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[jmone]

[Edit by JimH.  This thread was split from the original one and it begins at about the point where MC29 was released.  The older thread is here:  https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,131843.0.html ]

jmone said:

29.0.18 - retested on the NUC7 and it now looks like I can use "Blue" over "ordered dithering".  Ran through my std set of test files and they all looked good.  The only time I saw dropped frames was on the "Dolby Vision P81_GlassBlowing2_3840x2160@59.94fps_15200kbps_fmp4" test clip and that was only when I used the MCE up arrow to show the MC OSD.

Still has me amazed these old nucs work so well with JRVR.

[JimH]

Thanks for testing and reporting back.

[lello]

The transfer of DV to HDR10 seems to work well and appears not to be too costly (well on my 3090).  I'm using this file from Dolby to test http://media.developer.dolby.com/DolbyVision_Atmos/mp4/P81_GlassBlowing2_3840x2160%4059.94fps_15200kbps_fmp4.mp4

As recommended by Jimh, or having a look at this thread, but I still don't understand why I have problems with DV.

I have tried both mkv files with DV and BD UHD with DV, but in both cases I get the green screen.

With DV trailers, on the other hand, the colors are not correct; they are different than before but still not correct.

[Hendrik]

Are you sure you are testing the right thing?

BD UHD DV is not actually supported, so you should just be decoding the HDR10 track anyway. If you are manually switching to the second video track in such a BD UHD, then getting a green screen is sort of to be expected, as that then indicates that particular disc has no enhancement layer - but even if it did, you would just get some greyscale images that are not watcheable.

Similarly, in your MKV files, those should not actually have a secondary video track (or if its just one track, maybe it was ripped wrong), but if they do and you choose to use it, then not seeing anything would be expected for the same reason as above.

Those "green" video tracks are just the enhancement layer, you cannot watch that alone, it would need to be combined with the main video track.

What is known to work:
- BD UHD ripped with an up-to-date version with MakeMKV (eg. Profile 7). While this case is just partially supported, it will make use of the enhancement metadata.
- Dolby Vision Profile 5 and 8.1/8.4. Profile 5 is used by Netflix, Disney, Amazon etc, typical streaming services. If you happen to run into one of those, it'll work. Profile 8 is recored by iPhones in some capacity, and AFAIK used by some other video hosting sites.

What will not work (yet)
- BD UHD straight from the disc

Older DV profiles like profile 4, which is now deprecated, might or might not work properly, only limited testing was done on these older formats that you'll most likely just find in testing files around the web, but rarely actual content.

[jmone]

Hi Lello,
It may be worth starting with some "known good" DV examples.  This link has both Profile 5 and 8.1 examples - https://developer.dolby.com/tools-media/sample-media/video-streams/dolby-vision-streams/ that are worth downloading and seeing how they play for you.  I've no issues with either Passthrough or Tonemapping (using Auto).  FWIW, I personally prefer the Passthrough on my HDR displays but do use Tonemapping on the PJs. 

[esotericxa]

Just installed MC29 today. Using JRVR Trying TV Australia, PAL 1080i or 50i or 25hz whichever.
Get quite a few flashes, especially just after moving the mouse,
Also, a bit of juddering especially if say whilst bringing up the dialog box by right clicking on the moving picture.
Or after a fast pan across the sports field and credits are jumpy and not that clear.
Eventually, say after an hour the picture freezes, and actually locked the computer once so i had to kill power.
The TV is running the correct refresh rate, not that it looks like it based on the picture problems.
All of this TV works perfectly on MADVR, it just heats my video card up a bit more.
Happy to help with debugging if your interested, but would need instructions.
In contrast, last time I played a movie using MC28 and JRVR it appeared flawless....right through.?

[jmone]

I watched a bit of the Manly Panthers game last night (always good to see Manly get hammered!) using JRVR and while it was OK for me there was something a bit off.  I saw some de-interlacing combing (at times) and some macro blocking around the moving players.  I put it down to the HDHomeRun supplied HD signal, as the same image over Foxtel looked good.  I'll have a bit more of a look tonight.

