There are many options which can be enabled in MPV to improve the video quality but will increase the GPU power necessary. All the options described here are available in the highest video quality options available on Windows with some available in lower quality settings as well. Those wondering what these entail (or want to attempt to use them on other platforms) are provided a description here. Many of these are taken from GitHub - classicjazz/mpv-config: MPV configuration files for high quality rendering of traditional live TV and video disc formats and can be added to your mpv.conf file. See first post for the location of this file
Debanding
MPV can detect and reduce color banding present in video. This is more often prevalent in low-light scenes. Debanding is turned on when you use the High and higher quality settings. However the strength and processing of the debanding can be increases with the following:
deband-iterations=4 # deband steps (https://mpv.io/manual/master/#options-deband-iterations: defaults to 1)
deband-threshold=48 # deband strength (https://mpv.io/manual/master/#options-deband-threshold: defaults to 32)
Anti-ringing
Sometimes when video is scaled up or down some artifacts may be introduced. The anti-ringing directives try to reduce these artifacts but could potentially introduce artifacts of their own.
scale-antiring=0.7 # luma upscale deringing (https://mpv.io/manual/master/#options-scale-antiring: defaults to 0)
dscale-antiring=0.7 # luma downscale deringing (https://mpv.io/manual/master/#options-dscale-antiring: defaults to 0)
cscale-antiring=0.7 # chroma upscale deringing (https://mpv.io/manual/master/#options-cscale-antiring: defaults to 0)
External Shaders
There are multiple external shaders available. Do not combine multiple shaders of the same type. Two possible configurations of the external scalers are listed below: See mpv Configuration Guide for Watching Videos – Kokomins for more information. A large list of available scalers can be found at User Scripts · mpv-player/mpv Wiki · GitHub.
SSimSuperRes
This scaler is used in the Ultra quality setting. It uses the SSimSuperRes external scaler to perform the scale operation. This will require a higher end GPU such as a GTX 1060 or higher to perform fast enough for video playback.
On Windows, the scaler is automatically copied into the shaders directory for you. On other OSs, you must first download the SSimSuperRes from https://gist.githubusercontent.com/igv/2364ffa6e81540f29cb7ab4c9bc05b6b/raw/SSimSuperRes.glsl and save it in the shaders directory (create if it doesn’t exist) next to your mpv.conf file.
Then add the following to your mpv.conf:
glsl-shaders="~~/shaders/SSimSuperRes.glsl" # Set B C parameter to Mitchell.
scale=haasnsoft
dscale=mitchell
cscale=ewa_lanczossoft
If you want a sharper image instead, you can use:
glsl-shaders="~~/shaders/SSimSuperRes.glsl" # Set B C parameter to Robidoux.
scale=ewa_lanczossharp
dscale=mitchell
cscale=spline64
The above mentions Set B C parameter to which is asking you to edit the shaders/SSimSuperRes.glsl file and change the 2 instances of #define Kernel(x) MN(0.334, 0.333, abs(x)). You change the two numbers to:
- Catrom:
0, 0.5
- Mitchell:
0.334, 0.333
- Robidoux:
0.3782,0.3109
FSRCNN, SSimDownscale, and KrigBilateral
These scalers are used in the Make My GPU Hurt quality setting. This combination of shaders requires a really high end GPU to perform fast enough for video playback. This set of scalers uses a Fast Super Resolution Convolutional Neural Network (FSRCNN) as a 2x pre-scaler, SSimDownscale as a downscaler, and KrigBilateral as the scaler for the chroma channel. With this combination, when you play 720p content on a 1080p display, it is first doubled to 1440p using FSRCNN, then downscaled to 1080p using SSimDownscale, and the KrigBilateral scales the 360p chroma channel → 1080p (assuming 4:2:0 chroma subsampling is being used).
On Windows, the scalers are automatically copied into the shaders directory for you. On other OSs, you must first download the FSRCNNX scalers from: Releases · igv/FSRCNN-TensorFlow · GitHub, SSimDownscale from https://gist.githubusercontent.com/igv/36508af3ffc84410fe39761d6969be10/raw/SSimDownscaler.glsl, and KrigBilateral from https://gist.githubusercontent.com/igv/a015fc885d5c22e6891820ad89555637/raw/KrigBilateral.glsl. Place these in the shaders directory.
Then add the following to your mpv.conf file:
# luma upscaling
glsl-shaders="~~/shaders/FSRCNNX_x2_8-0-4-1.glsl"
scale=ewa_lanczos
# luma downscaling
# note: ssimdownscaler is tuned for mitchell and downscaling=no
glsl-shaders-append="~~/shaders/SSimDownscaler.glsl"
dscale=mitchell
linear-downscaling=no
# chroma upscaling and downscaling
glsl-shaders-append="~~/shaders/KrigBilateral.glsl"
cscale=mitchell
sigmoid-upscaling=yes
Audio Drops
When I had done the above on an RTX 2060, I started getting audio drops in certain content. The solution was to go into the NVIDIA Control Panel -> Manage 3D Settings -> Power Management Mode and change it to Prefer Maximum Performance.
