VLC Media Player videos are brighter than Media Classic Player

Happy Hopping

Happy Hopping

Supreme [H]ardness
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And VLC is also brighter than Nero's 9 MP4 player. Is there a function at Media Classic that allows you to make the screen brighter? I have to admit it looks kind of dark compares to the display on VLC Media player
 
MPC/MPC-HC doesn't offer specific controls for increasing/altering brightness and contrast unless you're using the VMR-9 renderer (in XP primarily). The EVR renderer (preferred for Vista/Windows 7) works with the display drivers to adjust such things, so that would be where you'd alter settings.

On my machine it's exactly the opposite, oddly enough: VLC is far darker to my eyes on playback of the same material than MPC-HC is (Windows 7 here).
 
Using VMR-9 and being able to change the brightness in the options isn't adequate?
 
I am not verse in video mixing renderer, which is why I prefer to use 1 software to make the changes vs. 2 different software to make the changes.

Do you have to use Win Media player if you use VMR?
 
Open MPC or MPC-HC, click View - Options - (Playback) - Output, change the DirectShow Video output to VMR-9 (renderless) and click Apply, then click OK. If this is done on Vista or Windows 7 you may need to run MPC/MPC-HC with Admin privileges to make this setting stick permanently depending on where you keep the MPC/MPC-HC executable, so if it doesn't "stick" now you know why and how to make it stick.

Now, the issue here is that you may not even get video after you alter this setting to VMR-9 - on my laptop with an Intel GMA950 and Windows 7 Pro x86, as soon as I altered the setting (so I could give you the step by step above) I ended up with audio but no video at all; seems the GMA950 just can't stand VMR-9 in Windows 7 so... your situation and your video card/drivers may give you video just fine, I can't say for sure.

Anyway, if it does work, and you do get video at that point using VMR-9 for rendering, now you should be able to adjust the video quality to your liking using the sliders under the Miscellaneous option in MPC/MPC-HC.

Can't guarantee any of this works but, that's how to do it.

The preference in Vista/Windows 7 is the EVR setting, especially with Windows 7 and it's multiformat decoders.
 
I can do the above and it can view the video afterwards.

But I don't see a "sliders under the Miscellaneous option in MPC" Where exactly is it?
 
You don't need VMR-9 if you have ffdshow installed. Open the properties of ffdshow and you can change many video settings. If you installed K-Lite or CCCP, then you have ffdshow.

Personally, I use Haali renderer in MPC because it has the deepest blacks and best contrast for my screens and doesn't look washed out.

ffdshow.png
 
thank you. I didn't know they have that new ver., I'll download it. As I can't find a media player that I'm truly happy w/ it.

I have Win DVD 7, VLC, Media Classic, Windows Media, Nero player. None of them can play high res. 19 x 12 wmv file properly. I think VLC can some what do the job w/ the other players just can't play or locks up
 
Happy Hopping said:
thank you. I didn't know they have that new ver., I'll download it. As I can't find a media player that I'm truly happy w/ it.

I have Win DVD 7, VLC, Media Classic, Windows Media, Nero player. None of them can play high res. 19 x 12 wmv file properly. I think VLC can some what do the job w/ the other players just can't play or locks up
Click to expand...

1920x1200 WMV file are you playing?
 
Happy Hopping said:
A lot of wmv files today are 1900 x 1200, nothing new.
Click to expand...

Huh. I haven't seen any 1920x1200 WMV files at all. Weird.

Anyway, what I was asking was if the playback issue was just with a particular file or was it every 1920x1200 WMV file?
 
Only 1920x1200 (which isn't true HD, that would be 1920x1080) clips I've ever seen in any format were demo clips and only a handful because the actual 1080i or 1080p resolution (again, 1920x1080) is what's the "standard." But WMV is by no means a "popular" format compared to the more currently standout formats of MKV and MP4 of which MKV is by far the only serious contender for high definition video delivery nowadays.

I'm guessing that when Happy says "1900x1200" what he's really meaning is 1920x1080, the current max HD standard resolution. As noted, only a few clips (that I've ever seen floating around out there) are pushing the 1920x1200 resolution and only for testing purposes. 1080 is the max vertical resolution, that's the standard.

