VMR9 and NVIDIA the culprit to washed-out video

[geov]

TV-Server Version:
MediaPortal Version: SVN
MediaPortal Skin: Blue
Windows Version: XP Profesional SP2
CPU Type: Pentium D 3.2GHZ
HDD: 2 X 240GB
Memory: 1Gig
Motherboard: ASUS P5PE-VM
Motherboard Chipset: Intel 865G
Motherboard Bios: American Megatrend Ver1201
Video Card: Nvidia FX 5200
Video Card Driver:
Sound Card: Sound Blaster
Sound Card AC3:
Sound Card Driver:
1. TV Card: Hauppage PVR500
1. TV Card Type: Analog
1. TV Card Driver: 2.0.48.24227
2. TV Card:
2. TV Card Type:
2. TV Card Driver:
3. TV Card:
3. TV Card Type:
3. TV Card Driver:
4. TV Card:
4. TV Card Type:
4. TV Card Driver:
MPEG2 Video Codec: MPV
MPEG2 Audio Codec: MPA
Satelite/CableTV Provider: DSTV MultiChoice
HTPC Case: ThermalRock Mystic
Cooling: 3 X ThermalTake Fans
Power Supply: Dont Know
Remote: Microsoft MCE Model:1039
TV: Tedelex
TV - HTPC Connection: VGA

Hi, I've been having a lot of problems with image quality in MediaPortal, especially with all DVD and AVI. I could never understand why my video always looked washed-out, because in Windows Media Player the quality is always great. I started playing with GraphEdit and realised that the only difference between the graphs being generated was that MediaPoratl uses VMR9 and WMP does not. Knowing nothing about video I decided to do some research on the web and quickly found out that my problem is related to VMR9, and that it is related to how bad my old Nvidia (GeForce FX 5200) graphics card is handling VMR9. I have not found a solution for this yet, and was hoping that some of you that understand VMR9 and the problem with Nvidia would be able to give me some more detail and tips on how to resolve this. Would a new graphics-card sort out my problems (which one), or are there some settings or drivers that I can use to resolve my problem?

[Darre]

Cant you just disable WMR9 in the MP settings? its located under "directshow filter control-->Video Mixer 9 settings"

[Commodore 64]

No you cannot disable VMR9. MP will always use Video Mixing Renderer 9.

There are some settings in your nV control panel related to tweaking video settings. Some people have had some success using those. For myself, I don't have any complaints about washed out colors...so I would hope it is something you can tweak to your liking.

See this post for some additional info: http://forum.team-mediaportal.com/sh...93&postcount=9

[tourettes]

Correct way to solve the washed out colors is to select a correct colour space from Nvidia drivers. At least latest drivers have setting what can be used to select beween RGB and YUV colour spaces. If you are using an older drivers the change must be done manually from registry.

Here's how to do it (unfortunately I cannot remember where I did got these instructions...)

OK...I found the registry hack and it seems to be working great for me! Here is how you do it for anyone interested:

Launch regedit and determine the current primary display
looking in HKey_Local_Machine\Hardware\DeviceMap\Video
and note the GUID (global unique identifier assigned by
which is the long string in brackets { } at the end of the entry
device\video0".
Look in
HKey_Local_Machine\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\
GUID}\0000
where {GUID} is the number derived from the previous step.
Open the "0000" directory and create a new DWORD called
VMRCCCSStatus and give it a value of
0x1 - to force use of the standard YUV range of 16-235
0x3 - to force use of the extended YUV range of 0-255

So I made the DWORD VMRCCCStatus in the following registry folder:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Video\{GUID}\0000
and gave it a HEX value of 3. I rebooted and seems to work great.

\Registry\Machine\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{D1A6C810-2415-4441-8264-61C09815A007}\0000

[daniel771]

Originally Posted by tourettes

Correct way to solve the washed out colors is to select a correct colour space from Nvidia drivers. At least latest drivers have setting what can be used to select beween RGB and YUV colour spaces. If you are using an older drivers the change must be done manually from registry.

Thank you very much for this tip. It worked beautifully with my 6150.