[rootz]

Thank you for this extremely helpful and well organised guide!

I followed it and I am now enjoying 4K HDR playback on my Samsung Q9 tv from my HTPC.

[Warner306]

Well, I'm glad you got some use out of it. Hope your HTPC remains stable and trouble-free.

You can continue to tinker with various settings in madVR, the GPU and Windows, but I find, the more you tinker, the more things tend to break. Sometimes it's safer to just watch movies.

[ktide1]

Much thanks to Warner306 for this excellent guide.  I'm setup with Kodi 18, MPC-BE, and madvr and overall everything is working well including HDR passthrough.

However, I keep having a small problem I'm hoping someone here can help with.  I'm using a GTX 1060 (6GB version) with the 385.28 Nvidia driver on Windows 10 1903.  No matter what I do, I cannot get RGB Full to stick in the Nvidia control panel.  For reference, the GTX 1060 is connected via HDMI to a Denon x3400h AVR, then to a Samsung KS8000 TV.  UHD color, color space settings, etc. are all set up correctly on all devices, with the intent of using RGB Full throughout the chain as suggested.  The HTPC is "always on" and I typically leave Kodi running all the time.

I've been through all the refresh rates, setting them up as suggested - i.e. 12-bit color for 30 Hz and below, 8-bit for everything else with RGB at full dynamic range.  When I set it, it will stay like that initially.  I can launch Kodi and it sticks, play a movie using MPC-BE as external player, no problems - so far so good.  It will even survive a reboot, no problem.  madvr reports the correct bit depth and all looks good.

However, if I switch off the AVR and TV (leaving the PC on and Kodi running) and come back later, say the next day, and turn everything back on again, it's immediately obvious the color settings have been changed to limited without anyone touching anything.  I can go back into the Nvidia control panel and re-select "Full" on dynamic range, click "Apply" and everything returns to normal.  Also another interesting anomaly is that if I start watching any HDR content, it triggers a switch back to "Full" with no need to go into the Nvidia control panel!  No matter how it gets switched back to RGB full, it will stay that way as long as I'm actively using it, but if I ever switch the system off and come back a few hours later, it reverts to limited again.

This is driving me nuts.  Any ideas from anyone on how to resolve this permanently?  What am I missing or doing wrong?

[Warner306]

It sounds like an oddity with the Nvidia video drivers.

I would either choose 8-bits for all refresh rates, which simplifies things and looks identical to 12-bits anyways. Or perhaps try using an EDID override, like described below, in the event this is related to an HDMI handshake issue when you turn on the AVR:

251833 (thread)

[tungvjckj]

I installed DSplayer Kodi Madvr for LG OLED TV when playing HDR movie, the screen kept blinking. Could you show me how to fix it?

[Warner306]

Can you post a screenshot of the OSD (Ctrl + J) during playback and post it here. And the name of your GPU and operating system.

[gotham_x]

For GPU 1080Ti , which power management mode is the best for madVR? Adaptive or Optimal Power ? I read conflicting opinions or is a subjective choice.

[Warner306]

I've always been told to use Adaptive when watching videos:

https://chefkochblog.wordpress.com/2018/...explained/

[gotham_x]

Thank you very much for your availability , very useful the link you provided.

[gotham_x]

There is a simple way  , not too demanding in the various steps to do , to create a custom resolution with madVR and nVidia GPU ? to be honest I would have found some guidelines , but, in my opinion, a little too laborious to put into practice.

[Warner306]

There are some instructions here:

https://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid...pid2721280

It isn't that difficult once you understand the process. You set EDID as the temporary custom resolution as the first step. Play a 23.976 fps movie for 30 minutes to an hour to have madVR calculate a better custom resolution, and then apply one of the optimized custom resolutions created by madVR.

Custom resolutions can be problematic with some displays. You might have some glitches where the screen turns black when there is a refresh rate change and the OSD of the AVR can sometimes be cut off when using the custom resolution during video playback. If you haven't used one in the past, you might not even need it, as any frame drops tend to occur infrequently and are difficult to spot.

[EviL GaMer]

Hello Warner306 and everyone else considering this is my first post,

first of all thanks for the amazing guide. It helped me to enjoy HDR without going blind by straining my eyes to see in the dark

I have one slight problem though. The queues fill up well and everything works. After a while though the present queue almost empties showing 0-1 frames in there. I tried fidgeting with the settings thinking that might be the problem but actually it's something else. I noticed that if I move my mouse during playback the queues fill up again and everything runs. Any thought on what might cause this kind of behaviour? I'm thinking it might have something to do with energy saving settings either in Windows or NVIDIA but as far as I can see everything seems okay. Windows is set to balanced which hasn't caused me any troubles before and NVIDIA is set to optimal performance

My rig:

Windows 10
AMD Ryzen 5 2600X Six-Core, 3600MHz
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080

[Warner306]

There could be several variables that might cause the present queue to empty. The most likely cause would be that rendering times are right at the edge of what the card can handle and are pushing it over the edge at certain points. Network latency in transfering large file rips could also be the cause, but the decoder queue would also be empty if that were the case.

For starters, post an OSD screenshot (Ctrl + J) when the present queue is empty and post it here with an image host such as postimage.

Also test your network transfer speeds with this test to ensure you are getting Gigabit speeds: LAN Speed Test.

[EviL GaMer]

There could be several variables that might cause the present queue to empty. The most likely cause would be that rendering times are right at the edge of what the card can handle and are pushing it over the edge at certain points. Network latency in transfering large file rips could also be the cause, but the decoder queue would also be empty if that were the case.

For starters, post an OSD screenshot (Ctrl + J) when the present queue is empty and post it here with an image host such as postimage.

Also test your network transfer speeds with this test to ensure you are getting Gigabit speeds: LAN Speed Test.

Here's the link to the OSD.

I looked at it more and the decoder queue seems to get down a little bit as do subtitles, upload and render. Up to the point of the screenshot dropped frames were 0 and repeated frames were 6. They kept rising while the queue was empty obviously. The moment I started taking the screenshot it continued perfectly fine, as if nothing happened.

[Cinephile]

@Warner306

What are your thoughts on the Kodi 19 fork with native HDR implementation for NVIDIA users? I have just come back to v18.4 as I noticed very subtle video stutter in v19.

Also, I observed that with madVR when I first start playback it drops 20-30 frames during the refresh rate change and then settles nicely for the remainder of the movie. I don’t actually see any glitches because it seemingly happens during the black screen before the movie starts playing. Have you come across something similar?

@Evil GaMer

Your rendering stats should be comfortably below the frame time (40ms in your case). Yours exceed it by a fair bit which is likely causing your issues. Hardware limitation would be my guess.