Recommended settings for nVidia cards

[LuckyDay]

So I have been purely an AMD user for the last 7-8 years. During that time is the entire timeframe that I've been using a HTPC.

So yesterday I found a deal at Micro Center that was too good to pass up on an NVidia card (670 2GB for $85).

It's been so long since I've used NVidia drivers that I need some suggestions or any help on what the "essential" settings are for Nvidia cards as far as picture quality from TV. I espcially notice a difference in analog channels because I have not made any changes to interlacing settings.

Is there anything that I should absolutely disable or enable right off the bat? For example on AMD it was dynamic contrast and auto white balance (caused a flickering on some channels).

[Scallica]

Go to the nVidia Control panel and change the color range from limited (16-235) to full dynamic range (0-255).

There is another option to switch from RGB to YCbCr444. Dashboard color settings, dropdown option digital color format.

[crawfish]

Only in rare circumstances would you ever need to use YCbCr444. See these messages and their follow-ups for more on that and Nvidia settings in general when using WMC and Kodi:

http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... 971#p82971
http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... 995#p82995

As per the last post in that thread, Nvidia recently updated their drivers to have an actual RGB Limited/Full option in addition to YCbCr444, and this governs the card's overall output and affects everything, desktop and video. This new option appears in "Adjust desktop color settings" and should normally be set to RGB Full (0-255) even when using a TV, because RGB Limited (16-235) is equivalent to using YCbCr444 WRT to the color space compression it does. Note that this is very different than the Dynamic Range in the Video section of the Nvidia Control Panel, which affects only video played using Nvidia HW acceleration; that section should normally be left as "With the player settings", i.e. untouched, and the player options should be configured for the desired output. The great thing about Nvidia finally adding the new option is that it does away with the SetDefaultFullRGBRangeOnHDMI registry hack nonsense, which I talked about some in the follow-ups. Now you can definitively set the overall card output in the Control Panel, with none of the hardware-specific YMMV crap that existed when it was just the lone RGB option.

[STC]

TV and movies use YCbCr 16-235 range. I prefer my HTPC set to YCbCr444. I do not game on my HTPC. Let the TV convert to RGB.

[crawfish]

TV and movies use YCbCr 16-235 range. I prefer my HTPC set to YCbCr444. I do not game on my HTPC. Let the TV convert to RGB.

As I described in the posts I linked to, by using YCbCr444, your video card is compressing everything to 16-235 right before it puts it on the wire. In order for this to work out for video, the video must first be expanded to 0-255, and this occurs in RGB color space, so you're not really "letting the TV convert to RGB". You're creating the levels round-trip I described, going from 16-235 in video to 0-255 and back to 16-235 when the card puts it on the wire, and I explained how to demonstrate this using an Nvidia card. As I mentioned, this loses BTB, WTW, and often creates banding in gradients.

Here's madshi's page on it:

http://madshi.net/htpc/page4.html

However, YCbCr output makes sense only if it's a "pure" output, without a multitude of conversions in between. If the graphics card first converts the YCbCr source to RGB, then converts it back to YCbCr for output this is actually a negative thing. Ideally the graphics card should just take the YCbCr source and output it as it is. To my best knowledge no graphics card on the market can do this today.

So unless you have some unknown card that can do this right, you are not avoiding an RGB conversion, and you are probably compromising video quality by having it output YCbCr444. Passthrough for video on a PC is to have the card output RGB 0-255 and the player software output Video Levels, which should preserve BTB/WTW, and for me, my Nvidia output calibrates, measures, and looks the same as my standalone BD player. I went into much more detail on this in the thread I linked to. This is great because I can use my PC as the pattern generator using Calman and have confidence the results will be good for my non-PC video devices; it's a very automated process, much easier than manually stepping through patterns on a disk or USB stick, and much more flexible, in that I can choose the pattern window size that works best for my plasma, instead of being limited to whatever is on the disk.

[STC]

For cable quality video I much prefer the skin tone of YCbCr. I don't do BluRay through the HTPC. I calibrated my TV to YCbCr as all my other devices output that mode by default.

[crawfish]

For cable quality video I much prefer the skin tone of YCbCr. I don't do BluRay through the HTPC.

I don't distinguish between cable and Bluray. I decided in 2008 never to buy another software Bluray player, but I do watch a lot of equivalent ripped media with Kodi, and of course I use WMC for CableCARD (and only CableCARD).

The thing is, there should be no difference, not in skin tones or elsewhere. Especially if you're talking about SD material, there could be a conversion error somewhere in your chain between BT.601 and BT.709 that is mitigated by outputting YCbCr. But there's an error somewhere.

I calibrated my TV to YCbCr as all my other devices output that mode by default.

In case the OP doesn't understand this, YCbCr is a compressed encoding for RGB, and RGB is the ultimate destination, so there shouldn't be any difference. If there is, the Spears & Munsil page Color Space evaluation page I linked to in the other thread may help one identify where the problem is; anyone confused by these conflicting stories should find it interesting, even if they don't decide to buy their pattern disc. Like I said in the other thread, "Whatever works", but YCbCr is the last resort for PC output for the reasons given, and it should not be routinely tried. Ditto for RGB Limited 16-235. If either seems to help, but neither is necessary due to the display only supporting 16-235, my bet is that there is a better fix available. Again, I'm talking here about overall card output, which should normally be RGB 0-255; anyone who can't describe the subtleties and additional considerations WRT playing video should see my linked messages for a detailed explanation.

[STC]

My TV does a better job converting to RGB than my GPU. There is a just noticeable difference in luminance and color tone which can be measured with a meter and I have seen it on every HTPC setup that I have played with which includes builds and hardware belonging to other people. Nvidia or ATI it doesn't matter which.

