WMC losing one pixel column on right

[Marc_G]

I tested playing with sharpness, and it changed the look of the moire a bit, but as expected, didn't get pixel matching to work in WMC. Still off by 1 pixel, with obvious banding.

On the other hand, the wife and I watched Star Trek Into Darkness last night, using MPC-HC called up by Media Browser from the WMC interface. It was amazingly beautiful. Of course, I'm a traditionalist and was distressed by scenes of the Enterprise under water, needing the warp core online to fire thrusters, and other violations of longstanding canon, but the picture was amazing.

Marc

[STC]

Ahh I think I understand now. Your choice of player for MKV's was MC?
I don't rip, just use MC for TV exclusively and TMT for disc playback (DVD and BluRay).

[tzr916]

Screen caps are from the same WTV file recorded on channel ID HD. One is from Zoom Player with LAV, the other is from WMC. I know you can't do full screen caps in WMC but the capture I am posting is exactly what I see when WMC is in full screen mode. I can see the WMC jaggies at 25 feet on my 55" Tv. They fade in/out, crawl, and flicker... that is not the only symptom, I will post here when I get more evidence.

WMC:



ZP LAV:

[STC]

^ I think a fair comparison would be WMC vs WMP.
LAV filters have a lot of other things going on.
Plus it doesn't look like those WMC jaggies are related to this issue(?)
They are massive. I don't see those at all in WMC.

[STC]

Any chance of you grabbing a short 5 seconds of that and putting it online?
I'd like to see from my end in WMC.

[STC]

Using WMC and WMP means you use the same video codec and all you are comparing at that point is the pixel shift from one to the other. That would be a more accurate measurement I think.

My next thought is that for this problem are screen grabs going to show exactly what the eye is seeing on a TV?
I'm not sure they are(?)

[tzr916]

WMP shows exactly the same as WMC. Yes, I see it with my eyes when playing the Tv shows. I can see it from 25feet away on my 55" Tv.

WMP:


As I have explained previously-

... I still get moire patterns and other stuff like jaggies and moving objects like brick walls, asphalt, trees, peoples hair, etc on SOME channels and SOME programs but NOT ALL of them. I too have to use third party players to get perfect picture on these WTV recordings. I blamed MS video decoder poor de-interlacing on badly flagged material. I tried three different GPU's and they all have the same symptoms to some degree. I have not tried an overscan test pattern, but I now may take the time to try it.

I also see it when I play the same file on my laptop in WMP/WMC but not ZP LAV.

[STC]

^ Okay you've just shown it is a different problem to what we are discussing on this thread.
WMP does not have the missing line of pixels.

It looks like some kind of anti aliasing quirk with your 640. Not sure about your laptop.

How have you got your GPU setup on the HTPC?
I use vector adaptive deinterlacing.

[richard1980]

Those jaggies are not attributable to WMC. WMC hands off video processing to your GPU via DXVA. So the jaggies are actually attributable to the DXVA implementation in your GPU.

To compare, this is the result of viewing the same logo in WMC on Intel HD 4000:

Untitled.png (50.35 KiB) Viewed 905 times

Edit: I'd like to clarify that it isn't actually WMC that hands off the processing to the GPU...it's the MS DTV decoder that does. Which is why you get different results if you change the decoder that WMC is using.

[tzr916]

SOME channels and SOME programs but NOT ALL, so the next show I recorded on ID HD may not have the symptoms (as bad). Over the past 5 months since I built this HTPC, I've tried three different GPU's and they all have the same jaggies and moving objects like brick walls, asphalt, trees, peoples hair, etc to some degree. Started with GT610, next tried amd HD7750, settled on GT640.

The only de-interlacing setting for Video in the Nvidia control panel is "Use Inverse Telecine" On or Off. I have these 3D settings which I have played with for months and what you are seeing is the best I could get out of either of the two nvidia cards:
AA Mode - Override any app setting
AA Setting - 32x CSAA
AA Transp - 8x supersample
CUDA Cores - all
Max pre frames - use app
Multi Disp - Single Disp Perf
Power Manage - Prefer Max Perf
Text Buff Anti - Off
Text Buff Neg LCD Bias - Clamp
Text Filt - High Quality
Text Filt Trilinear - Off
Thresh Opt - Auto
Triple Buff - On
V Sync - On

[tzr916]

And BTW I use these LAV settings:
Hardware Decoding - DXVA2 (copy back)
Field Order - Auto
Deinterlace Mode - Auto

[richard1980]

SOME channels and SOME programs but NOT ALL, so the next show I recorded on ID HD may not have the symptoms (as bad).

