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Maxim · 2009-02-20, 20:11

It's most likely due to the use of an "overlay." I'm not sure of the technicalities of it, but it would explain why the settings for the video card have no effect. Imagine that the video playback, or rather the rending is outside of the scope of the desktop. I've seen some cards have two sets of settings, one for the desktop, and one for the overlay.

Here is a picture of the Nvidia's older drivers allowing adjustment of the overlay settings:

Unfortunately I can't quickly find a picture of the newer Nvidia Control panel. What you're probably going to want to look for is adjusting the settings of OpenGL rendering since all of XBMC (As far as I understand) is rendered in OpenGL.

Nazgulled · 2009-02-20, 20:18

Either the OpenGL settings or Overlay settings don't allow to change the sharpening of the image so... Sad

Maxim · 2009-02-20, 20:25

Yeah sorry about that. Did you confirm that changing any settings effect the video playback/rendering? I don't have a Windows box so i'm not sure about that.

A similar concern was brought up recently about the image "quality" by another user in this thread here:

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=45425

It turns out to be a factor of filters used by the hardware on which the comparison to the XBMC video playback was being made.

In other words the playback of XBMC was raw, and the playback of other hardware (In this case an xbox360) was doctored. I'm sure that these concerns are on the list for the developers as everyone wants to have a pretty picture, but they're probably not first in line.

danillll · 2009-02-20, 21:43

Nazgulled
I feel your pain and I know exactly what you are looking for. I've been there and I tried every single possible way to slightly enhance the picture to soften the background on couple of movies with no luck. I tried linux and windows, on windows I tried every single option combination in NVIDIA control panel with no change whatsoever, but as MAXIM stated, I came up to a conclusion that for now I should encode and stick to very high quality movies, XBMC will show you the movie as it is, which is something I wish dev would work on to add a sharpener, denoise ... filters

danillll · 2009-02-20, 22:13

FYI http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/5553

Does anybody know how to increase priority? no work has been done on it.

danillll · 2009-02-20, 22:23

wow I am all over the place, I found this one, and it looks like it has been implemented 2 days ago for VDAPU, i wonder if this is only for linux, but I can test it Smile

http://trac.xbmc.org/changeset/17795

Nazgulled · 2009-02-21, 01:16

danillll Wrote:FYI http://trac.xbmc.org/ticket/5553

Does anybody know how to increase priority? no work has been done on it.

Well, the target milestone is set to 9.04, let's just hope it will be done by then... Big Grin

danillll Wrote:wow I am all over the place, I found this one, and it looks like it has been implemented 2 days ago for VDAPU, i wonder if this is only for linux, but I can test it

http://trac.xbmc.org/changeset/17795

Yes, that's only for Linux since it's VDAPU and since it's VDAPU, it only probably only work on movies that are decoded by the GPU cause that's what VDAPU is for (in XBMC's case). But this comes from a guy that doesn't know much about that, so, it may or may not, work on movies on hardware accelerated...

Too bad I don't use linux (yes I could change to it, but I won't), it's getting hardware acceleration and Windows not Sad

danillll · 2009-02-21, 05:39

Quote:Yes, that's only for Linux since it's VDAPU and since it's VDAPU, it only probably only work on movies that are decoded by the GPU cause that's what VDAPU is for (in XBMC's case). But this comes from a guy that doesn't know much about that, so, it may or may not, work on movies on hardware accelerated...

right VDAPU is nvidia's API for GPU decoding under linux, it supports many formats mainly x264/h264 which is the video in most MKVs (I can't find the list, but it is a link to a pdf file in the linux thread) so
hardware accelerated using the GPU + important filters = sweetness and fantastic picture.

gonna try his code right now and let you know if it's worth to switch to linux

Nazgulled · 2009-02-21, 06:28

Don't bother just because of that case I will not switch my media center to linux.

Thanks for caring though Smile

danillll · 2009-02-21, 16:39

Nazgulled

I have 3 OS installed on my machine, i tried the live version and configured it with with vdpau, and trust me, if you have a good nvidia card 8xxx or 9xxx, it's worth the switch, the picture quality is improved a lot and this is without using the additional filters, it looks like they are broken and not taking effect (see the main vdpau thread for the filter isssue) it's just a matter of time before it's fixed

but yeah, if you want a better crisp picture, linux is the way to go now, not trying to offend the windows devs/users, I still have my windows install and hopefully someone will port the same feature to windows.

Nazgulled · 2009-02-21, 17:22

It doesn't matter how much better the picture quality is improved, my HTPC machine is not used only as a media center application. I'm not going to compromise all other stuff I do with the machine just have crystal clear picture quality. The picture quality is currently not that bad, it's still HD. It could be better, yes, but not that bad.

And besides, VDPAU is not even on the main branch and when the main branch is improved or new features are added, the VDPAU branch is "left behind".

I prefer to wait until sharpness comes to Windows and the main XBMC branch Smile

But I'm glad you finally got the picture quality you were looking for.