Couple of things to have a look at are:
- How is movie playback (vs Live TV)
- When playing use Cntrl+J to bring up the Stats OSD so you can see if you are dropping / repeating frames (and post a screen shot if needed)
- What GPU are you using

That extra info will help if there are some JRVR settings that need tweaking.

[esotericxa]

movie playing impressive, no problems noted
HD 7750 1G DDR5
CNTRL-J a bit later

[jmone]

Wow, I'm impressed the 7750 is still going strong after all those years, must of been one of the first with DDR5!  Without seeing the Cntrl_J, I'm guessing the 1GB 7750 is struggling to keep up with the 50fps for PAL TV Playback vs 23.976 for movies and you are dropping frames.  If that's the case then you can try some lower settings (or much better yet, trade up to a better / more modern GPU if that is an option). 

I'm running JRVR on iGPU with the following settings that you may want to try:
- Scaling --> Upscaling & Downscaling --> Bilinear
- Scaling --> Advanced Scaling --> Disabled
- Advanced --> Dithering --> Algorithm --> Ordered Dithering
- Advanced --> Trade Quality for Performance --> Check ON "Allow HW decoder direct rendering on mismatched size"

The aim is to get your render times under 20ms for 50fps material.  Good Luck!

[lello]

Hi Lello,
It may be worth starting with some "known good" DV examples.  This link has both Profile 5 and 8.1 examples -

Thanks Nathan for the link.

In fact, opening a file with V29, "System Dolby Vision" now appears in the OSD and the colors appear correct. But I can also open these files with the V28 and even in that case the colors seem correct indeed, in my opinion, they are better.
In the V28 the image on the whole seems to me more contrasted while in the V29 a little too bright with a red that tends to orange a little.

Having a projector, I use automatic tone mapping: is it a matter of adjustments?

For the rest, I must say that with a V29 I noticed a significant improvement in performance, to the point that I don't think at the time of having to change my RX 580

[jmone]

If you are tone mapping for a PJ, then you need to look at the JRVR Options in particular under "Output --> Tone Mapping":
- Target Nits = adjust the "Target Peak Nits" to suit that of what your PJ can do (eg it will change the overall brightness range")
- Algorithm = try all three options to see which one you like the best.  They are all different "curves".  I like Hable from earlier testing, but I don't I've not spent time looking at the others.

[Hendrik]

Dolby Vision Profile 8 has fallback to either HLG or HDR10, which still looks ok, the Dolby Vision information just changes the image to whatever is indicated in the metadata - that can go any direction as the file indicates.
Profile 5 would be unwatchable without DV processing.

HDR tonemapping also changed in 29, so from just one scene its impossible to comment on what might influence it. You can try some of the options, in particular

Output -> General -> Advanced -> Gamut Mapping Mode
Output -> HDR Tonemapping -> Algorithm

The algorithms here are also changed compared to 28, as in they'll behave a bit differently, so I would recommend re-evaluating them instead of sticking to 28 experiences.
(Auto-select for the HDR tonemapping algorithm can select different algorithms based on the max nits of the video, as higher nits require more aggressive curves)

There is no "correct" setting for these, its all mostly to taste between brightness, saturation and detail retention, which often will collide with each other.
Remember to be careful tuning it for one video only, especially if its a demo video which might intentionally be mastered to show bigger differences then normal content might.

[lello]

I remembered now that with the V28 I was using Hable while now I left it on "auto".

With my projector I get a maximum of 65 nits, so on Target Peak Nits should I indicate this value?

Later I do further tests following your instructions.

[jmone]

Start with 65 Nits and move it up/down to your liking.

[Hendrik]

Usually its better to have it a bit above whatever the spec nits are.

[jmone]

+1 I too prefer to run JRVR at a higher Nit value than what the PJ is rated for.

[esotericxa]

Response to jmone reply #6 and #8
Thanks for the settings to try.
Uploading one CNTRL-J image
W10 set to output RGB but seemed similar with YCbCr
I thought I did this earlier but my reply seems to have disappeared.
I know non bug posts will be deleted, but the glitchy freezing TV on MC29 would be a bug would it not?
Just trying to understand. Thanks again.

