It is recommended to install the Kawaii Codec Pack which does everything automatically. Make sure to follow the directions on their page.
This method will result in significantly more image quality and performance than using CCCP (or anything ffdshow-based, really), so if you’re struggling to play back Hi10P anime, or even regular 1080p, consider trying this. MadVR is updated constantly and uses a very new version of libav for decoding, giving it much more speed than the ridiculously outdated ffdshow-tryouts project, as well as the even more ridiculously CCCP codec pack that is based on it.
Step Zero: Prerequisites
- Uninstall ALL instances of MPC-HC, CCCP, ffdshow, madVR, Haali, K-lite, CoreAVC etc. you might have on your system.
This is a clean guide that requires no other prerequisites to function, and ideally should have none installed either.
Step One: Downloading and Installation
- Download and install the latest version of MPC-HC (you want the .exe version for an installer)
Note: Get the 32-bit version ONLY! The 64-bit version is incompatible with madVR and will not function at all. - Install the LAV Filters. These are necessary for decoding video and audio. Take care while installing to deselect the LAV Splitter:
- Obtain and install the latest version of Haali’s Media Splitter
- Note: You can skip this step if your PC isn’t very powerful!
Download the latest version of madVR and extract it anywhere you like. Run install.bat inside the folder. DO NOT DELETE THE FOLDER AFTERWARDS, madVR lives inside it and does not copy itself anywhere else. Move it somewhere sensible before installing, for exampleC:\Program Files\madVR
.
Note: Make sure you’re logged in as an Administrator when running this! Do not right click and “run as admin”, log in as admin and run it normally!
Step Two: Configuration
- Open up MPC-HC’s options menu. Under “Internal Filters”, disable everything. You can leave some of the ones on the left active, but make sure you’ve disabled all of the ones not selected here:
- Under Playback, enable “Auto-load subtitles”
- Under Subtitles, make sure “Allow animation when buffering” is enabled, and “Maximum texture resolution” is set to “Desktop”:
- Under Output, choose “madVR” as renderer.
Note: If you skipped madVR, or you’re experiencing lagging, frame drops or poor performance in general, set this to “EVR Custom Pres.”, “Haali Renderer” or “VMR-9 (renderless)” instead – try them in that order until you find one that works.
- Make sure the LAV Video is selected as default decoder. If in doubt, go to external filters, choose “Add Filter”, select LAV Video Decoder and switch it to “Prefer”:
- After making the above changes, restart MPC-HC and play back any file. You should notice the madVR icon in the system tray. Right click this to access the settings:
Once inside, disable the “fullscreen exclusive mode” under Rendering -> General Settings. I recommend leaving this off unless you are having playback problems, because it prevents you from taking screenshots and makes the transition to fullscreen very ugly (It also messes up MPC-HC’s interface):
Step Three: Confirmation
- Play back a Hi10P file and use Ctrl+J to enter the OSD: (If it doesn’t show up or looks completely different, doublecheck output configuration)
Correct
Incorrect
- Finally, check the “Filters” list (in the right click menu of MPC-HC during playback) and confirm that LAV Video is being used:
Bonus: Adding ffdshow (Optional)
Adding ffdshow will allow you to use its audio decoder (for filters + a more customizable mixer), as well as using it for formats other than AVC1 (H.264), VC1 and MPEG-2. Especially for older 480p and worse content (which isn’t likely to be encoded in AVC1), you can use the ffdshow deblocking or debanding filters to attempt to improve image quality this way.
- Install the latest ffdshow-tryouts.
- Open ffdshow’s settings dialog (Start -> All Programs -> ffdshow -> Video decoder configuration), under “DirectShow control” set the Merit to normal:
- Go back to the internal filters menu of MPC-HC and disable all of the remaining transform filters:
- Double check Step Three to make sure ffdshow doesn’t touch your H.264 video.
Enjoy Anime!
Written by nand – 31.07.2011
with the new madVR v0.74 my ordered chapters problems are fixed ヘ(^_^ヘ)
I recently installed this on another PC after formatting. When I pause my video, the subtitles disappear, is this an easy fix?
Don’t worry, the issue is no more.
The transition from normal screen to full screen is really bad; hurts the eyes.
Can this be fixed? It only happens while I’m in the MadVR output
Hey there, I followed the exact directions step by step and even the correct output settings and subtitle settings as well as the MadVR ones and the rest but no matter what I couldn’t get past the “Ctrl + J” step because I couldn’t see any OSD because well, the whole thing was just black. I could hear the audio playing in the background when I pressed play but saw nothing except for MadVR: Direct3D failed to create or something like it. Can you guys please help?
