Software » Codecs » FrankyRenderer 1.1

FrankyRenderer 1.1

Important upgrade information
One ZIP for both players: MPC-BE and PotPlayer now use the same native FrankyRenderer package. There are no separate player packages and no MPC Video Renderer compatibility registration.
Recommended upgrade: Export your settings, close all players and uninstall the previous FrankyRenderer package using its Uninstall.cmd. Then extract the new ZIP to a permanent folder and run Install.cmd. Keep external ICC/LUT files if you use them.
PotPlayer requires the beta with native support: Use PotPlayer 261030 Beta 64-bit or a newer build with native FrankyRenderer support. Select FrankyRenderer, in the player's video renderer settings.
MPC-BE: Use a recent nightly build with native FrankyRenderer support and select FrankyRenderer.
Changes
Fixed AviSynth sources being reopened by Dolby Vision probing (#2).
Fixed cropped screenshots and "Save displayed image" errors in MPC-BE.
Fixed settings changed before playback not applying to the display profile (#3).
One native package for MPC-BE and PotPlayer 261030 Beta 64-bit with native FrankyRenderer support; removed the MPC Video Renderer compatibility registration.
Fixed a brief white properties window when opening the settings menu in MPC-BE.
Fixed regular single frame drops during playback, most noticeable with Smooth Motion.
Fixed bursts of dropped frames when switching to fullscreen or another display, resizing the window or toggling statistics with Ctrl+J.
Fixed missing frames after Stop and Play or a decoder change.
Fixed the first picture being shown twice after starting playback or seeking while paused.
Fixed failed rendering and screenshots of interlaced video with hardware decoding at native size on some systems.
Number fields in the settings menu now apply with Enter, Tab or when leaving the field; Escape restores the previous value.
Settings previewed in an open settings dialog are reverted on the next start if the player closes unexpectedly.
One invalid stored setting no longer resets the whole display profile.
Faster live preview while dragging sliders with an ICC profile or 3D LUT enabled.
Fixed a possible crash when the player closes the settings while a list or file dialog is open.
Settings menu: Reset Shader resets only the selected shader; clearer messages for missing ICC/LUT files and other small fixes.
Dolby Vision Profile 5 and 8 metadata is now applied even when the player's decoder does not pass it on (for example PotPlayer's built-in decoder), instead of falling back to HDR10.
HDR10 and HDR10+ metadata is now applied even when the player's decoder does not pass it on (for example PotPlayer's CUDA decoder), including the HDR10+ tone-mapping curve.
New: display mode switching in fullscreen like madVR. Each display profile has its own list of allowed modes (for example 2160p23, 2160p24, 2160p50, 2160p60), the original mode is restored when leaving fullscreen or stopping, and playback can pause for an adjustable time while the TV resynchronises (General & Presentation > Display Mode).

Video input and output
DirectShow video rendering for Windows x64, with libplacebo image processing and Direct3D 11 / DXGI presentation.
Native D3D11 decoder textures and CPU video input, with the active transfer path shown in the statistics overlay.
Support for 8-, 10-, 12- and 16-bit input layouts, including NV12, P010/P012/P016, planar YUV, packed YUV, RGB and grayscale formats. Native GPU input depends on the decoder's texture format and device capabilities.
Selectable output texture format: automatic, 8-bit integer, preferred 10-bit integer or preferred 16-bit float.
Configurable RGB output levels, dither target bit depth and maximum frames in flight.
D3D11 subtitle composition through compatible host callbacks.
Automatic Dolby Vision Profile 7 FEL/MEL processing for supported local progressive files, integrated into the renderer without an additional DirectShow filter. The existing splitter and base-layer decoder remain in use; enhancement data is read from the same local file.

Scaling and Smooth Motion
Separate image upscaling, image downscaling, chroma/alpha upscaling and chroma/alpha downscaling filters.
EWA Lanczos / Jinc, EWA Lanczos Sharp, Lanczos, Spline16/36/64, Mitchell, Bicubic, Robidoux and additional libplacebo filters.
Custom filter editor with a starting filter, kernel, window, radius, clamp, blur, taper, anti-ringing, kernel/window parameters and EWA mode.
Global anti-ringing strength and configurable downscaling anti-aliasing behavior.
Smooth Motion through temporal frame mixing, with selectable and customizable frame mixer filters.
Optional NVIDIA RTX Video Super Resolution through the driver, without an additional NVIDIA runtime DLL or helper process. Enable Super Resolution and choose quality in the NVIDIA app or Control Panel. Processed source images are cached before Smooth Motion; subtitles and final color processing follow afterward. Supports SDR and HDR10/PQ with 8-/10-bit processing; unsupported formats and native-size/downscaled output keep normal libplacebo scaling. Statistics report the driver request, not independently confirmed AI activity. Dolby Vision, HLG, linear, rotated and alpha-bearing input use normal scaling.

