K-Lite MCP Setup Guide for Anime

K-Lite Mega Codec Pack Setup Guide for Anime
http://www.myanimelist.net/blog.php?eid=741397

Thank you, Admin (clsid?), for maintaining the K-Lite packages all these years.

Disclaimer:  Please note that the guide is posted on a personal blog and contains many personal preferences.  Please feel free to experiment with different options and find out what may or may not work for you.

No, I am not ffdshow developer.

There are several things wrong in that guide.
1) You should not recommend Mega version, since you are not using any of its extras (VFW codecs). You should use Standard or Full version instead.
2) It is not needed to reboot before install.
3) LAV works better than Haali for MP4.
4) LAV also works fine for Matroska, so there is no real need for Haali.
5) Icaros Shell extension should only be disabled if user does not want thumbnails. Many people like thumbnails, so you should mention that.
6) DirectShow subtitle filter should be enabled. It is very useful and does not interfere with MPC-HC, even when using its internal subtitle renderer.
7) Video renderer:
VMR-9 on XP if using hardware acceleration. Otherwise I recommend VMR-7. This is what automatic mode selects.
EVR-CP on Vista/7/8 is what automatic mode selects. Sync is fine too. You should not use VMR-9 on modern systems.
madVR is recommended for powerful systems, but only for advanced users.
Unchecking default tweaks is not something I would recommend. Both are useful for most people.
9) It is recommended to do speaker configuration, both in pack and in Windows control panel. Audio drivers on Windows XP sometimes do wrong mixing or give poor quality.
10) Internal subtitle renderer of MPC-HC should be disabled if not using hardware acceleration. DirectVobSub (= xy-VSFilter) gives much better performance for complex subtitles such as karaoke. Internal subtitle renderer is required if using DXVA (native). On fast systems it does not matter if ISR is used.
11) It is not needed to remove "MPC DXVA Video Decoder". It is inactive (unchecked) by default, except if enabled in installer. This item is only used on XP and allows to enable DXVA post-install if desired.
12) It is not needed to add any filters to external filters list. The LAV decoders have high merit and will get used by default already.
13) You should not uncheck colorspaces in LAV Video decoder. That only causes problems and performance loss.
14) Audio dithering is already enabled by default on fast systems. On XP and slow systems it should be disabled, as it can have big performance penalty.
15) Subpicture buffer size is already configured automatically based on CPU speed
16) Why auto-zoom to 200%? That is just annoying when watching HD videos.

Thank you nonetheless =).

I must say that I am surprised and humbled by your review.  I didn't expect that anyone would take the time to provide feedback.  I shall respond in kind to the points that you have raised :).

Before anyone misunderstands, I should mention that the linked guide above is not meant to be an official guide.  It's incorporated with a lot of personal preferences, so it's more or less a set of personal suggestions and documentation.

1)  The Mega version is recommended because I would like people to be exposed to other options, and to pick and choose as they see fit.  What works for me may not work for other people, and vice versa.

2)  I have added another line to clarify that it's for the clean removal of codecs that may be in use prior to installation.

3, 4)  Albeit it happens very rarely, I have come across subtitle rendering issues a few times with LAV splitter.  I imagine that this will be a non-topic moving forward, however, if Haali will not become compatible with H.265.

5)  Icaros is not an essential component for the purpose of the guide (i.e. anime playback), and is therefore excluded to avoid potential compatibility problems (e.g. explorer crashing).

6, 10)  I have to admit that this is a personal preference on my part.  I prefer MPC-HC's internal subtitle renderer to xy-VSFilter because the former provides more flexibility with placement of subtitles (relative to video frame), and can be quickly enabled/disabled on the fly with a MPC-HC built-in hotkey (W).  xy-VSFilter does have better performance.

7)  Thank you.  This is timely since the latest nVidia GeForce drivers (v33x.xx) have broken support for VMR-9 in MPC-HC.  Some of the MPC-HC features (e.g. Display Stats / Ctrl + J) are not available with VMR-7, but I may switch to it (or another renderer) if nVidia drivers stay broken for a prolonged period of time.

