CoreCodec/H.264 Codec "CoreAVC"

[Sharktooth]

Any news on Weighted prediction front?:)

[CruNcher]

hehe sharktooth that's supported allready

version 0.71e (avc plugin only):
-some fixes
-weighted prediction support

we are at 0.71g allready but therefore no changelog is existing right now seems to had some speed optimations :)

@BetaBoy
that sounds cool but i hope going into Directshow and outside of TCPMP will not hurt the performance that much :(

[BetaBoy]

CruNcher... thats the goal... the TCPMP decoders are written at such a low level that in theory they should be at least 20% or more effecient then a comparable decoder. I am guessing this is why Toff wanted to diff other decoders.

[Lobuz]

It's wonderfull decoder ... but I have a little problem with maximizing CPU usage. Tested with Aplle trailers at WInXP and even in benchmark mode there is max around 60-70% CPU usage. My hardware is a little old: Newer AthlonXP 2400+ running on old Asus A7V at 1.5 GHz with 100MHz bus + 512MB of 133Mhz RAM on GForce2Pro64 . Is my hardware causing some bottleneck problem for TCPMP optimisations? Anyway it would be nice to know in what kind of video output TCPMP is working (WMV7-9 etc.) and color space (YV12 - YUY2 ) for better graphics card setting (YUY2 for my card).

Regards
Lobuz

[PicardGK]

There were no changes other that avc optimizing in 0.71g

In general the player is not really tuned for win32/x86 yet. Example some color space transformations maybe slow like hell.

Anyway it would be nice to know in what kind of video output TCPMP is working (WMV7-9 etc.)
You mean VMR7 / VMR9? Neither. The player is not DirectShow based, it uses simple DirectDraw overlays for output.

and color space (YV12 - YUY2 ) for better graphics card setting (YUY2 for my card).
It will try to use planar YUV formats first, like YV12, IYUV, I420. If that fails it will try the packed ones like YUY2. But I just checked and the planar->packed transformation in the player is handled by a slow fallback function currently with x86. This may cost speed, but didn't explain lower cpu usage.

One explanation I can think of is vsync. If you don't see tearing this means the ddraw overlay driver uses vsync. Try benchmarking the movie with selecting options/video/null in menu.

[Lobuz]

It will try to use planar YUV formats first, like YV12, IYUV, I420. If that fails it will try the packed ones like YUY2. But I just checked and the planar->packed transformation in the player is handled by a slow fallback function currently with x86. This may cost speed, but didn't explain lower cpu usage.
That would be useful to choose YUV formats like in ffdshow config. My graphics card isn't good with YV12 .. some hroma/luma shift and it propably does some conversion from yv12 color space.

One explanation I can think of is vsync. If you don't see tearing this means the ddraw overlay driver uses vsync. Try benchmarking the movie with selecting options/video/null in menu.
With null video set it uses 100% CPU and gets in benchmark of V 1080p 120% speed.

Regards
Lobuz

ps. Are there any chances of mpeg2 in ts HDTV support witch such fast decompression speed?

[unmei]

Yeah, i got the same "problem" here, i didn't even see that it wasn't using all of the CPU, i just noticed that a Xvid, a 450kbit AVC and a 2400kbit AVC all had exactly 60.09Hz in benchmark - highly unlikely (my assumption is either the GPU or the TFT itself (on DVI) locked the overlay memory to only allow writing at that certain freq max, which is the monitors refresh rate). Anyway with the NULL decoder speeds are amazing.

