Benchun has enlightened us all in his "Yellow Treasure" project by using FFDShow to (vastly) improve the quality of his images / results.

The AVS Forum - FFDSHOW Settings Thread has some good examples of settings that worked for all types of users. However, I feel that it lacks sufficient projector based examples. I think it could be cool if the members of this forum post result that work best with projectors, for example. I believe that FLY CRJ and Bluto are using this application with great success as well.

Here's the basic setup idea. BTW, the Sonic DVD Filter Pack blows. Try using the NVIDIA or dScaler5 ones instead

This could also be the place to post other software and hardware tweaks that improve the quality of the image before it hits your LCD panel.

Forgive me if this thread exists elsewhere...my powers of boolean search will be called into question.

Just going to add to this, been playing with FFDshow for the last week or so. I run an AMD system (2 actually) so it's not the "best" for this app. My htpc is a AMD64 3200 and i've noticed a few things about setting this up so it works with no jitters ect. One big setting that should be the first to be looked at by AMD useres is under Rsize - Settings. At 1080X720 you can run PAramter maxed and the luma/chroma settings at 1.5 as suggested by many. Try it at 1440X960 = 100% CPU, lowered paramter to 9 and Luma/chroma 1.5 and 85% CPU. 2160X1440 Parameter 4 luma/chroma 1 = 85% CPU. This is the only setting that i noticed to make a huge impact on CPU usage so play around with it, it really did'nt effect the quality that badly and there is no suttering at all. Hope that helps someone. Oh and i agree use the Nvida or Dscaler filters there way better.


Clinton

BTW, FFDShow can be found here.

Benchun achieved his results using ver. 2005-03-12.

Are you using Zoomplayer Pro?

Yes I am. I quite like it. I'm also using the NVIDIA DVD Decoders. I haven't tried the WinDVD ones yet, though.

Right now for my system, Zoomplayer is memory hog. I'm using a 1.4 gig machine with 512mb of ram and it eats it all. So, I'm goign to have to get a better computer before I can take advantage of it, I guess.

MY FFDshow settings and results are in my PLOG (in my sig)

A suggestion: put what type of monitor you are using as well. I suggest this due to the fact that there are so many different monitors, and they all don't have similair specs (varying contrast ratio, brightness, etc.). That way, people with similair monitors can benifit by not having to experiment too much. Just my 2 cents!

Hey, goahard2

That's bright!! start topic here. I also hope many folk will get fine result from using Codec software, players, graphic engine tools and whatever necessary software and hardware to improve our projector image quality.

I got very fine result Here_Sample image of using FFdshow codec and 1080i dvd file

Let's talk about a lot of things here. Great link Goahard with good Cheer.

Love the topic, great work. I pinned it for all to see

I know what you mean. My Athlon XP 2000+ and GEForce 420MX gasp and choke when trying to run anything higher than 900 x 600 (unless I overclock).

I just went out and bought myself a BFG Geforce 6600GT last night and it hasn't made the kind of difference I would have hoped/expected. However I very strongly suspect the card is just sitting there waiting for the CPU all the time.

I've ordered a Barton 3000+ for $100.00 off ebay. I should be able to OC that to 2500 mHz. If that doesn't get me where I need to be, then I'll have to cave in and buy a new mobo/processor.

However, Benchun is running his rig with a 2800XP, so I hope that I won't have to.

Thanks Neda for pinning this. I think we'll all learn lots from this.

I will be using an athlon 2800+ with a geforce 5200 vid card and 512mb pc2700 ddr. I was wondering what type of software will work the best. I was thinking of using dscaler and ffdshow, but do not know what I should use as a media software. Can I just use windows media player, or do I need something like zoom player?

I can't say for certain that it's the only way to go. However, I believe that with WMP, it's difficult to use the 3rd party DVD decoders like NVIDIA or dScaler5. I know that FFDShow will work with WMP and doesn't necessarily require 3rd party DVD decoders, however I have found that the 3rd party decoders take more load off of the CPU.

Personally, I find WMP so annoying to use that I prefer to pay for ZoomPlayer Pro so that I don't have to waste time trolling the geek sites to find out how to tweak WMP to be less annoying.

Sorry if that's not much of an answer.

I've been doing the equivalent of "Video Scalers for Dummies" in an attempt to better understand how I can tweak FFDShow to get the best results.

I found the forum disucssing Lancxos vs. Bicubic comparison on the AVS Forums to be pretty helpful.

