Madvr with GeForce 30xx - can't play SDR content after playing HDR (1 Viewer)

Sebastiii

Development Group
  • Team MediaPortal
  • November 12, 2007
    16,583
    10,403
    France
    Home Country
    France France
    I know that I have seen an Nvidia drivers tool kit hack to add possibility to install drivers when it not detects the current GPU but not sure if it will work for newer GPU !!!
     

    ThoW1982

    Portal Member
    November 6, 2010
    30
    16
    Home Country
    United Kingdom United Kingdom
    I know that I have seen an Nvidia drivers tool kit hack to add possibility to install drivers when it not detects the current GPU but not sure if it will work for newer GPU !!!

    Thanks for all your efforts.

    I think hacking the drivers is not a good option as I will loose all the benefits of 30xx line in gaming - I do game from time to time, that was a reason for upgrading it from Radeon 580.
     

    kilik360

    MP Donator
  • Premium Supporter
  • September 3, 2010
    576
    235
    Home Country
    Canada Canada
    I'm glad that this issue is finally on investigation. I have the exact same problem but with a Geforce 1050Ti.

    Have to restart MP after HDR content to get SDR colors back. Even the GUI colors are crushed until restart.

    I'll keep an eye on your thread, and of course guys, I can do some test on my side.
     

    HomeY

    Test Group
  • Team MediaPortal
  • February 23, 2008
    6,475
    4,645
    49
    ::1
    Home Country
    Netherlands Netherlands
    I'm glad that this issue is finally on investigation. I have the exact same problem but with a Geforce 1050Ti.

    Have to restart MP after HDR content to get SDR colors back. Even the GUI colors are crushed until restart.

    I'll keep an eye on your thread, and of course guys, I can do some test on my side.
    I 'solved' my issue (for now) to go back to the 446.14 drivers.
     

    kilik360

    MP Donator
  • Premium Supporter
  • September 3, 2010
    576
    235
    Home Country
    Canada Canada
    I 'solved' my issue (for now) to go back to the 446.14 drivers.
    Ho my god !
    Guess what, I was on 456.71 and tested the 446.14 driver like you suggest... You solved my problem !!! Wow !!

    I was on 430.64 in 2019, 442.37 in 2020 then 456.71.

    And now, 446.14 for the rest of my life. Seriously Homey thanks a ton because I left MP on a shelf for more than a year because of this problem!

    You literally made my YEAR !! 2021, the year MP came back to my life again !
     

    el Filou

    MP Donator
  • Premium Supporter
  • July 2, 2008
    124
    103
    Home Country
    Belgium Belgium
    (this is a crosspost from the madVR thread, as the same issue is discussed there)

    It seems like the problem is specific to NVIDIA and has two causes:

    1. Some time ago (can't remember the exact version, but can probably be found when searching this thread: AMD, Intel and Nvidia driver issues and last recommended version - Doom9's Forum) NVIDIA changed the way their private HDR API works and now says the developers who were using the API the old way should change their code (source: madshi, from link in previous post).

    2. As a workaround of point 1 for apps that were using the private API "the old way" (like madVR), NVIDIA implemented a 'trick' in the driver that detects when those apps display HDR content, and makes it transparently switch to HDR (source: Considerations for Playing Games with HDR Enabled | NVIDIA). What seems to be happening, is that the driver is detecting when apps that use madVR start a HDR video and it switches to HDR mode, but it not always detects when HDR content is not displayed anymore. For example, with MPC-HC people have said that when they display any GUI element like seek bar or menu, the driver temporarily switches to SDR and then to HDR again when the GUI element goes away. The test by @HomeY where opening Task Manager over MP temporarily switched back to SDR would have the same explanation.
    This is just my intuition on what may be happening, but I think as MediaPortal uses a 3D GUI and not 2D Windows GUI elements like MPC, the NVIDIA driver doesn't correctly detect when the app is not showing HDR content anymore, and that's why it's stuck in HDR mode after madVR is used once to display HDR content (i.e. the driver probably thinks MediaPortal is acting more like a game where everything is in HDR, than a media player that switches back and forth depending on content).

    The definitive solution if you follow what NVIDIA recommends (source: madshi) would be for madVR to change its code to use the "new way" to switch to HDR, but madshi isn't sure it won't impact quality as he thinks this involves the OS HDR API and it might not be lossless.
    As long as there is no change to madVR, there may be no other solution with MediaPortal except using old NVIDIA drivers (so no compatibility with newest cards), except if MP devs find some way to make the NVIDIA driver 'guess' that HDR content is not displayed anymore and it should switch back to SDR.
     

    Users who are viewing this thread

    Top Bottom