[bond]

first of all wow! this decoder really blows away!
i guess i can for the first time decode D1 res avc + he-aac in realtime on my 866mhz pentium3 :)

here my speed results for
x264_hp_2pass_720x288_B3-Ref_Ref5_p4x4-i8x8_loop-5_WBP_cabac:
coreavc-tcpmp: 90.32fps
ateme: 50.62fps
ffmpeg-mplayer: 49.91fps
ffmpeg-ffdshow: 44.98fps
ffmpeg-tcpmp: 38.58fps

i guess the values speak for themselves, coreavc-tcpmp is ~80% faster than the second fastest decoder, ateme!!!

the tcpmp values are derived via the tcpmp benchmark option together with "null video".
with directdraw video i still get 36.92fps

as i see it the now used avc features not supported by coreavc are:
- custom quant matrices
- lossless
- interlacing
i hope at least the first two will be supported too

another interesting thing i saw was that ffmpeg avc decoding via tcpmp is clearly more slower than when decoding with ffmpeg via ffdshow or mplayer. i guess thats because tcpmp itself is not that fast?

Thanks. The problem was caused by a buffering problem with high bitrate files dropping reference frames (there were also some audio gaps)i am wondering when does tcpmp drop frames? and is it possible to disable this, so i know for sure that tcpmp plays my videos in realtime without dropping frames

[Revgen]

This decoder (V. 71g) may be fast for some videos (The Greatest Game) but it's slow with my x264 encoded Beavis and Butthead video.

FFDshow and VLC player play this video fine.

If BetaBoy or Picard would like to take a look at it just send me a PM with your e-mail and I can send it to you via www.yousendit.com

[bond]

make sure you have avc.plg in your folder, otherwise the player will use ffmpeg for decoding, and thats slow

[Revgen]

The avc.plg is in my folder.

Or else The Greatest Game.mp4 video would play slow.

[kurt]

great player! But a question the developers:

what about AR-signaling (SAR in mp4 / DAR in matroska)? will this be implemented in the future?

[Birdy1]

This is amazing. I benchmarked a trailer of the movie Serenity. Before I couldn't play it at all.

player: tcpmp.win32.0.71g.zip
plugin: avc.win32.0.71g.zip

Serenity movie trailer serenity_1080p.mov

without avc and aac plugin (no sound) 53%
with avc and aac plug in 171%

P4 3GHz
ATI Radeon 9600 Pro

[BetaBoy]

Revgen and others.... if you have the FFMPEG plug-in installed and the AVC plug-in installed and are trying to play a video with our unsupported AVC features
- interlacing
- custom quantizer matrices
- lossless coding

Playback will the default to the FFMPEG plugin. This is the likely reason it is playing slow. Try another AVC video with the supported features and let us know the results.

[Revgen]

Okay, here are the details again.


1) My Beavis and Butthead video doesn't use any of these above features. So it shouldn't be the problem.

2) My video plays well with FFDShow and VLC player. The FFMPEG plugin shouldn't be the problem.

3) My video plays slow using TCPMP 0.71G combined with AVC plugin 0.71G. It also plays slow when the AVC Plugin IS NOT in the folder.

4) I can upload and send a link to my video through www.yousendit.com if you're interested.

[CruNcher]

Revgen what does the Media Info show after you load the file ?

[Revgen]

Revgen what does the Media Info show after you load the file ?

URL: H:\BEAVIS_BUTTHEAD_VOL_1\VIDEO_TS\Beavis and Butthead Vol 1 Disk 1.mkv
Format: Matroska File (MKV,MKA)
Duration: 1:47:40.960
Filesize: 715821 KB


Video: AVC aka H.264
Codec: CoreCodec AVC
Video Size: 720x480
Frame Rate: 23.976
Language: eng


Audio: AC-3
Codec: LibA52 (AC-3)
Format: 48000 Hz Stereo
Data Bit Rate: 224 kbit/s
Language: und


Played: 0
Frames Dropped: 0
Played FPS: 23.976

[Hyper Shinchan]

Really amzaing this plugin!!! I'll make extended tests later, but I'm really impressed!
Sugoiii!!!

[DeathTheSheep]

In having some MKV problems here as well. I think its the same one, actually; an MKV file of mine benches near 400% despite dropping many frames during playback.
AVI works just fine, though.

[travisbell]

Can't wait to see this DirectShow filter you are teasing us with... should be very, very interesting...