I set this all up earlier today. I couldn’t see any improvement in recent 1080p stuff, and then when I tried to watch Aria it was frame dropping like crazy; like hundreds in the first seconds of the show. At first I thought maybe MadVR is set-up for modern, HD stuff and can have issues with older shows, but I’d been watching Kaiji S1 and that was okay, and came out just over a year after Aria.
So I uninstalled everything, went back to default CCCP and it works great. Seriously, fuck this shit. It just seems like nerdy fine-turning that may show up differently in a graph or data read-out (e.g. the fact you need to CTRL+J to see if it’s set up to use MadVR properly rather than just being like “Wow, that looks a lot better now!”) but has no visible difference when actually watching the video itself, other than the occasional negative difference, as with Aria.
Any chance for DXVA?
@Sat
I had the same problem and no amount of googling helped me (kept telling me to update drivers and directX)
If your problem is the same as mine (error code zero) it’s because your monitor is set to 16 bit high color output but it needs to be in True Color (24/32 bit) do this through control panel>display (I assume you’re using windows).
For some reason I couldn’t find any documentation on this.
I’ve been searching around, maybe not thoroughly enough, but what exactly is the purpose of the madVR – log.txt that shows up on my desktop. It rapidly grows in size (it reached ~ 4gbs before I decided to delete it). Having a log is inconsequential to me, so is there a way to terminate the generation of the file every time use MPC-HC with madVR?
I did everything just as you said and the Ctrl+J look right but it just made a different problem. It fixed my original problem of not rendering correctly but caused a problem with frame rate. I even did some of my own tinkering with the settings to no avail (And yes I have a graphics card). And in the end I used the simple CCCP option and it works great.
I am having subtitle problems as well. Followed the guide exactly but on some animes, subtitles just disappear a couple of minutes into the video. When played with VLC the subtitles show fine. This is useless for anime if I don’t get subtitles!
I just installed everything from the above guide and it playbacks correctly but the video has become very slow. Is it because my processor is slow? Because the same video plays without any problem on the previous media players that I had been using. (KMPlayer with latest CCCCP) Please help me and tell me what is wrong.
I recently tried this setup and the first time I did it, I was also getting frame drops for 1080p video while it worked fine for 720p, so I went back to the CCCP + CoreAVC setup. Later on, I looked into a little more and found the solution to get this to work. I had to update my nVidia drivers. After the update, I tried this setup again and the videos are playing perfectly fine now. For those struggling with frame drops, try updating to your latest video card drivers.
IMO, there is a quality difference from the typical CCCP setup.
Lastly, thanks for the guide.
followed the instruction step by step….. turned my whole screen black, reinstalled cccp.
I think I should mention this to those who are trying with no success. There are minimum requirements to use MadVR successfully.
The requirements is:
– graphics card with full D3D9 / PS3.0 hardware support
– at least 128MB of dedicated graphics card memory
– Windows XP or newer
For more information, refer to madshi MadVR’s thread:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=146228
You could get more help there too. Lots of discussion on it.
If you do not fulfill the minimum requirements, it will not work out too well.
Also, if you are getting dropped frames, change the scaling algorithms in your MadVR settings. The scaling algorithms is ranked from the worst quality to the best (top to bottom).
I have a GeForce 9400M. My settings are: chroma: bilinear – luma up: lanczos – luma down: bicubic. This setup gives me 0 dropped/delayed in “exclusive” mode (full screen). If your GPU can handle it, you could go down better quality.
For people getting black screens, I had the same problem, here’s what I had to do to fix it. I used the “restore default settings.bat” in MadVR’s folder, used the uninstall.bat deleted -everything- in the folder, downloaded MadVR again, and used install.bat again, made sure settings were correct in MadVR as stated in guide, and fixed.
Ah well. When I finish configuring, I get no more subtitles. That’s a shame.
Anyway to fix the crack sounds in flac? :O
Can anyone show a screenshot as to where to find the madVR setting tray icon. I cannot find it and when I play a file, to try and get the icon to show up, the audio will only play and the video will say madVR reports: – creating Direct3D device failed (8876086c). I have been following the instructions exactly and I always hit a snag at this point.
I found the icon and I adjusted the settings, I am still getting the same message. Also whenever I do play a file, it asks, if I can run the MadVR controller thing.
How do I get to step 5 ?
Yes I read the brackets and I don’t know what to do but even if I did skip that step everything still runs fine so I’m wondering if it’s alright to leave step 5 out even though if it looks like it’s running the files good ?