Pretty much every single "Blu-ray" rip or HDTV rip of any kind is contained inside an MKV file (MKV is a container format, just as AVI and WMV are). WMV is the proverbial "drop in the bucket" in terms of the sheer numbers of such files out there while MKV has thousands upon thousands and more every day.

The only place I've ever been able to find any significant number of 1080 WMV (meaning Windows Media files) clips are at www.wmvhd.com, Microsoft's showcase site for WMV HD technology. Some nice clips there to show off what their HD encoding capability can do, and VC-1 is some nice stuff actually. Some DVDs actually have WMV HD copies of movies (at 1080 resolution), and some Blu-rays also come with the "Digital Copy" of the movie for use with portable devices, etc. "The Dark Knight" on Blu-ray comes with a DVD like that, a WMV HD copy of the movie that has to be unlocked with a code because of the DRM, which is a Blu-ray I happen to own (the only one, actually).

I'm starting to suspect that Happy there is getting drowned in a sea of player/codec glut and probably has so many of either installed that they are tripping over each other and causing problems with his system, thereby reducing his ability to play 1080 clips efficiently and without problems.

Try grabbing a few of the WMV HD clips from that showcase page I linked to above. If your system can't play them efficiently with Windows Media Player itself, there's a problem someplace. Use WMP as the player, not some other one - play WMV HD clips in their native player which should be WMP and if they can't do it or your system just isn't capable, then you can start addressing the issues...

Also, a spec list of your machine for playback would help. What CPU, what RAM and speed, what video card, etc... all that stuff matters here. Some machines just can't do 1080 playback well and need a bit of help either from a hardware upgrade or just configuration of the available stuff you have (like getting DXVA to work which lets the video card handle most if not all of the video processing/decoding stuff).

Give us a rundown and we can help more.
 
How can you tell the file is 1920x1080 or 1920x1200? Is there any media player software that shows the resolution of the file? It's possible they are just 1920x1080

My computer is a 2 x dual core AMD Opteron 290, w/ 4 GB of RAM, on a Nvidia 7950 GT w/ 512MB Video RAM. It connects to 2 screen, ea. screen is 30" 2560x1600. The OS is XP Pro

The slow down (more like jerky motion) occurs on all these high res. files, not just 1. Some players do more jerky motion than some others. The 1 that does the least jerky motion is VLC. However, to be fair, VLC has a lot of bugs, even a small size WMV file, VLC has on occasion pauses

regardless, it seems to be a software capacity issue, ie., unable to play these high res. files. This deduction is based on some players can play better than the others.
 
The reason why VLC is the least "jerkiest" is because it's totally a software based video player. As such, it can cope a bit better with older CPUs and such. However, nowadays the big thing in HD playback is hardware accelerated playback where the video card does all of the processing and playback of HD content and therefore lessen the CPU usage.

Now do these "jerky" playbac occur with other 1080P files in other formats?

As for finding out the resolution of a media file via by the media player, many media players do offer that option. In MPC-HC, when playing the video, right click on the video area, select "Properties" and go to the "Details" tab. For VLC, when playing the video, right click on the video area, select "Interface", then "Codec Information" and go to the "Codec Details" tab. In Windows Media Player 11, just right click on the file in the playlist and look under "Video size"

EDIT: It looks like MS had made a few mistakes with some of the videos. The "Coral Reef Adventure (IMAX)" video is only 1440x1088 even though the link says it's 1080....
 
That's not a mistake. It's still 1080p, albeit anamorphic (height get's cropped to 1080 on playback).
 
XP Pro... geez... ;)

The 7950 is more than capable of DXVA playback - letting the video card do almost all of the rendering - but you're going to have to stop using VLC, seriously. It's crippling you as Danny just explained.

Even in XP if you right click directly on a video file name in Explorer and choose Properties, the Details tab will tell you the native resolution. My comments above were meant to convey that the actual HD resolution (the stuff on Blu-ray discs, the stuff on HD-DVD discs, etc) is 1920x1080, that is the standard resolution for 1080 content, precisely to the pixels. As Snowknight26 pointed out, some stuff floating around gets encoded to 1920x1088 for whatever reason but those 8 pixels just kinda "get lost" (which is weird because 1088 / 16 = 68 while 1080 / 16 = 67.5 and most encoders require boundaries of 16 precisely... how odd).

