Is there such thing as upconverting software?

[Informant X]

Greetings,
Now before I start this might be a silly question, but here it goes. I have a DVD player that upconverts video to 1080i. So when I get a movie from my computer and slap it on a USB drive and play it through my DVD player it upconverts it to 1080i for my TV. This video to me seems to look better than if I was playing it on my computer in which I have my res set to 1920x1080. So my question, i'm going to be making HTPC like tomorrow, and I will play my movies using WMP on my computer to my TV. So I was wondering is there a way to upconvert it when playing it from my computer? Or is this naturally always done when doing it from my computer if I have my res set to 1920x1080?

Hope that kinda makes sense :/

 

[nickbits]

If your screen is 1920x1080 it is upconverting. You might want to experiment with different DVD decoders (windvd, powerdvd, etc) to find the one that looks best to you.

 

[Swivelguy2]

If your computer playing something at 1080p looks worse than the DVD player playing the same file at 1080i, one of two things is happening:

A. Something is wrong with your computer hardware or software, preventing it from doing its job correctly. If you're using VGA to connect the computer to the TV, that could be it.

B. The reason it looks worse from the computer is because you're playing a low quality file in high resolution. The high resolution of the output makes it easy to see the flaws in the source material.

 

[blanketyblank]

try using the cccp with media player classic. There are lots of options you can tinker with in the video decoder section which will affect the upconverting. Depending on the codecs you eventually use there are a lot of tweaks that can be done in the video and you can google some guides on this like this one:
http://www.neowin.net/forum/lofiversion/index.php/t422992.html
I suggest mpc since the windows media player hides a lot of the settings so it's harder to configure the individual codecs.

 

[WelshBloke]

Whats the problem with the video on your computer?

Is it blocky, soft/blurry? Are you getting combing or ghosting?


Getting your video to look just as you like is a bit like voodoo!

Personally I just use WMP or MPC-HC (on defaults) as I cant be arsed tinkering (and every time I do it looks worse ).

 

[thilanliyan]

For me Windows Media Player looks better than media player classic-HC due to blockiness/aliasing. Is there a way to fix that in MPC-HC?

 

[WelshBloke]

For me Windows Media Player looks better than media player classic-HC due to blockiness/aliasing. Is there a way to fix that in MPC-HC?

Yeah WMP is the same for me, I prefer it but some people would say its too soft/blurry.

You can go to the options and fiddle around with the output and get it to look pretty much exactly like WMP looks, or you can download and install CCCP and get prepared to waste a great deal of time :awe:. You will be able to tweak everything though.

Blockiness is usually from upconverting a lower quality source and aliasing can be from a dodgy deinterlacer.



Edit:View>options>Playback>Output> try EVR Custom Pres and set the resizer to bilinear PS2.0 and maybe upping the EVR buffers.
Disclaimer -- I have no idea what EVR buffers are but from trial and error this looks best on my system YMMV

 

[lopri]

For me Windows Media Player looks better than media player classic-HC due to blockiness/aliasing. Is there a way to fix that in MPC-HC?

Go to Play -> Shaders and try messing around w/ the options. You can mix them up if you wish.



Or you can toy with the filters you have. Go to View -> Options -> Internal Filters / External Filters. If you have 3rd party codecs installed in your system you can set the priority so the MPC will use them. There is a guide on the web somewhere.

 

[0roo0roo]

somethings wrong with your settings. si the screen overscan? 1080p native?
computer does upscaling by default when running at anything higher than 720x480 its a given.

upscaling is not much more than shining a turd either way.