x265 4:4:4 and ffdshow

Hello,
I have a problem with 4:4:4 8-bit x265 full range videos. Looks like whenever I turn any of the filters in ffdshow decoder the color range changes. When every filter is off then picture is displayed correctly, black is black, and when I would like to some filter (sharpen the image for example) then the range changes (black looks gray). FFDshow settings are set to full range.
I can only see it only in files coded this way (same codec but only changed to 4:2:0 looks fine).

I am using latest Mega Codec Pack 14.36 (I prefer ffdshow where I can); Windows 10 Creators Update; I had the same problem with previous versions (14.26 i think) and updated to this one today and discovered that turning off filters can effect it. I have also tried uninstalling it completely, clear off the registry and junk files with few programs and reboot and reinstall k-lite mega codec pack, but that didn't help.

Thank you.

Development of ffdshow has stopped years ago. So this won't be fixed. But it should be possible to work around the problem.

Which filters are you using in ffdshow? What does ffdshow show as input? You can see that when you hover your mouse over its tray icon.

The video stays black here with RGB32 input. And it should be using that by default. If not in your case, then on RGB conversion page in ffdshow you can adjust the input range.

I'm using sharpen pretty much all the time, levels and picture prototypes sometimes and others once in a blue moon.
It shows that the input and output is RGB32... weird... It shouldn't be AYUV? When i change primary output color space to AYUV (444 8-bit YUV) nothing happens, when I uncheck RGB32 to stop using it it goes for YUY2... So one by one I was unchecking them to force it to show me AYUV, but when AYUV was the only one that's stopped ffdshow from loading at all... btw, on pretty much everything but the RGB32 color range was fine.
PS, are you sure its pure black for you? You have contrast set to Full range instead of Auto on the conversion tab?

I can reproduce it now with Sharpen filter. ffdshow converts to YUV internally when using that filter. Problem seems to be because of that conversion.

ffdshow does not support AYUV. Most renderers have crappy performance when using it, so it is disabled by default in LAV. Keep it disabled!

This works for me:
- LAV Video decoder for everything
- ffdshow raw video filter as preferred external filter in MPC-HC settings
- ffdshow raw video filter settings > Codecs > raw video = All YUV

If you have a good GPU then you should give Madvr a try as video renderer in MPC-HC. That provides higher quality resize (which already gives better sharpness). But also has good sharpening filters.

Another sharpen alternative is: MPC-HC menu > Play > Shaders > Sharpen
(if that preset is not shown in the menu, then select Sharpen Complex 2 shader manually in the settings)

Picture properties is also available here:
MPC-HC options > Miscellaneous

Ok, I think I'm gonna try encoding my videos to 4:2:2 then, I would hate the quality degradation.

MPC is cool, but I use another player for a fast subtitle editing while watching a movie. I think that for 4:4:4 videos I have I'm just gonna change the contrast settings to Auto in the RGB conversion tab. That way I would keep the ffdshow decoder, which is the best for my needs (I pretty much depend on those filters and fast access to them from taskbar tray).

Thank you very much for your time and clearing it all up for me.

If you are encoding the movies yourself, then perhaps you could apply sharpening as part of the encoding process.

If you care about hardware decoding compatibility, then you should use 4:2:0.

Yeah, 4:2:0 has the best decoding compatibility but I can see the color degradation with a naked eye, that's why I wanted to try 4:4:4.

That is another great thing about Madvr. It upscales the chroma when using less than 4:4:4, so the color degradation is lower.