I was under the impression that you were seeing the logo combing all the time. But if you only see the combing on that logo sometimes, then it's not because of the deinterlacer, but the content itself. Either the jaggies are actually encoded as part of the video, or the frames that show the jaggies are mis-marked as progressive when they should be marked as interlaced (or vice versa).

And BTW I use these LAV settings:
Hardware Decoding - DXVA2 (copy back)

LAV does not have the capability to offload deinterlacing to the GPU via DXVA. It can only offload deinterlacing to the GPU via NVIDIA CUDA or Intel QuickSync. When using DXVA, LAV deinterlacing is handled by the CPU.

[STC]

I'm more inclined to think it's a local problem.

[tzr916]

...if you only see the combing on that logo sometimes, then it's not because of the deinterlacer, but the content itself. Either the jaggies are actually encoded as part of the video, or the frames that show the jaggies are mis-marked as progressive when they should be marked as interlaced (or vice versa)...

I agree it's the content, but if the jaggies are encoded as part of the video then they would be seen in ALL players ALL decoders ALL deinterlacing methods. They aren't. Look at how sharp and clear the LAV logo screenshot is. There is no way in hell, if the jaggies were part of the video, that LAV could make it look that good.

It has been my belief all along that it's badly flagged material, partly because of the similarities in the channels/content that others have reported in 29/59 threads (hbo, syfy, etc). I never had the widely reported "flickering", but I did all the 29/59 tweaks anyways, and they did not solve my problems.

[richard1980]

It has been my belief all along that it's badly flagged material, partly because of the similarities in the channels/content that others have reported in 29/59 threads (hbo, syfy, etc). I never had the widely reported "flickering", but I did all the 29/59 tweaks anyways, and they did not solve my problems.

Given the information so far, I am inclined to agree that the combing you are seeing is the result of incorrectly flagged material. If that is the case, there is nothing you can do to resolve the problem. The MS DTV decoder relies on the progressive_frame flag, and if the flag is wrong, the frame gets processed incorrectly...which results in artifacts such as the combing. The only way to resolve the problem is to change "wrong" to "right"...which cannot be accurately done once the flags have been set incorrectly. And that's why it is not possible for Microsoft (or Ceton) to ever fix the 29/59 issue, despite what some people may think.

[Marc_G]

As an update, despite lots of threads on various forums, I haven't found a resolution to the "missing line of pixels on the right" problem. I've moved to using MPC-HC as my primary media player for all ripped MKV content. I've got Media Browser 3/Classic in WMC, and Media Browser can automatically call up MPC-HC, so it's fairly painless. Only the recorded TV gets played by the actual WMC video system, and that's generally 1080i content at various levels of compression... somewhat of a loss of sharpness due to my issue isn't critical for that content.

I'm surprised that WMC is so flawed in this respect, but I probably shouldn't be...

Thanks all for your interest and input. Maybe one day someone will find a solution.

Marc

[STC]

It has been my belief all along that it's badly flagged material, partly because of the similarities in the channels/content that others have reported in 29/59 threads (hbo, syfy, etc). I never had the widely reported "flickering", but I did all the 29/59 tweaks anyways, and they did not solve my problems.

Given the information so far, I am inclined to agree that the combing you are seeing is the result of incorrectly flagged material. If that is the case, there is nothing you can do to resolve the problem. The MS DTV decoder relies on the progressive_frame flag, and if the flag is wrong, the frame gets processed incorrectly...which results in artifacts such as the combing. The only way to resolve the problem is to change "wrong" to "right"...which cannot be accurately done once the flags have been set incorrectly. And that's why it is not possible for Microsoft (or Ceton) to ever fix the 29/59 issue, despite what some people may think.

The acid test is to try a sample from tzr916 where he sees the jaggies. I have a sneaky suspicion others would not.

[STC]

...generally 1080i content at various levels of compression... somewhat of a loss of sharpness due to my issue isn't critical for that content.

Thanks for the update Marc, I agree with you. For regular cable TV it's very unnoticeable comparing side by side WMC and WMP footage. Especially from your seating position.

[barnabas1969]

I can definitely say that I've never seen anything as bad as the pictures that were posted previously. Most of the time, the picture is sharp and close to perfect (much better than the cable box). I only see moire when someone is wearing a tie or shirt with thin parallel lines (worse when the lines are diagonal). And... I don't see it very often. It happens most often when watching a TV news program when they interview someone. It seems that professional "TV people" (actors, news anchors, etc) know not to wear such clothing.

[STC]

^Agreed. It's as though the aliasing settings are too sharp. Something's not right. Regular TV STB aliasing would not show edges so sharp. The picture would be smoothed somewhat which would make edges smoother too.