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MPC-BE Optimization Tutorial

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Pauven
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MPC-BE Optimization Tutorial

Post by Pauven » Thu Jun 06, 2019 5:43 pm

While Media Player Classic is already great freshly installed, with a few tweaks you can make it into one of the best players for CMC. I have compiled the tweaks below to help you get the most out of MPC-BE. Note that many of these steps will also work for MPC-HC, but I recommend MPC-BE since it seems to better maintained than MPC-HT.


Getting rid of the ugly startup logo
No doubt if you use MPC-BE with CMC, you've noticed that the MPC-BE logo shows every time CMC calls MPC. Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad if the logo looked nicer, but I find it to be an especially ugly logo. Luckily, it is easy to disable the logo.

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From the MPC menu, go to View > Options to open the Options window, and then select Logo in the Player section (shown above). Here you can specify your own logo, or to simply disable it press the right arrow button, and the default logo image will disappear. Press OK or Apply to save this change.

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Updating the Key Mappings for better Remote Control functionality

Placeholder for future content...



Video/Audio Enhancements
The following sections detail several video/audio enhancing upgrades you can make to MPC.

Before you follow the steps below, please make sure you have already uninstalled any codec packs, as they will interfere with the installation of these enhancements.

You should also close MPC before performing the following steps.

If you prefer a video tutorial, here is the guide I followed: https://youtu.be/9ieVsaPGiP4 Note that some of the versions used in this video are older and the screens no longer match the current versions. My screenshots below are more up to date with current versions.



Installing LAV Filters
LAV Filters are a set of DirectShow filters based on the libavformat and libavcodec libraries from the ffmpeg project, which will allow you to play virtually any format in a DirectShow player. This is needed to link into the madVR component that we will install to improve the video quality.

Download the latest release here: https://github.com/Nevcairiel/LAVFilters/releases

Note that you will want to download the installer (for example, the latest LAV Filters release at the time I am writing this is 0.74.1, so I will download the file LAVFilters-0.74.1-Installer.exe).

After downloading, run the installer file. You can accept the installation defaults for all settings, though if you are only running MPC-BE 64-bit version, you can uncheck the 32-bit components (x86), as shown here:
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Finish accepting the defaults and complete the installation. Don't worry about configuring it at this time, that comes later.


Installing madVR
madVR is a high quality DirectShow video renderer used by millions of home theater enthusiasts around the world. Designed as a no-compromise approach, madVR delivers the ultimate video playback quality that no enthusiast should be without. It features high bitdepth processing (32bit per component), high quality algorithms for scaling, sharpening, debanding, dithering, etc., smooth motion playback without the annoying 3:2 pulldown judder even at 60Hz (though CMC also supports changing your display's refresh rate to match the source material), and much more.

To start, go to the madVR website and download the latest version: http://madvr.com/

Next navigate to MPC's program folder (i.e. C:\Program Files\MPC-BE x64), and once there create a new folder named "madVR" as shown here:

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Then open the madVR zip file you downloaded, and extract the contents to the new madVR folder you created above. Note that since you are working inside of a protected path, Windows will require that you provide administrator rights to create the folder and unzip the madVR files into it.

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Next find the "install.bat" file among the files you just unzipped, right-click it and select 'Run as administrator'. A DOS window will appear almost immediately showing the following message if it was successful (press any key to dismiss the window):
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This completes the installation of madVR.


Installing XySubFilter
XySubFilter is a new high quality subtitle filter. Not only is it faster than typical subtitle filters, it has noticeably better subtitle rendering.

Start by downloading the latest version of XySubFilter from the VideoHelp website: https://www.videohelp.com/software/XySubFilter

Next open the zip file and unzip the contents to a temp directory. Then right-click on "Install_XySubFilter.bat" and select 'Run as administrator'.

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If installation was successful you should see the following message window:
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Configuring LAV Filters
Now that everything is installed, the next step is to configure all the enhancements. Go ahead and launch MPC-BE, then select View > Options, and finally select the 'Video' heading from the list of options on the left. There change the 'Video renderer' option at the top to 'madVR', as shown here:
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Then select the 'Subtitles' heading on the left, and change the 'Subtitle renderer' to XySubFilter, as shown here:
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Next you'll need to disable the Internal Filters, so that the new LAV Filters / madVR can take their place. Select Internal Filters from the option list on the left. You'll need to uncheck all the filters listed on the Source Filters tab. TIP: If you right-click in the filter window, there's an option to 'Disable all filters' so you don't have to click several dozen individually.
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Now it is time to add the new external filters. Select 'External Filters' from the option list on the left, and then click 'Add Filter...'
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Add the 'LAV Splitter', 'LAV Video Decoder', 'LAV Audio Decoder', and the 'XySubFilter'. Then using the Up/Down buttons, make sure that they are listed in the order shown here:
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Next we need to configure the LAV Video Decoder to enable hardware acceleration. Double-click on 'LAV Video Decoder' in the list, and this will open the properties page shown below. Here you need to change the 'Hardware Decoder to use:' from 'None' to your preferred decoder ("DXVA2 (copy-back)" seems to be a good choice here):
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Press OK to save your Video Decoder configuration change. Next double-click on the 'LAV Audio Decoder' to configure the audio settings. Here you can configure things like Dynamic Range Compression, Bitstreaming, Output formats, Mixing, and more. Every PC and Home Theater setup is different, so I won't make any recommendations here - you need to figure out what settings work best for your system.
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That's it for the configuration of MPC to work with the LAV Filters.


The next step is to configure madVR, which I'll cover separately below.
President, Chameleon Consulting LLC
Author, Chameleon MediaCenter

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Pauven
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Re: MPC-BE Optimization Tutorial

Post by Pauven » Thu Jun 06, 2019 6:04 pm

If you've configured LAV Filters correctly and madVR is working, then when you start playing a video a new system tray icon for madVR will show up. This only shows while video is playing, so you must be playing a video (paused it okay) to have access to the madVR settings via the system tray icon.

When it comes to configuring madVR, much of it is related to fine tuning the settings to stay within the performance constraints of your video card. This topic is really too complicated for me to try and cover in a text article. Instead, I recommend you watch this video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfkwJEI9QvE


Additionally, I will show the Profiles that I set up:
  • 1080p Film
  • 1080p TV
  • 4K
  • HD Film
  • HD TV
  • SD
I then used this 'profile auto select rule', which is based upon resolutions only, and not filenames:

Code: Select all

if (((srcHeight >= 720) and (srcHeight <= 1080)) 
or ((srcWidth >= 1280) and (srcWidth <= 1920))) 
and (fps < 25) "1080p Film"
else
if (((srcHeight >= 720) and (srcHeight <= 1080)) 
or ((srcWidth >= 1280) and (srcWidth <= 1920))) 
and (fps >= 25) "1080p TV"
else
if (((srcHeight = 720) or (srcWidth = 1280))) 
and (fps < 25) "HD Film"
else
if (((srcHeight = 720) or (srcWidth = 1280))) 
and (fps >= 25) "HD TV"
else
if ((srcHeight > 1080) or (srcWidth > 1920)) "4K"
else
if ((srcHeight < 720) or (srcWidth < 1280)) "SD"
President, Chameleon Consulting LLC
Author, Chameleon MediaCenter

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