Audio/video Setup Guide

[TheaterTek]

TheaterTek 2 Easy Audio/Video Setup

Launch TheaterTek and choose Configuration from the right-click menu, or use the shortcut CTRL-C to bring up the configuration dialog.

AUDIO SETUP:
Click on the Audio tab to access audio properties.

SP/DIF Connection:
If you are connecting your sound card to a receiver which will handle the decoding of the Dolby Digital and DTS signals, choose SP/DIF on the Output dropdown, otherwise choose one of the other options. (See below).
Under the Audio Device setting, choose either DirectSound:name of your device, or just name of your device. What is the difference? Basically, the first one is using the Microsoft DirectSound audio driver, and the second is using the WaveOut driver.
So which one should I use? There is no simple answer to this question, as a lot depends on the way the driver for your audio card or chipset was written. It is generally better to choose the DirectSound version first and test it, then change to the waveout option if you experience audio issues such as lip-sync, or skipping. If you are using an Audigy card, then you MUST choose the DirectSound version.
The Default choices that appear on this dropdown correspond to the audio device chosen by the operating system and displayed under the Sounds and Audio devices control panel.

Analog Connection:
If you have the Advanced audio version, then additional options will be available on the Output dropdown list. Most notably, selecting Multi-Channel will allow you to configure the number and size of speakers in your setup.
Stereo, will downmix any multi-channel source to just two channels. However, if you do not have the advanced audio pack, DTS signals cannot be downmixed to two channels.
Dolby ProLogic will use the Dolby ProLogic algorithm to re-create the left, right, center and surround channels from a Dolby Pro Logic encoded stereo source.

Dolby/DTS Preference:
Most people with DTS capable receivers prefer to choose the DTS track on a DVD when it is available. Use this option to let TheaterTek make this selection for you if the DVD allows audio tracks to be switched on the fly. (Note: Some DVD's always require that audio streams are slected via the Audio menu option on the DVD).

VIDEO SETUP:
Click on the Video tab to access video properties.

Video setup probably causes the most confusion and results in the inevitable "which settings are best for me?".
There is essentially no right answer to this question as much depends on personal preference, video card being used, and display device being used.

However, I will explain the differences in the technology and provide suggestions for video card/display type combinations.

Overlay, VMR, VMR9, what the heck do they mean?
Back in the dark ages (circa 2000), there was really only one option for video playback on graphics cards, and that was called Overlay. Overlay stands for the video overlay hardware that is present on virtually every video card manufactured in the last several years. Basically, the graphic card manufacturers reserved an area of silicon on their chips to handle a video buffer that DVD software manufacturers and media companies could use for the purpose of displaying motion video. The quality of the video that could be displayed on the overlay was highly dependent on the implementation of this hardware by the card manufacturer. One advantage of using the Overlay was that it used relatively few resources on the PC and made video playback with low powered cpu's feasible. Think back to the days of PIII 450's...

When Microsoft introduced Windows XP, they also introduced with it a new video rendering technology called the VMR, which stands for Video Mixing Renderer. To be precise, it was named VMR7 and only existed on Windows XP. What the VMR did was allow various video streams to be composited and rendered on a per-pixel basis using the 3D capabilities of the card. This allowed special effects such as drawing the video on 3D surfaces such as a rotating cube, or adding transparency. Now with the advent of the VMR, video is no longer operating in a fixed 2D plane, but can be drawn inside a 3D world, much like the modern video games. The video is now a texture, just like a wall in Doom 3, and can have several effects applied to it. How useful is this for high quality DVD playback, not much, but it does open the door to many other possibilities to improve the quality of video playback.

VMR9 was introduced with DirectX 9 and effectively built on VMR7 and made available for all Windows operating systems. Many of the flaws and deficiencies of VMR7 were corrected in VMR9 and made it a much more tangible alternative to Overlay for video playback. It is still not without various limitations, and again Microsoft improved on the original VMR9 with Service Pack 2 for XP. So I strongly recommend you install Service Pack 2 if you're running XP.

