[LINUX/MAC/WINDOWS] Video Post-Processing Filter support in XBMC's DVDPlayer
#1
Lightbulb 
I would like several post processing options available. The post processing in the XBOX version of XBMC rocks. I hope that some day this will be ported to windows, without post processing i'll stick to my FFdshow and windows media player...
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#2
I just came here to find out if XBMC had any post processing abilities on windows.
I'm currently using Mediaportal (sooo unstable! even v1.0) and can't wait to switch to XBMC once TV capabilities are here, but no post processing is going to be a bummer when running xvids through my tv at 1920x1080 Shocked

Are there any plans to provide any form of post processing on the windows platform ?

Cheers!
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#3
Hi all,

I am looking to move to XBMC on my main HTPC as soon as Live TV support arrives.
I'm currently using mediaportal and its reaaaaally unstable.. so looking forward to the move to XBMC.

I would like to know if XBMC can do post processing on videos ?

I currently use FFDShow under Mediaportal and have it resizing videos to 1920x1080 and adding de-noise, blur and sharpen filters.

It would be a real shame if I can't do the same with XBMC as some of my videos are the greatest quality to start with so without filters they look quite shabby on a 37" @ 1080. Oo

Cheers!
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#4
Check this thread for scaling details -

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?p=236102
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#5
Thanks, I have played with the scaling settings and they didn't really seem to do anything much in terms of quality.

Are there any other post processing filters such as NR, blur, sharpen etc.. ?

Cheers
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#6
Swifty Wrote:I would like to know if XBMC can do post processing on videos?
No, XBMC's DVDPlayer (the video player in XBMC for Linux/Mac/Windows) does not currently offer any video postprocessing features (so today if the source video is crap then XBMC will currently display crap).
http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=DVDPlayer

http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=DVDPlayer#Un...d_Features
Quote:Unimplemented Features...
* Post-Processing filters to enhance visual quality and remove artifacts, etc. (port mainly from MPlayer and FFdshow?)
* SSP (Statistical-Post-Proc.), DeBlocking, DeRinging, Sharpen, Soften, ReQuantization, Auto-Luminance, Blurring/DeNoising
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_post-processing

Feel free to submit a feature request or better yet code and submit a patch:
http://trac.xbmc.org
http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=What_is_XBMC...to_XBMC.3F

PS! XBMC's DVDPlayer could probably also do with a new software deinterlacing filter:
http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=DVDPlayer#Un...d_Features
Quote:Unimplemented Features....
* Automatic deinterlace for interlaced DVDs on progressive TVs, (possible port deinterlacer from YADIF, DScaler, or y4mscaler?)
Always read the XBMC online-manual, FAQ and search the forum before posting.
Do not e-mail XBMC-Team members directly asking for support. Read/follow the forum rules.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting please make sure you read this first.
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#7
Thanks for the detailed reply Gamester, good reading.. I didn't realise DVD player was whats used for all video in XBMC windows - thats why I got confused with the PP capabilities.
I will submit a feature request, as for the moment I only know some VB6/VB.net - C/C# is my next learning mission Smile

Thanks!
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#8
Swifty Wrote:...for the moment I only know some VB6/VB.net - C/C# is my next learning mission Smile
FYI; XBMC is mostly C++ with some C (like FFmpeg that is used by DVDPlayer), see:
http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=Appendix_D:_...ment_Notes
and
http://wiki.xbmc.org/?title=DVDPlayer#Development

Wink
Always read the XBMC online-manual, FAQ and search the forum before posting.
Do not e-mail XBMC-Team members directly asking for support. Read/follow the forum rules.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting please make sure you read this first.
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#9
Lightbulb 
Hello,

Would it be possible to add adjustable luma/chroma scaling in the GL shader? I mean something like option "-vo gl:yuv=2:lscale=5:cscale=5:filter-strength=<value>" in mplayer. I am using this in mplayer as a simple "sharpening postprocessing" and since it is done by the driver/GPU it has low performance impact. In my case the typical scenario is when viewing low res video but could be used to soften as well.

Also it seems that since the shaders are already used in XBMC the code change might be just minor (just my guess).

It may also satisfy some of the users asking for any postprocessing. Alternatively expose the option to load custom fragment programs (like the option customprog in mplayer)?
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#10
I use XBMC for Windows and I love it, I have a last generation ATI video card, an Intel dual-core 3.3GHz and I've a Sony 52-inch LCD panel.

