limit upscaling, due to 4k causing audio glitches (1 Viewer)

George Hines

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March 6, 2017
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Hi All,

I have a NUC7i3 running MP1.21pre connected to a Samsung 4k TV (NU8000).

I was having periodic audio dropouts (randomly every few seconds). Once I dropped the display resolution to 1080p (using the custom settings in the Intel Graphics settings), the audio dropouts went away. This works okay, but this forces me to use a funky scaled 1080p desktop.

Since I am only interested in watching broadcast TV in MP, is there a way that I can get more control over how MP drives my display during playback? Ideally, I would want to limit the upscaling to 1080p. Even better might be to experiment with using the TVs upscaler when playing low resolution broadcast content (it case my TV does a better job).

Can I do this in MP? I've tried playing with madVR and limiting the display modes to 1080* variants, but this didn't seem to work for me.

Alternatively, if this isn't easy to do and my NUC isn't up to the task of 4k, then would upgrading to a NUC8i3 be the answer?

Thanks for your advice.
 

wjw

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July 13, 2008
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Given the lack of live 4k broadcast TV (at least in UK/Europe - don't know about USA) I don't see a need to set your onboard graphics output to other than standard HD. Don't use Intel graphics (I have an nVidia card) so can't comment on how you would do that. However, I do have a new 4K Samsung TV myself and I think the built-in upscaling is excellent - at least as good as anything I've seem from my PC. That's the way I run my system and even my wife has commented on the quality of the picture from time to time (does depend enormously on the quality of the source broadcast though!).
 

Owlsroost

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  • October 28, 2008
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    I agree with 'wjw' - just run your desktop at 1080p.

    Assuming you are running Windows 10, take a look at the CPU and (particularly) GPU utilisation in windows task manager when playing something in MP - it might be quite high (remember there are 4 times as many pixels on a 4k screen c.f. a 1080p screen - this is a big increase in the rendering load).

    Also madVR is higher load than EVR, and using 'DXVA2 (native)' hardware acceleration in LAV Video decoder is lowest cpu/gpu load.
     

    George Hines

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    March 6, 2017
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    Thanks for the help.

    I'm currently able to control the display (and desktop resolution), forcing it to 1080p. This does solve my audio dropout issue. Although I would like to still be able to play 4k video in YouTube, this is of secondary concern.

    My primary concern is to maximize the playback quality of my over the air (ATSC) recorded TV. If the content is broadcast at 480i (or whatever), I'd like to be able to have the graphics card switch to that resolution (as long as my TV supports it). At the very least, I'd like to be able to control how much upscaling is done on the graphics card and what to leave up to the TV. As one poster noted, the TV might have a quite good upscaler (or deinterlacer). This both solves any performance problems and might improve quality.

    If I could do this (limit the upscaling on the pc), then I might be able to leave the desktop resolution at 4k as I'd want the full screen media player to ignore this and switch to whatever mode is optimal for the content being displayed.

    I hope this makes sense.

    Is this kind of control possible with MP?

    Thanks!
     

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