Advanced MPC-HC Setup Guide - with madVR (v1.2) (Read note on first post)

HauntingShock said:
madFLAC is only good if you have a good sound system. Which I don't :D

maguss said:
I think I'll stick with your guide as it seems the most recently updated guide.

TheCorinthian said:
I was using LAV audio with Jan Willems MPC. Discovered that the audio works if I drag everything that's inside the Blu ray rip folder (.bdmv, .clpi. .mpls) and not just the m2ts file that is in the stream folder. Strange, because I can recall being able to play sound from the m2ts alone.

It seems I have bigger problems now however. The movies I watch no matter what format will jack my cpu to %100 after 10 minutes of watching. This happens to all media players not just mpc. I even downloaded VLC player to test it and it also crashed. What is more annoying is that video files I've watched without any problems before are crashing my computer now.

I'll have to reformat my computer and setup mpc with this guide tonight and see if that helps. My specs are: [Specs here]

I know they aren't the best specs in the world but again even MKV files I had no problems with before lose synchronization with the audio and crash the player
now D: Pretty much any big HD video file (8 - 40 GB) with a high bitrate will lag and drive my cpu crazy after 10 minutes of watching them. Shame this should happen now since this guide helped me watch Hellsing anime.

I would hate to have to upgrade but I'm out of ideas if the reformat doesn't help.

Jrittmayer said:
So I decided to give your setup a try, and surprisingly the quality difference is actually more noticeable than I thought!

One thing though, video files now take much longer to open than before (Like a good 10 seconds), not sure why that is. I'm running off an SSD so... :/

Niyawa said:

Glad you liked it. But it's strange, the delay shouldn't be anything more than 3 seconds at max. Do you have any specific files that behave like that or is everything you played?

Jrittmayer said:
Tested several videos
a few 300mb~ 720p TV rips
a few 1-10gb Bluray rips

Niyawa said:

Did some quick search on the matter, it seems like there's also others having the same problems with madVR 0.85x. A 10 seconds load. It could be a driver problem or simply a bug with newer GPUs, since my Intel HD can open files in less than 2-3 seconds. I'm sure your specs are not the problem.

Also, make sure your GPU is not messing up with the video, for example, I believe you have a "central" that control your GPU general options like video color/resolution etc, I don't remember where, but it's there, so disable everything that could interfere with your video quality/performance.

Tomorrow I'll look into more depth about how to deal with it, it's inconvenient but if you could be kind to wait until then, I would appreciate.

Jrittmayer said:
Whenever I opened a video it would prompt me to run madVR but I unchecked the box that said "Ask me everytime" so I guess it just auto-runs now? Maybe this process slows it down?

Niyawa said:

Hm... I don't know if it's related, it could be a lot of work, but would you upload a screenshot of this control panel then? If I have the image I might find something that could help.

Jrittmayer said:
Yeah, this slow start up problem is actually more annoying than I though. Having to wait for a video to start is quite annoying. Not only that but when I scroll forward there a delay for the audio to start back up (around 1 secondish)

Niyawa said:

Good thing you passed by, I'm still searching around a little, I believe this is a madVR issue, my delay also got from 2-3 seconds to 4-5. Not too much, but I noticed it. It seems like that came up with version 0.85.3. About the audio delay, that's explained in the FAQ. See section of Audio, last question.

Edit: Thumbnails huh... It's not impossible, but it's not something you should be asking for. For .mkv files you'll need a DivX Media Pack, which messes up with your registry and might cause some problems with your currently installed filters. Not to mention far as I know it's not for free.

Jrittmayer said:
Okay, so the problem lies with madVR, is there fix or workaround for this?

Niyawa said:

For now I don't think so, I'l going to get in touch with madshi and ask around a little. Meanwhile, you didn't enable/disable any option that's not included in the guide did you? Especially something like "delay playback start until render queue is full".

Niyawa said:
Strange, very strange.

I don't think you followed this guide step by step Corin. First you're using Haali for .m2ts when LAV is the one supposed to handle it. Fix that in the filters list and options for the splitter. Next, use imgur.com for your screenshots, Photobucket will always rezise, I almost can't read anything there. Now to the most important, you're getting a "mini dump" error, please check the memory usage of MPC-HC while playing those videos and report it here.