For the moment, I have gathered that you really shouldn't use the Lanczos filter with a parameter higher than 4 or else you get excessive 'ringing' in your image. In fact, Don Munsil (general video guru) himself makes some very interesting contributions that help.

He tends to favour a scaler called Catumull-Rom but I'll need to do more reading to figure out how to implement that with my setup. He also says that Lanczos 2 and Catumull-Rom are almost identical.

Well, I hope this is interesting...

i have been playing with ffdshow on my computer and when watching a movie i get this burn effect. where parts of the last image are burned into the next with and orangey color. is ffdshow doing this or my crt playing tricks on me?

I'd say it is your display, the phosphors in it are probably getting old and can't dim down enough for fast scenes.


peace

i have a pentium 4 2.4 ghz and 512 ddr ram but the picture doesn't stream right. it is really slow, and cpu usage read at 10-20%. anyone knows why? it start and stop start and stop, annoys the hell out of me.

You should be able to playback DVD fairly well if I judge your CPU and RAM alone. However, there are other factors:

Which O/S (service pack?)
What Video Card are you using? (are the drivers up to date)?
What DVD Decoders are you using? (DScaler5, NVidia?)
Which Player are you using (Zoom Player Pro, Windows Media Player, etc)?
Which version (if any) of FFDShow are you using? (if so, what settings?)
What DVD Drive are you using? (drivers?) Is it on it's own IDE channel or sharing with the HD.
Have you tried extracting your DVD to your HD and playing it from there? (eliminates DVD player from picture)

If you give a little more info, somebody on here can probably help you out.

I'm running Microsoft XP Pro with service pack 1.
Video card is a cheap one that came with the dell system. Rage XL PCI video card.
I was using DScaler(no CSS) for audio and video decoder.
I use zoomplayer pro to play the file as suggested.
the version of ffdshow i have dated back to 10-12-2004.
the setting on ffdshow is: resize&aspect: 1024X768, keep original aspect, for setting i used lanczos with luma sharpen at 1.5 and chroma sharpen 1.5 and parameter at default. blur&NR: denoise3d luma=.5 chroma=.5 time=5 with hq checked. i'm using a dvd burner to play. but as of now, i'm playing a file that's already on my harddrive. i'm also having problem playing dvd directly through zoomplayer. when using zoomplayer in dvd mode, i can't simply press play, i have to open the files as if i was in media mode. i get this error message when trying to play dvd in dvd mode:
An error has occurred!
Unable to initialize dvd interface, filters required for dvd playback may not be properly configured or your version of direct x is too old.
Filter Connection Error!
[FFDshow video processor].out --> [overlay mixer].input0
Not all filter can connect properly. if the filter above is an "additional filter" try unchecking it in the option dialog.

i get this message when attempting to play dvd using zoomplayer pro in dvd mode. and the weirdest thing is that the cpu is only running at 10-20%. i think that's the reason why it plays as if it was a slideshow. it's so slow. how can i force ffdshow to use more cpu to process. i hope someone in here can help me out. thanks a lot.

I have tried:

Zoom Player Pro, Power DVD 6 and thearetek with ffdshow and without.

I run a 3200+XP OEM (no overclock) and theatretech produces the best picture on my PJ. This is hand down. The NVidia post processor is as good as ffdshow for me becuase my processor will not handle the processor intensive requirments in the original FFDSHOW thread linked in the original post.

Just thought I would throw in my two cents. Zoom Player is a nice player but theatretech has continually surprised me to date. This is with an ATI card too

I'll post this here also.

Here are some free calibration tools you can use instead of having to buy a disk like DVE or AVIA. Use your software player of choice. You can also burn them to a disc for your set-top-player. IMO you should keep up to date on this thread pointed to for newer versions.
Enjoy.

For DivX tweaking
For DVD playback: Reference Black/White Calibration tool 1
Also for DVD playback: Reference Black/White Calibration tool 2 updated version of 1

Thanks for the tools!!

Hmm Nvidia downmixes Dolby Digital 5.1 into stereo playback.

Nvm, found a solution that outputs digital sound in Nvidia.

Just got FFdshow working with dsaler and zoom. Right now have it set at 1800x1500. I know it is not scaled right but I just wanted to see how high it would go. If I go into the 2000 range it starts to skip a bit. Now if I can only get FFdshow to work with my tvcard and Media Portal. It is in the options but will not start.


Thanks for all the great info. DVD's are looking great!!!!!


NH3man!

FFDShow and Theatertek work great, but so does WMP10 and the Nvidia Purevideo decoder. I played the movie Sahara the other night through my Laptop into my PJ with the WMP10 and the Purevideo Decoder, and the quality was outstanding...

