LAV Filters - DirectShow Media Splitter and Decoders

[NikosD]

It could also be very helpful if someone with an Nvidia or AMD card with hybrid, not pure, HW HEVC decoder could test this clip to compare MS MFT vs LAV in order to check out if it's Intel specific problem or hybrid specifically.

[Manni]

I'm happy to test with my HD7870 and also with the AMD R9 Fury I've ordered which should arrive tomorrow.

I don't know exactly how the HD7870 deals with HEVC, ie if it's CPU only or hybrid (I'm using Crimson 15.1.1), but I too have noticed that MPC-BE_LAV+MadVR (or EVR-CP) struggle more with HEVC files than PowerDVD15. I expect the Fury to use hybrid for 10bits HEVC.

I've noticed that frames tend to drop more at every shot transition, or when a long shot has a slow pan (so a lot of info that changes in each picture).

For example, if you look at the Exodus HEVC HDR 10bits trailer, PDVD 15 plays it almost perfectly, while MPC-BE+LAV struggles at each shot transition and towards the end of the shot with the temple at night, which is a long pan shot. I've set the GPU and CPU to the max (22) in MadVR, it helps but it doesn't get rid of all the stutter.

[nevcairiel]

I don't think the HD7870 supports any kind of HEVC acceleration from the driver side, unless thats a relatively new feature.

[Manni]

I don't think the HD7870 supports any kind of HEVC acceleration from the driver side, unless thats a relatively new feature.

Thanks, that's what I thought. Then is it useful if I test with the upcoming AMD R9 Fury which definitely has hybrid acceleration for HEVC?

[nevcairiel]

I've just pushed VP9 DXVA2 support to LAV, which will be available in the next nightly build tomorrow.
Note that there is some caveats to know about:

- Its limited to 4:2:0 8-bit (Profile 0), like most DXVA2 accelerators
- Its been tested on Intel Braswell only. Skylake will probably also work. Older Intel systems may not.
- While NVIDIA pretends to support VP9 DXVA2 on the GTX960, it does not actually work (black screen). I'm somewhat confident that its a driver problem, since it fails in rather specific ways that it otherwise shouldn't.
- When using DXVA2-Native and playing an unsupported file (4:2:2/4:4.4 or > 8-bits), you may get a black screen, since fallback to software may not catch the unsupported format early enough (Copy-Back does not have this issue, since it can fallback to software at any time)

Due to the limited amount of hardware that can actually make use of this, testing was also limited, so keep that in mind.
Its also disabled by default, due to all this.

[Thunderbolt8]

is it possible to manually update dcadec in LAV filters? I cannot find the .dll file in the installed directories. also, for some reason the DTS-HD bitstreaming field of LAV audio is greyed out for me.

[clsid]

is it possible to manually update dcadec in LAV filters? I cannot find the .dll file in the installed directories. also, for some reason the DTS-HD bitstreaming field of LAV audio is greyed out for me.
DTS-HD gets activated when you enable DTS.

[nevcairiel]

is it possible to manually update dcadec in LAV filters?

LAV is entirely open-source, you can rebuild it with a newer dcadec.
Other kinds of updates are not available.

Note that todays nightly contains the very latest version.

[Thunderbolt8]

DTS-HD gets activated when you enable DTS.right, completely forgot about that -.-

[Nullack]

G'day Hendrik. Very nice to see your commits into FFMPEG in the last few days with VP9 and now on my birthday, a nice little surprise with LAV filters nightly having VP9. I'm on GTX 960 and given your insights into nvidia's drivers I had not expected VP9 dxva2 to work currently. This is indeed the case sir, when playing back VP9 like phfx_4KHD_VP9TestFootage.webm. Using MPC_HC the app exits and will not display. Using MPC-BE the app tries to play, but stops immediately without exiting. Either case, no playback. Im on driver build revision 359.06. Cheers

EDIT: Also the tick in the VP9 checkbox to enable it, in the LAV Video Decoder app, that isnt persisting. I dont know if this is a feature where LAV auto unticks it cos it knows it failed, or if it's a bug where the GUI isnt remembering the user wanting it enabled.

[nevcairiel]

Please try to keep hardware benchmarks separate from this thread (NikosD has a thread dedicated to such things), or at the very least just post numbers and not screen filling screenshots.
Also keep in mind that Braswell is an Atom-CPU, so hybrid decoding of 4K is probably just too much for it.

[sirhaden]

Does the video decoder support decoding faster than real time? It seems that the default settings result in decoded samples being provided based on the sample duration.

[nevcairiel]

Does the video decoder support decoding faster than real time? It seems that the default settings result in decoded samples being provided based on the sample duration.

Content is output as fast as any downstream filter will receive it. Video and Audio renderers of course only receive content in real-time, since they are designed for that.

LAV Audio and LAV Video can deliver content as fast as your CPU can decode it (or your drive read it)

[Manni]

It could also be very helpful if someone with an Nvidia or AMD card with hybrid, not pure, HW HEVC decoder could test this clip to compare MS MFT vs LAV in order to check out if it's Intel specific problem or hybrid specifically.

I have an AMD R9 Fury tonight, it's leaving tomorrow.

Here is what it can do: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7097546/LAV/AMD%20R9%20Fury%20DXVA%20Checker.png

When I run the decoding test with LAV set to DXVA copyback, here is what I get:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/7097546/LAV/Test%20Fitness%20LAV%20HEVC%20Main.png

Not sure I'm doing it right, first time I'm running these kind of tests.

HEVC Main acceleration seems to work fine, but it looks like it's hardware, so not sure it's what you're after. I have no hybrid acceleration for any Main 10 file, but that might be the way I've set it up.

I can do more tests if you let know what you want me to do tonight, otherwise the GPU is going back tomorrow.

[Manni]

Just to add that I've done some tests with PDVD15 and I seem to get with it some hybrid acceleration for Main10 that I haven't been able to get from LAV.

With PDVD, the CPU is at 50% for my HDR test files of Exodus and even the more demanding Life of Pi one which it plays almost perfectly.
With LAV, CPU is close to 100% and I get dropped frames during transitions with Exodus and unplayable with Life of Pi.

I've set up LAV with DXVA2 copyback (tried native too) and renderer set to EVR-CP.

Maybe it doesn't like 10bits files because it works fine with the fitness test file and many other 8bits files.

[NikosD]

Fury has indeed a pure HW HEVC decoder, not a hybrid one, so it's not the case.

Regarding 10bit HEVC, Fury should have no HW support hybrid or pure HW acceleration.

The cpu usage of 50% of PowerDVD and 100% of LAV is not easy to explain.

DXVA2 copy-back or native with LAV has no difference for 10bit HEVC because they are not actually used with Fury, it falls back to SW.

Try "None" and see of there is any difference.

[Manni]

Fury has indeed a pure HW HEVC decoder, not a hybrid one, so it's not the case.

Regarding 10bit HEVC, Fury should have no HW support hybrid or pure HW acceleration.

The cpu usage of 50% of PowerDVD and 100% of LAV is not easy to explain.

DXVA2 copy-back or native with LAV has no difference for 10bit HEVC because they are not actually used with Fury, it falls back to SW.

Try "None" and see of there is any difference.

Thanks for this, it confirms what I thought. Sorry I couldn't help more.

I knew that the Fury had no hardware acceleration for Main10, but I was hoping for hybrid. As it's not the case - except for some reason with PDVD it seems, which doesn't really matter to me as I'm more interested in MPC-BE+LAV+MadVR performance - I decided last night to keep my HD7870 until Arctic Islands.

As I was only trying to provide the requested data and as the Fury is not relevant to your issue, I won't do more tests, the GPU is packed and going back today :).

[nevcairiel]

PDVD15 implements its own hybrid codec using OpenCL I think.

[Manni]

PDVD15 implements its own hybrid codec using OpenCL I think.

Ah thanks (I couldn't see your post in the other thread).

That explains it then :).

They did a pretty good job, the Main10 videos are anything from stuttering to unplayable without acceleration on my 3770K and play almost perfectly on PDVD with just 50% CPU use (up to about 50mbps).

I wonder how it would have dealt with NikosD's high bandwidth files (crowd run). I couldn't test as the bandwidth is too limited on HDMI 1.4 without the Club3D adapter as the files are 50p.

The best I could do without was 30p.

[huhn]

just set the display to 1080p60 for such a test.

[sirhaden]

Content is output as fast as any downstream filter will receive it.

I have 2 video streams in a proprietary container that get demuxed in a custom demuxer and sent downstream to 2 separate instances of the LAV video decoder. One of the video streams is 30 fps and the second is 5 fps. The decoded streams are sent downstream to a custom picture-in-picture filter where synchronized PIP is performed before outputting a single image for rendering.

The problem is that the 5 fps stream arrives at the PIP filter out of sync, behind the 30 fps stream. A short delay is applied to the faster stream to allow the slower stream to catch up.

What is happening is that the slower stream's packets are not arriving fast enough from the LAV video decoder in order to resync the streams. Using an older version of ffdshow in the same exact architecture does not exhibit this behavior and the slower stream's packets are decoded and delivered fast enough to sync the streams and perform PIP.

Could this be due to the use of 2 instances of the LAV video decoder? Are there any known issues running multiple instances of the LAV video decoder?

[nevcairiel]

LAV Video does not implement any rate limiting at all. Like I outlined in my earlier post, it'll decode content as fast as it gets it from the source and the renderer accepts it.
Note that decoding can have a delay based on number of threads used and some codec properties, so you may allow for a bit more buffering to sync a low fps stream up properly to account for the delay.

There are no known issues running multiple instances at the same time.

[Manni]

just set the display to 1080p60 for such a test.

I'm only interested in UHD HEVC Main10 decoding, so have no interest in testing anything at 1080p.

[nevcairiel]

The resolution or refresh rate is irrelevant if you just want to test *decoding* :)

[Manni]

The resolution or refresh rate is irrelevant if you just want to test *decoding* :)

You're right, I should have said I'm interested in playback performance at native resolution, so downscaling to a lower resolution doesn't really help to assess that.

Plus it's only with PowerDVD, and I care even less about that :)

[LigH]

To (more or less) "benchmark" AviSynth decoders, AVSmeter is quite useful. If DirectShow doesn't have similar tools, one may as well use it with a DirectShowSource script, despite a little overhead.

[NikosD]

DXVA checker can measure both DirectShow and MediaFoundation decoders, in both pure decoding mode (without renderer) and in playback mode using EVR at arbitrary resolutions.

[dansrfe]

How is the appropriate LFE mix level determined for a stereo output to satellite speakers which separates and routes low frequencies to a small sub?

[foxyshadis]

How is the appropriate LFE mix level determined for a stereo output to satellite speakers which separates and routes low frequencies to a small sub?

Your sound card or speakers handles all of that. LAV doesn't do upmixing.

[Nullack]

Something unexpected is happening with VP9 playback on my Nvidia GTX 960

When testing this file phfx_4KHD_VP9TestFootage.webm I had expected to see LAV Filters nightly x64 slam the CPU since I have both VP9 DXVA 2 decoding disabled in the latest nightly of LAV filters, but also because AFAIK the Nvidia VP9 hybrid mode isnt working in current drivers. What I found in MPC-BE is that playing that test 4K VP9 file back, even though the renderer said that it wasnt using DVXA, I was seeing 48% GPU utilisation. I dont know how the GPU got so busy in assisting the playback of the VP9 file. The end result was that the 4K VP9 video played back smooth as silk.

[nevcairiel]

The VP9 software decoder is pretty well optimized, I wouldn't be surprised if it just managed to decode it on its own. Stuff doesn't magically get accelerated even though its all turned off.
The GPU usage was likely just from processing the video.