I have 2 theories regarding your problems:

1. Related to the .m2ts, I've finally found a sample that doesn't play properly here, seems like DTS Express is not compatible with this guide. I would appreciate a screenshot just like the one in "The Grey" with the file you can't hear the sound, but make sure you're using LAV Splitter or it will be useless.

2. The mini dump problem is usually caused by leak of memory, that's why I'm asking a report in this matter. Even if the memory levels are normal, I recommend you trying a new MPC-HC version from the link provided or a stable one, and see if anything changes.

I would also recommend you to re-do or just re-check the guide step by step, and make sure it's not a problem with your settings.

Jrittmayer said:
Where would delay playback start be located, just so I can double check?

Niyawa said:

Go to madVR options, it's under "rendering" > "general settings".

TheCorinthian said:
1. I rechecked the steps from the guide and I don't think I missed anything. In order to get LAV Splitter to do the job should I go to the LAV Splitter source properties in external filters and check every input format except for matroska? I tried that and it still uses Haali media source for m2ts files.

2. My cpu fluctuates between 40 and 60 with the m2ts files that currently don't have sound. When I skip forward the cpu increases to about 80%. I tried a 15GB mkv file to see the cpu activity. When I browse through scenes the cpu is higher and the audio makes weird screeching noises sometimes. Here is screenshot of this movie.

Jrittmayer said:
It's unchecked....hmm, this is puzzling. Can I install an older version of madVR or something or will that screw the whole setup up?

Also, audio started stuttering now...probably because of reclock....ugh, can I use a different audio decoder, which one would I use?

TheCorinthian said:
If I were to upgrade to a desktop what specs would be good enough to play 1080p movies with high bitrates and not down scaling them? I'm not familiar with the latest graphics cards so if you could suggest a few that would be great.

Jrittmayer said:
Wait, so does this process down scale higher bit rate video? And if so, is there a way to change that for increased quality?

Also does this method put more focus onto the CPU or GPU for video processing power? Playing a 19.5Mbps 17GB 1080p BD file I only seem to be using around 15-20% of my CPU at any given time.

Still haven't figured out how to speed up the opening of video files, been playing around a bit with madVR but no luck :C

Jrittmayer said:
EVR-CP? Where/how would I set that?

Niyawa said:

Open MPC-HC Options menu, Under "Output", instead of madVR select "Enhanced Video Renderer (custom presenter)". And block madVR in External Filters to make sure it's EVR-CP that will be used. Just undo these steps to use madVR again.

Jrittmayer said:
Tried this and still same results when opening files, it hangs for a good 5 seconds or more then finally loads up.

Niyawa said:

Now we can assume it's not a madVR problem, and not a decoder either. It must be MPC-HC or Haali/LAV Splitter. Since you already removed ReClock that is one less too.

You're using MPC-HC or MPC-BE/JanWillem32 build?

Jrittmayer said:
I'm using the x86 (32-bit) version of MPC-HC as per the download link in your description.

Niyawa said:

I don't want to sound pessimist, but I'm running out of options... Could you try to use MPC-BE and MPC-HC stable instead of the current one? If it's the same in both players, then means it's not a MPC issue either. Which leaves Haali and LAV Splitter.

Jrittmayer said:
Will tinker with it tomorrow and report back. Thanks for the help though :)

Niyawa said:
so unless you make a genuine attempt to explain why you believe something will not work, I don't know how I can believe you, since it works here.

Jrittmayer said:


I actually fiddled a bit more with reclock before giving up on it and the audio works now with no stutter or delay.

I'm using the x86 (32-bit) version of MPC-HC as per the download link in your description.

katsucats said:
LAV 0.54.1 (or a version in between) apparently solved that problem, so it's no longer an issue.

My setup would hang for about 4 seconds too unless "Use GDI or PowerStrip for faster refresh rate detection" was checked in ReClock Video Settings. You might try that if you haven't already (or ignore me, whatever).

katsucats said:
My setup would hang for about 4 seconds too unless "Use GDI or PowerStrip for faster refresh rate detection" was checked in ReClock Video Settings. You might try that if you haven't already (or ignore me, whatever).

