Hi, in a way I'm kind of new to the XBMC, and I have a couple of questions which I think Wiki did not answer.
1) How should I update XBMC nightlies? I mean, if I have imaginary rev 38000 installed on my PC and a new revision of 38001 is released - is it ok to just run the 38001 installer or should I uninstall the 38000 first (if yes, do I need to delete profiles automatically or XBMC folder manually?) and just after that run 38001 installer? I know sometimes the order of these things matter very lot, for instance many times I've read very careful instructions on how to update Nvidia drivers. Wiki doesn't have much on this subject:
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Ins...or_Windows
2) What does post-processing option in Video settings do? Does it work with DXVA2-accelerated video decoding? Should I enable it? To be honest, I personally think I usually see these things but this time I really can't see no difference, if I see something it might just a be a tiniest possible amount of general full screen blur, which is something I'd necessarily not like. I think the wikisection of Settings might be a bit outdated (at least when compared to the nightlies:
http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Videos_Settings ).
hyperionfin Wrote:Hi, in a way I'm kind of new to the XBMC, and I have a couple of questions which I think Wiki did not answer.
1) How should I update XBMC nightlies? I mean, if I have imaginary rev 38000 installed on my PC and a new revision of 38001 is released - is it ok to just run the 38001 installer or should I uninstall the 38000 first (if yes, do I need to delete profiles automatically or XBMC folder manually?) and just after that run 38001 installer? I know sometimes the order of these things matter very lot, for instance many times I've read very careful instructions on how to update Nvidia drivers. Wiki doesn't have much on this subject: http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Ins...or_Windows
I simply install without any need for removal first. To date no problems at all.
2) What does post-processing option in Video settings do? Does it work with DXVA2-accelerated video decoding? Should I enable it? To be honest, I personally think I usually see these things but this time I really can't see no difference, if I see something it might just a be a tiniest possible amount of general full screen blur, which is something I'd necessarily not like. I think the wikisection of Settings might be a bit outdated (at least when compared to the nightlies: http://wiki.xbmc.org/index.php?title=Videos_Settings ).
As to the second question I personally have no reason to use it so I do not. Basically my philosophy is if it works and I am happy with it why mess with the settings.
I am sure someone will provide greater detail with respect to question two in the very near future.
1 - no set routine. I personally uninstall (except profile folder) reinstall and restart pc (just to clear out any deadwood). But I'm sure others have had success purely overwriting.
2 No idea LOL - but if it doesn't make a difference to your viewing why worry with it?
steelman1991 Wrote:2 No idea LOL - but if it doesn't make a difference to your viewing why worry with it?
It's just my eagerness to know/learn things and my grand desire to control everything. =)
I see now what your looking at - never noticed that before, though I think it may have only been introduced in recent builds and might have more to do with SD playback than HD - sure I read in the 'native dxva2' thread something about its introduction - try there.
Post processing (through SW in XBMC code, that is) does not do anything if DXVA2 is in use - the output is also done using DXVA's methods in that case.
WhiningKhan Wrote:Post processing (through SW in XBMC code, that is) does not do anything if DXVA2 is in use - the output is also done using DXVA's methods in that case.
All right, I thought this might be the case... I'd love though if a dev could confirm this or if you had an URL as a reference.
EDIT: In a way, this post seems to indicate the opposite:
http://forum.xbmc.org/showpost.php?p=558...count=1014
Postprocessing (again, talking about pure SW post processing here) cannot be at the moment performed for DXVA decoded content, that would require copying frames out from GPU for processing. See
http://forum.xbmc.org/showpost.php?p=560...count=1050
For HD content, it would also be rather pointless due to potential miniscule gains and huge processing power requirements.
Now, using post processing features offered by the HW through the DXVA api is a different story. It would make much sense to use HW deinterlacing and scaling through DXVA also for content _not_ decoded with DXVA, which is why I am interested in this subject.
I'm not really following, sorry.
So, the post-processing checkbox in nightly builds' video options is for software post-processing, which cannot be done when video is decoded by DXVA. Therefore, it doesn't do anything if I check or uncheck it when I'm decoding my videos with DXVA?
Is this correct?
But still you mention there are post-processing features in offered by DXVA also, as both you and Crystal mention in your posts, right? Are those post-processing features only limited to
deinterlacing (not interesting to me) and
scaling (ofc important but as long as the best scaling method offered by DXVA is bilinear, not interesting issue to me)? Doesn't the term post-processing usually refer to a vague set of other image improving techniques such as deblocking, sharpening, luminance alterations, denoising etc. (I became familiar with these during "my era" as ffdshow-user, however now I've moved completely to the XBMC) - and if so - does DXVA postprocessing offer any kind of set of features like those? If it does, are they currently always enabled or never enabled, or is the checkbox in the nightly builds' GUI exactly for enabling those.
However, as I stated earlier, I'm just not really capable of seeing much difference if it's enabled or not. And I'm always using DXVA-acceleration since I'm runnin ION-platform. Basically the only thing I "might" be seeing is a light unsharpen, soften or blur.
Those "vague set of other image improving techniques such as deblocking, sharpening, luminance alterations, denoising etc." to which you refer are available in the DSPlayer build. Whether they have any effect on picture quality, or have an effect on/work with DXVA or not I don't know - just know they are there - never used them.
Thanks for the info. I'm not even necessarily saying that I want to have/use them. I just want to know what's going on.
I'm still not yet sure if the checkbox in GUI is for SW-post-processing that's not possible to happen when DXVA-decoding or DXVA-post-processing (and if for it, what does it include / do)?
No post processing has been implemented for DXVA, as noted by Elupus and CrystalP in the forum discussion linked to earlier. If someone figures out at some point something that even gets implemented, similar GUI checkboxes can obviously used for enabling/disabling them.
Information of DXVA processing can be found e.g. here:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/...S.85).aspx
And for DXVA HD which is available for Win7 only:
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/...S.85).aspx
If you actually want to know the details as badly as you say and want to follow what's going on, there's no better way than reading the source code and comparing the contents of repository commits. Especially since the code is changing all the time, and what you are told on forums may be invalidated by a single commit.
WhiningKhan Wrote:No post processing has been implemented for DXVA, as noted by Elupus and CrystalP in the forum discussion linked to earlier. If someone figures out at some point something that even gets implemented, similar GUI checkboxes can obviously used for enabling/disabling them.
All right, that's Crystal clear now.
WhiningKhan Wrote:If you actually want to know the details as badly as you say and want to follow what's going on, there's no better way than reading the source code and comparing the contents of repository commits. Especially since the code is changing all the time, and what you are told on forums may be invalidated by a single commit.
That just might go a step too far for me though... consider me an enthusiastic user who is willing to get involved in the community.
That would be quite a bit easier if XBMC devs had a habit of writing short one to three sentence changelogs for each nightly build. Would it be too much to ask?