[JimH]

I thought I did this earlier but my reply seems to have disappeared.
I know non bug posts will be deleted ...

Only in the build thread where we post new builds.

[jmone]

Here is what JRVR tells me with live DVB-T.  I'm not sure why you have the Windows OS setup for 25Hz, I'd suggest you really want to try 50hz and see how that looks as a starting point.  The performance stats looks OK.

[esotericxa]

Thanks for the reply.
I will try 50 for fps.
I might be confused by the 50i ness or 1080i at 50Hz of AU HD PAL.
Other settings seem to have defaulted to you suggestions unless I missed something.

[esotericxa]

latest observations on JRVR TV video
Moving the mouse causes a up to say 20 frames to drop
Can look like some one is taking flash assisted photos from behind the camera.
Turning off recording and time shifting seems to help the overall smoothness

[jmone]

Well the 1GB 7750 can only do so much.... and their will be limitations on what it can / cannot do reliably.  For example on my iGPU NUC it can just do 50fps material but even if I run Task Manager in the background it will start to drop frames.

[MarkIL]

just to be clear with Dolby vision all the added benefits are decoded within JRiver and sent to TV and as such there would be no difference in picture quality from JRiver decoding and say a Dolby vision uhd blu ray player?
thanks for the reply

[bogdanbz]

My feedback after using this version with JRVR as the video renderer for a couple of days:

- great job on the rendering of ass/ssa subtitles! they're rendered very quickly, even animated subtitles I tried pose no problems at all

- when launching playback of a 1080p video by double-clicking on a file in Windows Explorer, while the computer is using a 4K TV as its display, the video is displayed first in a rectangle in the middle of the screen for a fraction of a second (maybe a 1920x1080 rectangle), and only then that rectangle is resized to cover the entire screen; this is not something that could be noticed in MC28; it does not matter if "Allow HD decoder direct rendering" is enabled or not; I have MC configured to launch the files in full-screen mode like in the attached screenshot

- there are some playback artifacts on MPEG2 mkv files originating from remuxing DVD vob to to mkv files: the video frames are sometimes rendered out of order, and I suspect this happens when there is a transition between film and interlaced video content in these remuxed files; the beginning of the first episode of Star Trek Voyager NTSC DVD is such an example; I will try to provide a sample to test this; this issue exists in MC28 as well, it's not new to MC29

- while playing a DVD NTSC interlaced disc (29.9 fps played as 59.9 fps) on the TV at 60Hz I noticed a lot of stutter during pans; in the JRVR OSD I could see the detected display VSYNC was fluctuating between 58 and 59.9 Hz, while I've never seen it being anything but a fixed 60.002 Hz before;

that was enough to figure out the TV display connected with a HDMI cable was used in VRR mode for some reason (I have GSYNC enabled for the TV display in the nvidia control panel, and configured to be enabled for full screen mode); once I disabled GSYNC in the nvidia control panel, the detected TV display VSYNC rate returned to a fixed value of 60.002 Hz and there was no stutter anymore; my Windows 10 was not configured to force VRR for applications that don't support it, which makes me believe the JRVR swap chain was created using the DXGI TEARING flag that enables VRR; is JRVR supposed to support VRR, or is it just a mistake? because it does not seem to work well

[Hendrik]

The swapchain is not created using the tearing flag, but NVIDIA GSYNC forces itself into things without any considerations for compatibility, unfortunately, because they specifically want to work with all "games" even if they don't change their code to make use of it (its also independent of the Windows VRR settings). I am not aware of a proper way to opt out of that as a 3D application generically (ie. with D3D11 only), unfortunately.

VRR is definitely not supported and not meant to be used, the entire design of it does not fit well into video playback (in theory it sounds like it might, but it requires real-time perfect timers to flip the image at the appropriate time, which Windows isn't particularly great at)

This is unfortunately a problem if you do both gaming and video viewing on your PC, but other video renderers also suffer from it to varying degrees - more if you get closer to the screen refresh, like playing 60fps as in your example.
NVIDIA is rather aggressive about forcing GSYNC into things.

