Problem with video quality in XviD avi (1 Viewer)

[kike_1974]

I have problems with quality, specially in dark scenes in XviD avi movies.
In WMP the picture is sharp with vivid colors with a good quality image.
With MP in the same picture black tends to be gray and in general quality is crappy.

My current configuration:
I just made a fresh installation of windows XP from scratch. Then I installed MediaPortal. Checked to play avi files with both WMP and MP and none was able to. Perfect, as codecs were not installed. Then I installed fddshow. Tried again in WMP and MP and both play the avi. And then I see the difference in quality.

What is the problem? Do I have to enable more filters in MP that in WMP are enabled by default or something like that? How can I get the same quality in an XviD avi with MP as in WMP?

I need your help!

 

[kike_1974]

I have added in filters (in movie postprocessing) the following one:
Video Mixer Renderer 9

Now the quality is the same that the one that I get with WMP.

The problem is that now I can't see the OSD of MediaPortal when I am watching a movie. I mean, if want to forward 15secs the movie I press right cursor and the movie moves forward, but I can't see the menu on Screen.

Any solution for this problem?

 

[yggdrasil]

XviD avi movies.
In WMP the picture is sharp with vivid colors with a good quality image.
With MP in the same picture black tends to be gray and in general quality is crappy.

My current configuration:
I just made a fresh installation of windows XP from scratch. Then I installed MediaPortal. Checked to play avi files with both WMP and MP and none was able to. Perfect, as codecs were not installed. Then I installed fddshow. Tried again in WMP and MP and both play the avi. And then I see the difference in quality.

What is the problem? Do I have to enable more filters in MP that in WMP are enabled by default or something like that? How can I get the same quality in an XviD avi with MP as in WMP?

I need your help!

I'm observing the same, xvid playback in wmp or any other player for that matter being far superior to xvid playback in Mediaportal.

I would like to use the internal player in MP.

yggdrasil

 

[kike_1974]

I think that I found how to make it. The problem is with color interpretation. Colors in movies are usually coded in the range 16-235 instead of the full 0-255 range. WMP corrects this, assigning black to 15 and withe to 235, but not mediaportal.
I found a way to correct this: I added a filter in ffdshow ("levels") and set the input range to 16-235 and output range 0-255. It works and I see the same quality in MP now.
I would like to find a way without having to add a filter, because ffdshow adds extra computations and therefore it adds extra CPU load. But in the meanwhile I'm using this solution.
Hope this helps.

 

[arfster]

16-235 is actually correct video levels (as stored on DVD and broadcast to TV), and if you have to transform it to PC levels then it will always cost you CPU cycles.

The easier way is just to calibrate your display so 16 is black and 235 is max white. This is what any video source will expect.

 

[yggdrasil]

Thanks!

Setting input to 16-235 greatly improved xvid playback in MP.

excellent!

 

[leohuf]

Hi, I had the same problem here...

The thing is, in my codecs list in MediaPortal Setup, ffdshow isnt listed for video, only for audio... so I am using CyberLink Video Decoder as the video codec.

Anyway, I tried adding ffdshow video decoder as a Movie Post Processing filter... but that didn't helped either. Then I tried using the "levels" filter in ffdshow. The quality improved, but wasn't like WMP quite just yet...

So, I disabled the ffdshow video decoder filter and started looking for the "Video Mixer Renderer 9"... I found it, but also found one called simply "Video Renderer", which seemed better in the properties pane. Well, voilá.

Now I can confirm that I have the exact same video quality in MP and in WMP. I have no idea why I had to configure things like this but, well, it's working!

Hope it helps,
Leo.

 

[yggdrasil]

I'll give this a try, thanks!

 

[arfster]

So, I disabled the ffdshow video decoder filter and started looking for the "Video Mixer Renderer 9"... I found it, but also found one called simply "Video Renderer", which seemed better in the properties pane. Well, voilá.

Now I can confirm that I have the exact same video quality in MP and in WMP. I have no idea why I had to configure things like this but, well, it's working!

What's probably happened here is you've set MP to use VMR7 or overlay, both of which are labelled as "video renderer"- WMP uses VMR7 which is why it looks the same. Both will perform a levels expansion (except when vmr7 is in renderless mode) to 0-255.