Regardless, the dual dual core Opterons you have (I'm guessing you mean you have 2 physical chips in the machine, and each chip has dual cores, so dual dual cores for true SMP work), the 4GB of RAM, and that 7950 should easily play 1080 content without skipping a beat, or a frame as the case may be.

It's your player of choice that's causing you the problems, almost guaranteed. Give MPC-HC a shot as mentioned earlier. Grab the latest build from http://xvidvideo.ru and see what happens. You may need to configure a few of the settings but, I'm quite positive it will offer far superior playback capability over VLC on that hardware.

If worse comes to worse the one final "I damned well know it'll make a difference" solution is to get CoreAVC for your software-based decoding of HD content. I've got CoreAVC working great on a 2 year old Netbook with an Atom processor and a GMA950 in it. While it can't play 1080 content (kinda pointless on a 1024x600 screen for many reasons, not just a waste of drive space for the files), it can handle 720p stuff with barely 60% CPU usage just fine (mind you it's an Atom single core processor so, that's a huge accomplishment).

Using CoreAVC + your current machine would allow you to play anything, practically guaranteed. I'm certain that 7950 card can play 1080 content easily with DVXA, the issue is getting it all working properly.

The information on this page is invaluable so read over it (don't focus on it being "anime" centric - the actual information about DXVA and setting it up to work properly, especially for XP users, is crucial stuff and isn't to be missed). If you can follow the directions, do as instructed, after you're done you'll be able to play anything without so much as a hiccup...

http://imouto.my/watching-h264-videos-using-dxva/
 
Bahamut said:
The 7950 is more than capable of DXVA playback - letting the video card do almost all of the rendering......

I'm certain that 7950 card can play 1080 content easily with DVXA, the issue is getting it all working properly.
Click to expand...

AFAIK, the 7950 never came with VP2 or PureVideo HD 2 that would allow for hardware accelerated HD playback. In fact, that feature wasn't introduced in Nvidia cards until the release of the 8400/8500/8600 series. Not even the 8800GTX, 8800 GTS 320MB, and 8800GTX 640MB had that feature. So basically, the 7950 should not have VP2.
 
Since I just start using MPC-HC, I'll try it for a few days to see if there is any jitter on those WMV files

Now do these "jerky" playbac occur with other 1080P files in other formats?
Click to expand...

Danni, they are only in WMV format, and yeah, all the 1080p files that I got using the players I mentioned on page 1, gives jerky motion, in fact, they skip some frames.

I use the property tab, and I just confirm they are only 1920 x 1080. So you are right on that one.

The reason I bought the 7950GT at the time, is because it's heatsink, so there is no fan attracts the dust and it's quiet w/ no noise. I really like it. The other reason is, I'm very happy w/ XP Pro, if I use those newer video card, that need Direct X 10, then I may be force to upgrade to Win 7
 
Bahamut said:
If worse comes to worse the one final "I damned well know it'll make a difference" solution is to get CoreAVC for your software-based decoding of HD content. I've got CoreAVC working great on a 2 year old Netbook
Click to expand...

thanks for the link, I'm reading it right now. My computer installed FDDshow, so far it works quite nicely. It could be FDDShow can't decode fast enough, if so, I have to jump ship to CoreAVC.
 
Happy Hopping said:
The reason I bought the 7950GT at the time, is because it's heatsink, so there is no fan attracts the dust and it's quiet w/ no noise. I really like it. The other reason is, I'm very happy w/ XP Pro, if I use those newer video card, that need Direct X 10, then I may be force to upgrade to Win 7
Click to expand...

That last part doesn't make much sense, really. There are fanless video cards (like some of the Nvidia GT210 cards and some ATI stuff too) that are very very cheap (like $50 or less, and sometimes with a rebate of $10-25 on top of that) that don't make any noise at all, and offer true hardware decoding capability since it seems that 7950 doesn't (I could have sworn it did, I had an 8800GT that covered it fine).