[BetaBoy]

ok... you have been warned!!! This is a pre-pre-pre-alpha directshow version of CoreAVC.... bond has tested it and it needs alot of work still ;-)

<bond> ffdshow: 47.16
<bond> ateme: 50.62
<bond> coreavc: 73.33 ;)
<bond> that is with a stream that has pretty much everything enabled

CoreCodec AVC DirectShow Video Decoder

ALPHA VERSION FOR TESTING PURPOSE ONLY

Changelog:
==========

Version 0.0.0.1 Alpha :
Use a very high merit in this alpha release, don't install it if you
don't want to use it.
Should support anamorphic from Matroska (native mode) and MP4 files.
Limitations :
- Only output to YV12 and I420
- No dynamic output mediatype change
- No flushing for buffered frame at end of file
- Linked with some unecessary code from TCPMP
- no cqm, lossless or interlacing support


There are way too many issues to even bother posting about... but hey, I did say it was a pre-pre-pre alpha build... so with that.... Have fun.

Download here: http://cc.serveftp.org:8884/CoreAVC20060102.7z

[falcon2000eg]

thanx i just tried it and loved it keep the good work.

[Revgen]

Beavis and Butthead plays great with this one. Good Job! :thanks:

The Greatest Game trailer (1920x1080) also plays great.


Your pre pre pre alpha build has earned a right to graduate! :)

[Sirber]

On my 3000+ (running in low power mode, RealAnime is not encoding :D)

On 640x480 with (x264 + AAC+v2 = MKV), in overlay mode

FFDShow: ~50% CPU
CoreAVC: ~38% CPU
MPlayer: ~30% CPU

[CruNcher]

yep it's like Bond said blasting 40% faster then any of the other Decoders :)

[sillKotscha]

blasting 40% faster then any of the other Decoders :)

first time I can watch these trailers...

sample H264 High Profil

KingKong (http://multimediacom.free.fr/Download/x264HP_KingKong_720p_1500.mp4)
1280*720*25
1500 Kbps

Harry potter IV (http://multimediacom.free.fr/Download/x264HP_HPIV_720p_1250.mp4)
1280*720*25
1250 Kbps

IceAge (http://multimediacom.free.fr/Download/x264HP_IceAge_720p_1250.mp4)
1280*720*25
1250 Kbps

really flawless with my system...

http://tinypic.com/jkvlzn.png
http://tinypic.com/jkvn1l.png
http://tinypic.com/jkvm6h.png

[bond]

<bond> ffdshow: 47.16
<bond> ateme: 50.62
<bond> coreavc: 73.33note that with the tcpmp i get on the same stream a decoding speed of 90fps, so its even a lot faster than coreavc dshow

edit:
so on this sample (720x288_B3-Ref_Ref5_p4x4-i8x8_loop-5_wbp_cabac_770kbps) with my pentium3 866mhz cpu
- coreavc-dshow is ~45% faster than ateme
- coreavc-tcpmp is ~75% faster than ateme

ateme _was_ the fastest decoder till now (and not publically available). compared to the available other fast decoders (libavcodec, moonlight) the speed increase is obviously even bigger

so this decoder really rocks! great job! :)

[PicardGK]

4) I can upload and send a link to my video through www.yousendit.com if you're interested.

Please upload it, if there is a little chance it will make faster finding problem. In next few days I will be still busy with some other stuff I need to finish, but I will get back to coreavc after that (cqm support is coming also).

[bond]

cqm support is coming alsouhm, actually it seems the 0.0.0.1 version of coreavc already handles cqm!
did this happen automagically? :D

no lossless and interlacing tough

[Revgen]

Please upload it, if there is a little chance it will make faster finding problem. In next few days I will be still busy with some other stuff I need to finish, but I will get back to coreavc after that (cqm support is coming also).

Uploaded the file and the link has been sent to your e-mail address.

[Sirber]

http://picard.exceed.hu/tcpmp/test/ is dead :(

[BetaBoy]

yeah.... there is an outage in the host country.