[Nullack]

Thanks. I wonder what processing it is doing then on the GPU? Its progressive so no deinterlacing needed. Maybe its some sort of colour conversion but I dunno cos I run a HTPC TV display in YCbCr 4:2:0 so I thought it just got all pushed through without fiddling for most content. And the source video is 4K, my display is 4K, so image scaling doesnt seem necessary. I tried to use mediainfo to see the source colour infos and so on but its not listing that information. Maybe the source colour is something strange. Still using a whole 48% of my GPU seems allot, thats like what I see with HEVC L52 DXVA 2 decoding.

[nevcairiel]

PCs don't operate in YCbCr, there will generally always be a RGB step, which is why YCbCr output is generally flawed.
So in your case, there is actually two conversions then, YCbCr from the video -> RGB in the renderer -> YCbCr for output.

[Manni]

PCs don't operate in YCbCr, there will generally always be a RGB step, which is why YCbCr output is generally flawed.
So in your case, there is actually two conversions then, YCbCr from the video -> RGB in the renderer -> YCbCr for output.

True, but if you send RGB to the display most of the time (at least with TVs and Projectors, not necessarily with PC Monitors) there will be an internal conversion to YCB first to apply controls like color and tint which can't be applied in RGB, then another conversion to RGB internally.

The best way to test for this is to see if you can still change color and tint on the display when sending RGB. If you can, then the display is doing an RGB > YCB > RGB internal conversion.

In that case sending YCB to the display means there is one less RGB > YCB conversion.

If color/tint are locked, then the display accepts RGB directly without any further internal conversion, and it can be better to send RGB from the PC as in that case you do get less conversions.

So it's usually a good idea to test what works best for each display.

[wanezhiling]

http://i.imgur.com/S4NkVJq.png
Hi nevcairiel, I suggest adding a 'Restore Default Settings' option in Start Menu, how about?

[nevcairiel]

In that case sending YCB to the display means there is one less RGB > YCB conversion

Not really, you just do the conversion in the GPU instead of the display, still same amount of conversions. I'm not sure which would be of better quality.
In the case of YCbCr output from the GPU you have to hope that the conversion matrix and the inverse matrix in the TV are the same. If its all done inside the TV, you could probably safely assume that its the same.

[Isochroma]

Still no fix for the Doom9 fiefdom's censors, and still no fix or word from the author of buggy LAV Filters which won't install LAVvideo.ax on WinXP SP2.

It errors out instead, complaining about being unable to register the file.

Turns out - after I wasted half my precious afternoon investigating due to complete lack of documentation or software explanation - that the file is dependent on a certain function in Windows implemented in SP3+. That function is called GetLogicalProcessorInformation().

GetLogicalProcessorInformation() is un-necessary for the work performed by LAVvideo.ax. Instead it is another useless dependency designed to force users to change their entire operating system and undocumented on either of the author's websites and not checked for by the installer during installation, thus leaving users with a cryptic error message at the end and a nonfunctional video decoder.

There is no explanation on either of the software's websites and no specification of OS requirements.

The software does no checking during installation and instead trips all over itself finally falling apart on the last mile.

It's time the author took responsibility for his poor software coding and fixed it.

If he doesn't then he will never hear the end of this issue on a certain other site.

[davidsama]

I am pretty sure nevcairiel has said that he no longer supports windows xp or xp sp2 or xp sp3. Just because you refuse to upgrade to windows 7 does not mean that you can try to force other people to still support your 20+ year old os.

[Sparktank]

It is open source, afterall.

Nothing stopping anyone from forking the source to emphasise support for XP (esp. outdated service packs).

Surely, there must be some site out there that specializes in updates for XP ( <SP2 ) compatibility.

[manolito]

The current LAV filters install and work nicely under WinXP SP3. I still am a big fan of XP (but of course I also have a Win7 installation for the ever growing number of software which does not work under XP).

But I really don't see any good reason not to install SP3 under XP. At least for me and everyone I know the SP3 does not break anything.

@ Isochroma
You sure could use a little improvement of your netiquette...


Cheers
manolito

[foxyshadis]

This has to be one of the most insane demands I've ever heard, but at least you aren't cursing out the people trying to tell you it won't happen this time. When any software says it supports an OS without mentioning service packs, that always means it supports at least the latest service pack, but maybe not anything before it. That's obvious and expected; who would bother to keep around all previous versions, if they could even get hold of them, for the two people in the world who would ever try to install it that way? LAV can't possibly be the only thing that doesn't work on SP2.

[nevcairiel]

As others have mentioned XP SP3 still works fine, however any earlier versions are not supported, as they lack key Windows functions that LAV uses.

[Nullack]

Hi. Ive done some research but Im still confused about LAV Video configuration settings. Help would be great please.

Background: Only today did I realise my Samsung UHD 65" display has a special mode that I could have configured ages ago to do more than 2160P60hz with YUV 420. In this special UHD colour mode I can now do lots more settings. Two cases of note:

Case 1:
3840x2160P 60Hz
Output colour format: RGB
Output colour depth: 8bpc
Output dynamic range: Full 0 - 255

Case 2:
YCbCr444 but dynamic range goes to limited without beeing able to adjust it and 8Bpc stays the same

I assume case 1 would be better as a config? Since I get full dynamic range in RGB?

Now onto LAV Video specific settings.

RGB Output levels (for YUV -> RGB Conversion): I have it set currently to PC 0-255? Or should it be untouched?

And output formats. At the moment I have just RGB32 enabled. I'm confused though since 8Bpc on each R G B would be 24. For some reason the TV displays RGB32 output even though the nvidia control panel says it can only do 8Bpc. Should RGB24 be enabled, and RGB32 turned off, or both on as well? And given 8Bpc I think RGB48 should be disabled?

[nevcairiel]

You should generally not have LAV convert video to RGB, especially on UHD content its just going to be rather slow because it uses the CPU for that. Let your GPU do the conversion, its going to do it anyway, much faster at that.
RGB32 and RGB24 are both 8-bit RGB, the reason for 32 is that having data be aligned on powers of 2 is more efficient to work on, so it gets 8-bit of unused data added.

[Nullack]

Ok thanks. Ive set YUV to RGB as leave untouched and stuck with LAV video just having RGB32 as the only ticked output. As I assume that since Im outputting RGB 8Bpc full dynamic range to the display, thats what the display wants to see. Im trying to understand your response, I assume case 1 config is the right config to use for the display and hence I should set lav to just do RGB32 as the only output?

With playing back:

4K HEVC 10 Bit P010: Mixer Output RGB32, Input Type P010 : all seems OK playing this stuff. But then on this:

4K HEVC YUV 420: Input type NV12, Mixer Output NV12 Type NV12

So is that a bug? I told LAV to use RGB32 as the only allowed output yet it says its outputting NV12 for 8 bit HEVC?

Sorry if this is not a bug and its complex than I realise - Im trying to learn this stuff and Im a bit confused. :)

[nevcairiel]

If you use DXVA2-Native, then the output settings have no effect.
And you didn't seem to understand my response, since I said its better to not try to output RGB from LAV. :) The best quality and performance is usually achieved by not disabling any of the output formats and just letting the renderer handle the necessary conversions.
The options are only provided for testing and for renderers which have broken conversions - but many of the conversions in LAV are relatively slow. The CPU is just much slower at processing raw image data than a GPU would be.

[Nullack]

Thanks. So in DXVA 2 native none of the output settings matter. So even if I wanted to do something not recommended like get LAV to do RGB conversion, since Im in native mode it wont ever happen.

Since none of the settings will be obeyed, can I politely suggest it would be less confusing for the user just to disable that whole section of the GUI by greying it out when native is set? :)

I therefore assume when in DXVA native mode, the output mode
is "whatever it is" that gets forced in the whole stack and the user has no choice or decision to make.

[nevcairiel]

Since none of the settings will be obeyed, can I politely suggest it would be less confusing for the user just to disable that whole section of the GUI by greying it out when native is set?

Not every video can be decoded by DXVA2, since DXVA2 only supports a small range of video codecs.
Therefor disabling the settings makes no sense.

[Nullack]

Oh yes, I see ofcourse thats a global setting whereas for example some video codecs will go back to software. Thanks, you really are the master of this stuff :) I appreciate all the insights.

[Nullack]

Hi. Below in this thread is a description of a bug I had assumed to be a MPC-BE / MPC-HC problem. One of the MPC-BE Developers is saying I should raise it for the LAV Filters project. Basically on all three configuration tools for LAV, it works fine in high DPI and 4K situations when the three config tools are run by themselves. WHen however MPC-BE or MPC-HC is playing a video, and I right click into filters then one of the LAV configurators, the formats tab is all garbled up. Screenshots in the below link:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1749525#post1749525

[Plutotype]

Hi folks,
Do LAVfilters support DCP package playback? xml and vid.mxf and aud.mxf
Thanks
Pluto

[lowenz]

Hello guys!

I enjoy testing LAV internal and other filters for HEVC playback but I can't find a way to disable the GPU acceleration of my 750 Ti (Maxwell 1): it seems the GPU drivers override every other options in MPC-HC / LAV if I use "modern" renderers.

Any suggestions?

[Vasilich]

with LAV you can set it to use CPU only when using decoder type "avcodec".
what do you mean under "modern renderers"? renderer can also use GPU for effects, so refer to wiki/forum for that particular renderers you use how to disable GPU usage by them.

[lowenz]

what do you mean under "modern renderers"? renderer can also use GPU for effects, so refer to wiki/forum for that particular renderers you use how to disable GPU usage by them.
VMR 7,9, EVR (and Sync).

0% GPU usage with a Radeon 7850 (windows 7), high GPU usage with the 750 Ti (windows 10)

[lowenz]

with LAV you can set it to use CPU only when using decoder type "avcodec".
HW acceleration is already disabled in MPC-HC/Lav configuration but the GPU (Nvidia Maxwell) usage is still high (vs AMD GCN @0%, same settings)

[wanezhiling]

Because the player can't detect the gpu usage on ATI/intel platform, so always 0%, that's not correct.
With nvidia, it's normal, you can check GPU-Z -> GPU Load.

[lowenz]

Because the player can't detect the gpu usage on ATI/intel platform, so always 0%, that's not correct.
With nvidia, it's normal, you can check GPU-Z -> GPU Load.
It's 0% with RTSS.

[nevcairiel]

Your stats are just wrong, then. Video Rendering will always take a bit of GPU load.
However, if hwaccel is turned off in LAV, then it will not touch the GPU at all. Anything that happens after LAV has decoded the image is entirely out of its hands, so not relevant to this thread.

[Nullack]

Bug Report: Forced subtitles are not appearing despite being enabled in LAV splitter. During playback LAV splitter identifies the auto subtitle stream for forced subtitles. However no forced subs are displayed such as in star wars episode 1 bluray disc chapter 14. Normal PGS type subtitles display fine.

I see the help text in LAV Splitter has a note saying the tick box for forced subtitles may not work for all bluray discs. Is there a way to fix this? Can I assist with testing? What is the issue causing some blurays to not work with forced subtitles.

Thanks

[sneaker_ger]

PGS subtitles in BluRay can mark certain subtitle pictures (not tracks!) as "forced". So you can have one track that has the complete English + alien dialogue of Star Wars in a single track. LAV can filter the non-alien parts out because they are not marked as forced if the user wishes so. Some authoring houses choose to not mark any subtitle pictures as "forced" at all, instead they just put the full dialogue (including the alien parts) in one track and the alien parts into another track. Since no picture is marked as forced LAV will filter everything out. Your only options:
1.) deactivate the respective LAV option or
2.) choose the respective full subtitle track (not the auto forced-only one) or
3.) re-author the file with some subtitle editor to make use of the flags

You might be forced to do 3.) in case you have not copied the track that only consists of the alien language parts from the BluRay. (or re-rip the BluRay, of course)

The problem is well known - there's nothing you can assist with.