NVIDIA has built-in profiles to disable GSYNC for some common media players, maybe I can also programmatically add a profile to do that. At least that covers NVIDIA then, not sure about other vendors.

A sample of the MPEG2 MKV issue would be great. I think I know what might be the issue, but a sample to confirm and fix against would be best.

[Hendrik]

NVIDIA has built-in profiles to disable GSYNC for some common media players, maybe I can also programmatically add a profile to do that.

That seems to be working, and will be in a future build.
Incidentally this is a setting the NVIDIA control panel doesn't even expose for users to setup in their own profiles, but luckily NVAPI lets you do all the advanced things.

[bogdanbz]

Here is the beginning of the first episode of Star Trek Voyager, remuxed from a NTSC VFR DVD, video only. It's pretty long 3m20' and quite big at 151 MB. It's a mix of non-interlaced film (shots of actors speaking) and interlaced video CGI shots (text scrolling and space ships). There are no artifacts visible initially, but after a while there are sudden moments of misplaced sequence of frames occurring. The final such moment and likely the most visible one happens at the very beginning of the episode opening sequence, at around the 3m10s mark, which is very close to the end of this fragment.

https://files.catbox.moe/8a5d8e.mkv

I remuxed the DVD to mkv files using MakeMKV 7 years ago, but this fragment is done using the latest mkvmerge and shows the same behavior. The artifacts are visible when using JRVR but not when using madVR.

[Hendrik]

29.0.22 is now available which should hopefully resolve the VRR/GSYNC issues by creating a custom profile for MC
https://yabb.jriver.com/interact/index.php/topic,132500.0.html

[bogdanbz]

Hello Hendrik!

The new nvidia profile is indeed installed, and VRR is no longer auto-enabled anymore.

There is one difference that I can see however between what this profile that MC installs does, vs the profile that a user can create and configure for MC in the nvidia control panel.

Before installing this latest MC29 build, I added a profile for MC29.exe in the nvidia control panel, which exposed for this application the setting "Monitor Technology". It let me configure it to "Fixed Refresh", which also set two other settings in the profile: "Preferred Refresh Rate" and "Vertical sync".

This is how the settings looked like when I set "Monitor Technology" to "Fixed Refresh" (I also added inside parenthesis all the settings available):

- Monitor Technology = Fixed Refresh (Use global setting / G-SYNC Compatible / Fixed Refresh)
- Preferred Refresh Rate (SONY TV *30) = Application-controlled (Use global setting / Application controlled / Highest available)
- Vertical sync = Use the 3D application setting (Use global setting / Use the 3D application setting / Off / On / Adaptive / Adaptive (half refresh rate) / Fast)

The nvidia profile that this latest MC29 build installs makes only one change: "Monitor Technology" appears grayed out, with a value of "Not supported for the application". "Preferred Refresh Rate" is left untouched as "Use global setting (Highest available)" and "Vertical sync" is left as "Use Global setting (Use the 3D application setting)".

In other words, those two other settings default to the global value, which the user might have set to something that is not compatible to what MC expects.

Perhaps it's better to emulate what nvidia does when the "Monitor Technology" setting is set to "Fixed Refresh". And maybe "Monitor Technology" can be set to "Fixed Refresh" like nvidia does (it worked very well too, btw, VRR was not enabled anymore while G-SYNC was enabled for the display).

[Hendrik]

Fixed Refresh Rate is the default mode in the current settings, as the flag I set entirely disables changing that setting (as it indicates that MC is incompatible with VRR), its also what NVIDIA sets for other video players, so I think its the right setting to use. It also prevents users or any other settings from overriding it, as its clearly indicated as incompatible, not just disabled, which seems like a good bonus.

I am not aware of any reports of issues with those settings changed, and I rather set a minimal profile then try to force way more settings that might or might not even have an impact.

