MPC Video Renderer: Frequently Asked Questions

[clsid2]

Official bug tracker

https://github.com/Aleksoid1978/VideoRenderer/issues

When asking for help with a problem, first make a screenshot of the video with the debug overlay enabled (press Ctrl+J) because that contains important information for the developers.

Does this renderer support HDR video?

Yes!
It supports both HDR passthrough to a HDR display, as well as tonemapping to SDR for older displays.

Does this renderer support Dolby Vision?

Yes. It supports most (but not all) variants of Dolby Vision.
DV gets converted into HDR or tonemapped to SDR (depending on your settings).
It does not support outputting DV directly to your screen.

Why does my screen go black for a (few) second when playing HDR video?

That means that your display is switching display mode to HDR.

If you do not like this behavior, you have the following choices:

1. Turn on HDR permanently in Windows settings. Or manually toggle it on before opening the video by pressing WinKey+Alt+B.
2. Turn off HDR passthrough in MPC Video Renderer settings. Then HDR video will get tonemapped into SDR video.

Tip: in the Windows HDR dropdown setting in MPCVR settings, you can adjust when the renderer is allowed to switch display mode. For example you can allow it only when going fullscreen.

Why doesn't HDR get activated automatically?

In the settings of MPC Video Renderer you can allow it to turn on HDR in Windows. This may be off by default.

4k video has bad quality when downscaled (to 1080p)

This is a "bug" in NVIDIA driver. It uses a bad quality scaling algorithm when using the D3D11 video processor.
EDIT: This has been fixed in 560.70 driver (and newer).

HDR video is a bit too dark (or too bright) when tonemapped to SDR

You can use the SDR Display Nits option to adjust the tonemapped brightness. Lower value means brighter.

Default value is 125. Older monitors are often 100 nits. Projectors even lower.
Modern monitors can have higher brightness.
If you have significantly reduced brightness setting of your monitor, then a lower display nits setting may look better.

Which hardware decoder should I use in LAV Video?

If you use Direct3D11 in the video renderer, then recommended choice is D3D11.
Otherwise use DXVA2 Native.
Note that modern GPUs which support hardware decoding of AV1 video, usually only support it with D3D11.

How can I see debug details about the input video and renderer processing?

Press Ctrl+J to show the renderer debug OSD.

When you are submitting a bug report or question, the developers usually want a screenshot with this information enabled.

HDR has washed out or wrong colors, but only in fullscreen

Might be an issue with the ICC profile of your monitor.

This may help:
Right-click on your player .exe > Properties > Compatibility > enable "Use Legacy ICC Color Management"

I get a black screen when playing 10-bit video

This may happen with for example AMD Vega and RX5xx GPUs. I suggest reporting this bug to AMD so that they can improve their driver.

Workaround:
Uncheck P010 in the video processor section of MPC Video Renderer options. It will then use Shaders to process 10-bit video. Instead of unchecking P010, you can also try unchecking Use Direct3D 11 first.

Color controls in player do not work with 10-bit video

Another AMD bug. Same workaround as above.

Deinterlacing does not work with AMD GPU

Deinterlacing with AMD GPUs requires Future Frames implementation when using the D3D11 video processor. Currently MPC Video Renderer does not support Future Frames.

Workaround is to uncheck Use Direct3D 11.

Or you can enable deinterlacing in the settings of the internal video decoder. Also switch hardware decoder to Copy-back mode.

Deinterlacing does not work with NVIDIA 50xx GPU

Edit: this should be fixed in latest drivers.

As a workaround you can enable deinterlacing in the settings of the internal video decoder. Also switch hardware decoder to Copy-back mode.

What are the best shader settings?

First of all, the renderer does not use Shaders for scaling when it can utilize the video processor for scaling. That uses built-in scaling algorithms of your driver. The video processor generally does a good job and is most efficient, so for most people there is no need to disable it, unless you are having problems.

To always use the shaders, uncheck Use for resizing in the video processor section.
The best quality shader algorithms are Jinc2m (upscaling), Catmull-Rom (chroma), and Lanczos (downscaling).