It's probably best for the OP to try both modes and decide which is preferable.

[LuckyDay]

Thanks for the suggestions.

I toyed around with the RGB/YCbCr settings on my AMD cards but don't remember what I ended up going with. I'll try these both out and see what I like. I just checked on the color range and it was already defaulted to Full also.

There don't seem to be too many color correction settings on this driver, which is good IMO, because they tend to do more harm than good.

Analog channels seem to come in with pretty good quality already, so I don't think I need to do too much config there.

[webminster]

Passthrough for video on a PC is to have the card output RGB 0-255 and the player software output Video Levels, which should preserve BTB/WTW, and for me, my Nvidia output calibrates, measures, and looks the same as my standalone BD player. I went into much more detail on this in the thread I linked to.

In the context of WMC, you're basically saying set the GPU to 0-255, and let the WMC player provide video levels 16-235, correct? Is it assumed that (say) TV playback will already be at those levels and WMC will output them unaltered (and the GPU setting will just pass that through)?

I recall (and used) a registry setting (NominalRange) to either set 16-235 or 0-255 for WMC playback. In this model does this setting have any validity? And if so, which setting makes more sense, tell WMC to output 0-255 as well? Or leave this out and let WMC output whatever it does?

Interesting thread.

[webminster]

Too late to edit my above post... I've always found the range aspect confusing. I've read that all the range settings (video card, player) should be set the same, to match the display. In my case (older Panny plasma), it doesn't have a PC range option, so I figured to be correct, I was supposed to set all things to 16-356 RGB Limited, to match the display. I think I have set to actually find a definitive reference for that, and not sure if that's correct. I'm not sure if the comments above about setting the RGB 0-255 range on the video card assumes the display is set to PC levels, or not.

[crawfish]

Passthrough for video on a PC is to have the card output RGB 0-255 and the player software output Video Levels, which should preserve BTB/WTW, and for me, my Nvidia output calibrates, measures, and looks the same as my standalone BD player. I went into much more detail on this in the thread I linked to.

In the context of WMC, you're basically saying set the GPU to 0-255, and let the WMC player provide video levels 16-235, correct? Is it assumed that (say) TV playback will already be at those levels and WMC will output them unaltered (and the GPU setting will just pass that through)?

That would be the no-compromise video output option I talked about, (2) in this message I linked to earlier:

http://www.thegreenbutton.tv/forums/vie ... 995#p82995

I recall (and used) a registry setting (NominalRange) to either set 16-235 or 0-255 for WMC playback. In this model does this setting have any validity? And if so, which setting makes more sense, tell WMC to output 0-255 as well? Or leave this out and let WMC output whatever it does?

Interesting thread.

I believe all the answers to your questions are contained in my messages in this thread and the ones I linked to here and on avsforum.com and their follow-ups. I addressed overall card output (affects both desktop and video), card video settings (affects video only), player settings including NominalRange and when and why you might or might not use it, and TV settings. Further, I went into the advantages and disadvantages of various combinations, the main consideration being desire for no-compromise video vs consistency with the desktop so one calibration can work for both desktop (photos, games, etc) and video. I went into what you should and shouldn't see when viewing video pattern discs and test images in paint programs. If you respond in those linked threads, I will see it.

I do have something new to say about NominalRange vs Nvidia's Video Dynamic Range setting. I'm now using just my GT640 for both my monitor and TV, whereas before, I was using Intel 4600 graphics for monitor and GT640 for TV. I recently stopped using Intel because of its bad behavior with Firefox, but I found a difference between Intel and Nvidia for WMC when viewing WMC on my monitor. The levels were not correct for Nvidia, and I needed to expand them to PC Levels. I couldn't use NominalRange to get 0-255, because that would affect my TV as well, and the TV is set up for the no-compromise video output configuration, where I want WMC to output its default 16-235. This left me with changing the Nvidia Video Dynamic Range to "Full (0-255)" for the monitor, which as I mentioned in the linked thread, I learned to avoid a couple years ago due to a subtle color-shifting bug when using it. The good news is, I'm not seeing that problem on the monitor, nor am I seeing the anomalies the Microsoft guy I mentioned in the linked thread warned about, and I now see no reason not to use it instead of NominalRange.

Since I was switching things up, I also tried my TV on the Intel 4600 graphics for the first time ever. I found the Intel control panel options exposed for HDMI connections horribly confusing, and once I stumbled upon the correct settings, the output was markedly different than my Nvidia card, with Nvidia again being consistent with my BD player when viewing test patterns in AVS HD 709 and as measured with my meter. For example, one anomaly was that Intel clipped Black levels 17 and 18 for the same TV settings that were perfect for Nvidia and my Sony S5100 (2013) and even newer S1500 (2015) BD players.

So, my conclusion is that Intel 4600 is crap as far as I'm concerned. It causes Firefox to do occasional whole window flashes when clicking links, refreshing pages etc, which is really distracting when there are multiple rows of tabs, and the one thing that mitigates it, disabling Firefox HW acceleration, degrades font rendering as I described here. Its video settings are more confusing than Nvidia, and once configured correctly, the levels are still slightly off from what I presume to be objectively correct per the agreement between my GT640 and Sony BD players and close tracking of BT.1886 as measured in Calman. The only interesting thing about Intel was that I never had to change any settings for WMC to use correct levels on my monitor, which means Intel was by default expanding WMC's default Video Levels to PC Levels, something Nvidia doesn't do unless I make it do it by setting its Video Dynamic Range to "Full (0-255)". I think that's most likely yet another Intel driver bug, one where it does what you want but really isn't supposed to.