What is DXVA?
DXVA stands for DirectX Video Acceleration, and is a means to offload much of the initial video processing to the card instead of doing it in software. How much DXVA accelerates the decoding is dependent on the video card being used, and the drivers for that card. Without going into too much detail, there is a lot of work involved in taking an MPEG2 stream (such as a DVD), or a WMV-HD stream and decoding it so it can be displayed on your output device. Back in the early days, using video acceleration was almost always required in order to get smooth playback due to cpu limitations. Today, it is needed much less, unless we're talking about HD streams such as WMV-HD or HD transport streams, where the very high resolutions (1280x720, 1920x1080) compared to DVD resolutions (720x480) stress even modern cpus and video cards.

What are the de-interlacing options?
Under the De-interlacing Control option you'll find Auto, Film, Video and Smart. Auto and Smart for the most part are the same, TheaterTek will detect the source material as either Video or Film and make adjustments accordingly. Smart is unique to the NVPP mentioned below.
You should typically leave this option on either Auto or Smart, but occasionally you may need to adjust for a specific DVD and set Video or Film to prevent a herringbone effect as you see motion in the video.
The de-interlacing Mode, should usually be left as Best Available as this will tap into the video cards preferred, or best, de-interlacing method.


What's best for me?
So, with those explanations out of the way, which renderer should you choose?
If you're using an older operating system such as Windows 98/Me or Windows 2000, the Overlay may be the best choice for you. I strongly feel that to get the best out of VMR9 you need to be running XP with Service Pack 2.
Some people also feel that the picture produced by the Overlay is much sharper than the picture from VMR9. This is true on many cards, but you should also take into consideration what a sharper picture means. Is it sharper because the pixels that make up the image are rendered and scaled better, or is it because an artifical edge enhancement or noise has been added to the video, sacrificing overall detail?
If you're using XP with SP2, then my personal preference is to use VMR9.
So why is VMR7 still available as an option in TheaterTek? The original VMR7 available only for XP, is a little simpler than VMR9 and can use less resources than VMR9, so it has been left in for those that want to do a comparison.

But what about the so-called 'FullScreen' or 'Exclusive' mode, YUVMixing, Post-Processing with NVPP and FFDShow?
Now that we've covered the basics, there are some additional options that can be used to improve the picture quality. I stress CAN BE used, because we now enter the territory of personal preference, particularly when we're talking about FFDShow, and individual graphic card capabilities.

What's FullScreen mode?
FullScreen mode is an option that is available on the Advanced Video button. This works in tandem with VMR9 and requires XP SP2 to function. What does it do? When this option is checked and you've selected VMR9 as your preferred renderer, TheaterTek effectively takes over the video card and places it into what is known as 'fullscreen exclusive' mode. This means that no other applications or windows can appear on top of the playing video. The advantage of doing this is that TheaterTek takes over part of the rendering process and allows effects such as fade in/fade out graphics and improved video scaling, leading to a better picture. By taking control of the video card, the smoothness of playback can also be improved, particularly with cards that 'tear' the video at certain resolutions.
What's the disadvantage? The right-click context menu is disabled when this mode is used, so if you live and die by that functionality you will need to use the alternative methods to access the same functionality. Fortunately, virtually all the capability that could be accessed by the context menu is now available through the GUI. If you also like to toggle between different applications while watching a movie, this mode isn't for you. Clicking on a second monitor window, or alt-tabbing while the video is playing will cause it to minimize to the task bar. Clicking on the minimized TheaterTek icon in the taskbar will restore the video, but in fairness, this mode is intended to provide the highest quality playback experience and not for casual, interrupted movie watching.

What does the Buffers option on the Advanced video page do?
The default for this is set to Normal and in almost all cases you should leave it there. If you suffer from bad stuttering, you may want to drop it down to 'Less' to see if that improves your playback.

What is YUVMixing?
Typically this should be turned on. It can help reduce cpu load.

What is Post Processing with NVPP and do I need it?
This is the nVidia Post Processor supplied with TheaterTek that is capable of handling 3:2 pulldown detection on the video frames themselves rather than relying on the flags that are part of the DVD encoding itself. Why should I care? You'd actually be surprised just how many DVD's are badly mastered with incorrect flags specifying video content when the material is actually film based and vice versa. What's more, these flags appear all over a DVD and are often incorrect in-between chapters, or sometimes the whole DVD.
Choosing this option in the Post Processing section will turn this feature on, but will also force the decoder into software mode, as the NVPP cannot be used with DXVA acceleration turned on.
Who should NOT use it? nVidia built the capability of the NVPP into their latest graphics cards so this is not needed if you use certain nVidia cards. A full list is on the nVidia website, but essentially, 6200, 6600, 6800, and 7800 cards have this feature built into hardware. If you have one of these cards, to enable this feature you should turn on the following: DXVA, Smart mode de-interlacing, and Allow subtitle movement.