Share it...?
Does the ATI AIW X1800 'deal' with component and dvi-in hdtv? The vid-card portion sure looks nice--but maybe it wouldn't 'make-nice' with dScaler?
http://www.ati.com/products/RadeonX1800/index.html
http://www.ati.com/developer/atirdv.pdf

I just bought TheaterTek this week since I liked the FFDShow processing support and the automatic aspect ratio feature. Have to read the manual a bit to understand how to configure that but once you do it is really worth it, and can do per-disc ARs if you like as well.

A little bit about the resizing though, for NTSC don't resize over 2x if you want to still use the builtin video controls (brightness, contrast, etc.) Once the vertical resolution exceeds 1080 (I think that was the limit) then you lose those controls due to some decoder limitations with VMR. I believe the recommended resize for PAL material was 1.75.

It does help to use the brightness and contrast settings to compensate for the brightness increase when the luminance levels are set to studio 16-235, as opposed to the 0-255 capable for PC display. This way you can fix the video levels without interfering with your desktop levels and still retain full postprocessing, etc.

I am looking for some advice on the player, codec, filter combination. As I understand it many players will not decode DVD, at least the free ones. Zoomplayer (free) does not play DVDs, BSplayer and VLCplayer will. Somehow my laptop didn't seem to come with any know dvdplayer (although it has a dvddrive), and if it did, it has been long enough ago that the disks are lost.

I have been able to get VLCplayer 0.8.4a to play my dvds reliably and pass AC3 through to my amp/decoder via the turtle beach usb/spdiff adapter. The trouble is that I can figure out how to connect ffdshow to it and I can't seem to find anything about that one the web either.

I would like to use the capabilties of ffdshow. So can anyone:
1. show me how to do this will VLC player or
2. show me a free player will will connect with ffdshow and pass through AC3
3. if 1 and 2 aren't possible, then what is the best solution (and cost is a factor) for doing this.

thanks!

rearden

You can try the K-lite codec pack. The Standard and Full versions come with Media Player Classic and ffdshow, and they all play nice together.

Ok,
I installed ffdshow, dscaler and media player classic. The VLCplayer developers seem to have an odd aversion to ffdshow.

I was able to get MPC to play my DVD and passthrough AC3 and it was correctly decoded by my amp. But what I don't see is how to hook up MPC and ffdshow. I played the dvd but I never saw ffdshow get any cpu. I have trolled many times through the configs of both programs and quite a few google searches and am still missing the key to get ffdshow into the stream. It must be simple, but I haven't found it.

What do I need to do?

rearden

Goto the view menu nad choose options...
Then goto filters and select overrides then you should be able to add the filter.
Once it has been added just double click on it to change configuration settings inside of fddshow...

Hope this helps...

Regards,
Traynor

Hi All

Imatrix has released a beta of ZoomPlayer 5. Have been using it and it is very stable even in VMR 9.

http://www.inmatrix.com/files/zoomplayer_beta.shtml

For those with Linux, mplayer offers the best solution in post processing capabilities. There are horizontal and vertical deblocking filters, automatic contrast and brightness adjustments, noise remover, deinterlacing etc. I have tried several different combinations of filters, but I've found that the recommended high quality filter does an excellent job, and removes the need for a lot of tinkering. You can read all about mplayers features once you have mplayer installed on your computer by simply typing "man mplayer", but here's a few things to get you started:

will run mplayer with the high quality filter combination. It is the same as using "pp=ha:a:128:7,va:a,dr:a". That is, strong high quality vertical and horizontal deblocking, as well as deringing, all with an automaticly adjusted quality setting. The automatic quality adjustment will remove the filters if the CPU is loaded in order to play the video skip free.

I haven't played with the temporal noise reducer, but I did try autolevels and did not like the results. Contrast was too high, making brights too bright and darks too dark (saturated), so actual image information was removed. I would compare it to the clipping of an amplifier if that makes any sense to anyone.

Now of course you don't want to have to type in the video filters every time you want to play a video. For this, there is the mplayer config file, which contains all your default settings. It resides in "~/.mplayer/config" where ~ is your home directory. Once you have found a combination of post processing filters you like, simply add them into the config file. For the example above, the line to add would look like this:

It's also a good idea to add this line in there as well to disable the screensaver when mplayer runs:

Hope this helps out a Linux user or two out there. Just remember that mplayer has a very complete manual page, so don't be afraid to look through it and see just what kind of cool features mplayer has.