8)  Same reason as #5.  I think it's great to have them as a selectable options in the installer, but I would personally prefer them to be off by default.

9)  I agree that audio drivers used to be quite problematic on Windows XP, but they seem to be much more mature by now.  I honestly haven't had a single issue in the past five years.

11)  Noted.  I have take out the "MPC DXVA Video Decoder" line from the guide.

12)  With the current version of K-Lite Codec Pack, configuration changes made through the MPC-HC Options -> Internal Filters -> Internal LAV Filters settings section are not reflected during playback.  You can verify this through Play menu -> Filters -> LAV Audio/Video Decoder.  They can, however, be adjusted through Options -> External Filters.

13)  Unfortunately, luminance and chroma issues are still prevalent in anime releases.  An effective solution is to use the YUV -> RGB converter implemented by nevcairiel.  See http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1523729#post1523729.  Both ffdshow and CoreAVC have/had a similar feature.

14)  Noted.  I have rewritten the corresponding section in the guide.

15)  I know.  The two of us had a lengthy discussion on this in https://codecs.forumotion.net/t1065-mpc-hc-subtitle-default-settings-update ;).

16)  It's handy for SD videos with small resolutions :P.  I actually find it pretty convenient with HD videos, too, as MPC-HC will expand right to the monitor borders but still stay within them.

You may want to emphasize the fact that a lot of the settings are personal preferences. Some may reduce functionality. So maybe explain more what the options do, so that users can decide if they want the functionality or not.

2) In that case it would be better to reboot after uninstalling other codecs, instead of before.
The codec pack is able to detect pretty much every other pack in existence and can run its uninstaller. Then it checks if any files have been scheduled to be removed at next boot. It will inform user if a reboot is needed first.

4) There may be an occasional issue with subs. As far as I know it only happens on Windows XP. It seems to be related to loading of embedded fonts. Seeking back in the video usually fixes it.

6,10) It would be useful to mention the performance advantage of xy-VSFilter. Some anime videos have very complex subtitles, that won't play smoothly with the ISR on older systems.

9) Others may not be so lucky and could be stuck with old drivers.

12) Internal instances of LAV store their settings separately. The pack primarily uses the external instances. There are various ways to access the settings (of the external ones):
start menu shortcuts (if enabled)
tray icon (if enabled)
codec tweak tool > configuration
mpc-hc menu > play > filters
If you are adding the external filters purely as an extra way of accessing settings, then mention that reason.

13) Are you sure the problem is with the video? Some older drivers have bugs that cause incorrect colorspace conversion in certain video renderers. Again and issue mostly limited to XP. Luminance issue is very common with certain old ATI drivers in combination with VMR-9. That is one of the reasons why VMR-7 is default. Some people prefer Haali on older systems for same reason.
Instead of recommending it as a default, I suggest you mention it as a possible solution in case user has problems with bad colors ("washed out" video).

I have added a disclaimer to the opening post in this thread.

2)  The reboot is not meant for the installation of K-Lite Codec Pack.  It's great that KCP installer does its own checks.

4)  Embedded fonts are a common practice with anime releases.  I will reconsider when LAV Splitter has better support for them in the future.

6,10)  I have modified the last sentence in the guide to mention xy-VSFilter.

9)  No.  I am not going to tell people who are not having any problem with their audio setup to enable mixing just for the sake of it.

12)  I thought that I did but maybe it wasn't clear enough.  I have added additional explanation.

13)  Yes.  I have both nVidia and ATI video cards.  People who don't have references to accurate colours will not necessarily detect chroma and luma issues.

7)  It looks like the latest nVidia drivers have broken EVR-CP support, too.  Sync Renderer is not affected.

I don't know how I missed it before, but I added a line to the guide today to uncheck the Dynamic Range Compression (DRC) option in LAV Audio Decoder.  DRC is as attractive to me as those "enhancements" in AMD drivers, and it's unchecked by default in clean LAV installation.

Like the admin suggested in most cases in the first reply;

I think most desktops should be able to handle madVR by now (my 7 year old desktop does, but it has allot of options and some options really have a strong impact on performance). In madVR there is a specific option to deselect for watching anime. My experience is that madVR is better as the default VMR-7.