What is Post-Processing with FFDShow?
This is a tough one to describe in just a few paragraphs as FFDShow is a very powerful post-processing tool. Its depth is too great to go into here and there are several guides and opinions posted on our forum and others. However, I will cover the basics for the most common configurations and the rest is up to you. One important point to note is that FFDShow forces software mode on the decoder and each option uses more and more cpu power. It is not recommended to use FFDShow with anything less than a P4 2.4 or equivalent.

Which version do I use, there are so many?
FFShow is a constantly evolving filter and as such has a new build almost on a daily basis. The version we've tested and used in-house is the 'ffdshow-20050303-sse' build which you should be able to Google. The SSE part in the filename is because this is a specific build to use SSE instructions on newer Intel and AMD chips which improve the performance of the filter. If you do not have a recent cpu, you will need to use a different version without the SSE optimizations.

What do I turn on?
The most common feature that is used is the Lanczos scaling. Lanczos is a very cpu intensive algorithm, but it performs high quality scaling of an image to your output resolution and applies a little sharpening at the same time.
You should enable the Resize and Aspect feature of FFDShow, choose Lanczos as the scaling algorithm, and set the parameter to 2. You can adjust the Luma and Chroma sharpen to taste.

For NTSC users, where DVD resolution is 720x480, should choose Multiply by 2.0, and make sure that Resize Always is checked.
PAL users, where DVD resolution is 720x576, should choose a Multiply of 1.5 to avoid losing video color controls caused by the vertical resolution going over 1088. This restriction should hopefully be removed in a future nVidia driver release.
No Aspect Ratio correction should also be applied.

You also need to verify a few other settings:
On the Codecs page of FFDShow, disable everything except Raw Video, which should be set to YV12
On the Output page of FFDShow, select only YV12.

In TheaterTek, you will also need to adjust your Aspect Ratios in the AR Editor to compensate for using FFDShow. This is detailed in the manual.

Summary:
If you made it this far, you're either now watching the best picture you've ever seen, or you're totally lost.
Just in case you fall into the latter category, here are some basic recommendations for easy setup:

User 1:
"I'm running on an older cpu and haven't moved to XP SP2 yet"
Select Overlay for your video renderer choice
Check DXVA in the Advanced Video page.

User 2:
"I've got an nVidia 6600GT on XP SP2 and just want the easiest setup for a great picture"
Select VMR9 for all renders
Select Smart for your De-interlacing option
Check Allow Subtitle Movement
Check DXVA in the Advanced Video Page
Check FullScreen in the Advanced Video Page
Check YUVMixing in the Advanced Video Page

User 3:
"I've got a recent ATI card on XP SP2 and want the easiest setup for a great picture"
Select VMR9 for all renders
Select Smart for your De-interlacing option
Check Allow Subtitle Movement
Check FullScreen in the Advanced Video Page
Check YUVMixing in the Advanced Video Page
Optional: Select NVPP as your Post Processor in the first Post Processing dropdown

User 4:
"I've got state of the art hardware and just want the absolute best picture possible. PS I love to tweak."
Grab and install the FFDShow version as mentioned above.
Select VMR9 for all renders
Select Auto for your De-interlacing option
Check FullScreen in the Advanced Video Page
Check YUVMixing in the Advanced Video Page
Select FFDShow as your Post Processor in the first Post Processing dropdown

[Big Picture]

Your Guide is VERY helpful. Thank you!

Two suggestions:

1. Step By Step for migrating from 1.5 to 2.X

2. Current Hot Key Index.

[TheaterTek]

TheaterTek 2 will use the files created as part of TheaterTek 1.5.

You should copy the Data folder and Bookmarks folder from TT 1.5 to a safe place.
Uninstall TT 1.5
Install TT 2.0
Copy your saved Data and Bookmarks folder into the TT 2.0 folder, overwriting any temporary files created there.

All the Hotkey values are listed on the Hotkey tab of the Configuration dialog.

Andrew

[Max Leung]

nVidia built the capability of the NVPP into their latest graphics cards so this is not needed if you use certain nVidia cards. A full list is on the nVidia website, but essentially, 6200, 6600, and 7800 cards have this feature built into hardware.