[Nullack]

Thanks for the details. However this doesnt stand up to logical reason to say it cant be done programatically. Since the Xbox One can do it using the AMD x86 CPU thats in it, clearly it can be done in software. Also Cyberlinks PowerDVD does it, again some software compiled for the x86 platform. I assume the problem is the open source community was never given licences from the Bluray folk and hence all the open source stuff was clean room reverse engineered? And theres gaps in whats been discovered from that reverse engineering vs the actual spec?

[nevcairiel]

The information is just not present, the only way to do this is to use the full menu navigation, which is obviously not the goal here.

[foxyshadis]

The only way I can see a player accounting for that is by silently switching to a forced-only subtitle track if forced is selected and no forced subpictures are in the main track. Then you have to guess which track if none of them are marked forced either...

[nevcairiel]

and no forced subpictures are in the main track.

Unfortunately, you don't know that until the end of the movie. ;)

[jkauff]

@nevcairiel
You're working for JRiver now, I'm curious why the Red October version of LAV is always behind the LAV standalone released version. Is there a technical reason? I have LAV set up as external filters, which seems silly given how often MC21 is updated. Just curious.

I didn't post this in the JRiver forums because I didn't want to take the chance that I would embarrass anyone.

[Stereodude]

The information is just not present, the only way to do this is to use the full menu navigation, which is obviously not the goal here.
And yet, nearly everyone still insists there's no compelling use case to implement menu support via libbluray into players. The fact that none of the open source players (potentially excluding VLC) can properly play back many intact Blu-rays (after decryption) without requiring the user to manually futz with subtitles during playback somehow gets overlooked. :scared:

I know I just love having to pause a movie to go figure out if there are forced subtitles (by flagging or a VM command to pick a certain PGS track) in one of the other PGS subtitle tracks that I should be seeing when I hear foreign languages being spoken but aren't seeing any subtitles on the screen. Apparently only the end users, and none of the developers, are actually trying to play back intact decrypted Blu-rays. :confused:

[nevcairiel]

You are free to wish for any feature you want, but its not my responsibility to fulfill your wishes. I do perfectly fine without BD menus, in fact I would never use them even if I could. And yes, I do watch plenty Blu-rays, I just make them MKVs first. My remote control can't go to the PC and put a disc in, after all.

[Stereodude]

You are free to wish for any feature you want, but its not my responsibility to fulfill your wishes. I do perfectly fine without BD menus, in fact I would never use them even if I could.
No one said it was. That doesn't change the validity of the use case. The open source community is happy with half-ass Blu-ray playback. That point became crystal clear a long time ago. Unfortunately, there's no decent commercial software player. Arcsoft was the closest and they've since given up.

And yes, I do watch plenty Blu-rays, I just make them MKVs first. My remote control can't go to the PC and put a disc in, after all.
ROFL... Since when is watching .mkv files with the streams extracted from Blu-rays "watching a Blu-ray"? Am I listening to CDs when I play FLAC files in foobar?

[nevcairiel]

ROFL... Since when is watching .mkv files with the streams extracted from Blu-rays "watching a Blu-ray"? Am I listening to CDs when I play FLAC files in foobar?

Its the same end-result. I buy a disc, and I watch the movie in the evening, without any frustration during watching time.

[Stereodude]

Its the same end-result. I buy a disc, and I watch the movie in the evening, without any frustration during watching time.
Yes, because in the afternoon you spent an hour of your time to rip it, figure out which tracks should be included, and mux a mkv of it.

[nevcairiel]

Yes, because in the afternoon you spent an hour of your time to rip it, figure out which tracks should be included, and mux a mkv of it.

Its more like 5 minutes (10 max on stubborn discs) of unpacking the disc and starting the process and setting up the streams, and 20 for it to finish ripping, but that part is unattended of course.
I rather spent that time while I am working on the PC anyway, rather than when I want to just relax and watch the movie.

Anyway, enough of this discourse. LAV isn't going to offer BD menus now or any foreseeable future, but any other developer is of course free to build this!

[dansrfe]

Your sound card or speakers handles all of that. LAV doesn't do upmixing.

Actually I meant just downmixing to stereo with LFE frequencies. Do I just find the optimal LFE mix level by trial and error in the case where the speaker system "upmixes" 2.0 -> 2.1? Is 1 the max LFE level of the source?

[AlexKane]

Actually I meant just downmixing to stereo with LFE frequencies. Do I just find the optimal LFE mix level by trial and error in the case where the speaker system "upmixes" 2.0 -> 2.1? Is 1 the max LFE level of the source?

1 means no volume scaling.

[videonerd]

And yet, nearly everyone still insists there's no compelling use case to implement menu support via libbluray into players. The fact that none of the open source players (potentially excluding VLC) can properly play back many intact Blu-rays (after decryption) without requiring the user to manually futz with subtitles during playback somehow gets overlooked. :scared:

I know I just love having to pause a movie to go figure out if there are forced subtitles (by flagging or a VM command to pick a certain PGS track) in one of the other PGS subtitle tracks that I should be seeing when I hear foreign languages being spoken but aren't seeing any subtitles on the screen. Apparently only the end users, and none of the developers, are actually trying to play back intact decrypted Blu-rays. :confused:

Hi Stereodude, do not fool yourself to think that nevcairiel can actually add any features to lav filters (which is just a hack using ffmpeg). You are more likely to get that feature developed in lav filters if you chase the ffmpeg devs.

[sneaker_ger]

Nevcairiel is one of the most active ffmpeg developers. Don't mistake lack of interest for lack of ability.

https://github.com/FFmpeg/FFmpeg/commits?author=Nevcairiel

[SeeMoreDigital]

Hi Stereodude, do not fool yourself to think that nevcairiel can actually add any features to lav filters (which is just a hack using ffmpeg). You are more likely to get that feature developed in lav filters if you chase the ffmpeg devs.
How rude :eek:

[e-t172]

Actually I meant just downmixing to stereo with LFE frequencies. Do I just find the optimal LFE mix level by trial and error in the case where the speaker system "upmixes" 2.0 -> 2.1? Is 1 the max LFE level of the source?

The correct value for LFE when downmixing to two stereo channels is +10dB - 6dB = +4dB = 1.58.

The +10dB part is because of ITU-R BS.775 (https://www.itu.int/rec/R-REC-BS.775/en) which states that LFE should be played back 10dB louder than any of the main channels.

The -6dB part is to compensate for the fact that you're mixing LFE into two channels, not one. The reason it's 6dB and not 3dB is because, at these low frequencies, acoustic summation is typically coherent.

I believe the reason why nevcairiel did not make 1.58 the default is to avoid overloading stereo systems that don't have a lot of bass capability.

[ryrynz]

How rude :eek:

Obviously had no idea, was appropriately schooled.

[filler56789]

You are more likely to get that feature developed in lav filters if you chase the ffmpeg devs.

Unlikely. Hendrik Leppkes is good, whereas many /¿most? of the "regular FFmpeg-ers" are just bureaucrats.

[Nullack]

Hi Stereodude, do not fool yourself to think that nevcairiel can actually add any features to lav filters (which is just a hack using ffmpeg). You are more likely to get that feature developed in lav filters if you chase the ffmpeg devs.

Hendrik is an ffmpeg developer, look at his commits in the ffmpeg git log! It aint right to diss him in the way you have! I dont agree with his views on bluray menu playback where he considers it to not be important for the users, but the bloke has done a masterful job not only on lav filters, but also ffmpeg. Were lucky we benefit from his efforts. You should consider apologizing.

[Nullack]

Yes it is, including 4K. Smooth as silk with little CPU utilisation. I did notice a strange value for the DXVA2 variable - I dont usually see that its more descriptive. As seen in the screenshot below:

http://i.imgur.com/nT2vCe0.jpg

[huhn]

Does the latest Nvidia 361.43 WHQL driver released today fix anything with VP9 DXVA2 decoding on GM206 GPUs?

yes and it isn't hybrid.

[Nullack]

For Hendrik:

* I see the Microsoft DXVA2 Spec Paper for VP9 is bundled into VP8 as well. Is there any future intent to add VP8 hardware assist in LAV filters since the two versions seem kinda intertwined? Currently VP8 is done in software.

* I also see on Microsofts DXVA2 Spec Paper website, MPEG 4 part two specification documents. Does LAV Filters intend to support stuff like xvid gpu acceleration?

Thanks

[nevcairiel]

VP8 might happen when hardware starts supporting this, no plans for mpeg4pt2, its too much of a butchered and misused format that would only result in trouble.

[v0lt]

The sample (http://www.mediafire.com/watch/9c7uq38m9b9ixzj/sample_HEVC_1080p_20sec.mkv) has artifacts when HEVC DXVA (Nvidia GTX 950).

[pacuro]

Hi guys,
I do not know what I am doing wrong or maybe what still have to do.
Each time I enable VP9 decoding in LAV Video Decoder Properties tab, "tick" disappears when playing VP9 sample and software encoding is engaged.
Doing this with latest nightly MPC-HC and LAV (both portable) and can not obtain VP9 DXVA playback.:confused: Of course 361.43 drivers are installed.
AVC and HEVC DXVA still works though.

[huhn]

you are most likely using the internal lavfilter version from MPC-HC not the new installed version for playback.

there are multiply ways to change this. one is to disable all internal filter in MPC-HC.

[pacuro]

Thanks huhn. Chose external filter and it works now!
Could you please tell me what is the difference since both (installed in Windows and portable in MPC-HC filters catalog) LAV versions are the same (0.67.0.29). I prefer portable "things" over those with instalators. Portables work fine with AVC and HEVC...

Edit:
Quite interesting as I removed LAV from Windows and choose in external codecs portable one stored in MPC-HC directory. Works as well :)
Is there anything what should be fixed by developers in MPC-HC or LAV ?

[hubblec4]

hi nevcairiel

I have some questions about nested chapters.
I will use ordered chapters too, cause its necessary for chapter segment linking
(which will work perfect, thank you so much).

It seems to me that LAV Splitter use the "main chapter" start and end time and the segment uid only.

1. Which parameter of a nested chapter is used in LAV Splitter?

The duration of an ordered-nested-chapter seems not to be used. Only the start time marks the chapter.
Also the segment uid will be ignored and an existing chapter-segment-link will not work.

I have uploaded a sample folder (http://forum.gleitz.info/attachment.php?attachmentid=98871&d=1450828621) with test files.
There are 3 episodes(separate folder) and a menu folder(all episodes together with two menu-"start".mkv's)
Epsiode 1 has an opening part(which will used for the other two episodes with chapter-segment-linking),
2 chapter parts and a credits part.
The other two episodes has 2 chapter parts and credits part only.
(Note: Only in the menu folder plays the episode 2 and 3 correct with the opening part from episode 1.)

The "without nested chapter menu.mkv" play all chapter-segment-links well and all durations correct.
The nested menu.mkv shows the opening part from episode 1 only one times.
The first nested chapter from episode 2 and 3 has a chapter-segement-link to episode 1 opening part
(00:00:00.000-00:00:02.000).

LAV Splitter menu -> chapters:
You see the episode 2/3 "main chapter", the first and the second nested chapter have the same time stamps.

