Nvidia Control Panel Settings no longer affect VLC

[GuyWithAQuestion]

Nvidia Control Panel has a few really cool settings which can alter the look/clarity of video you watch on-the-fly, including the sharpening of edges, image noise reduction, Color/Contrast/Brightness/Hue/Saturation/Dynamic Range, etc. These make it very easy for a user to change the look of video to suit their specific tastes as well as quickly change them when the settings may work for some styles of video such as animation, but not for others like live-action. This has all worked wonderfully with VLC for as long as I can remember, but now I've noticed it no longer works. After several hours of reinstalling VLC, drivers, and fruitlessly searching online I have gone through several versions of VLC and the last version it still works for is 2.2.8—the last one prior to the 3.0.0 release.

So I'm just curious if anyone knows why this no longer works with current releases of VLC? I've made sure to add it to Nvidia Control Panel's "whitelist", I've looked through VLC's settings to see if there was a way to force it to use the GPU on the off chance it was because it was defaulting to integrated graphics or something (which probably wouldn't be a problem anyways). Is there any way to fix this so that I'm not forced to use an older version?

Sorry if this does not belong here, I know it involves another program but considering it works for older versions of VLC it seems like it has something to do with what was changed in between the update. I don't know if it matters in this case, but I'm using Windows 10.

Thanks

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

Video decoding hardware acceleration would be the obvious culprit.

[Lotesdelere]

if there was a way to force it to use the GPU on the off chance it was because it was defaulting to integrated graphics or something

You can try this workaround: make a copy of Vlc.exe and rename it to Vlc-GPU.exe.
Then in the Nvidia control panel use this one to assign it the GPU and the settings you want.
Of course, you must now run Vlc-GPU.exe.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

You should use VLC 3.0 and try Direct3D9 output (without and with hw decoding)

[oggmeista]

this is nonesense, iv'e like the poster been using VLC for years and always had video hardware accelaration switched on... and i always used the nvidia control panel to mange the display, on top of that there are accelaration settings in the the players preferences settings, so how could it be "you can't use hardware accelaration with VLC, as i was stupidly informed, by someone who should keep his bs to himself, if he doesn't know.....clearly if this function worked with VLC 2 series than the issue is the player, and it seems to me to be a big backward step, i'm extra frustrated as i have also previously donated a modest sum, in leu of seeing PROGRESS in it's development, well this isn't progress this is an idiotic non logical change...instead of fobbing me off with some totally unfounded codswallop,, can someone who actuallly KNOWS something give us a legit, fathamable reason why this issue occurs, is it win 10?, becaue since iv'e had win 10 this bs has occured, why don't i stop complaining, and use VLC ver 2, if that works, well again the answer for that is logic, the 2 series is old and although obviously better than the 3 series because it doesn't have this ridiculous issue, it also i suspect won't have updated coding to it's security protocols, unless someone can assure me this is not the case...right now the player is a joke constantly having to fiddle with settings because it doesn't have a limits function as does the control panel so you change the setting and have hardly any effect then move it a pixel or so further and the colour display completely changes, i'm talking about the hue, just in case someone doesn't realize, as it's obvious..and the 4 irriteration, i tried it, it just constantly kept crashing, tried it again months later again just crashes......i mean come on, can someone actually explain what can be done to resolve this situation instead of trying to deceive their way to an answer, we don't need any more Trumps thx...

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

This is not about the VLC version. This is about dual-GPU setups. The NVIDIA control panel forces VLC on the iGPU.

[GuyWithAQuestion]

Okay so OP here, just randomly had to re-install VLC after a HDD crash and remembered this thread, lo and behold it became active again at the perfect time.

I did get it working but my solution throughout the last two years has literally just been to downgrade (Ended up having to do so successively which took way too long but iirc... and I might be wrong on this the last version of VLC that actually worked with the NVIDIA control panel was 2.2.4, although I will have to re-confirm this). This is in-line with what oggmeista said, suggesting the issue is with the newer versions of VLC player and not something else.

I think I originally tried all of the solutions presented here to fix it, but for the sake of future users who are also frustrated by this issue I will once again attempt all of the suggestions here separately and document their results.

First off I tried Rémi Denis-Courmont's suggestion of disabling "Video decoding hardware acceleration". I couldn't find an exact match to that phrase in the preferences, but I believe it is the "Hardware Decoding" option under the FFmpeg a/v decoder section. Unfortunately this did not solve the problem.

Next I attempted Lotesdelere's workaround method, but unfortunately this NVIDIA Control Panel only allows one to select specific GAMES, and the settings I'm referring to apply exclusively to video.

Third, I took Jean-Baptiste Kempf's advice of putting it on Direct3D9 output... and surprisingly it... actually worked!!

So if anyone out there in the future finds this issue problematic, try out Jean-Baptiste Kempf's idea, it worked for me, so chances are it would work for you as well. There is also the option of going back to previous versions of VLC, as I can personally attest to it working on WIndows 10 64 bit.

Rémi Denis-Courmont: This is not about the VLC version. This is about dual-GPU setups. The NVIDIA control panel forces VLC on the iGPU.

While I am positive you know much more about how VLC works than I do, my experiences seem to suggest that this is not completely true. I used various old versions of VLC 2.x.x for almost 5 years (~2013-late 2017) with absolutely no issue and without needing to tweak any settings, and I have always had some type of integrated INTEL GPU. I can also say with 100% certainty that from 2018-2019 I had an iGPU & a 780ti, that I was able to successfully use NVIDIA Control Panel's settings with instantly once I reverted far enough back through VLC releases (almost certainly 2.2.4 if I am remembering correctly). Currently I am using an iGPU & 1060ti.

I am sure it isn't at the top of anyone here's list, but personally I would very much prefer using a more modern output than Direct3D9... considering it's almost TWO DECADES old now (not that there's anything wrong with that but there have been numerous improvements since then), so if any of this gave some kind of insight to you kind developers into what the issue may be, or if anyone had any other ideas for how to remedy this, I know that I (and others as well) would really love it!

But regardless, thank you everyone for all of the helpful tips! And to any future troubleshooters, I hope this information helps some of you out there!

[lokiburn]

Bump to this post. I tried the D3d9 output but still no love from Nvidia control panel. I guess I'm off to try the 2. version. 4.0 is said to fix this form an article I read but that's then and this is now...