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[mwillems]

So I've been very happy with MadVr's upscaling for live-action content, but I seem to have a hard time making animated content look even remotely good.  My current default settings for all video are to use Jinc with AR for chroma and luma, with debanding, and occasionally NNEDI image doubling when my GPU can keep up with the content.

For whatever reason, those settings seem to make animation look like hell with tons of mosquito noise and/or ringing (I'm not fully sure how to describe it, but I see visible pixelation around object boundaries and fast movement of small objects looks juddery and terrible).  The extent of the problem seems to vary quite a bit from series to series, but it seems especially bad with 1) interlaced animation, 2) on any kind of onscreen text, 3) in scenes with small moving objects.  

For example, I have been unable to find settings that make "the Simpsons" look good, although the problem seems more pronounced with older seasons of the Simpsons than newer ones (I'm watching the second season right now and it looks just terrible). And I've seen the same problem in lots of animation.

To be clear, I checked the OSD and I'm getting no dropped or repeated frames, and I tried watching direct from DVD to rule out any kind of file-corruption/re-compression issues.

Question 1) Has anyone found "best practices" for upscaling animated content?  I've been toying with experimenting with softer upscaling algorithms, but I'm not sure if that's the issue, or if it's something else?  

Question 2) I've had good luck with MadVR profile switching based on content type (i.e. interlaced or not), but that was all based on info MadVr would already have; I'm not sure what the best way to signal animated content to MadVR would be.  Assuming I can set up an alternative MadVR profile for animation, is it possible to get MadVR to switch profiles based on tag information, or could I include a string in the filename to get MadVR to switch, or something else?  

Any advice is appreciated.

[6233638]

Can you upload a sample clip?
 
Instructions

[mwillems]

Can you upload a sample clip?
 
Instructions

Sure, will do when I get home.

[mattkhan]

Question 2) I've had good luck with MadVR profile switching based on content type (i.e. interlaced or not), but that was all based on info MadVr would already have; I'm not sure what the best way to signal animated content to MadVR would be.  Assuming I can set up an alternative MadVR profile for animation, is it possible to get MadVR to switch profiles based on tag information, or could I include a string in the filename to get MadVR to switch, or something else?  

I haven't tried it but the changelog includes this line

* added file name tag "profile='profile name'"

interesting question btw, I have been meaning to ask something similar about some DVDs I have got round to ripping, obviously I'm used to BD quality now but the quality is worse than I was expecting. I could post a clip if you wanted to make this thread broader than just animated content. It seems like there might be value in a more uptodate madvr config thread (at least it would be useful to me anyway!)

[mwillems]

I haven't tried it but the changelog includes this line

* added file name tag "profile='profile name'"

That's basically exactly what I was looking for.  I can manually adjust the filenames for the affected files. 

interesting question btw, I have been meaning to ask something similar about some DVDs I have got round to ripping, obviously I'm used to BD quality now but the quality is worse than I was expecting. I could post a clip if you wanted to make this thread broader than just animated content. It seems like there might be value in a more uptodate madvr config thread (at least it would be useful to me anyway!)

62's the expert, so I'll let him decide    I watch a lot of DVD's and most of them look good/great to me with my defaults, I've just been watching a lot of animated content lately, and it's starting to get to me how bad some of it looks.

[JimH]

Did you try animated content with the default RO HQ and RO Std?

[mwillems]

Did you try animated content with the default RO HQ and RO Std?

I actually did that over the weekend Jim, and had mixed results.  

The ROHQ defaults were definitely not an improvement over my existing settings: they actually looked worse to me, in part because the interlacing defaults to video mode and most deinterlaced animation needs film-style deinterlacing to avoid scanlines.  But even manually switching just the deinterlacing didn't fully resolve my issues.

Interestingly, RO Std actually looked better than either the ROHQ defaults or my normal settings (which is a credit to MC/Hendrik).  But there were definitely still some issues with artifacts in RO Std, so I was hoping better results could be achieved through tweaking MadVR.

I guess my fallback might be to use zoneswitch to pitch animated content into a RO Std zone    

[mwillems]

6233638, I sent you a pm with a link.

Thanks again for having a look!

[mwillems]

So I received some good advice from 62, and I thought I'd share my results.  Using softcubic for chroma and luma with softness set to 80, and debanding on maximum vastly improved the problems I was seeing, which are mostly a result of poor source material (older DVDs).  Softcubic 80 seemed to be the sweet spot for my eyes, 100 was a little too soft, and anything less than 80 wasn't quite as good. 

Thanks much 62 for the advice, much appreciated.  If anyone out there is trying to watch old simpsons DVDs (or other not-so-great transfers of animation, of which I have a few), those are settings I would wholeheartedly recommend.