2. Is this a bug or a not implemented feature?

Nested chapters are not really good documented and I think you has programmed this so good you knew.

3. Or could you find detailed specs?


I hope you have time for this topic.

hubble

[huhn]

Thanks huhn. Chose external filter and it works now!
Could you please tell me what is the difference since both (installed in Windows and portable in MPC-HC filters catalog) LAV versions are the same (0.67.0.29). I prefer portable "things" over those with instalators. Portables work fine with AVC and HEVC...

Edit:
Quite interesting as I removed LAV from Windows and choose in external codecs portable one stored in MPC-HC directory. Works as well :)
Is there anything what should be fixed by developers in MPC-HC or LAV ?

mpc-hc will update the lavfilter version sometime in the feature that will fix it. they are simply "outdated".

overriding may work too.

[Nullack]

The sample (http://www.mediafire.com/watch/9c7uq38m9b9ixzj/sample_HEVC_1080p_20sec.mkv) has artifacts when HEVC DXVA (Nvidia GTX 950).

Yes I too get artifacts on my 960 under copyback DXVA2. In software decoding there is no artifacts.

[foxyshadis]

Is there anything what should be fixed by developers in MPC-HC or LAV ?

MPC-HC only uses official releases, so it'll be fixed shortly after nev releases a new stable version.

[kasper93]

mpc-hc will update the lavfilter version sometime in the feature that will fix it. they are simply "outdated".

overriding may work too.

We are not outdated atm.

[NikosD]

You and nevcairiel should be working closer and update your software synchronised.

[ryrynz]

You and nevcairiel should be working closer and update your software synchronised.

LAV was updated 10 days ago, MPC-HC updated LAV 10 days ago (0.67.30) The MPC-HC devs will follow LAV and get email notifications when new changes
are made so you really can't really get any closer than that unless Nevcairiel updated MPC-HC himself. He could do this if he felt like it (he has rights to do so I believe)
but I doubt this will ever happen given he's not really associated with MPC-HC's development.

If you want bleeding edge then you use the external filters, I can't see anything changing in this regard.

[huhn]

We are not outdated arm.

had no better word for it so i put it in "". doesn't change that his version wasn't the nightly.

[mark0077]

Guys I'm using LAV Splitter / Audio / Video with mpc-hc latest beta. Just reformatted my PC and I'm not sure if my issue was there before or not but its there now. When I play an mkv file I have here which has a default first audio track of PCM s 24 LE, the LAV Audio Decoder isn't showing up in the filters list. When I switch tracks to the 5.1 track, LAV Audio Decoder kicks in. The strange thing is, when I switch back to the 2 channel track, LAV Audio Decoder is still in use.

Whats causing this, is it MPC or LAV Splitter or something else? Just that I use LAV Audio delay functionality as my TV has quite a bad video delay, so its noticeable that LAV Audio isn't in use as the audio is all out of sync.

[clsid]

PCM is uncompressed audio and doesn't require any decoding. The reason why LAV gets used after track switching is because (by default) the decoder isn't removed from the filter graph during switching.

The audio switcher in MPC-HC also has a delay option that you could use instead.

[mark0077]

Ah OK thanks. Its just not ideal as things like upmixing / audio delay all need to be replicated in the likes of mpc-hc then. Is there any other way clsid to force LAV Audio to be used so that I don't have to get those other LAV features working elsewhere for PCM?

[clsid]

Delay works independently of mixing. And while LAV can increase the number of channels, it doesn't actually upmix, it just adds silent channels.

If that PCM track is stereo and you want 5.1, then simply set Windows to 5.1 and your sound driver will do the mixing.

[FreeFall]

nevcairiel,

The latest nightly builds are crashing when playing DVD's, happens with MPC-HC x86 / x64 and Zoom Player. Zoom Player shows a crash report pointing to avutil-lav-55.dll as the problem. The problem seems to affect LAVFilters-0.67.0-14 and later builds.

This is on Windows 7 x64 Pro.

Thanks.

[Nullack]

nevcairiel,

The latest nightly builds are crashing when playing DVD's, happens with MPC-HC x86 / x64 and Zoom Player. Zoom Player shows a crash report pointing to avutil-lav-55.dll as the problem. The problem seems to affect LAVFilters-0.67.0-14 and later builds.

This is on Windows 7 x64 Pro.

Thanks.

Yes, it intermittent but Im replicating it on Win 10 x64 during DVD playback. Heres what the app log spat out from the crash:

Fault bucket 120380086268, type 4
Event Name: APPCRASH
Response: Not available
Cab Id: 0

Problem signature:
P1: mpc-be64.exe
P2: 1.4.6.1053
P3: 567b658a
P4: avutil-lav-55.dll
P5: 55.10.100.0
P6: 01185798
P7: c0000094
P8: 00000000000235cb

[Aleksoid1978]

Hi nevcairiel.
1 - thanks for you code for VP9 DXVA2, work great on GTX 960.
2 - can help deal with a small problem : when use LAVVideo and close playback do first calling CLAVVideo::BreakConnect() with dir == PINDIR_INPUT. When use MPC-BE's Video decoder, close playback - do first calling ::BreakConnect() with dir == PINDIR_OUTPUT.
I can not understand the reason for different behavior. Can you help me ?? :)

[mark0077]

I also tried my Queen Greatest Hits DVD today and it also has issues but with the latest official version. With internal mpcbe mpeg2 decoder there's no issue. This DVD always seemed to cause ffdshow issues in the past but haruhiko had fixed all of those. Is it worth uploading the menu for this somewhere. Basically the menus freeze and windows blue spinning icon appears.

[Aleksoid1978]

https://yadi.sk/i/eFmQ-MWBiHWR3
About 50 second video stream changes (changing the frame size from 720x576 -> 1920x1080). In DXVA mode only Microsoft DTV-DVD Video Decoder can normally handle this situation.

But - if you seeking this place, the resolution is changed and continues to play normally.

[Nullack]

You should generally not have LAV convert video to RGB, especially on UHD content its just going to be rather slow because it uses the CPU for that

Thanks. Should this be default to leave it as untouched as input? Currently LAV is defaulting to PC levels 0-255.

[nevcairiel]

Thanks. Should this be default to leave it as untouched as input? Currently LAV is defaulting to PC levels 0-255.

The option makes no difference if you don't force RGB conversion by disabling everything else. And once you do convert, full range RGB is more standard. There is usually a reason for the defaults to be what they are ;)

[nevcairiel]

1. Which parameter of a nested chapter is used in LAV Splitter?

The duration of an ordered-nested-chapter seems not to be used. Only the start time marks the chapter.
Also the segment uid will be ignored and an existing chapter-segment-link will not work.



Only the primary chapters directly under an edition are used for "ordered chapters", anything else wouldn't really make much sense, IMHO.
You can't "nest" ordered chapters, the interaction with the top level and the levels further downwards would be very bizzare.

For example, in your "00 Menu nested chapters.mkv", you have a top level chapter that says (Episode 2) "Play 0:00.000 to 0:07.487 from Segment #2", which is a clear instruction.
Then nested chapters try to override this - the first nested chapter says "Play 0:00.000 to 0:02.000 from Segment #1". Is this supposed to override the first 2 seconds of the top level chapter? Or make it longer? Its just not clear what its supposed to do, because there is no clear spec.

A more logical way to approach this would be to not have the top level chapters actually be ordered chapters, and only the level below - but alas thats not how it was designed, or how any other ordered chapters MKV works.

So in short, top level chapters inside an edition are used for ordered chapters, any further nested chapters are purely cosmetical for navigation purposes.


2. Is this a bug or a not implemented feature?

Nested chapters are not really good documented and I think you has programmed this so good you knew.

Sounds like you are doing something that its not meant for.

If you really want to shove multiple episodes into one mkv, best would probably to use one edition for each. That way you can even share OP/EDs properly.
Or don't use nested chapters, and just name them differently, ie. name them like LAV would name them if they are nested "+ [Name]" etc, that way it looks like its nested, but its all top-level.

Otherwise, nested ordered chapters are not something that works. The top level chapters under the edition need to be the ordered chapter entries, no others will be used for ordered chapter handling.

[hubblec4]

Only the primary chapters directly under an edition are used for "ordered chapters", anything else wouldn't really make much sense, IMHO.
You can't "nest" ordered chapters, the interaction with the top level and the levels further downwards would be very bizzare.

Ok. I figured out that LAV work like you described but I think thats a limit of your programming and not a limit of the specs.
I have seen other menu chapter.xml files which have nested ordered chapters.

A possible way for ordered chapters is set the ChapterTimeEnd equal to the ChapterTimeStart or let it empty. If you found such top-level ordered chapter and it has nested chapters too, than you could use this start and end times for ordered chapter handling.


For example, in your "00 Menu nested chapters.mkv", you have a top level chapter that says (Episode 2) "Play 0:00.000 to 0:07.487 from Segment #2", which is a clear instruction.
Then nested chapters try to override this - the first nested chapter says "Play 0:00.000 to 0:02.000 from Segment #1". Is this supposed to override the first 2 seconds of the top level chapter? Or make it longer? Its just not clear what its supposed to do, because there is no clear spec.

A more logical way to approach this would be to not have the top level chapters actually be ordered chapters, and only the level below - but alas thats not how it was designed, or how any other ordered chapters MKV works.

So in short, top level chapters inside an edition are used for ordered chapters, any further nested chapters are purely cosmetical for navigation purposes.


Sounds like you are doing something that its not meant for.

If you really want to shove multiple episodes into one mkv, best would probably to use one edition for each. That way you can even share OP/EDs properly.
Or don't use nested chapters, and just name them differently, ie. name them like LAV would name them if they are nested "+ [Name]" etc, that way it looks like its nested, but its all top-level.

Otherwise, nested ordered chapters are not something that works. The top level chapters under the edition need to be the ordered chapter entries, no others will be used for ordered chapter handling.


Normally my Matroska menu editor creates for each episode an edition and an edition with all episode. It works like it should.
Only if in the episodes an existing segment-link to another file then it doesnt work with nested chapters well.
(but I think I can write a workaround)


I know LAV Splitter has other priorities and maybe you have in future a little bit time to enhance the Matroska splitting.
I would help you if you like.

[nevcairiel]

Ok. I figured out that LAV work like you described but I think thats a limit of your programming and not a limit of the specs.
I have seen other menu chapter.xml files which have nested ordered chapters.

You have to ask yourself one thing:
Does it work with Haali Splitter?

If the answer is No, then the specification does not allow it.
There is no written specification for ordered chapters, whatever works with Haali is the specification. And I'm not going to invent any arcane use-cases that are never going to be used by more than 2 people anyway.

[hubblec4]

You have to ask yourself one thing:
Does it work with Haali Splitter?

Im sure it would not work with Haali Splitter, cause the segment-linking works not perfect like you said(many posts before).
The other reason is Haali was not a fan of a menu so i think he don't implement such a feature.



And I'm not going to invent any arcane use-cases that are never going to be used by more than 2 people anyway.

Yes, that can I understand. How many people would be needed so that such a function is incorporated?

[thomaz909]

i have a problem with 0.67.

when i install 0.67 i cant bitstream "Reclock encoded AC3" over "Realtek HDMI Audio" anymore.
with 0.65 all fine.

same settings used for both versions.

i absolutely have no idea what happens.

reclock shows that it gets 6 channels and reclock output say that it is in "ac3 enc mode (wave out)" but my denon avr stays in "analog" mode which indicates that no digital signal is coming.
then i run 0.65 installer and after that it works again immediately.

[nevcairiel]

Thats a ReClock bug. You can fix it by checking the legacy 5.1 layout option in LAV settings.

