could we expect that feature. I like to utilize every inch of my screen(sans the black bars ) even at the cost of stretching the video 

+1, when MC 29 is available for amd64.
Thanks.
George.

[Hendrik]

Hendrik, any plans in the pipeline for adding automatic cropping/black bar detection and removal/image stretching to fill the whole screen as in MadVR ? if yes then by what time could we expect that feature. I like to utilize every inch of my screen(sans the black bars ) even at the cost of stretching the video 

We are not likely going to offer an automatic/on-the-fly feature for this, because its costly to compute. There is a reason madVR can only do it when not using hardware decoding, and it also costs a significant amount of CPU power, and that sort of limitation is not something we're looking to adopt.

However, the basic functionality to remove black bars already exists today, we just don't know where they are. So instead of doing it automatically during playback, it might be possible to create a sort of "Video Analysis" similar to the Audio Analysis we already have that gathers the required information about the video, so we can use it during playback. But installing such a process will take some time, and it also isn't the highest priority right now, so I cannot comment on any timeline.

[lello]

I have a 21: 9 screen and when I have a movie with black bands, with the remote control I go to Aspect Ratio> Crop Black Bars 2:40 and immediately the black bars disappear.
It is a semi-automatic procedure, but much better than madvr because to make the automatic detection work I had to activate the copy back in the LAV Filters and in the case of BD UHD my GPU could not do it

[HTPC Videophile]

We are not likely going to offer an automatic/on-the-fly feature for this, because its costly to compute. There is a reason madVR can only do it when not using hardware decoding, and it also costs a significant amount of CPU power, and that sort of limitation is not something we're looking to adopt.

However, the basic functionality to remove black bars already exists today, we just don't know where they are. So instead of doing it automatically during playback, it might be possible to create a sort of "Video Analysis" similar to the Audio Analysis we already have that gathers the required information about the video, so we can use it during playback. But installing such a process will take some time, and it also isn't the highest priority right now, so I cannot comment on any timeline.

    :'(  That feature in MadVR  made me switch from VLC /KODI(although KODI has an unofficial MadVR player version) to  MPC and then finally to MC (since MC has an unrivalled library mangement too to handle my enviable collection of Blu-ray video songs from almost every known movie released in blu-ray) .And with MadVR going stagnant, JRVR's  active development brought so much hopes for me to continue with my hobby of ripping and collecting Blu-ray songs from movies. But nevertheless you are doing a wonderful job on JRVR and we all adore you for that.  Meanwhile i''l have to wait and stick with MadVR+MC combo till the time i start adding 4K blu-ray songs with Dolby/HDR10/HDR10+   to my collection. till that point i don't need to worry. Still have 1734 more blu-rays to rip and that would take years for me at the current pace of 2-3 rips in a week. So by then maybe JRVR might be ready or who knows MadVR might start getting updates once more.

[jmone]

FWIW, you can do all the cropping you need.  When playing a title "Right Click --> Window-->" to bring up the options to Crop Black Bars / Override Aspect Ratio etc.  The good news is that you only need to do this once and MC will remember the settings for next time it is played.  These playback preferences are stored in a Field called "Playback Info" and you can even copy this data from one title to another.  It's not automatic but it does work.

[jmone]

However, the basic functionality to remove black bars already exists today, we just don't know where they are. So instead of doing it automatically during playback, it might be possible to create a sort of "Video Analysis" similar to the Audio Analysis we already have that gathers the required information about the video, so we can use it during playback. But installing such a process will take some time, and it also isn't the highest priority right now, so I cannot comment on any timeline.

...and then I can retire that part of Swag of Tools!

[JimH]

Split Dolby Vision Support in JRVR

[dwalme]

Quick question on JRVR.

With MadVR I set my PC video card to output PC Level 0-255 RGB.   I then configure MadVR to work in video level (16-235).  This preserves WTW (whiter than white) output and gets accurate output from my video card.   Downside to this is the desktop is always displaying the wrong video levels but for a dedicated HTPC it's not an issue.

(TV is configured for 16-235 video levels to match the output from MadVR)

Does JRVR support video level output (16-235) while the video card is configured to output PC levels (0-255).

[terrym@tassie]

Does JRVR support video level output (16-235) while the video card is configured to output PC levels (0-255).

No it does not.
 
See these posts by @SamuriHL for a good discussion/explanations of the issues:
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,130657.msg912116.html#msg912116
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,130657.msg912119.html#msg912119

[Hendrik]

Rendering in limited range basically means lying to the graphics card, which is usually not a good place to be in. Its a bit of an edge case, and BTB and WTW are not meant to be seen on the final image anyway (if you could see them, that would mean you are not using the full potential for actual image data).

It wouldn't be very complicated to support such a mode, but for the time being I'm trying to avoid it, as its much simpler to just run at full range all the time, and let the graphics card deal with anything else.

[HTPC Videophile]

FWIW, you can do all the cropping you need.  When playing a title "Right Click --> Window-->" to bring up the options to Crop Black Bars / Override Aspect Ratio etc.  The good news is that you only need to do this once and MC will remember the settings for next time it is played.  These playback preferences are stored in a Field called "Playback Info" and you can even copy this data from one title to another.  It's not automatic but it does work.

Sorry for late reply(by any standards) but i am aware of this option from day one of using MC . As someone who has in his library 7k+ untouched blu-ray rip video songs in pass thru quality of varying pillar boxing to test the available options , i can assure you that not only is the above process cumbersome but unreliable as well when it comes to non standard pillar boxing in some weird blu-rays. The automatic cropping and stretching of pillar boxed 1080p videos from say 1920x1080p to cropped 1920 x816p( this sometimes varies within the same blu-ray) and then stretching it to Full Screen 1920x1080p Full  HD using Jinc scalers in MadVR is something i cannot afford to compromise. Varying width of black bars within the same blu-ray can only be handled by the automatic black bar detection/cropping in madVR with the option to report the changes to MC at every black bar change ticked ON.

[JimH]

Split OLED TV's

[tensionfire]

I use a ICC profile and JRiver loss the profile after changing the refresh rate. This problem is with JRVR and MadVR. It would be wonderful to use the ICC profile with refresh changes too.