Image processing
Debanding with adjustable iterations, threshold, radius and grain.
Adaptive Sharpen with adjustable strength.
Bwdif and Yadif deinterlacing with temporal references, automatic field order and manual top/bottom-field overrides.
Blue-noise, ordered and random dithering, with optional temporal dithering.

HDR and color mapping
Two HDR modes: Passthrough HDR to Display and Tone Map HDR to SDR.
Native NVIDIA HDR10 passthrough sends HDR metadata to the display while leaving the Windows HDR setting off. Moving the video between displays updates the HDR output, including while paused, and restores the previous display's state. This driver path has been tested on NVIDIA hardware; AMD native HDR output is not implemented.
A Clipping Protection switch for HDR-to-SDR tone mapping.
Tone mapping functions including Spline, BT.2390, BT.2446A, Reinhard, Mobius, Hable and ST 2094 curves.
Adjustable SDR target brightness and HDR peak override.
HDR peak detection with smoothing, scene-change thresholds, percentile selection, black cutoff and delayed peak detection control.
Detailed tone curve controls for knee adaptation, Spline slope/contrast and other function-specific parameters.
Local contrast recovery with adjustable strength and smoothness.
Perceptual, relative/absolute colorimetric, softclip, saturation and additional gamut mapping methods.
Gamut compression controls, internal LUT resolution and optional tricubic gamut interpolation.
Separate HDR Shadows, Midtones and Highlights controls, each with exposure, contrast and saturation adjustments.
Inverse tone mapping, gamut expansion, metadata selection and clipping/LUT visualization controls.

Color adjustment and management
Brightness, contrast, saturation, gamma, hue and color temperature controls.
SDR ICC profile support with selectable rendering intent.
Custom .cube LUT loading and LUT interpretation controls.

Shader chain
21 bundled mpv-compatible GLSL shaders from the PlayKit collection, with original authorship and license notices preserved.
Neural/adaptive upscaling options: FSRCNNX 2x, AiUpscale Photo 2x and RAVU Zoom.
Animation-oriented upscaling: Anime4K CNN 2x M, ArtCNN C4F16 and CuNNy 2x12 DS.
Chroma reconstruction: KrigBilateral and CfL Prediction.
Sharpening, detail and local contrast: AMD CAS, Guided Detail Enhance and Clarity.
Edge cleanup: FineDehalo, Anti-Ringing and PixelClipper.
Denoising and debanding: NLMeans, Bilateral Denoise, Chroma Denoise, hdeband and neo-f3kdb.
Detail-aware downscaling: SSimDownscaler and DPID.
Per-shader parameters, configurable processing order and double-click enable/disable controls.

Black bars and zoom
Automatic detection of hardcoded black bars from video pixels.
Crop and zoom controls to fit active content or fill the output.
Adjustable detection threshold, switching delay and stable zoom behavior.
Protection for detected subtitle content in the black bars.

Settings, presentation and diagnostics
Native dark settings interface drawn with Direct2D and DirectWrite, with English sections for General, Processing, Scaling, Black Bars / Zoom, Color Adjustment, Color Management, HDR and Color Mapping, and Shaders.
Search across settings, scrollable pages, readable descriptions and explicit default values and ranges.
Compact shader list with double-click enable/disable and a parameter editor for the selected shader.
Live settings preview: valid changes appear immediately; OK keeps them and Cancel restores the dialog's opening values.
Separate settings for each display, with editable device names. Newly connected displays start with default settings; reconnecting a known display restores its saved profile.
Import and export all saved display profiles in one INI backup, including disconnected devices and custom names. Older single-profile INI files can still be imported into the selected display.
Numeric entry, fine adjustment steps, reset controls and contextual descriptions.
Configurable background color, transparency and rendering quality/performance options.
PotPlayer fullscreen playlist-transition handling.
Compact settings layout for smaller displays and stable window resizing: the image holds during size changes and resumes when the size settles, including before the mouse button is released. Audio playback continues.
Ctrl+J statistics with display/video information, active processing settings, frame counters, presentation timing and CPU/GPU render timings.
Persistent shader cache for reusing compiled processing work across playback sessions.


Installation and system requirements
Tested on Windows 11 x64. Windows 10 x64 is expected to work, but I have not tested it because I do not have a Windows 10 system available.

MPC-BE: Use a recent nightly build with native FrankyRenderer support and select FrankyRenderer in the video renderer settings.
PotPlayer: Use PotPlayer 261030 Beta 64-bit or a newer build with native FrankyRenderer support. Select FrankyRenderer in the video renderer settings.
One package for both players. FrankyRenderer now registers only its own native identity; separate MPC-BE and PotPlayer packages are no longer needed.

Upgrading from an older version: Export your settings, close all players and uninstall the old FrankyRenderer package using its Uninstall.cmd. Then extract the new ZIP to a permanent folder and run Install.cmd.

Keep the installation folder in place. To remove the renderer, run Uninstall.cmd.

Settings backup: Export saves all display profiles to an INI file; Import restores them. Keep external ICC and LUT files separately.