[Wedgedkc]

Huge thanks for this, I can now watch the the fountain teaser and other hd trailers in 720p on my athlon xp 1800+. Amazing!

[Sirber]

Bug: Can't use CoreAVC DShow from AVISynth. Takes 100% CPU and timeout.

[CruNcher]

Bug: Can't use CoreAVC DShow from AVISynth. Takes 100% CPU and timeout.


Known problem is being worked on actually it will load it but it takes very long ;)

[Sirber]

AVISynth timeout :) so it will never load... NEVER!!! :D

[bond]

my issues till now with coreavc:
- loading via directshowsource() doesnt work
- helix vfw yuv codecs cant handle the yv12 output of coreavc (but can handle ffdshow's yv12)
- after seeking in very rare cases the audio takes some seconds till its played again

[MatMaul]

:eek: :eek:

with a x264 high profile source (688*368), I obtain on my processor (pentium M Dothan 1,73 ghz) :

CoreAVC : 163.5 fps
ffdshow-20051230-icc-sse2 by issa : 104,1 fps (fastest build on this processor)
TCPMP : 172 fps
mplayer2005.11.23.P4 by celtic_druid : 106,7 fps

with a x264 high profile HD source (1280*720) :

CoreAVC : 69,5 fps
ffdshow-20051230-icc-sse2 by issa : 44,3 fps
TCPMP : 77 fps
mplayer2005.11.23.P4 by celtic_druid : 46,4 fps

Really good job !! Thanks a lot !!
I can now decode HD 720p trailer without dropped frames !

[Sirber]

What about mplayer?

[Revgen]

If anybody wants an easy way to register/unregister .dll, .ax, or other types of files I recommend RegDrop (http://www.addisonsw.com/revsqu.htm) . Just put the regdrop.exe onto your desktop and drag whatever file you want to register over the regdrop.exe icon and it will register the file for you. Drag that same file over the icon again to unregister it.

Works well with the CoreAVC decoder.

[MatMaul]

with this build of mplayer (http://www.aziendeassociate.it/cd//mplayer/mplayer2005.11.23.P4.7z) and this command line :
mplayer "file.mkv" -vo null -benchmark
I obtain 106,7 fps

PS : I edited my last post with a test on a hd source

[[Toff]]

I've uploaded a new version :
http://coreavc.corecodec.org/CoreAVC20060104.7z

Changelog :
Version 0.0.0.2 Alpha (20060104) :
Fixed some compatibility problems (AVI Decompressor, AviSynth, ...)
Project cleanup (smaller size)

[CruNcher]

Yep works great thx toff good work :)

[AlexW]

Hi, could one of the CoreAVC devs please have a look at this clip?: http://mirror05.x264.nl/Alex_W/force.php?file=./clips/b0rked.mp4

The problem seems to occur when the 8x8 transform is used on direct blocks in B-frames.

[Sirber]

It seems I have dropped frames with the player (0.71g). Seems to drop on low motion, so it could be the same problrm as AlexW.

[dbzgundam]

That's odd... Still no mention of CQM, yet the above posted CoreAVC can handle all my CQM encoded videos. ;)

[omion]

Wow. VERY nice.

ffdshow:
880 CABAC = 23.88 fps
720 CABAC = 32.40
720 CAVLC = 46.07

CoreAVC 0.0.0.2:
880 CABAC = 38.14
720 CABAC = 49.16
720 CAVLC = 63.67

60% faster than ffdshow at 1600x880. Very impressive! Keep up the great work!

The only quibble I have with it is that it doesn't seem to work with MPC's "VMR9 (renderless)" setting. It keeps using some sort of overlay.

[lexor]

@omion: what's up with 1600x880? what footage do you have in such a weired resolution?

[omion]

Heh. I knew somebody would ask that. The source is actually a 1920x1080 HDTV capture. I rescaled it to be 1600 wide because that's the width of my monitor. The height just came out to 880.

[futurex]

that it doesn't seem to work with MPC's "VMR9 (renderless)" setting. It keeps using some sort of overlay

i noticed that too