MPC-HC troubles...

[Ren]

Setup:
Vista x64
WMP11
MPC-HC 6.4.9.0 (latest)
CCCP 2008-01-24 (latest)
QT lite 2.4.0 (latest)

Well, main testing subject used for this is Bert Monroy's PixelPerfect video, episode 12 (http://bitcast-a.bitgravity.com/revision3/web/pixelperfect/0012/pixelperfect--0012--damen3--hd.h264.mov) to be specific. It's H264 mov. I'm splitting with QT because Haali doesn't split properly for WMP11 and only audio is played. But I have to use MPC because WMP crashes before end of video (screen falls apart to gray artefacts). Problem is, MPC has significantly worse quality of picture, and I'd like to find out why. I'm pretty sure I messed up some settings.
Pixelation is visible on red objects on folowing screens:
MPC:
http://img405.imageshack.us/img405/133/mpcmt9.th.jpg (http://img405.imageshack.us/my.php?image=mpcmt9.jpg&s=1)
WMP11:
http://img148.imageshack.us/img148/2391/wmplz0.th.jpg (http://img148.imageshack.us/my.php?image=wmplz0.jpg&s=1)
JPEG compression blurred it a bit and in move it is much more noticeable. Anyone has an idea how to fix it, please?

[Kado]

Latest MPC HC (http://www.etud.insa-toulouse.fr/~mvelten/bordel/mplayerc_r404.7z) is version v6.4.9.1 - 1.0.11.8 (rev404).

I remuxed the file to a mkv container to use haali splitter in order to get audio and video.

Now you may be getting a pixelated image because of the video rendering engine used with the mov file, because when playing the remuxed mkv file I get none of that. Those problems come from the video renderer used.
Also mpc crashes if using ffdshow try-outs (rev 1860) at about 9min forward and coreavc displays a corrupted image from the same time forward.

Remux the file to mkv and test it with vmr9/haali/evr.

[Ren]

Kado> Thanks for helping me out. There isn't latest version on SourceForge but somewhere in directory named 'bordel'? :-) That's a bit odd..

So..I remuxed MOV into MKV and you were right, now both players has same nice and smooth picture as WMP11 has with MOV before. But both players also crash at that specific moment after 9th minute now. Does it means something different decodes H264 from MOV container in MPC? But what if I have only ffdshow installed? Now I can choose, nice picture with crash or ugly one working..
I was using VMR9 so far, switching to EVR or Haali brings no change. MOV is always bad but working, MKV is always nice but crashing. And I don't really understand why..

[Kado]

the mov file is being decoded by the quicktime codecs while the mkv is decoded by a directshow codec like ffdshow, coreavc, cyberlink etc.

test results with the mkv file (using mpc hc):
coreavc gives corrupted image;
ffdshow crashes the player;
cyberlink h264/avc decoder does not output video.

errors start at 10:15.

something maybe wrong with the video stream that makes it incompatible with the other decoders.

New mpc builds are here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1100268#post1100268), and somebody resquested the rev 404 to be compiled and someone (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1100735#post1100735) else did it. _xxl , casimir and clsid are the main developers for the mpc hc builds.

[clsid]

The reason why this (and other) MPC HC builds are not available on the sourceforge website is because it is a test build. These builds may contain bugs and incomplete/untested code.

[Ren]

clsid, Kado> Ad MPC-HC: Oh, makes sense now, thanks..

Kado> the mov file is being decoded by the quicktime codecs while the mkv is decoded by a directshow codec
Yeah, I completely forgot this stupid thing about QT, not being codec..So I'll stay with MOV/QT for a while. Because from Episode 10 of PixelPerfect onward all MOVs have this same behavior, sooner or later player crashes. Maybe it's some feature unimplemented in nonQT filters..? Most ppl out there use plain QT and they didn't report any troubles with those files. And it's couple of months back since release, so...