[thomaz909]

yes,
it works.
thx.
:)

[Nullack]

Thanks very much Hendrik for the commit in the git log fixing DVDs cheers :)

[nevcairiel]

The latest nightly builds are crashing when playing DVD's, happens with MPC-HC x86 / x64 and Zoom Player. Zoom Player shows a crash report pointing to avutil-lav-55.dll as the problem. The problem seems to affect LAVFilters-0.67.0-14 and later builds.


Thanks very much Hendrik for the commit in the git log fixing DVDs cheers :)

I was meaning to comment on that last night but got distracted. But yes, it should be working again in the latest nightly, hopefully.

Do let me know if the issue persists.

[nevcairiel]

https://yadi.sk/i/eFmQ-MWBiHWR3
About 50 second video stream changes (changing the frame size from 720x576 -> 1920x1080). In DXVA mode only Microsoft DTV-DVD Video Decoder can normally handle this situation.

But - if you seeking this place, the resolution is changed and continues to play normally.

The behavior seems to be quite similar in software mode and in DXVA mode for me. It briefly hangs and shows artifacts for a second, then just continues without problems.
Since software mode behaves the same way, it seems like a problem in the FFmpeg decoder. Having said that, resolution changes are a bit on the complicated side as it is. If there is a clean cut in the video stream it should work OK, but not always.

[Aleksoid1978]

It's working on Nvidia, but fail on ATI. But - Microsoft video decoder fine on ATI too.

[mark0077]

I was meaning to comment on that last night but got distracted. But yes, it should be working again in the latest nightly, hopefully.

Do let me know if the issue persists.

Nev do you still have the Queen Greatest Hits I DVD. I remember a while back I posted lots of issues with both it and the Star Wars Episode II DVD with LAV Video Decoder. Just even with the latest nightly using LAV Video for the Queen DVD, it pretty much doesn't work at all anymore. The windows blue spinning icon appears when I navigate to Title 1.

If you have it would you mind trying it with the latest nightly?

[nevcairiel]

The spinning icon would indicate a problem with the player instead, it gets stuck in its main thread, which LAV should have no direct control over.
I don't think I have that DVD.

[mark0077]

Ah right OK no worries. I can't reproduce with other video decoders like ffdshows mpeg2 one or mpc-be one thats the only reason I mentioned it.

[dansrfe]

Is it possible to have a quick shortcut or way to automatically detect current default audio output to turn mixing on/off?

I often switch between bluetooth headphones and the multichannel speaker system and remember to enable/disable mixing however its a bit difficult to get everyone else using the setup to follow suit.

[Nullack]

Hendrik a quick comment on testing. Theres some toolsets in the commercial space that are achieving a very high level of test coverage - and doing so with test frameworks that make it quick and easy. Argon for example have built a model of the various specs such as VP9 and HEVC, and have produced test coverage that is mathematically based on all possible values from the standard:

http://www.argondesign.com/products/argon-streams-vp9/

Then there is intel as well:

https://software.intel.com/en-us/intel-stress-bitstreams-and-encoder/

There is obvious value in this for both FFMPEG and Lav Filters - it goes far beyond what FATE does.

Given your leadership in the field and name recognition, I just wonder if they would be willing to negotiate with you on donating their software "for the cause" to FFMPEG / LAV Filters. It would be good PR for them, and given FFMPEG is the open source leader in the field it would be a strong statement to add to their brand. Theres lots of examples in the past where commercial companies have done this and I would encourage you not to dismiss it out of hand. Cheers

[nevcairiel]

There is no need. There is plenty people running FFmpeg against various automated testing and fault finding tools to identify problems, including people from various "big" organizations like Google and Mozilla who frequently provide results for all sorts of codecs, not just limited to VP9 or HEVC.
FATE is not comparable to such tools (and not wanting to be), since its "just" a deterministic automated regression test, and not out to find "new" bugs, just to prevent old ones from coming back.

In general such commercial tools are usually more marketing than useful. Both VP9 and HEVC provide a wide range of official conformance streams that test the behavior on "correct" bitstreams, and there are plenty of smart tools to create and test "broken" streams available to us today.
So in short - the "obvious value" just isn't there, since such things are already done today, and one more tool that does the same thing just isn't going to make any big difference.

[Nullack]

Good stuff, so its already in play - I get your point about FATE being for a cut down regression test suite and not an attempt to cover functional ranges in a mathematical way - but this type of automated functional testing has a place just as much as regression. What impressed me about these tools was the maths model used in mathematically ensuring test coverage over the whole ranges of possibilities. That goes way beyond a few companies looking at a few validation streams. And its not fuzz testing if that what you mean to imply (I read about what google did in this space it was top stuff). This is different to fuzz testing. This is developing a framework to mathematically analyse functional ranges and cover all such scenarios. Logically, if this is all "marketing" and the companies arent offering anything of value beyond what is already existing for free, then they have no sales and no business; yet they do exist....If your sure this is actually already being done with full range functional test coverage from an IV&V standards point of view, well awesome :) Its very difficult to do - a friend of mine had a whole team doing a formal IV&V process for an aircraft system which took 2 years of intense effort. Most test efforts rarely put more than a fraction of test coverage into their functional tests simply because of the numbers involved unless they get into automated functional test frameworks.

[hdboy]

Hi

I have a TrueHD 7.1 track that ac3filter cannot handle but LAV can. However I like ac3filter's extensive mixer options, including creating a custom mix (why I want to do this is a long story I probably don't need to go into here). Ac3filter has not been updated for a while and I want to use lav for everything (already use it as splitter and video decoder). Is there a way to have lav do the decoding and ac3filter do the mixing? Thanks.

Edit: I figured it out. Duh. In ac3filter's system tab, uncheck truehd in the "use ac3filter for" box. Then put ac3filter above lav audio decoder in external filters list of your player (MPC-HC in my case). Voila.

[Nullack]

Hello Hendrik. Thanks for the commit in your latest nightly on fixing the formats tab with high DPI scenarios when operating under media players like MPC-BE. It was a cosmetic item but nonetheless it looks great now its fixed and I'm thankful for the fix. Regards

[NikosD]

Hello and Happy New Year to all.

It's been confirmed about 4 months ago here in Doom9, that Skylake accelerates in HW 8bit HEVC format up to 8K resolution and I thought that maybe you could add this resolution in LAV video properties.

I don't have a Skylake to test it, but I believe that you allow Skylake to accelerate 8K HEVC, even if you haven't added this resolution to LAV video yet.
Right ?

[nevcairiel]

The 4K checkbox really means "4K and up", so yes, if the driver accepts 8K then it should work.

[nevcairiel]

Ah right OK no worries. I can't reproduce with other video decoders like ffdshows mpeg2 one or mpc-be one thats the only reason I mentioned it.

I had one thought - does this only happen with madVR by any chance?
Maybe I shouldn't be calling this one madVR function the way I do, I'm not sure really.

Unfortunately, none of the test menus I have shows any problems, and the number of full DVD discs I have is rather limited.

[mark0077]

Actually yes when I switch to use EVR-CP the blue spinning icon doesn't appear, but the menus don't really behave properly. There is an "OPTIONS" menu button which when clicked doesn't seem to bring you where it should. Just some animation appears which seems to then get stuck mid animation, and you don't get brought to a different screen. Maybe its just bad luck that the very few DVDs I have always seem to be tricky to deal with.

Heres a screenshot after I click "OPTIONS", the screen seems to be stuck mid animation. I tried getting the DVD menu to work without the bigger .VOB files but it won't so I'm not sure that I'm going to be able to upload any parts of the menu to show you.

http://i66.tinypic.com/358c95u.jpg

EDIT: Actually the menus do work fine, it was SVP that was causing the second issue :) So yeah using evr-cp fixes the first issue so maybe there is a change needed if using madVR as you say.

[clsid]

Are you planning to add a fallback to software decoding for unsupported VP9 profiles?

[nevcairiel]

Are you planning to add a fallback to software decoding for unsupported VP9 profiles?

Fallback works fine today, just don't use DXVA2-Native if you care about that, VP9 does not allow detecing the profile before decoding starts - ie. not early enough to fallback in time.

[nevcairiel]

Actually yes when I switch to use EVR-CP the blue spinning icon doesn't appear, but the menus don't really behave properly. There is an "OPTIONS" menu button which when clicked doesn't seem to bring you where it should. Just some animation appears which seems to then get stuck mid animation, and you don't get brought to a different screen. Maybe its just bad luck that the very few DVDs I have always seem to be tricky to deal with.

Heres a screenshot after I click "OPTIONS", the screen seems to be stuck mid animation. I tried getting the DVD menu to work without the bigger .VOB files but it won't so I'm not sure that I'm going to be able to upload any parts of the menu to show you.

http://i66.tinypic.com/358c95u.jpg

EDIT: Actually the menus do work fine, it was SVP that was causing the second issue :) So yeah using evr-cp fixes the first issue so maybe there is a change needed if using madVR as you say.


SVP breaking DVD menus is not surprising, menus need rather careful handling as every single frame needs to be displayed without delay, while things like SVP tend to add a bit of delay for temporal interpolation.

Anyway, can you try the latest nightly with madVR?
https://files.1f0.de/lavf/nightly/

I hope it should work now.

[mark0077]

Hi nev. I have disabled SVP for the test now, but unfortunately with the latest nightly (LAVFilters-0.67.0-38.exe) when I play the DVD and Navigate -> Jump To -> Title 1 the seekbar seems to show the correct chapter markers in mpc-be and I see the duration of the actual DVD appearing correctly but the blue spinning icon shows up again on what looks like the first frame.

[nevcairiel]

Maybe it is in fact a madVR problem then. LAV uses a special subtitle interface with madVR for DVD subs and menus, maybe it blocks somewhere unfortunate.

[mark0077]

Maybe it is in fact a madVR problem then. LAV uses a special subtitle interface with madVR for DVD subs and menus, maybe it blocks somewhere unfortunate.

OK Thanks for looking into it nev, do you think I should bring this over to the madVR thread to see if madshi can see if its anything from that side thats causing it.

[Gleb Egorych]

Hi, nevcairiel,
Here is a sample that there are artifacts in all hardware-assisted modes (DXVA2/CUDA): https://www.sendspace.com/file/nfhb8p. Software mode is OK.
Win7 x64, LAV 0.67.0-43 x86, GTX660, Forceware 359.06.

[wanezhiling]

Hi, nevcairiel,
Here is a sample that there are artifacts in all hardware-assisted modes (DXVA2/CUDA): https://www.sendspace.com/file/nfhb8p. Software mode is OK.
Win7 x64, LAV 0.67.0-43 x86, GTX660, Forceware 359.06.

Same here.
But works good with Intel GPU.

[oddball]

I have an issue with LAV in MPC that I cannot get my head around. I recently purchased a Denon AVR and connected it using HDMI from an AMD video card. My problem is I cannot get stereo Dolby Surround decoding when I set the AMD to 5.1 or 7.1 channels. I can only get it by setting the AMD speaker configuration to stereo. I then have to set LAV to bitstream. I would prefer to have LAV set to decode audio to multi-channel output (So that I can have multi-channel+DS) but in order to do this I have to set Windows to 5.1 or 7.1 speaker configuration. But this then sends stereo as 2 channels over multi-channel (all channels are active so the amp does not think it's stereo only) and I lose stereo Dolby Surround sound.

It's Kinda annoying really. If I play a MP3 in foobar with 5.1 or 7.1 speaker configuration set it auto switches the AVR to Dolby surround so I know it's possible. I can only think it's the way LAV is splitting the channels to multi-channel.

