[Warner306]

Well, now that I've been thoroughly vexed for the last week or so, and educating myself on the enormous volume of information about video processing and playback...I have more questions and confusion than ever.

I'm coming from Klassic Kodi because the idea of a configurable player is very liberating, but comes with setup difficulties. I got that, so I'm trying all different combinations of decoders, filters, renderers, hardware, software, dxva, shaders...etc. Right now, the quality of DVDPlayer is better (and more stable than) DSPlayer. I blame my 630 GTX, which is probably woefully underpowered for MadVR. But I wanted to give it a shot anyway.

I have a couple of specific issues so far. The volume with DSPlayer is 30% (or whatever) lower than DVDPlayer on my other install of Kodi. Yes, they're both installed on the same box, so I could do a side to side comparison, realizing each one is altering my .xml files in userdata. Boy am I reckless and dumb. In any event, I'll try a video in DS Kodi, then exit and play it in Classic Kodi, and the volume is definitely weaker in DSPlayer. I've tried many changes.

I know getting a black screen and freezing upon starting a video has been an issue, so I've been tweaking delays and frame rates, but there is no consistency yet.

Should I be using hardware acceleration or not? It's Nvidia, but I read from various sources I should choose dxva2 (copy back) vs. Cuvid. Is that old news, relevant or myth?

I assume I need to keep a tight inventory of which post-processing and shader effects I'm using, because it seems like a careless dork could apply way too many filters from too many sources, and it will merrily destroy the picture and cripple performance without telling me I'm foolish for expecting too much. Now that I'm reading more of the forums, it seems like the use of all these filters indicates I'm watching very shitty quality videos. I won't lie, a lot of it is porn, but I know there's only so much you can do when the source material is poorly encoded, and therefore, free.

So, am I a heretic for trying to use ffdshow (because of the post processing?) instead of LAV. I bet I've committed a crime. It seems like the world is using LAV, but for the life of me, I couldn't see the improvement, and couldn't tweak any settings. But I'm diabetic, so my eyesight is shot to begin with. Now I'm wondering if I'm about 5 years behind the times with software and certainly hardware. Look, my Media player is my son's old Dimension 4700. It makes more noise than a leafblower when the CPU is cranking away. So I was trying to squeeze more work out of it than it's capable of doing. I've read extensively MadVR requires a videocard powered by a Bugatti.

Should I just go back to Klassic Kodi and call it a day until I upgrade the essential hardware, or valiantly chase this foolish dream to get quality, smooth playing bliss from DSPlayer? I'm certainly thrilled by the idea, but I'm the type of guy who likes mindlessly tinkering with shit with no results.

Given your graphics card is more powerful than my graphics card, take the settings I provided in the second-last section and as a starting point (using the profiles shown for a 1080p or 2160p display). The picture quality will be immediately improved over DVDPlayer. Start by disabling all of the trade quality for performance checkboxes in the madVR control panel. Ditch FFDShow because it is old and won't improve anything and use the Internal filters installed with DSPlayer as described in the guide. This should be very simple and reduce the complexity of your set-up considerably. I would also recommend setting up madVR profiles in Kodi using Load DSPlayer settings... in DSPlayer settings.

Second, install ReClock and use WASPI Exclusive Bitstreaming (as the picture indicates in the ReClock section). Check all of the audio formats in LAV Audio your receiver supports. Your volume issues are most likely due to the use of some type of DirectSound device.

If the picture/sound quality still sucks, then DSPlayer/madVR likely isn't for you.