Maybe it's a limitation of asking one of these mini computers to do a little bit too much, although CPU was never above 30-40% when these things occurred, so perhaps it was GPU related.

this's a great topic
you should consider writing a howto or something about this setup

These Intel NUCs have dual display outputs, so I made the capture device act as the main 'display' which SlingFront outputs to, and then the second display (the TV) runs MPC-HC/SVP to do the capture and output the results to the TV.

It works really well, and interestingly it doesn't appear to use significantly more CPU/GPU than the dual PC setup.

Everything is remembered on a reboot and I just made sure it auto starts MPC-HC on the second display.

One hassle I had was that I have had to use the System Default renderer, otherwise if I used EVR custom, VMR7, VMR9 etc I got bad audio sync issues - but funnily enough only when the capture was 25fps (smoothed to 50fps). No such trouble if the capture is 29.97 (smoothed to 59.94). I didn't get any such issue when I chose the System Default renderer, which is odd because I'd have thought it would just resolve to EVR or VMR or something. This wasn't a SVP issue by the way, if I took that out if the equation I saw the same issues described above.

So I've chosen 2 threads, which gives minimum audio sync issue (auto leaves things badly out of sync). It then adds 3 to this to get a number for the buffer ahead of 5.

What is the current situation - does SVP need to look 5 ahead to do its work, with only 2 threads? I realise I can try it out in hidden settings but maybe it would need the full 5 frame look ahead at some point but not very often?

My setup is ffdshow, avisynth and SVP core, and MPC-HC of course. I wanted to understand how this all fits together which was why I haven't downloaded the full install and extras as I don't know whether I need them yet.

It depends on too many factors:
- internal ffsdhow input/output buffers (you can try to play witt them on ffdshow properties page -> avisynth -> buffer back/ahead but I'm not sure it'll change anything)
- video renderer input buffer
- threads count in SVP (in Avisynth actually)
- SVP settings => one frame processing time (which can be rather big value like 150 ms or something)
- may be the latency is a little bigger with GPU acceleration turned on 

so in a real world with 10-15 threads the latency is around 0.5 seconds  at least the latency between frame input in Avisynth and it's presentation on screen, and I have no idea how to measure full latency

One PC is setup as a Slingplayer PC, ie devoted purely to displaying the stream from my Slingbox via the SlingFront software. Unfortunately it's hardcoded to use the MS DVD decoder and I've tried various workarounds to make it use ffdshow without success.

Hence setting up another PC and a usb3 capture device to grab the uncompressed output from PC1, capture it into MPC-HC and thus giving me access to SVP.

SVP set to use 2 threads, otherwise latency becomes annoying. Actually, I'd like to try one thread as it still adds a little more delay than I would like (half a second maybe) but it only goes down to 2? Would a faster machine reduce the latency still keeping with 2 threads?

My main problem was when PC 1 changes to a stream with a different framerate and thus switched screen refreshrate there was no way I could see of PC 2 knowing that it needs to restart the capture with a different framerate. So I first modified MPC-HC adding some commands/functions for starting a capture in full screen with the different frame rates I need then set it up to listen on a UDP socket for instructions. Then I modified SlingFront to send a small packet over UDP when the frame rate changes (such as connecting to a Slingbox with a different source) instructing MPC-HC to restart the capture at an appropriate framerate.

It all works pretty smoothly, although my SVP machine is a little under-specced as mentioned earlier, one of the new Intel NUCs. If I have PC1 outputting 1080p and PC2 capturing (and outputting) 1080p it struggles to cope. CPU goes high but even when it isn't it still judders. Reducing both down to 720p solves it and let's me use all the default SVP settings. Strangely, I can go even better than the defaults and not overload the CPU but then I still get stutter? Is that to be expected?

Other observations, not all SVP-related but still:

- I couldn't use MPC's auto resolution/frame rate switching, it simply didn't appear to take any notice of the capture framerate. Perhaps it only works for files or streams, and not directshow captures?
- I found best performance on my setup by using the Overlay Mixer Renderer in MPC. If I used EVR custom, or VMR9 then I got stutter even when CPU use was pretty low. This went away using Overlay Mixer Renderer.
- Audio was garbled when Audio Renderer in MPC was set to 'System Default' but when I chose 'Intel Display Audio' it was fine.
- Leaving threads at Auto led to the audio being badly out of sync. I had to explicitly choose 4 threads or less to make this problem go away.
- I had to set the hidden SVP setting ChkDeltaFPS to a high value to stop the popup which otherwise appears when changing desktop resolution and capture frame rate at the same time - sometimes you'd briefly end up with an invalid scenario and the popup would appear.
- If the capture framerate is set to a value higher than the actual capture source (let's say PC1 is sending 50fps, but the capture is set to 60fps) then SVP gives a warning about the SVP index. I can sort of see why, but it was confusing at first as it implied the SVP settings were too intensive, when it's actually related to the discrepancy between capture source framerate and capture framerate.

Overall though, I'm pretty enthused with SVP as a whole, so thankyou for making it. I've donated to the project.

My next plan is to get a faster mini PC and see how far I can push the settings, hopefully get it working at 1080p. I'm thinking of the new Zotac ZBOX IQ01. This has Intel hd graphics 4600 (actually a step down from the Intel NUC PC I am using) but I think a much faster processor, quad core I7 4770T vs the dual core I5 4250U mobile one on the NUC.

Of course, I could just a get new TV instead with decent motion interpolation, but where's the fun in that!

