I have been messing around with my ffdshow and zoomplayer settings again. I have come up with some real good results and thought I would share the settings that I am using. It would be cool if others would do the same so we can compair and learn from each other to get our pictures as good as we can. It's crazy how the smallest change in ffdshow has such a big impact on the picture. Well here are my settings for ffdshow and zoomplayer and again I hope others will share their settings as well.
First are my ffdshow settings




Here are the zoomplayer settings



My projector was using a 15" CMV 522A LCD and now I am using a 17" Samsung 730B.
My computer is nothing earth shattering as far as power goes. It's a 2.8 ghz celeron processor with 256mb of ram and an integrated intel graphics card. This weekend I am putting in a new invidia fx5200 video card that has 256mb of ram so I will have more flexability and control. I found that if you don't have a bunch of junk running in the background a small system like this can run ffdshow and zoomplayer just fine I don't have any problems. If I have some time this weekend I will post some pictures here to show the results on the projected image. Or check my plog I have some pictures in there as well.

Nice idea. Probably should include your computer specs as well since a weak PC can't handle a lot of stuff a powerhouse can.

yeah this should be a really helpful thread. good idea

on a somewhat related side note , i recently got a new system and am surprised that it is a bit choppy when playing 1080p mkv files. i don't have all the specs on me, but the video card is a 7300 with 512 ram, 3 gigs of ram, core 2 duo 2.0ish, sata hdd. it plays the files, and they are definitely watchable, but at least 10 times or so in a movie the video will freeze for 5 seconds or so (sound is never choppy.) i close all other programs i can when running the movie. what do you guys think? i've thought about getting a fairly nice video card ($200 8800GT maybe?) but don't want to waste my money if the VGA isn't the problem.

not trying to jack your thread Wireman, i think seeing everyone's settings will be great. i just figured most people reading this thread will be a little pc/settings savy

aerosoul22
My first suggestion is to look at the order of the codecs on the right hand side of the ffdshow video configuration.
You can change the order in which your system performs these functions and if you have them in an order that your system does not like for some reason it can get choppy. My system is no were near as powerful as yours so there is no reason yours should not be able to handle it. The order I have mine in might not work for your system so maybe just start with the order I have in my screen shot and work from there. A friend of mine had the problem with it getting choppy as well and when he messed around with the order of these things the problems cleared right up. Hope this helps

You should never use any kind of post processing or anything that messes with the colors or black and white. That should be only adjusted in you displays settings. The idea is to keep the source untouched in that dept. If for some reason you cant adjust your monitor very well, use your graphic cards control panel to do so.

Sharpening is a personal preferance but more often than not it actually degrades the picture. If your gonna use it, make it as light as possible.

Since you dont have that powerful of a PC just use resize to your panels native rez with a setting of Lancoz 2 with Luma Sharpen set to 1.2 only.

I wouldn't use Zoomplayer to adjust the aspect ratio either. That should be left alone. If your aiming to make your 4:3 panel output at 16:9 then Powerstrip is your friend.

Another thing. All FFDshow filters used should be at the top of the list. And the order of where you put them in has a HUGE impact on performance.

Hope this helps.


peace

every time I've tried to use zoomplayer and ffdshow I have run into some sort of problem. zoomplayer would crash until I held my head just right...this has been with multiple machines at multiple times (fresh os install...loaded for a while..etc.)

I usually just set up ffdshow then use media player classic and it just works...the first time and every time after that.

Well I just bought a 46" Samsung (630 model) which is a 120hz lcd TV and I'm now looking at ffdshow again to use as a dvd upscaler. I'll have my pc connected to the tv via hdmi (I've got the ati 780g motherboard with the integrated video which is supposed to do hw hd decoding).

Once I get the TV stand in and the HDMI cable (ordered online as the in-store prices are just silly) I'll let you know my findings.

I'd like to eventually have a bluray player that will upconvert my dvd's (pretty standard) but also play my dvd-audio/sacds as well. For now however I'm trying to go the free route upconverting my dvd's.

I didn't think there where any true 120hrtz tv's yet, just the interpolation crap (though it's not necessarilly bad it's very misleading).

well it is a buzzword as refresh rate as we have come to know it with CRT's really does not apply at all for LCD's. each pixel changes individually so the screen is not re-drawn 60 or 120 times per second. The interpolation has to occur regardless because of the source which is only going to be 24 or 30fps (or 29.97 to be more precise for NTSC signals). The supposed benefit is that 120hz is a multiple of 24 so 24fps sources should need less additional trickery to get smooth video. I'm using this LCD TV as my main computer monitor as well so some benefits that may not be apparent for video viewing will be more useful with computer/game use.

After tinkering around with ffdshow It is apparent that it cannot approach the quality of a dedicated hardware upscaling solution. The resizing/sharpening creates additional blocking which then must be smoothed and things start getting muddy right there. Then there is the worry of my PC being taxed and potentially freezing/stuttering during playback...none of this is a concern with the hardware solution. The only reason I can't get a super cheap upconverting player is b/c I want something to replace my existing player which also plays DVD-Audio/SACD...I would ultimately be better off getting a super universal do everything blu-ray player but I'm not ready to drop that kind of money...decisions, decisions....

well now ATI has their 4800 series video cards which are supposed to do hardware dvd upscaling and even upscaling of HD content if you have a monitor that supports resolutions higher than 1920x1080. Of course wading through the driver versions trying to find one that works for you may put some people off.

I considered getting a 4830 as the integrated 3200 on the 780g motherboards doesn't really do what it says it can do with any sort of reliability. I've scoured the net but all I can find about it are the same stupid benchmarks for 800 different games that are exactly the same..how many times can you have a guy running around shooting at things before you get tired of it? show me the video playback capabilities!