Any ideas?

[huhn]

try ac3 filter.

[nevcairiel]

I have an issue with LAV in MPC that I cannot get my head around. I recently purchased a Denon AVR and connected it using HDMI from an AMD video card. My problem is I cannot get stereo Dolby Surround decoding when I set the AMD to 5.1 or 7.1 channels. I can only get it by setting the AMD speaker configuration to stereo. I then have to set LAV to bitstream. I would prefer to have LAV set to decode audio to multi-channel output (So that I can have multi-channel+DS) but in order to do this I have to set Windows to 5.1 or 7.1 speaker configuration. But this then sends stereo as 2 channels over multi-channel (all channels are active so the amp does not think it's stereo only) and I lose stereo Dolby Surround sound.

It's Kinda annoying really. If I play a MP3 in foobar with 5.1 or 7.1 speaker configuration set it auto switches the AVR to Dolby surround so I know it's possible. I can only think it's the way LAV is splitting the channels to multi-channel.

Any ideas?

You want an Audio Renderer with WASAPI Exclusive mode that properly switches the output device to the number of channels the decoder outputs. Thats really the only way.

[nevcairiel]

Hi, nevcairiel,
Here is a sample that there are artifacts in all hardware-assisted modes (DXVA2/CUDA): https://www.sendspace.com/file/nfhb8p. Software mode is OK.
Win7 x64, LAV 0.67.0-43 x86, GTX660, Forceware 359.06.

Sounds like a driver or hardware problem if even CUVID shows the same problem.

[Gleb Egorych]

Sounds like a driver or hardware problem if even CUVID shows the same problem.
CoreAVC in CUDA mode shows no artifacts.

[GCRaistlin]

Feature request: show LAV Video settings window (by double click on the system tray icon) on the primary monitor even if the player's window is not on the primary monitor.

[oddball]

You want an Audio Renderer with WASAPI Exclusive mode that properly switches the output device to the number of channels the decoder outputs. Thats really the only way.

None of my audio renderers in MPC are listed as WASAPI capable. Is there any other way to bypass LAV for stereo sources? I want to use LAV for everything BUT stereo. I don't want to use AC3Filter etc thanks.

EDIT: I have found a workaround by using ReClock. It allows me to set my AVR to WASAPI output. I am unsure why LAV/MPC alone is not enough to achieve the same result. I tried setting my AVR to exclusive mode in MPC and it made no difference.

[AlexKane]

@oddball
The 'Internal Audio Renderer' in MPC, is using WASAPI by default.
I tried setting my AVR to exclusive mode in MPC and it made no difference
You are probably just using DirectSound.

[sneaker_ger]

I believe MPC-HC's new renderer always uses Windows' channel count instead of the source count, so it does not work for your purpose. It has already been asked in the MPC-HC thread to change that.

[nevcairiel]

CoreAVC in CUDA mode shows no artifacts.

CUVID in LAV Video also seems fine here. No artifacts.
The stream is damaged though, and I think it just uses Error Concealment to hide the problems, which doesn't work very well in DXVA2 modes tbh.

The avcodec software decoder has the much better error concealment than any Hardware Decoder i've ever seen, but due to the way DXVA2 works, it cannot function there.

[fluffy01]

I believe MPC-HC's new renderer always uses Windows' channel count instead of the source count, so it does not work for your purpose. It has already been asked in the MPC-HC thread to change that.
Yes. I noticed that too. I have a very similar setup to Oddball with a Denon AVR connected through a HDMI cable.
I use the MPC-BE internal renderer in exclusive mode, as this does in fact always try to switch the output layout to match the input layout, and it works great for me.

My exact setup is this: I configured the windows mixer to 2 channels, so I can let the AVR upsample it to surround, if I want to, when playing normal audio in Windows.
Then I configured MPC-BE to use "MPC Audio Renderer", which is the internal audio renderer of MPC-BE. I believe that the audio renderer can be used with other players too, though I haven't tried.
I configured the renderer as such: The sound device is just the primary audiodriver, though you can choose whatever you want to use.
I set WASAPI mode to exclusive, and ticked "Allow bit-exact output" and unticked the "Use system layout channels".
I set the Sync method to "Sync video to audio", though I do not think this has any effect on what channel layout is used.

I hope this helps.

[oddball]

Yes. I noticed that too. I have a very similar setup to Oddball with a Denon AVR connected through a HDMI cable.
I use the MPC-BE internal renderer in exclusive mode, as this does in fact always try to switch the output layout to match the input layout, and it works great for me.

My exact setup is this: I configured the windows mixer to 2 channels, so I can let the AVR upsample it to surround, if I want to, when playing normal audio in Windows.
Then I configured MPC-BE to use "MPC Audio Renderer", which is the internal audio renderer of MPC-BE. I believe that the audio renderer can be used with other players too, though I haven't tried.
I configured the renderer as such: The sound device is just the primary audiodriver, though you can choose whatever you want to use.
I set WASAPI mode to exclusive, and ticked "Allow bit-exact output" and unticked the "Use system layout channels".
I set the Sync method to "Sync video to audio", though I do not think this has any effect on what channel layout is used.

I hope this helps.

Did not work for me. I set MPC-BE the same and I can only have one or the other. MPC-HC actually gives more options in regards to whether you want bitstreaming, just multi-channel decoding etc as far as I can tell. I can't get both multi-channel decoding (not bitstreaming) to HDMI and keep stereo sources sent as just stereo for Dolby Surround. It is always sent as stereo left and right over multi-channel.

[nussman]

You are looking for this (not released yet) https://github.com/alexmarsev/sanear/commit/8e14705e1421851235d7a369c8bc27ea6698414e

This can not be changed by splitter/decoder (LAV). You have to use a wasapi audiorenderer with this feature (reclock should work, not sure about MPC BE).

[fluffy01]

Did not work for me. I set MPC-BE the same and I can only have one or the other. MPC-HC actually gives more options in regards to whether you want bitstreaming, just multi-channel decoding etc as far as I can tell. I can't get both multi-channel decoding (not bitstreaming) to HDMI and keep stereo sources sent as just stereo for Dolby Surround. It is always sent as stereo left and right over multi-channel.

Did you enable the mixer in LavFilters? If so, disable it.

I just bitstream all bitstreamable formats and only decode whats left... Why do you need to decode everything except 2-channel AC3?

[Gleb Egorych]

CUVID in LAV Video also seems fine here. No artifacts.
Which videocard/driver do you use? I do see artifacts in CUVID mode in LAV Video.

[nevcairiel]

Both GTX960 or Titan X, using latest drivers (361.43)

[clsid]

I get artifacts with CUVID using a GTX960 and 361.43 on Win7. LAV 67.0-44.

[Thunderbolt8]

You are looking for this (not released yet) https://github.com/alexmarsev/sanear/commit/8e14705e1421851235d7a369c8bc27ea6698414e

This can not be changed by splitter/decoder (LAV). You have to use a wasapi audiorenderer with this feature (reclock should work, not sure about MPC BE).doesnt wasapi exclusive mode ignore this anyway?

[clsid]

No, wasapi does what you tell it to do. The current MPC-HC renderer simply doesn't do the correct thing for the discussed use case. But it will provide the necessary options in the future.

[Stereodude]

doesnt wasapi exclusive mode ignore this anyway?
Yes, when it's implemented "correctly" (ie: how people want).

[rock]

pardon me to ask something. I have WVC1 files (a file can be downloaded from here (http://media.ch9.ms/ch9/b208/c62d6156-e839-4d1c-8d78-a484a382b208/aspnet26767_Source.wmv)), play with MPC-HC nightly (1.7.10.56). When I play with dxva2 selected, wmv9 mft is used. When I play with intel quicksync selected, quicksync is used. My notebook vga is intel hd 3000. so I wanna ask, dxva2 not support for this kind of file? or actually my vga not support dxva2 for this kind of file?. thanks in advance. :)

[NikosD]

My notebook vga is intel hd 3000. so I wanna ask, dxva2 not support for this kind of file? or actually my vga not support dxva2 for this kind of file?. thanks in advance. :)

For SandyBridge (HD 2000/3000), Intel didn't provide DXVA2 VC-1 HW decoders in drivers.

You need Ivy or better for that.

I have asked them in Intel forums but Intel didn't care to support them in such relative old HW.

QuickSync decoder does support it, as you tested yourself and it's the only way to get HW acceleration for WMV3/VC-1 for Sandy.

[Djfe]

I have a question concerning TV recordings with AC3 sound (Transportstreams)
If the number of channels switches (for example) from 2.0 to 5.1 then the sound is missing for a second or so

if I play the same scene with VLC then there is no sound missing

I have an example with speech in which you can clearly hear the difference

is this issue known already?

@nevcairiel
if not and you want the sample just write me a pm ;)

[nevcairiel]

Changed should be immediate from LAV Audio's side, it is however possible that the audio renderer or even audio device re-inits which causes this.
If this is the case, you could test by enabling the mixer in LAV Audio, which suppresses all channel changes on the output. If the missing sound disappears then, you know that its likely the audio renderer or even audio device.

[Manni]

NevCairiel, I said so already in the MadVR thread, but thanks a lot for implementing 3D support in LAV. This is really great news!

[Djfe]

Changed should be immediate from LAV Audio's side, it is however possible that the audio renderer or even audio device re-inits which causes this.
If this is the case, you could test by enabling the mixer in LAV Audio, which suppresses all channel changes on the output. If the missing sound disappears then, you know that its likely the audio renderer or even audio device.

thx for the explanation :)
you are right, the issue doesn't seem to be caused by your filters
turning mixing on "fixed" it

since it happened with mpc-hc
is the reason for it a misconfiguration in mpc or rather in windows/my audio drivers?

or is there no way to fix it rather than turning mixing on, because the hardware just takes its time to switch between channel modes?

my speakers channel configuration here is 2.1 and they are simply connected to one green audio jack
I'm using the realtek onboard soundcard of my Gigabyte mainboard

[nevcairiel]

my speakers channel configuration here is 2.1 and they are simply connected to one green audio jack
I'm using the realtek onboard soundcard of my Gigabyte mainboard

If you only have Stereo speakers anyway, it would probably be easiest to just set LAV Audio to downmix to stereo at all times, then this problem disappears and you don't have to worry about windows doing proper mixing.

[Nullack]

Gday Hendrik. Certainly pleasing to see the following commits in the log

Support MVC frames in internal frame copy functions
Clear stereo image buffers when de-allocating a frame
Implement basic H264 MVC decoder based on Intel MediaSDK

Is there any plan to also share the love with Nvidia users :thanks:

[nevcairiel]

This works on every system. Please consider testing before commenting :)

[Nullack]

Understood :)

Ok so now that I'm home and not limited to looking at GIT like at work, I've done many hours of testing. When it kicks in, it seems to be working well on the latest nightly 0-54 which is up to commit d27597b as stated in the build log.

