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Old 11th August 2019, 18:22   #1  |  Link
ThunderFi
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Join Date: Jul 2019
Posts: 42
madVR with LG OLED C8

Hey all!

I'm new to this forum and new to all of this basically. I've been doing my best to find information on my own but I wanted to ask a couple of things here.

I'm using my LG C8 when I watch movies from my PC, usually 4K HDR movies. I'm using MPC-HC + madVR. I've read a lot about different options and algorithms and I feel like my setup is mostly good, but there are a couple of things I'm uncertain about. I'm using the correct HDMI cable as well.

It all began when I started noticing some really bad color banding in my 4K HDR movies. I started testing different things and trying to find information from the web. It would seem that the color banding is not that severe when I haven't chosen the PC mode from my TV. If the HDMI input is just 'HDMI' the banding is very small but I still see it certain scenes. The downside is that the picture seems to be less sharp when the HDMI input is not in PC mode. I have enabled HDMI ultra deep color.

In madVR I have selected my TV's native bitdepth as 10 bit (or higher) since the C8 has a 10 bit panel. I have checked with the debug console that the D3D11 fullscreen says 10 bit. My video card settings are at default, which means 8 bit RGB. I have an RTX 2080.

I have chosen the 'passthrough HDR to display' and 'send HDR metadata to the display' in madVR.

Here are the questions:

1. I know my TV's PC mode forces chroma sub sampling 4:4:4. Is this why movies in PC mode seem to be sharper? My 4K HDR movies are 4:2:0 so the 4:4:4 shouldn't come into play, right? Should I use PC mode or just the basic 'HDMI' or something else?

2. RGB output levels in madVR. This is something I just recently figured out to try. When I select TV levels (16-235) and from my TV select black level as low the picture seems to look much better than PC levels (0-255) with black level as high. With PC levels and black level low the picture is way too dark. The gamma setting on my TV is 2.2 and I have selected pure power curve 2.20 in madVR calibration settings. So the question would be, should I keep the TV levels in madVR or is there something weird in my setup? Which one should look better?

3. My TV is not properly calibrated because I don't own the necessary equipment and I haven't bought the services of a professional calibrator. I have tried a lot of different settings in my TV settings based on recommendations from RTINGS from example. Then I have done some tweaking based on what looks better to my eye. Anyway, I read somewhere that most modern TV's are calibrated to BT.2020 and that's why I should choose that in madVR's calibration settings? Or should I choose something else or disable calibration controls entirely?

4. HDR settings in madVR. Is it better to passthrough HDR to the display or should I be using pixel shader tone mapping or external 3DLUT tone mapping?

Like I said I'm still new to all of this. Hopefully someone can answer my questions, I would appreciate it a lot!

Last edited by ThunderFi; 11th August 2019 at 18:25.
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