I followed all the instructions and get: madVR reports: – creating Direct3D device failed (8876086c) any help?
I have WinXP and ATI HD 5450 GFX card (1GB) btw
yo try this guide too, i think this one is among the best so far, however it’ll take time to finish all the config. http://imouto.my/configuring-potplayer-for-gpu-accelerated-video-playback-with-dxva-or-cuda-and-also-high-performance-software-decoding/
I didnt even do anything and my my default k lite 7.6.0 flawlessly plays Hi 10bit animes
Thanks! Now I can watch 10-bit without problems.
Please help. I can play 10 bit animes but subtitles did’nt show up and i currently using k-lite codec latest version.
It wont let me set mpc as my default program for opening files anymore, what could cause this
Can anyone tell me why the audio stops as soon as i skip a part in the video ?
I’ve been getting a lot of dropped frames on 1080p files…
Make sure you’re logged in as an Administrator when running MadVR! Do not right click and “run as admin”, log in as admin and run it normally!
For those having drop frames at 1080p I’ll recommend to use the (enable automatic fullscreen exclusive mode) and under rendering —->exclusive mode setting –> change the “how many video frames shall be presenting in advance:” to 16 this will allow you to use a backbuffer queue of 16 instead of 8 on windowed mode making it a glitch free playback (at least for me). Indeed it makes the transition to fullscreen very ugly but at least I don’t have any drop frames anymore. Also just in case people start asking I have a Core i7 920 at 3.2 GHZ and a Ati HD4870. madshi should increased the backbuffer for windowed mode to 16:)
For those having drop frames, It’s very important to move madvr folder to the fastest HDD or SSD that you have. Previously I was having problems because I was running madvr from the default Download folder (a slow 2TB HDD for storage). Fix it by uninstalling and moving a the folder to C: (a SSD) and installing again. Result: NO MORE DROP FRAMES IN WINDOWED MODE.
started watching nichijou coalgirls sub and the openers and ends are choppy as fuck on both 720 and 1080. why is this?
What is the advantage of LAV decoder over the old method of madVR decoder?
Followed all the steps step by step….enhanced image quality…..plays Hi10P….frames dropped…..wat do?
Thx for the great guide, it works like a charme but I have an issue still: i can’t take any screencaps at all now ( getDIB failed,hr=80004005, is the error that i got). Using stamp+paint (or whatever similar program) aside,what can i do to get the mediaplayer screncap working again? Thx in advance.
@Yoshiro
You can only use Print Screen to take screen caps if your using MadVR.
Understood, thx:(
You definitely need to update the screen cap thingy asap, if possible.
is it that after making these settings, i will have problems playing a 8-bit anime?
use xy-vsfilter for subtitles
it supports 10-bit p010 output
Odd… when I try to have it use LAV Audio Decoder my external filter options are wiped.
how do i change where “madVR – log.txt” is created?
@Esam
It’s not an update it needs, it simply needs to be coded. madVR’s coder (madshi) does not see it as a higher priority than many other things he’s doing with madVR currently.
@Sugar
No, you shouldn’t have an problems playing 8bit after doing this.
@Amak
That might suggest that MPC-HC is crashing when you’re closing it, so the options aren’t getting saved due to a fail to close properly. Try updating your MPC-HC.
@sillyme
Not sure that can change, but you could always change the entire madVR directory to wherever you want the log to be in the first place – do that by hitting the uninstall batch file, moving all the files to where you would want the log, then using the install batch again.
@Farfie
i had it in a specific directory but the log files showed up on to the desktop, i took your advise and uninstalled it and re installed and deleted the log files and it didn’t show up when i played a 10 bit video. thanks 🙂
madVR reports:
– creating Direct3D device failed (8876086c)
I set up everything according to the guide.. everything goes smoothly until this. I have latest DirectX and latest drivers installed… Video Card is an Intel GMA 950.
Any solutions to this problem?
Also, I followed the tutorial on my desktop computer and it worked perfectly… although it is much newer/more powerful than this laptop.
I forgot to mention I’m running Windows XP Professional.
@Farfie
Got it to work. Changed the filter settings and some random one so I can hit the Apply button. Also updated everything that had an update, so it works now. Thanks for getting the wheel turning.
Got this page bookmarked for future reference. Been using CCCP for a few years that it became hard to switch. but came around to do it today since I felt like experimenting.
Noticed a difference in video quality after switching, though I had to do a few extra tweaks to get it to work with my 5.1ch speakers properly.
why cant I use lav filters? I switched both audio and video decoder to prefer at external filters but when i check it at the filter list it doesnt show up. does anybody have an idea