I think you forgot to add the 6800 cards...right?

Good FAQ!

[Starred]

Great!
thx Andrew

Maybe you can add this link to your explanation of YUV mixing:
YUV Mixing

[TheaterTek]

Starred,
It's basically very technical which is why I left it out.

Andrew

[tanwn]

i don't recomend yuv mixing becuase it affects the color decoder, check out the green color decoder on avia special test pattern and u will know what i mean, there's a green underpush around 25% when tested with ffdshow resize to 1920x1080i. Does it affect other settings, you need to find out for yourself as i've not tested it.

[jimwhite]

"there's a green underpush around 25%"

this is usually FFDShow-version dependent....

[kschmit2]

Originally Posted by TheaterTek

Max,
No I'm not, the 6800 series (NV40 to be precise) does not contain the VP.

Starred,
It's basically very technical which is why I left it out.

Andrew

Andrew, only the WMV acceleration is broken in the (or most) 6800 cards. The VP is in there and is fully functional.
http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo_support.html

[NiToNi]

Originally Posted by jimwhite

"there's a green underpush around 25%"

this is usually FFDShow-version dependent....

Could you be a bit more specific please.

[Max Leung]

kschmit2, it is possible that NVIDIA is lying to us AGAIN.

If what Andrew said is true, s**t will hit the fan. (But I doubt it...it would be a hell of a conspiracy)

[TheaterTek]

My mistake. The NV40 handles the features listed on the nVidia website.

Andrew

[Vern Dias]

I don't recomend yuv mixing becuase it affects the color decoder, check out the green color decoder on avia special test pattern and u will know what i mean, there's a green underpush around 25% when tested with ffdshow resize to 1920x1080i.

It's a known fact that this is an issue with ffdshow at resize's that are not related to the native resolution of the source. Use 1.5x or 2.x resize and you will be fine.

Not using YUV mixing can cost you a lot of CPU cycles in crtain environments.

Vern

[Blue]

Thanks for the guide Andrew..

[capitano]

quote..
On the Output page of FFDShow, select only YV12.



User 4:
"I've got state of the art hardware and just want the absolute best picture possible. PS I love to tweak."
Grab and install the FFDShow version as mentioned above.
Select VMR9 for all renders
Select Auto for your De-interlacing option
Check FullScreen in the Advanced Video Page
Check YUVMixing in the Advanced Video Page
Select FFDShow as your Post Processor in the first Post Processing dropdown[/quote]

apart a greater use of the CPU, I have noticed a really great improvement of the image quality using in FFDshow RGB32( with high quality YV12 to RBG conversion) instead of YV12...
YUVMixing not checked.
Nobody uses RBG32?

[Denner]

Hi Andrew.

You write that the nVidia 6200 supports 3:2 pulldown detection but on the nVidia web page it says that it does not support it, so I am a bit confused about it...
Could you please clear this up for me :-)

Best Regards
Denner

[Antonio C]

Originally Posted by capitano

quote..
On the Output page of FFDShow, select only YV12.
Nobody uses RBG32?

What is Post-Processing with FFDShow?
This is a tough one to describe in just a few paragraphs as FFDShow is a very powerful post-processing tool. Its depth is too great to go into here and there are several guides and opinions posted on our forum and others. However, I will cover the basics for the most common configurations and the rest is up to you


cheers
Antonio

[tacomafran]

I've been using Overlay (have never used ffdshow) and recently tried the VMR9. I'm a "User 2" (nVidia 6600GT and XP SP2) - with Marquee 9" CRT and followed the suggested settings. My observations are: the picture is softer compared to Overlay and the menu command (up, down, left, right) is more responsive when on DVD menus. What causes the softer picture? It would be nice is VMR9 is as sharp or sharper than Overlay because I like the responsiveness of the former.

[axel]

Originally Posted by tacomafran

....It would be nice is VMR9 is as sharp or sharper than Overlay because I like the responsiveness of the former.

This is where ffdshow can help. W/o ffdshow even overlay is way too soft for my taste.

_____
Axel

[tacomafran]

I've downloaded and tried the ffdshow (2005-09-20). It doesn't seem to have any effect. I enabled it under the Postprocessing dropdown list. How do you make it work?