Can you please provide input into why it might not kick in under DXVA and resort to software even though the 3D file is in h.264? For example, heres an AVC encoded bit of footage that is not using DXVA:

At http://bbb3d.renderfarming.net/download.html And the bbb_sunflower_2160p_60fps_stereo_abl.mp4 file

ffprobe spits out:

Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'bbb_sunflower_2160p_60fps_stereo_abl.mp4':
Metadata:
major_brand : isom
minor_version : 1
compatible_brands: isomavc1
creation_time : 2013-12-20 20:17:03
title : Big Buck Bunny, Sunflower version
artist : Blender Foundation 2008, Janus Bager Kristensen 2013
comment : Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 - http://bbb3d.renderfarming.net
genre : Animation
composer : Sacha Goedegebure
Duration: 00:10:34.53, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 12491 kb/s
Stream #0:0(und): Video: h264 (High) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuv420p, 3840x4320 [SAR 1:1 DAR 8:9], 12006 kb/s, 60 fps, 60 tbr, 60k tbn, 120 tbc (default)
Metadata:
creation_time : 2013-12-20 20:17:03
handler_name : GPAC ISO Video Handler
Stream #0:1(und): Audio: mp3 (mp4a / 0x6134706D), 48000 Hz, stereo, s16p, 160 kb/s (default)
Metadata:
creation_time : 2013-12-20 20:17:06
handler_name : GPAC ISO Audio Handler
Stream #0:2(und): Audio: ac3 (ac-3 / 0x332D6361), 48000 Hz, 5.1(side), fltp, 320 kb/s (default)
Metadata:
creation_time : 2013-12-20 20:17:06
handler_name : GPAC ISO Audio Handler
Side data:
audio service type: main

Here's one which does work nicely with DXVA 3D, the video seems pretty much the same under ffprobe.exe except for the frame rate

Input #0, matroska,webm, from 'LG_3D_Air.mkv':
Metadata:
title : LG_3D_SOUND_DEMO_2_1_1.Title7.Bluray3DRip
encoder : libebml v0.7.8 + libmatroska v0.8.1
creation_time : 2012-09-11 05:16:35
Duration: 00:03:51.68, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 12811 kb/s
Chapter #0:0: start 0.000000, end 231.680004
Metadata:
title : (01)00:00:00:000
Chapter #0:1: start 232.065000, end 231.680004
Metadata:
title : (02)00:03:52:065
Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (High), yuv420p(tv, bt709), 1920x1080, SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9, 23.98 fps, 23.98 tbr, 48003.07 tbn, 47.95 tbc (default)
Stream #0:1(kor): Audio: dts (DTS-HD MA), 48000 Hz, 5.1(side), fltp (default)

The curious thing is that when I use MKVToolNix to make the bbb file into an MKV as "bbb_sunflower_2160p_60fps_stereo_abl.mkv" I still dont get DXVA acceleration. I thought it did support muxing 3D, so if thats true its not a simple container format problem as "LG_3D_Air.mkv" just works fine. Also I tried "bbb_sunflower_2160p_30fps_stereo_abl.mp4" and that uses software too so its not a high frame rate issue. So ffprobe doesnt seem to give me much help as to why some 3D isnt using DXVA. The only visual difference I can see between the 3D AVC encoded files is the working one is side by side, and the non working ones are top by bottom.

[madshi]

The recently added 3D support is for MVC streams, which is how Blu-Ray encodes 3D, so both left and right eye have full resolution. Side-by-side and top-by-bottom are from LAV's point of view simply 2D encodings.

[Nullack]

Thanks for that Madshi, appreciated :) I have a large DVD/Bluray/Bluray 3d collection. All the 3D blurays with MVC streams Ive played in my hours of testing today using the nightly build with MCP-BE and AnyDVD HD have worked super great. What I dont have my head around, is if SBS and TBB AVC encodes are just 2D to LAV, why is seemingly similar video footage falling back to software in some cases?

[madshi]

I can't answer that. But I don't understand what you said about playing MVC Blu-Rays with AnyDVD HD, that shouldn't work yet. Currently only 3D Blu-Rays remuxed into MKV by MakeMKV are supported. Playing 3D Blu-Rays as is in m2ts format shouldn't work yet.

[nevcairiel]

The dimension of the first file you referred to is way too high for DXVA (3840x4320), its 4K OU 3D, which is more than most DXVA devices can decode.
As madshi said, there are no changes to such files (and none planned) since they are "just" 2D files which happen to contain 2 images in the stream, but nothing the video decoder has to care about.

The only new format supported right now is MKV 3D files created by MakeMKV from a 3D Blu-ray.

[Nullack]

Understood. Im happy to fix any error in my test process - test errors occur just like dev errors. Im using the 3D bluray movie "Gravity" from the 3D disc. I know for sure Im entering 3D mode on my UHD display, cos one it has a little window saying so, and also while its a UHD display when in 3D mode it only does 1920x1080. I have 3D clearly visible in the render. I switched temporarily to EVR CP as yours (which is awesome thanks) doesnt have CPU / GPU utilisation in the render stats menu, and I plainly see the GPU being used with little CPU in 3D bluray playback. Please find attached a screenshot of the render stats. I dunno mate.

http://s12.postimg.org/3xeapwqst/mvc.png

[nevcairiel]

MVC 3D decoding also only works with madVR, or you will only get a 2D image.
You could also always decode 3D Blu-ray before, you would simply only get a 2D image. And nothing has changed in that. Like repeated many times now, the only supported format are MakeMKV MKV 3D files created from a 3D Blu-ray, and only if you use the latest madVR release.

[Nullack]

I get what your saying I'm not challenging that. Given I *am* seeing 3D, as I also clearly stated, I'm not sure where it's coming from then if LAV is just doing 2D in such use cases. I'll look into my TV manual as maybe its some sort of 2D->3D conversion it auto does in that mode or something.

[rock]

For SandyBridge (HD 2000/3000), Intel didn't provide DXVA2 VC-1 HW decoders in drivers.


thanks for answering. anyway I do some testing on other player, potp, it show dxva native when using built-in dxva decoder. as you said "For SandyBridge (HD 2000/3000), Intel didn't provide DXVA2 VC-1 HW decoders in drivers.", I wanna ask to answer my curiosity, how to check when player really use h/w acceleration, in this case dxva2? thanks.

sorry for thread owner if its off-topic.

[madshi]

I get what your saying I'm not challenging that. Given I *am* seeing 3D, as I also clearly stated, I'm not sure where it's coming from then if LAV is just doing 2D in such use cases. I'll look into my TV manual as maybe its some sort of 2D->3D conversion it auto does in that mode or something.
As I've explained in the madVR v0.90.0 announcement, if you have 3D activated with NVidia drivers, NVidia itself tries to convert 2D movies to 3D, at least when using D3D11 presentation. Maybe you're seeing that. Or maybe your TV is doing the conversion, I don't know.

[Manni]

@Nevcairiel
Please could you provide the name of the Intel DLL downloaded during setup, and in which folder it's located?
I have to install LAV on a different PC because I use KCP on my HTPC, so LAV isn't installed in the default location, and then copy the installed files into the KCP folder.
I don't think the Intel dll is in the LAV Filters folder, which might explain why the 3D playback with LAV+MadVR doesn't work on my HTPC.

[nevcairiel]

The dll is inside the LAV Filters folder if you used the latest nightly installer and didn't disable installation of the H.264 MVC components (libmfxsw32/64.dll)
I cannot support such a setup however, please just execute the installer on the system its supposed to run on, it does more than just install files.

Anyone running a custom setup for some reason is on their own, I am afraid. I provide the installer to avoid setup issues.

[Manni]

The dll is inside the LAV Filters folder if you used the latest nightly installer and didn't disable installation of the H.264 MVC components (libmfxsw32/64.dll)
I cannot support such a setup however, please just execute the installer on the system its supposed to run on, it does more than just install files.

Anyone running a custom setup for some reason is on their own, I am afraid. I provide the installer to avoid setup issues.

Thanks, and yes to both conditions (latest nightly and both options enabled). I guess I'll have to either wait for KCP to update its components or leave KCP behind and install all the components separately, which I'm tempted to do anyway to move to 64bits. The main drawback for me is that MPC-BE handles most file types internally by default, I'm not sure how to get the same setup as the one I get with KCP, where LAV handles everything.

Last time we discussed this, you said it was fine to simply drop the LAV files in the LAV Filters folder in the KCP folder, hence why I tried this way, but I totally understand you can't support this.

[Nullack]

Manni I run nightlies of MPC-BE x64 and LAV Filters x64. You can easily disable all the internal filters and just run with the LAV ones as external, with priority on all three being splitter / video / audio. It works well, actually very well, stable and robust most of the time for what are nightly builds. Its a real credit to Hendrik and the MPC-BE Team. To do so just go into the various internal filter sections of MPC-BE, right click and choose disable all. Then in the external filters, after installing the LAV filters (I only use x64 builds for both software) manually add the three LAV splitter / audio / video by clicking add filter and choose the prefer option for all three.

[nevcairiel]

Last time we discussed this, you said it was fine to simply drop the LAV files in the LAV Filters folder in the KCP folder, hence why I tried this way, but I totally understand you can't support this.

Most of the time this works fine, however sometimes the setup functions need to be executed again - especially if support for new formats is added like in this case.

[Manni]

Most of the time this works fine, however sometimes the setup functions need to be executed again - especially if support for new formats is added like in this case.

Manni I run nightlies of MPC-BE x64 and LAV Filters x64. You can easily disable all the internal filters and just run with the LAV ones as external, with priority on all three being splitter / video / audio. It works well, actually very well, stable and robust most of the time for what are nightly builds. Its a real credit to Hendrik and the MPC-BE Team.

Thanks, will try to move to x64 and separate installs of MPC-BE, LAV and MadVR tonight. It will certainly make updating each component as needed easier. :)

[clsid]

Has anyone benchmarked the performance of the Intel Media SDK decoder yet?
Does it use hardware acceleration on systems with an Intel GPU?

[akim]

nevcairiel

Please do audio normalization in Potplayer and MPC-BE and then the MPC-HC will must have.
If the answer is not whether it is planned in the future?

[huhn]

mpc-hc/be have an normalize feature.

[filler56789]

If the answer is not whether it is planned in the future?

Nope :)

[Nullack]

Hello Hendrik, with todays nightly I have observed I can no longer seek forward or backward by clicking the mouse in the player's seek bar somwhere else other than current playback and have it work OK in webm / VP9 using this sample for example:

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?111230-Google-VP9-4K-HD-Sample

Im not sure when this was last working/if it worked off the top of my head. I tried seeking in other container and video codec formats, all is seeking OK including even similar footage such as VP8 / webm

Thanks

[NikosD]

Has anyone benchmarked the performance of the Intel Media SDK decoder yet?
Does it use hardware acceleration on systems with an Intel GPU?
Is there a sample to test it ?

[huhn]

how to test? it only actives when madVR is the renderer right?

[NikosD]

@nev and anyone else that can help regarding MVC MKV support

1) Your last nightly builds (installers executables) can't be uncompressed properly using latest Inno Setup Unpacker v0.45 with the command innounp -x "installer.exe"
It misses the Intel DLL.

I saw that you are using 7za.exe, possibly to extract the libmfxswXX.dll ?

Is there a proper way to extract the latest nightly installer ?

2) For manually registering properly the latest nightly builds, do we need to register the libmfxsw*.dll besides the .ax files ?

Even on Intel systems ?

I searched my C: disk and didn't find the SW libraries - libmfxsw64.dll

Only the HW dlls, like libmfxhw64.dll

3) Does the use of SW Intel libraries by LAV mean that even on Intel systems which have already installed HW Intel libraries, only SW decoding of MVC can be done ?

Do you plan to add HW acceleration for MVC decoding ?

4) Can we use MVC decoding with EVR/EVR-CP or is it supported by madVR only ?

Thanks!

[madshi]

1) The installer doesn't contain the Intel DLL. The installer downloads it during installation in case you have the MVC decoding option checked. The reason for this is that the DLL is quite big, so it would increase the size of the installer quite a lot, and not all users might want/need it.

