Help setting up HDR 4K on PC for the first time.

[KENJI512]

Hi everybody! I'm a new user and I have bought new monitor to my PC, which handles 4K and HDR. I wonder how to set it up in Media Player Classic HC to work best with my rig.

By this moment I have been using K-Lite Codec Pack and Media Player Classic Home Cinema x64. Now, I added MadVR to handle HDR, which is not handled by default by MPC HC. I also enabled HDR in Windows 10.

My monitor is LG 38GL950G-B which is 4K (3840x1600) + HDR (HDR400) + 120/160/175Hz + G-Sync. It works in 3 modes:
-175Hz, no HDR, 8-bit (YCbCr 4:2:2 compression) <--- I don't use it, maybe will use it in some games
-160Hz, HDR, 8-bit (Full RGB) <--- I use this sometimes for games
-120Hz, HDR, 10-bit (Full RGB, 8-bit+FRC) <--- I use this mostly for desktop and games

My computer is - GTX 1080Ti + i5 4690K @4,3GHz + 16GB RAM + SSD SATA3 + Windows 10
I also plan to upgrade it in one year time to - RTX 3080Ti + Ryzen 4900X + 32GB RAM + SSD NVMe PCIe x4

I've some problems with setting up movies and some questions:

1) What would be the best to use with K-Lite Codec Pack and Media Player Classic HC to properly use HDR in movies? Should I stick do MadVR or there are alternatives?

2) What would be the best settings for my actual and future computer to handle HDR? There are so many options... upscaling, downscaling, image doubling, chroma upscaling... As I know what they are - I don't know which are the best for quality (Especially in MadVR). Any newbie advices?

3) Is there any funcion to AI improve image on the fly, like upscalling, but with refinement? Image doubling or something like that? I use image sharpening and noise reduction in Nvidia settings. (related to previous question)

4) Black bars in some movies - sometimes when I play movie, it has hard coded black bars. This is tricky - if I set in MadVR DXVA2 they stay and I have to crop image in MPC-HC to ultrawide... It is annoying, I have to do this every time. But if I set Lanczos or NGU upscalling/downscalling it works automaticaly. I also add that in LAV I choose Nvidia CUVID, not DXVA2 (copy-back). What to do to avoid hard coded black bard?

5) When I first set up MadVR - it worked very annoying. When playing video, double clicked to full screen, it changed the monitor setting to... same as it were - but screen went black for 1 second like when changing resolution etc. Every time I moved mouse to interface (playback slider) or exited full screen, screen went black for 1 second again... I changed some settings and it now doesn't do this, but maybe it is some HDR mode, which has to have exclusive full screen mode or something, to really enable HDR in movies? I also noticed that when I click CTRL+J in HDR 10-bit movie it writes D3D11 fullscreen windowed (8-bit) - shouldn't it be 10-bit? On my monitor setting I read 10-bit mode, HDR is enabled in Windows 10, 10-bit is enabled in screen settings.

Here are some of my actual settings:

[Attachment 52791 - Click to enlarge]

Best regards!

[KENJI512]

Ad. 4) I discovered that NGU scales automaticaly and probably cuts black bars. DXVA2 does not scale automaticaly :/

Ad. 5) In NGU black screen for 1s to change is happening :/ In DXVA2 it is not, I can minimize or get UI anywhen I want. I found some solution - checked in MadVR to automaticaly go to fullscreen, so I got now a new playback bar, but it is not treated as UI, so the black screen for 1s is not happening - I can forward videos. I also found that NGU upscalling/downscalling has better, richer colours and is brighter than DXVA2. Better colours are in SDR and HDR materials, brightness in HDR is same (good), but in SDR is better (brighter, closer to HDR experience). Oh and brightness in SDR materials is increasing only after I go to fullscreen and wait a moment for 1s black screen to start happening and then they are brighter. Also before it happens debug info is not fully white, it is somewhat grey. Is it normal?

I also got 10-bit thing work - checked in screen settings in MadVR 10-bit or above.