Jrittmayer said:
Most files open within 1 second or so now! Some still hang a bit but that issue is mainly with larger files.

I'm going to test it a bit more later but for now it seems that changing that has fixed 80% of the problem :D

Niyawa said:

I wonder why I didn't noticed that earlier when I checked it, I'm retarded. It's the same for me.


What are the 20% left? Oh yeah, you can update to madVR 0.85.3 now.

Jrittmayer said:
The files that are several Gb large, they used to open almost as fast as smaller files when I used CCCP+Shark 007 Codecs but they didn't seem to get much sped up from changing the option. Still hang for 4-6 seconds :/ hmmmm...

Niyawa said:

CCCP dithers everything, so it's much faster to open and decode files (too bad it's outdated and come with shitty options). Also, using 2 codec packs at the same time is not a good idea Jritt. madVR uses P010 for output (the best high quality out there for 10-bit) and that takes time. If you try with EVR-CP again I believe the time will go down to 2-3 seconds at least.

That's just my assumption though. You seem to have hardware of quality, so I can only give suggestions to such extent.

Jrittmayer said:


I suspect it might have something to do with playing files off of secondary HDD's. My OS boots off an SSD but the majority of my files are located on 3 seperate HDD's.

I'll play around with it somemore and report my findings ;)

katsucats said:
This might be a shot in the dark, but are you using external drives, and are they the power saving 5700rpm "green" drives or the normal 7200rpm? Some drives will automatically spin down quickly to save power and take a couple seconds to come back online.

Then again, I have a file server on a separate computer connected through the router, and it only takes me 1-2 seconds to open 45GB files (uncompressed blu-rays), so I don't think it merely being on separate HDDs mean anything.

Edit: Another shot in the dark, if you have anti-virus software like Norton running, try disabling them.

Jrittmayer said:
They're all internal 7200RPM SATA drives, two 1 TB and one 2 TB drive. Most of the anime runs off the 2 TB drive. I don't believe they're power saving type drives, since their access time is pretty good good.

I don't have any anti-virus running aside from Windows Defender. Not sure if WD causes problems?

Niyawa said:


First, I don't recommend the use of Bishoujou Project guide. Not just because their guide sucks (don't let me get started with most issues), but because it recommends things that you will never need like madFlac and the useless CoreAVC. They also don't recommend the use of xy-VSFilter that is the best subtitle renderer to date (because of minor issues with Desktop resolution which only people who upscale can sometimes notice). Oh yeah, with this guide like Hakuro said, you won't need hardware acceleration or anything of sort. madVR is GPU oriented so it will use the potential of the CPU and GPU altogether.

Basically, they're trying to put in your throat everything that is out there either you'll need it or not. Completely pointless.

The Bishoujo Project said:
Ever since a relatively-recent-but-I’m-too-lazy-to-look-up-exactly-which version of madVR… support for MPC-HC’s internal subtitle engine has been added. This means we don’t have to rely on something (very) shitty like directvodsub. Something unique about the internal subtitle engine is an architectural difference in that it imposes subtitles essentially after all other rendering work has been done. This was brought to light to me by a commenter “CV” and an encoder at Afternoon Naps Empire. This is good in theory, but not in practice because of some scaling issues that mess with typesetting, an issue with anamorphic video scaling because the internal subtitle engine imposes subtitles after the video is re-sized to display resolution, and some bugs with color-space conversion because SD content and HD content use two different color-matrices and if the subtitles are not rendered with the video then a slight difference can occur depending on how the subtitles were typesetted.

xy-vsfilter, a more recent fork of vsfilter, fixes most of these issues however it should be noted that because vsfilter applies subtitles before display resolution resizing occurs the subtitles will have a lower resolution to compared to the internal subtitle engine — this is why this guide has been updated to use JanWillem32′s builds of MPC-HC AND NOT XY-VSFILTER (I’m reiterating this here because people not familiar with the internal subtitle engine were misinterpreting this explanation as instructions to use xy-vsfilter. It’s only mentioned because I’m debunking the idea that it’s the best solution.) which fixes, in my opinion, the worst of these issues with the internal subtitle engine in default builds while retaining crisp high-resolution subtitles.