I note that the video quality of XBMC, especially on SD video and DVD (but also on HD videos) is very poor when I compare it with other decoding systems, such as ffdshow, benefiting by a series of software filters to improve visual quality (denoise, sharpness, HQ scaling, deinterlacing, deblocking, etc..);

furthermore the only Media Player Classic has a series of filters (shaders) which use the accelerated graphics hardware so egregious (scaling and sharpness).

I would like to have these software or/and hardware filters in XBMC, which is an excellent mediacenter, but just like video quality/settings, which it's the main function of a mediacenter, disappoints me a little.

(Excuse me for my bad english)
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#11
Lightbulb 
I'm just wondering on the current status of how they are progressing as I was looking through the changes made, and noticed ArtVandelae and bobo1on1 were working on lanczos pixel shaders for the renderer.

are these usable? if so, how? from the looks of things, it seems automatic!

thanks.

edit, just saw they were added at 26952, looking forward to giving them a test!
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#12
Could we have a brief explanation of the differences among the different options available now?

For instance, lanczos3 optimized differs from lanczos3 how exactly?

What logic does the Auto setting follows?

It is all GPU based, so with a modern GPU we should not see performance hits, right?
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#13
Well, I tried xbmc-r27020-trunk.exe, and *all* of the new advanced options engage, but are unusable in that build. Frame rate drops off the board for 720p material.

System:

AMD Athlon 64 X2 5600+
Radeon HD3200 (integrated 780g chipset in gigabyte mb)
WinXP32 SP3
Catalyst 9.11

Even though this is a lowly integrated video card, it is pixelshader capable - all of the shader options in MPC-HC work fine. And I can *easily* do lanczos 8 tap resizing for 720p x264 material to 1920x1080 in software with ffdshow on this machine, all running at 30-50% max CPU with either ZoomPlayer (preferred) or MPC-HC, so I don't know what the problem with XBMC is at this point, but it's current implementation is terribly inefficient.


Cheers
The REAL Joe
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#14
works great for me, no more turning to external players for dvd playback!

the REAL joe, you cant compare cpu upscaling to gpu upscaling. as its a different part of the machine doing it. i have a gt240, not a fast card, but it works nicely (i think i used lanczos3 optimized). If you want to try another gpu scaler (in MPC-HC/ZP) you could try madVR, i had an nvidia g210 which is a step up from integrated graphics and that struggled with madVR.

in other words, just because your cpu can, doesnt mean your gpu can, HD3200 is a slow gpu.
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#15
neil.j1983 Wrote:works great for me, no more turning to external players for dvd playback!

the REAL joe, you cant compare cpu upscaling to gpu upscaling. as its a different part of the machine doing it. i have a gt240, not a fast card, but it works nicely (i think i used lanczos3 optimized). If you want to try another gpu scaler (in MPC-HC/ZP) you could try madVR, i had an nvidia g210 which is a step up from integrated graphics and that struggled with madVR.

in other words, just because your cpu can, doesnt mean your gpu can, HD3200 is a slow gpu.

I understand that. I guess I'm just frustrated because development of XBMC seems to be taking the attitude of "one piece of code has to work on every platform" so there are terrible inefficiencies all around trying to do it all with one.

For example, most modern GPU's already have the ability to decode 1080 video in hardware, and many users already have one of these GPU's, but the dev's feel it's better to pursue the Broadcom Crystal HD addin card instead of developing hardware decoding for what many already have. Doesn't make sense.

And with the scaling and rendering, *any* external player with ffdshow and the plain old overlay mixer will do awesome upscaling of 720p material to 1080p in software that will work on just about any CPU from the last 3 or 4 years. And the same ffdshow (newest dev builds since ~3194) + overlay mixer also do hardware decoding with 1080p on most video cards of the same vintage (you don't need to upscale or resize 1080p, it's already there). So rather than support that (at least on the Windows platform), they are developing the one-fits-all again with scalers and renderers, and it just doesn't seem to work well, at least not as efficient as it could be.

In these 2 cases, at least for the time being, it appears that we're putting the decoding load on the processor while it actually belongs on the GPU; and putting high quality scaling on the GPU when it can easily be handled by the CPU. These development decisions just don't make sense to me.

Sorry, I'm ranting and likely to get flamed for criticizing a free product, but don't get me wrong - the interface and library functions are great, and the built in player works very well for most material if I just want to watch it and am not concerned about really good picture quality.

For that I'm truly grateful, this is a really nice program!!

But it could be truly great if the built in player would support decoders and renderers that are already working and doing a much better and more efficient job, rather than reinventing the wheel at every turn just to make the one fits all approach work, but not really efficiently.

</rantoff>
The REAL Joe
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[LINUX/MAC/WINDOWS] Video Post-Processing Filter support in XBMC's DVDPlayer0