[jmone]

That is pretty neat!  Is it worth adding the following to the MC nvidia Profile?
- nvidia control panel --> manage 3D Settings --> Vertical Sync --> On
- nvidia control panel --> manage 3D Settings --> Power Management Mode --> Prefer Maximum Performance

[Hendrik]

Here is the beginning of the first episode of Star Trek Voyager, remuxed from a NTSC VFR DVD, video only. It's pretty long 3m20' and quite big at 151 MB. It's a mix of non-interlaced film (shots of actors speaking) and interlaced video CGI shots (text scrolling and space ships). There are no artifacts visible initially, but after a while there are sudden moments of misplaced sequence of frames occurring. The final such moment and likely the most visible one happens at the very beginning of the episode opening sequence, at around the 3m10s mark, which is very close to the end of this fragment.

https://files.catbox.moe/8a5d8e.mkv

I remuxed the DVD to mkv files using MakeMKV 7 years ago, but this fragment is done using the latest mkvmerge and shows the same behavior. The artifacts are visible when using JRVR but not when using madVR.

This should be fixed in an upcoming build. It was as I expected, and easily reproduced and fixed with the sample, thanks!

[bogdanbz]

Thank you very much for working on it!

[lello]

Usually its better to have it a bit above whatever the spec nits are.

I did a lot of tests, but in the end the only combination that works with all types of video and with my projector is BT2446> tpn 200

[jmone]

...thanks for adding Ctrl+R to reset the stats (must have missed it in the release notes)!

[bogdanbz]

I mentioned this in one of the MC29 builds, but it got lost there, so here's again: a bug report regarding BluRay subtitles when the disc is played in Full Menu mode. The subtitles are "blinking" on/off every second or so. The blinking does not happen when playing the BluRay content in Main Title mode.

I "doctored" a mini-version of the BluRay content, by reducing the size of most m2ts files to just 1 MB, and only the main title is larger than that. Here it is in an archive (123 MB): https://files.catbox.moe/7cmqzk.7z

It's from the Japanese BluRay "Drive My Car", so I'll explain how to enable subtitles from the Japanese menu. The BluRay is setup to start playback of the main movie automatically, without having to start it from the disc menu. I recommend to press the shortcut combination to go to the disc menu once the movie starts, and configure subtitles from there.

In the main menu, the third option from left (the one with the dot in it) is the Audio/Subtitles configuration submenu. In the submenu, the second option from the left in the bottom row is the Japanese hearing impaired subtitle, while the third option is the English subtitle.

I recommend using the Japanese hearing impaired subtitle, because it starts displaying something right from the start (the musical note sign) and then there is an additional sign, long before a character starts speaking in the movie. The English subtitle only displays something very late, when that character starts speaking, and I cut the m2ts file shortly after, just enough to show that the English subtitle is blinking too, not only the Japanese one.

Once you configured the subtitle, go back to the main menu and select the leftmost item to start the movie playback.

The musical note sign should display very soon, and it will blink on/off. Then the descriptive text will be displayed, and it will blink on/off too (oddly, in alternate sequence to the musical sign on/off). Later on the actress will speak, and the subtitle of what she's saying will blink too.

[Hendrik]

Thanks for the sample, that should be fixed in a future build.

[bogdanbz]

Thank you for your work! The subtitles are fine now on this disc, indeed.

I would have a JRVR feature request regarding subtitles: please allow to set transparency for both text and bitmap subtitles. Why? When a bright white subtitle shows in a dark scene in a movie (especially in HDR movies), it completely destroys the scene, and even makes dark details harder to notice on the screen when you are watching the movie in a totally dark room as the pure white area has a sort of a blinding effect in this circumstance.

In MPC-BE you can control this (Subtitles -> Default Style) and I usually set the "Primary" color transparency to 25%. It applies to both text and bitmap subtitles and I find it much more pleasing when I watch movies in a dark room.

[lello]

I have a problem that I only noticed now, and therefore I don't know which version it came with.

Basically with UHD BDs with Dolby Vision, I no longer see the possibility to choose between HDR video and DV video, but it automatically goes to DV as indicated on the OSD.


It's probably my settings error, but I can't figure out which one

[Hendrik]

You could never pick between DV and not, if DV data is present it's going to be used.
On actual UHD Blu-ray discs, DV data is not available to JRVR though, only if you rip it to MKV would the DV data become accessible, because its converted into a single track. The dual-track nature of DV Blu-ray discs is not supported yet.