By the way, how does SVP with 'maximum' settings compare to the best available TV-tech out there? I've tried LG Trumotion and it's not bad, lower latency than my SVP setup but I don't think it is as good when it comes to fast-moving objects like a football. SVP seems better at that, but not perfect either, and I've not been able to turn up the settings to see how good I can make it.

Finally, is there a roadmap of future changes?

Keep up the good work, anyway.

Oliver

PS jeez, did I say small update...hope you're still awake whoever got this far

Many thanks for your help.

Really like the results of the smoothing - only thing that isn't perfect is when watching football it's very hard to get the ball to move perfectlywheb it's tracking quickly (no problem when it's slower). The players, the panning, the studio etc is great, but depending on the settings the ball either appears as 3 balls moving at once (two of them kind of ghosted) or it flickers. Maybe it would be better if I had a machine powerful enough to turn up some of the settings.

Still very good though, and better than LG Trumotion which makes a mess of the ball even more, now it just depends on whether the hardware will work in conjunction with MPC and SVP, eg if the capture source changes resolution can it all cope etc. ideally I want this PC to boot into MPC open the device in full screen and work without further input. Indeed it won't even have a keyboard or mouse, I'll just access it using VNC if necessary, so essentially it'll act as a video processor for the source, passing it onto the TV, remaining switched on in this state indefinitely.

No idea if that is a realistic proposition, whether MPC, SVP, ffdshow. AVISynth.....etc is collectively stable enough.

I did try the two options for profile selection but the bug still persists.

Here is the information for when I play the 30fps file:

--------------------------

Last processed file parameters:
Filename: 720p30 Sample.avi
Frame size and frame rate: 1280x720 pixels, 30 fps

Detected screen parameters
Screen size and refresh rate: 1280x720 pixels, 60.145 Hz

Video smoothing info
Smooth factor: 2:1
Resulting video frame rate: 60 fps
Repeat 1 frame every 6.9 sec (without ReClock)

Selected profile: 1280x720@29.97

-------------------

I have added profiles for both 1280x720@30 and 1280x720@29.97, so as you can see above it has picked the wrong one.

A rounding error, I reckon, unless I'm meant to just define it as 29fps in the profile. Don't have a 29.97 file to test, unfortunately.

Anyway, it sounds like I can just use the default profiles if MPC is basing screen resolution changes on the source fps, so it's probably not going to be a problem, but it seems to be making a wrong decision to me.

About profiles selection see two options in SVP tray menu - Profile selection method:
- Exclude profiles with different frame rates
- Choose one with nearest pixel rate

And detailed information about current detected framerate can help: SVP tray menu - Information - Additional information

I then deleted the 29.97 profile and made a 1280x720@29 profile, and after that SVP would choose the @30 profile for the 720p30 file. Maybe SVP has incorrectly rounded up the 29.97 to 30? I haven't tried a 29.97 file so I wonder which one it will choose for that.

Nice one, thanks.

i5-4250U - slower than desktop i3 which is rather slow for HQ 1080p

it would be a 'double fps if 30 or below' option.

this's an easy part
i believe it should work like this with default setting
anyway you always can add another video profile for high frame rate source and set to "do not interpolate"

However, do you know if MPC will use the original source fps before SVP has adjusted it or will it use the newly smoothed-up fps as the basis for switching the screen refresh rate?

I'm not sure but since SVP kicks in AFTER playback is started MPC should switch framerate before this.
Otherwise you can just set x2 interpolation mode and let MPC set the output refresh rate

So in advance of getting the hardware I've been messing about with some sample files recorded with Fraps and Action! with some success. With the newest NUC (Haswell i5, HD5000) I can leave it at default settings if my source is 720p25 and desktop is 720p50. If I try a 1080p25 source and have the desktop at 1080p50 then it overloads the CPU and I have to dial things down quite a bit to the extent I lose some smoothness.

720p is fine though for what I want to use this (smoothing the output from viewing a remote Slingbox)...so the next the hurdle will be to see if one of these new NUCs with USB3 can handle an uncompressed capture (is that going to require a ton of CPU?) ie whether my test of reading an AVI file is valid. I chose the highest quality setting in Action! and it was well over a GB for a few minutes of video, and it seemed to cope with that.

I have a Q though; if my plan works then the source is going to be either 720p25, 720p29, 720p50 or 720p59. My aim is to find a USB3 capture device that will capture at whatever resolution the source is and pass it to USB3 unchanged then what I want is:

- MPC to change the refresh rate to either 50 or 59 according to the source
- SVP to adjust the framerate to this refresh rate

I can see the options for both of these.

However, do you know if MPC will use the original source fps before SVP has adjusted it or will it use the newly smoothed-up fps as the basis for switching the screen refresh rate?

If it's the former then that should be ok, but if it's the latter then I could end up with a situation where the desktop is in say 59p, the source then changes to 25fps but SVP immediately changes it to 59fps (because it it trying to set the fps to match the screen)....and thus MPC would leave things at 59p....when what I would want is MPC to see the new 25fps source and switch the desktop to 50p and then SVP would kick in and smooth things up to 50fps.....

Or, another way of looking at it would be to find a way of making SVP choose fps as follows, so it doesn't reference the screen refresh rate:

25fps - smooth up to 50fps
29fps - smooth up to 59fps
30fps - smooth up to 60fps
50fps - leave unchanged
59fps - leave unchanged
60fps - leave unchanged

Essentially it would be a 'double fps if 30 or below' option.

If SVP did that then all I'd need to do is set MPC to match the source and I wouldn't have any circular dependency.

Maybe there is some script or something I can edit to add such an option?