Best way to watch dvds?

BogEyes

BogEyes

BogEyes

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Hey, hoping some of you might be able to help me out. I've recently upgraded my system to one in my sig, and also bought a 24" led backlit monitor, 1920x1080.

Been really looking forward to watching some films on my new monitor, as I assumed the picture quality wood be great! However, I watched transformers yesterday using vlc player and I was abit dissappointed. It sort of feels like its just stretching the film to fit the screen, so it doesn't look as sharp as it should. I was also getting tearing, and I can't seem to figure out if theres somthing along the lines of v-sync to turn on?? I've done some reading into all this but am just getting bogged down with too much information, so I've got a couple of questions.

Are there any free media players that play dvd's at 1920x1080 resoloution (upscaling?)

Is there such a thing as v-sync when watching dvds?

Totally confused with talk of different codecs, and all the other things you need to download aside from the media player itself. help?

Yesterday I downloaded VLC player, zoom player, divx player, media player classic, anydvd and theres a couple of other things which seem to have installed themselves without me really having a clue what they are?! What do I need to just simply watch my dvds at my native resoloution of 1920x1080 without tearing?? Or can't it be done?

Cheers, borgia.
 
I use FFDshow and AC3Filter.

FFDshow does an excellent job of upscaling, sharpening, NR, etc... Loads of options to tweak and get the best out of your videos.

AC3Filter is also good for sound. Especially the dynamic range compression feature.
 
Right, both of those seem to be installed. Don't really understand what they are though. They aren't media players? How do they work? From looking through it, ffsdshow seems to have a mass of different settings etc that you can change, but its like reading a foriegn language to me!
 
Which graphics card do you have?

If you've got any nvidia card, there are options to help make the picture better in the options, like removing noise, a sharper image, more contrast etc.

A little off topic, but if you've got a ps3, the upscalling is incredible.
 
I've got an ati radeon 5770. And I don't own a ps3 either! I'm gonna try have a fiddle about with ffdshow anyway?
 
Hmmm. Cheers, but I'm still pretty lost! So dvds play at a low resoloution, and I assume thats way they don't look great on high resoloution monitors? I never really thought about this, but I suppose its obvious really that you need High Definition (marketing term?) content to be able to watch stuff at high definition/resoloutions!

If someone can explain to me in laymans terms how to make a dvd look better that would be great!
 
DVD isn't so much "low" resolution as such it's just low in relation to the resolution of your monitor. If you think about a DVD image which is 720x576 (I think) stretched out over the size of your monitor it's always going to suffer a perceived hit in quality - if you resized your window it would look fine, but obviously you want them full screen. I watch DVDs on my 1680x1050 screen and while they don't look great up close they are pefectly fine a couple of metres away. What you need is to upscale them with one of the tools mentioned.

The vsync/tearing issue can probably be solved with a few clicks in your graphics card setting, but not having an Ati card myself I can't point you in the right direction.
 
theheyes said:
What you need is to upscale them with one of the tools mentioned.

The vsync/tearing issue can probably be solved with a few clicks in your graphics card setting, but not having an Ati card myself I can't point you in the right direction.
Click to expand...

Thanks mate, thats shed some light on the issue. Using the tools mentioned, ffdshow being the main one? How would I go about upscaling a dvd? It sounds as if thats what I want to be doing?
 
I have a link at home with a guide on how to setup ffdshow to upscale, I'll edit this and add the link soon. The upscaled results really do look good compared to the standard vido. Ffdshow should also upscale video files too (I.e avi, mpeg etc)
 
cokecan72 said:
I have a link at home with a guide on how to setup ffdshow to upscale, I'll edit this and add the link soon. The upscaled results really do look good compared to the standard vido. Ffdshow should also upscale video files too (I.e avi, mpeg etc)
Click to expand...

Thanks, that would be great mate :)
 
Off topic slightly but do any of you know how I can get FFDShow working on WMP on W7 x64? I'm using the x64 FFDShow but it is not showing up in the system tray. Any ideas?
 
I've got the shark 7 Codecs on vista64 and when I play a DVD or any other movie file in VMC/MPC-HD (on my second monitor) FFD etc.. show up in the tray automaticaly!!..
 
sorry for hte late reply guys lol completly forgot about this thread

The site where the guide was hosted seems to have gone now :( it was on htpcnews It was a nice guide because it had pictures showing the difference between standard dvd playback and upscaled in various scenes of films.

This guide isnt too bad, from what I remember they're basically the same settings as the htpcnews one but without the pics to show the differences

You could also have a read of the huuuuuuuuuuuuuuuge sticky on the theatertek forums for more info.

I think the main things you need to alter are postprocessing, Blur & NR and Resize & Aspect

Hope this is of some help to ya
 
Macky said:
Off topic slightly but do any of you know how I can get FFDShow working on WMP on W7 x64? I'm using the x64 FFDShow but it is not showing up in the system tray. Any ideas?
Click to expand...

I use ffdshow tryouts with the haali media splitter with wmp in w7 x64. the x64 version of ffdshow seemed a bit buggy so i stuck with the 32bit version
 
Cheers mate. I followed these settings..

First, for DVD's, assuming you have a DVD player which supports using FFDSHOW as a filter.

1. Blur & NR - Enabled
- Disable everything from the settings, except for Denoise3D and HQ, they sould be enabled.
- In Denoise3D settings, put Chroma to 1.00, Time to 4.00 and Luma to 0.00.

2. Resize & Aspect - Enabled
- Resize on, Multiply by 3 if your computer can handle it, 2 if it can't, or even some specific resolution will do. (The point is to resize the video to be bigger than your viewing resolution, which the video card will then scale it down to. For some reason, this gives you better IQ than just resizing it straight to your native resolution)
- Enable Resize Always
- Aspect Ratio should be changed when needed, if ever, but "Keep original aspect ratio" is a good default
- On Resize & Aspects Settings sub-page, set both Luma and Chroma methods to "Lanczos", and make sure the Lock is enabled. Number of tapos should be set to 2.00, Luma Sharpen to 1.00-1.50 and Chroma Sharpen to 0.00. Enable Accurate Rounding.

4. Deinterlacing - Enabled (Note, this is heavy filter)
- Set it to Framerate doubler, and "no motion estimation - blend images"

All other filters should be disabled.
Click to expand...

And watching 24 it looks way better, honestly, it really does! Thanks a lot!

Just chucked Transformers back in and that looks better too.
 
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