2008-01-19, 12:45 | Link #1 |
8-headed Dragon.
|
Video artifacting and quality issues.
Recently I've noticed more and more that in dark areas of the screen when watching fansubs (I think usually h264, but I'm pretty sure I've noticed it in a couple of XviD files I've watched recently) that there is a lot of artifacting and the like when fading in and out of darkness, etc. I got a new monitor for Christmas, and while it's a relatively high resolution LCD monitor, I don't see why that would be the problem. I'm also using a GeForce 7900 GS, which hasn't given me any problems in the past, either. I very recently (today) reinstalled ffdshow and even updated my video drivers to see if a reinstall and settings reset would fix it (in case I'd borked something myself) but it's still pretty noticable at times. If there's some settings related to media player classic, that would also be helpful, as I have no idea what any of the stuff about overlays, etc are for or do.
Here's an example screenshot, any help would be appreciated. |
2008-01-19, 13:38 | Link #2 |
AS Oji-kun
Join Date: Nov 2006
Age: 74
|
Are you scaling up a video? Trying to watch something encoded in 704x400 at much higher resolutions can produce this effect. What happens if you rescale your monitor image to a resolution similar to the program you're watching? What if you watch the video in a window in its native resolution? Does the problem go away?
I've found these artifacts to be especially obvious when watching scenes with dark solid backgrounds like the one you showed here.
__________________
|
2008-01-19, 14:51 | Link #4 | |
8-headed Dragon.
|
Quote:
I tried it again after setting my resolution all the way down to 600 x 800 and it was still there, although I couldn't find any good examples of it in any of the Shinsen encodes I had on hand, so maybe it IS just my selection of groups' doing. Last edited by Orochi; 2008-01-20 at 11:57. |
|
2008-01-19, 15:16 | Link #5 |
Senior Member
Join Date: Mar 2004
|
It does that because that particular scene is bitrate starved. It typically happens in dark scenes simply because the encoder program tries to save bits on those areas.
You see it more on XVID because when people try to cram a show down to the 170MB sizes and things from a 250-350MB source file, it has to remove data from somewhere. You'll see it on any encode if they reduce the bitrate enough, or if they don't allocate enough bits to the darker scenes. On the other hand, it could have been that their raw was shit quality, in which case they couldn't really have done much about it. |
2008-01-19, 22:00 | Link #7 | |
Love Yourself
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Northeast USA
Age: 38
|
Quote:
If you want to improve it, you can look through FFDShow and turn on some of the post-processing options. It should make it look a bit better, but it's not a miracle cure by a long shot. And if the episode was encoded very poorly, you probably won't notice a difference. Welcome to the joys of having a better monitor - when things look good, they really look good, but you notice the flaws in everything. Try to go for H.264-encoded material at higher resolutions if you can. If there's no reply beneath me when I check the episode, I'll edit this post with an update on the episode. Otherwise I'll add another reply. Edit: I watched the ending sequence and it didn't look bad at all - especially not anywhere near as bad as that screenshot. I'd suspect it's something wrong with your codecs or settings. Your screenshot also has the background looking like a light blue, while Eviltape's screencap and what I saw had a black background. What codecs have you installed on your system? I suppose we can also go through your FFDShow settings. To make sure that it's an FFDShow setting and not a setting within MPC, try opening the file in a different video player and see if it looks the same.
__________________
Last edited by Ledgem; 2008-01-19 at 22:44. Reason: Episode viewed |
|
2008-01-20, 12:07 | Link #9 | |||
8-headed Dragon.
|
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Let me try some files under a different media player. Unfortunately, I don't really have many others. Scratch that, I don't have ANY other players that support .mkv. Should I get something else so we can deduce if it's an MPC problem? Here's two more examples from files from different formats and groups. Spoiler:
Spoiler:
Btw, the thing you mentioned about having a better monitor may or may not be relevant, as I was using a 21-inch CRT before, and am using it as my secondary monitor in a dual-screen configuration now, but as I mentioned earlier in the thread, the files still looked trashy even when I dropped my resolution to like, 600 x 800. Actually, ew. Upon closer inspection by moving the window back and forth between monitors, the problems I'm noticing are much harder to see on my old monitor. I wonder how long it's been like this. |
|||
2008-01-20, 16:32 | Link #11 | ||||
Love Yourself
Join Date: Mar 2003
Location: Northeast USA
Age: 38
|
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
__________________
|
||||
2008-01-20, 17:40 | Link #12 | |
8-headed Dragon.
|
...Okay. What do you want me to do now, then? I'm pretty sure I don't have any wonky extraneous codecs floating around on here, as I do a pretty extensive set-up just to play anime and media files whenever I start using a freshly-formatted hard drive. Any surefire way to check other than browsing through Add/Remove Programs?
Quote:
|
|
2008-01-20, 17:53 | Link #13 |
makes no files now
Join Date: May 2006
|
Then your system is borked somewhere. Both are DirectShow players, just like MPC and thus _should_ work. Do you have CCCP installed? If not, then try it. But before remove any other codecs that you might have installed, like ffdshow/vsfilter/haali/etc...
Try to check it also with mplayer. It uses pretty much the same stuff as CCCP does, so if that works fine then you can narrow it down.
__________________
|
2008-01-20, 18:12 | Link #14 | |
8-headed Dragon.
|
Quote:
Anyway, the reason the problem looks to have decreased seems to me the same reason it's harder to see on my CRT monitor: the quality has been reduced. The dark scenes are just darker, rather than cleaner. I posted a screen from Kimiaru earlier in the thread where the protagonist is leaning over the balcony, and while the artifacts are less visible, you can barely make out his face now, too. So evidently I had changed some settings to improve the visual quality and it was simply making the imperfections more visible as well. |
|
2008-01-20, 18:19 | Link #15 |
makes no files now
Join Date: May 2006
|
Regarding the screenshots, you can fix that by going into MPC's options, Output and change DirectShow video to Haali's Renderer (should work just fine since you have a 7900GS). Remember to restart before you try again though. However your issue is just too weird, because I had the same file, Ayako's one, and I don't remember seeing anything like that. Either way, no one would release a file with such video artefacts unless it was really unavoidable.
__________________
|
2008-01-22, 19:29 | Link #16 |
8-headed Dragon.
|
I got the second episode of Shigofumi when it was released by "FTP-A" and skipped right to the ending sequence. It looks much more like the correct screenshot posted by Eviltape than my initial screenshot, which leads me to believe my problem is fixed now. It was either a bad encode, or more likely, some issue with my video settings that was since corrected by reinstalling the CCCP and resetting all of my decoder and playback software all at once.
So I guess the issue's closed, thanks for everyone's help. |
Thread Tools | |
|
|