Guide: Perfect playback & Display calibration (1 Viewer)

[kiwijunglist]

How can I setup my display and pixel output to 0-255? Can you give me a guide please, I don't know how you mean it.
I'm using lav filters and the settings herefor should be right.

Yes it's already set to 0-255, and with the clipping performed by your tv you only see 16-235 flash. This is ok and for your situation (with a tv that is not accepting 0-255 levels) it is desirable.

The reason you see 0-16 flash in VLC and not MePo is that whatever codec you are using in MePo (LAV) is expanding video to 0-255 and then your display is clipping 0-16/235-255 where as VLC is sending out a 16-235 (compression), hence there is no clipping.

If you want to see 0-16 flash then change lav to always output tv levels 16-235 and unclick all the tickboxes except RGB, however there is no reason to do this, and i recommend you don't.

 

[badboyxx]

Ok then I am reassured.
So I have to calibrate my tv referring to your guide but increase/decrease brightness so that I can see bar #19 flashing in my case?

 

[kiwijunglist]

yes. another way to calibrate brightness would be too find a couple of extremely dark scenes in some high quality videos you have, turn the brightness up really high to see some details in the darkest parts of the video, then drop darkness to the detail dissappears then increase by one notch (or leave it there). of course you should calibrate using what ever video player you want to use... eg. in MePo. sometimes its ok to loose a tiny bit of black detail because depending on the display setup it can look a bit nicer with the brightness down a notch than it's supposed to be.

For contrast usually it's set to 100% or close to 100%. Sharpness is usuall 50% or 0% depending on the way the tv handles sharpness.

For my TV in PC mode i set sharpness to 51% and in movie mode I set sharpness to somewhere between 0 and 6%.[DOUBLEPOST=1441272119][/DOUBLEPOST]btw: whats your setup... is it PC -> hdmi -> receiver -> hdmi -> tv or pc -> hdmi -> tv

 

[badboyxx]

For my TV in PC mode i set sharpness to 51% and in movie mode I set sharpness to somewhere between 0 and 6%.[DOUBLEPOST=1441272119][/DOUBLEPOST]btw: whats your setup... is it PC -> hdmi -> receiver -> hdmi -> tv or pc -> hdmi -> tv

My setup is PC -> hdmi -> receiver -> hdmi -> tv. I'm using the devices AVR Pioneer VSX-521 and TV Sony KDL-46NX715 if it helps you.

 

[kiwijunglist]

ahh ok. the reason why your display is clipping 0-16 is because pioneer receiver doesn't work correctly with full range rgb. I actually have a pioneer sclx87 and it does the same thing. If you feel the pioneer 0-255 rgb it clips the 0-16 part.

In your special situation there are quite a few options you could leave things as they are (which is perfectlyfine) or you could change display settings in video driver to either RGB Limited 16-235 or YbCbCr. After you do this you will see 0-16 flash with brightness up high, then you should turn down the brightness until you see only 17 flashing. The advantage of doing it this way would be that photos and the mediaportal gui would look nicer (because photos and gui contain 0-16 colour information), with videos it will be the same.

There is no right or wrong way to do it. If you want 100% best possible theoretical picture (which you probably wont even notice the differece) you need to bypass the avr completely because the avr is processing the video (even with proecssing off)

My setup is

HTPC -> Gefen Detective -> HDMI Splitter

Then:

Splitter -> Samsung TV
Splitter -> Pioneer AVR

I use full range rgb, I set colour space to 36 bit, use madvr renderer in 10+ bit exclusive mode, and I set refresh rate fixed to 60hz so I can use the TV in 'pc mode' which lets me do 4:4:4. The difference is very minimal, and barely noticeable.

 

[badboyxx]

I have done all the settings like in your tutorial. Movies with stereo source has an output in stereo. So far so good. But I want to have stereo sources expanded into 5.1? What do I have to do? I want to enjoy always the audio in 5.1.

 

[kiwijunglist]

Stereo to 5.1

Your avr can upmix to 5.1 or you can do it on the computer.

To do it on computer. Enable mixing to 5.1 in lav audio. Untick the don't mix stereo sources box. That should work i think.

 

[badboyxx]

To do it on computer. Enable mixing to 5.1 in lav audio. Untick the don't mix stereo sources box. That should work i think.

I still have no sound in the rear boxes. Could it be that the other channels are filled with silence?
I don't know what I have to do if I want to upmix with my avr.

 

[mm1352000]

@badboyxx
Please provide screenshots of your MP and LAV audio settings.

 

[kiwijunglist]

Enable lav audio tray icon. Click on tray icon during playback. It will tell you if source is 2.0 or 5.1. It is unlikely to have silent channels.

I might be wrong and lav audio doesn't upmix. The best way to upmix would be with your avr. The alternative is use a custom nstrix in ffdshow or your audio drivers may have an upmix option.

I recommend not upmixing on the htpc and using a surround mode om the avr if you must have 5.1 from 2.0.