Anyway, the comment about being "forced" to upgrade to Windows 7 is where I'm stuck: nobody is going to force you to use Windows 7; the suggestion to get Windows 7 is because XP is... well... I don't want to turn this thread into an OS war so, all I'll say is you'd probably get better performance overall - and definitely better video performance certainly - by moving to Windows 7 for a variety of reasons, most notably the improved video subsystems and the multi-format decoders (read: no more codec packs needed, those are bad ideas anyway).

But, it's your machine, you do what you think is best. For the hardware you have, getting CoreAVC (it's like $10 for a permanent license) can cover the HD decoding no problem. It's the shortest fastest quickest most efficient solution to the problems you appear to be having. Just as a sidenote, there's always a possibility that those WMV files you have could be corrupt to begin with which would causes the jitter/stutter/skipping automagically, anyway. It's just another potential issue that should be considered.

Next step would be a better video card (in terms of hardware decoding capability, that is). $50 or so would get you such a card, even the cheapest ATI and Nvidia cards that exist on the market today offer more firepower for video processing than that 7950 ever could.

Windows 7 is up to you...
 
Bahamut said:
offer true hardware decoding capability since it seems that 7950 doesn't (I could have sworn it did, I had an 8800GT that covered it fine).
Click to expand...

The 8800GT was one of the first mid to high-end video card to offer true hardware decoding. The 7950GT was released in Sept. 2006, long before Nvidia developed VP2.
 
Danny Bui said:
The 8800GT was one of the first mid to high-end video card to offer true hardware decoding. The 7950GT was released in Sept. 2006, long before Nvidia developed VP2.
Click to expand...

Well that would do it, wouldn't it. Most cards made in the past 7 years have some kind of acceleration going for 'em; the older ones were mainly MPEG2 decoding assist I suppose.
 
Another reason I pick that card is because I have 2 of them, and at the time of purchase, it's the only card that gives dual link 2560x1600 and heat sink based.

Obviously there are better card today. But if I buy 1, don't I have to upgrade to Direct X 10? Or can I use it under XP Pro w/ Direct X 9?
 
Happy Hopping said:
Another reason I pick that card is because I have 2 of them, and at the time of purchase, it's the only card that gives dual link 2560x1600 and heat sink based.

Obviously there are better card today. But if I buy 1, don't I have to upgrade to Direct X 10? Or can I use it under XP Pro w/ Direct X 9?
Click to expand...

It won't matter because XP doesn't support DirectX 10 natively, only Vista/Windows 7 do that. I don't understand your focus on DirectX 10 anyway, you seem to be under the assumption that if you - and I'm just guessing here - were to actually have to upgrade to DirectX 10 for some reason (say an upgrade to Vista or Windows 7) that your older DirectX 9 games might not work.

Nothing could be further from the truth because Vista and Windows 7 still maintain full backwards compatibility with DirectX 9 capable hardware and software, meaning all the games you may have.

I've got Windows 7 installed and while it shows DirectX 11 is the main version supported, I also have DirectX 9 and DirectX 10 capability since all the versions are "installed" and the files particular to one version are called up as required.

Basically in a nutshell: you've got absolutely nothing to worry about if you bought a new video card like the ones suggested so far. They'll work just fine in Windows XP because you'll be installing the XP drivers for use of the card - and if you decide to upgrade to Vista or Windows 7 (skip Vista, seriously) you'll already have a card ready to go for DirectX 10 and potentially supporting some or all of the features of DirectX 11 as well.

Nothing to worry about.
 
I have tried out MPC-HC on a few files. There are audio / video lag (audio is lagging) and some jerky motion (missed frame)

I go back and view the same files w/ VLC. There is no abs. no audio delay, and no jerky motion. However, if I skip from say a certain pt. of the WMV file to another pt. of the file, there is re-pixelating delay for about 2 sec.

W/ MPC-HC, I view the files at 1920x1080 size, and the delay is there. W/ VLC, I view the file at 19x10 as well as 2560x1600, there is no delay in neither 1.

So, I'll stick w/ VLC. It could still be a video card issue as what you guys are saying, but we have new video card every few mth., and I don't really have time to play video games, as such, I have no reason to buy a new card when VLC can do the job.

Thanks every1 for your input
 
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