I really dont see a reason for improving subtitles since the quality is already sufficient on default except that it should display animated subtitles. Other then that there is really no need to change anyting from the default at the cost of performance issues.

There is almost no issues with keeping sound output at defaulth on my xp, since most anime are stereo already, but only 1 time I experienced an issue that 5.1 audio from an anime was tottally wrong "displayed" with hearing voices at low volume and enviroment at high volumes. It was fixed by putting the output at stereo since I use headphones only. Since then I kept output at stereo. Also enabling 32-bit floating point without mixing gives extreme distorted noise, at least in ffdshow on my xp.

madVR was more of a necessity before when ffdshow was too slow and LAV didn't have a RGB converter/sampler of its own.  LAV's RGB converter works fairly well now, and nevcairiel has said that he will enhance it further when given the time.  madVR does have a lead in terms of absolute quality at the moment, but it also has a heavier dependency not just on hardware but on drivers, too.

Case in point:  People who are currently affected by the brokenness of nVidia GeForce drivers v33x.xx will experience some frame losses here and there with only LAV installed, but at least they can still watch videos.  However, if they have added madVR to the end of the pipeline then they are pretty much screwed, unfortunately.  MPC-HC will either crash or show a black screen for a prolonged period of time.

My guide is written with simplicity in mind, so things like madVR and ReClock are not covered.  People who are interested in setting them up can refer to http://www.myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=516729.

If a file's audio track has been incorrectly encoded, I want to know right away instead of masking it in a way that will artificially change playback of all other files.  My guide does not suggest nor recommend enabling 32-bit floating point support.

There has been an amazing amount of performance and compatibility improvement in MPC-HC's internal subtitle renderer recently (as mentioned in K-Lite Codec Pack v10.3.0's change log).  I personally don't see any reason to use xy-VSFilter now...

Thanks to Admin for continuing to maintain and update K-Lite Codec Pack.

There is a subtitle renderer crashing bug affecting MPC-HC v1.7.3.10-43eac9f (included in KCP v10.3.0).  The bug has been fixed in MPC-HC v1.7.3.20-03742f4.  MPC-HC v1.7.3.4-60b7492 (included in KCP v10.2.8) is not affected.

Fixed in 10.3.2 which contains MPC-HC 1.7.3.16

1.7.3.20 has a bug that causes high GPU usage when pausing video.

Confirmed.  Thank you, Admin.

Admin wrote:1.7.3.20 has a bug that causes high GPU usage when pausing video.

The high GPU usage issue that Admin referred to has been fixed in MPC-HC v1.7.3.21 (5b803b8).  K-Lite Codec Pack v10.3.3, which includes MPC-HC v1.7.3.33 (d9ae67e), contains the fix.

The guide has been updated to reflect recent changes in various components.

Based on the component selection in your guide, you don't need the Mega version, but Standard would already be sufficient.

Uncheck "Position subtitles relative to the video frame" to allow the entire player window space to be utilised for subtitle rendering.

With the default settings (half checked), normal subtitles are rendered relative to the player window, and ASS/SAA subtitles are rendered relative to the video (for accurate positioning). So default is better in my opinion.

Admin wrote:Based on the component selection in your guide, you don't need the Mega version, but Standard would already be sufficient.

I use ACM codecs from time to time, but you are right, it's not directly related to the guide.

Admin wrote:

Uncheck "Position subtitles relative to the video frame" to allow the entire player window space to be utilised for subtitle rendering.

With the default settings (half checked), normal subtitles are rendered relative to the player window, and ASS/SAA subtitles are rendered relative to the video (for accurate positioning). So default is better in my opinion.

This is a personal preference in my opinion.

The guide has been updated to reflect recent changes in the installer.

http://www.myanimelist.net/blog.php?eid=741397

Disclaimer:  Please note that the guide is posted on a personal blog and contains many personal preferences.  Please feel free to experiment with different options and find out what may or may not work for you.

The guide has been updated to reflect changes up to v11.8.0.

http://www.myanimelist.net/blog.php?eid=741397