4) Currently only madVR has the necessary interfaces in place to properly receive the decoded 3D frames from LAV. Maybe other renderers will add support for that sooner or later, or maybe not. It might be possible for LAV to create a side-by-side view for renderers which don't support 3D, but I don't know if nevcairiel is planning to do that.

[NikosD]

Thanks for the reply.

I don't have a BluRay 3D or a MVC MKV on my HDD (only SBS and top-bottom files) but your reply at 4) looks like that it's impossible to see a MVC MKV file without madVR!

Or is it the implementation of LAV MVC MKV decoder that needs explicitly madVR ?

[madshi]

At the moment madVR is the only way to see an MVC MKV file with LAV, that's correct. LAV isn't written to specifically only support madVR. LAV outputs the frames in a way that any renderer can implement. madVR is simply the first that does. The standard DirectShow APIs don't really support 3D frames, so nevcairiel and I developed a new interface for that. It's not very complicated and easy enough to implement for other renderers, too, they just need to invest the time and effort to do so.

[NikosD]

Very clear answer.

And the question is:

How all the other decoders/players display MVC MKV files without using madVR renderer ?

[madshi]

Which other decoders/players do you mean? PowerDVD? That one has its own 3D decoders and renderers, they're not using LAV or madVR. So they could implement their own private interface between decoder and renderer.

[NikosD]

It's been a long time since my last involvement in MVC.

IIRC, Stereoscopic Player can decode/ display MVC MKV and I think it was using CoreMVC ?

And i think there is another one player that I don't remember its name.

[madshi]

I'm not sure which interface CoreMVC uses to output 3D frames. AFAIK CoreMVC has never been publically released. I think Stereoscopic Player and CoreMVC did their own private thing.

[Manni]

Which other decoders/players do you mean? PowerDVD? That one has its own 3D decoders and renderers, they're not using LAV or madVR. So they could implement their own private interface between decoder and renderer.

It's been a long time since my last involvement in MVC.

IIRC, Stereoscopic Player can decode/ display MVC MKV and I think it was using CoreMVC ?

And i think there is another one player that I don't remember its name.

I'm not sure which interface CoreMVC uses to output 3D frames. AFAIK CoreMVC has never been publically released. I think Stereoscopic Player and CoreMVC did their own private thing.

I don't know about CoreMVC but Stereoscopic Player doesn't work on AMD due to a bug in the drivers (see https://community.amd.com/thread/168983).

It's been a while since I last tried, I hope it won't be the case with the MadVR/LAV implementation, hopefully not as it relies on the Intel DLL.

By the way, PowerDVD doesn't support 3D MVC in mkv files. It simply does a 2D > 3D conversion of the left eye stream which looks awful. Works fine with 3D Bluray though (apart from a levels mismatch issue in 3D vs 2D with AMD).

[madshi]

From the description in that bug report it sounds like they're using the AMD custom 3D API which was made for Windows 7 (but might still work on Windows 8+). madVR is using the official Windows 8+ Direct3D APIs instead. I can't say for sure whether they have the same problem or not. I've only tested if 3D generally works, I've not had a chance to watch a full movie and look out for delays or other issues.

[NikosD]

I remembered the other player I thought it could play MVC MKV files but I'm not sure it does.

I can't test it.

It's called Bino3d
http://bino3d.org

[nevcairiel]

I remembered the other player I thought it could play MVC MKV files but I'm not sure it does.

I can't test it.

It's called Bino3d
http://bino3d.org

That one doesn't seem to support MKV MVC files, only 3D files encoded as "normal" H.264.

[fluffy01]

I was just wondering... Do you have any plans of implementing DXVA2 decoding of MVC?
I once looked at the specs, and it seems like a pretty simple and straightforward interface for it.
That way, we don't have to depend on the Intel API.

[nevcairiel]

There are no plans. Its not quite as simple as you portrait it, I'm afraid.

[fluffy01]

Sorry to hear that. And you are right. I only did a quick readthrough, never actually tried to do it myself.
I am not a C/C++ programmer. I mainly program Delphi and C#.
It looked pretty simple, though, but as you said, there is probably more to it than that.

[fluffy01]

Oh, almost forgot... I reencoded some of my 3D-blurays into a HSBS video, a long time ago, for easy viewing. I tagged the video stream in the mkv-files as being SBS, I was wondering if LAV Splitter/Video is reading and sending this information on to madVR? Because I can't seem to get it to realize, that it is in fact 3D.

[madshi]

Is there an SBS flag in the container? If so, maybe LAV could export it somehow (e.g. IPropertyBag) in some future version, would be helpful for me.

[Nullack]

Hello Hendrik, with todays nightly I have observed I can no longer seek forward or backward by clicking the mouse in the player's seek bar somwhere else other than current playback and have it work OK in webm / VP9 using this sample for example:

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?111230-Google-VP9-4K-HD-Sample

Im not sure when this was last working/if it worked off the top of my head. I tried seeking in other container and video codec formats, all is seeking OK including even similar footage such as VP8 / webm

Thanks

Looking a bit deeper at this there seems to be some ffmpeg level discussion about seeking in VP9. Handy that Hendrik is also a ffmpeg contributor :cool:

[Duffy Moon]

Not sure if anyone can help with this, or even if it's an LAV issue (but it doesn't happen with my TiVo) but when I watch some video files via MPC, my amplifier shuts itself off on occasion.
It's not set at a high volume, so I don't think it's a signal overload (although it does seem to happen more often when there's a sudden loud noise on the soundtrack). I have tried checking clipping protection and using DRC, but they made no difference. It only happens on about 1 in 100 files, but when it happens, it's very annoying!

[Nullack]

Hi Hendrik. Say a user has got the tickbox for prefer audio stream with the highest quality enabled in the lav splitter config. Its rare but it can happen that a bluray disc has both a TrueHD and a DTS HD MA track. I've noticed LAV splitter will default to TrueHD. Since TrueHD and DTS HD MA are both lossless, it doesnt make a difference which one is chosen if they can decode that chosen one in their audio system. And I realise you needed to pick one of them in this case. However, it is generally acknowledged that DTS is a better option than AC3. So when a user might have older audio gear that only does the old standards like DTS or AC3, the better outcome in this circumstance would be to default to DTS HD MA since that will fallback to DTS and not TrueHD which would fall back to AC3. Thanks

[nevcairiel]

Looking a bit deeper at this there seems to be some ffmpeg level discussion about seeking in VP9. Handy that Hendrik is also a ffmpeg contributor :cool:

Seeking in that file works fine, its just slow because the file doesn't contain a proper seek index. Nothing that can be done about that, other than remuxing it of course.

[dansrfe]

Bug: AC3 track is prioritized higher and selected instead of ATMOS/TrueHD track of same language.

[nevcairiel]

Bug: AC3 track is prioritized higher and selected instead of ATMOS/TrueHD track of same language.

It is most definitely not, unless the AC3 track has more channels.
Check your player, some players like to override stream selections.

[dude2012]

Is there a consensus as to which is better with Lav 0.67.0? I've read posts including from Nev saying DXVA2 is better than CUVID in Windows 10 but not sure which to pick? BTW I have an Nvidia GTX770.

[fluffy01]

Is there an SBS flag in the container? If so, maybe LAV could export it somehow (e.g. IPropertyBag) in some future version, would be helpful for me.

It is not just a SBS flag. It is actually a Stereoscopy flag, which allows a multitude of different 3D types.

The MKVToolNix GUI offers a dropdown with 15 different types of 3D (Including Mono-2D), so you can look there and see what is supported.

Setting this flag actually causes MKVToolNix to default the extension of the file to .mk3d instead of .mkv, so perhaps add this extension to LAV, so we can double-click this type instead of having to either change the extension back to .mkv or manually drag and drop the file in the player.

[nevcairiel]

I can probably export this metadata in some form, but I haven't seen many files use it. But no harm anyway!
LAV supports the .mk3d extension, file associations are managed by the player however, and not the splitter.

[fluffy01]

I usually add this flag to the 3D movies I recode, and if LAV and madVR starts to support it, then I bet that loads others will start to use it as well :)

[dansrfe]

It is most definitely not, unless the AC3 track has more channels.
Check your player, some players like to override stream selections.

I'm on the latest nightly for MPC-HC, the "Prefer audio stream with highest quality" option is enabled in LAV Splitter.

MediaInfo:

Audio: Dolby AC3 48000Hz 6ch 640kbps [A: AC-3 [eng] (ac3, 48000 Hz, 5.1, 640 kb/s) [default]]
Audio: TrueHD 48000Hz 8ch 9216kbps [A: ATMOS [eng] (truehd, 48000 Hz, 7.1, s24)]

I'm not sure what default audio track means. Did this override priority selection? None of the other files with multiple audio tracks show this.

[nevcairiel]

The "default" flag overrides everything, don't set it if you don't want that behavior.

[dansrfe]

The "default" flag overrides everything, don't set it if you don't want that behavior.

Makes sense, although perhaps an option to override the default flag for audio/subs would be useful. I've yet to find a case where the default flag was used for a purpose other than to ensure decoder compatibility by the author of the file.

[DragonQ]

Makes sense, although perhaps an option to override the default flag for audio/subs would be useful. I've yet to find a case where the default flag was used for a purpose other than to ensure decoder compatibility by the author of the file.

I always set primary audio streams to "default" over secondary streams (e.g. director commentaries).

[Blight]

Probably not out in the wild yet:
Zero-Day FFmpeg Vulnerability Lets Anyone Steal Files from Remote Machines (http://news.softpedia.com/news/zero-day-ffmpeg-vulnerability-lets-anyone-steal-files-from-remote-machines-498880.shtml)

[nevcairiel]

Probably not out in the wild yet:
Zero-Day FFmpeg Vulnerability Lets Anyone Steal Files from Remote Machines (http://news.softpedia.com/news/zero-day-ffmpeg-vulnerability-lets-anyone-steal-files-from-remote-machines-498880.shtml)

IMHO that issue is slightly overrated, but LAV is not affected in any case, unless you use it in an unsafe manner (ie. by directly hooking it up to a web server, potentially exposing its output, which is always a bad idea).

And just to be safe, the "concat" protocol used in those demonstrations is not available in LAV either (and never has been).

[3421]

Installation, disabling rtp. LAV splitter, rtp enabled. The rtp links do not open. Installation, rtp enabled. Lav splitter, rtp disabled. rtp links open. Checked on the player which not plays rtp without lav filter.

Checkbox disable/enable all the components. I disabled everything and I choose what I need and enable.

A difficult captcha from questions I don't know all the answers. And I don't know English.

[ileile]

I can probably export this metadata in some form, but I haven't seen many files use it. But no harm anyway!
LAV supports the .mk3d extension, file associations are managed by the player however, and not the splitter.

do you have any plan to support 3d bluray or ssif files in the near future? it is a important feature. with 3d bluray support, we can throw PowerDVD out of the window.

btw, thank you for your work :thanks:

[3421]

Enable or disable rtp in the menu LAV splitter is ignored. RTP is always as selected during installation LAV. 62

[Warner306]

Is it possible to modify the audio delay in LAV Audio to apply to specific refresh rates (e.g. 24 Hz)?

I have problems with audio sync at 24 Hz when playing 23.976 fps content. Other refresh rates are fine. This problem is reasonably common.

- Plex Media Player has a built-in delay for 23.976 content (see bullet #9 (https://support.plex.tv/hc/en-us/articles/208175907-How-are-Plex-Media-Player-and-Plex-Home-Theater-different-)).

- Kodi offers the ability to set delays for specific refresh rates (described here (http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=223175&pid=2033893#pid2033893)).

- There is an entire thread dedicated to this issue in the Kodi forums (found here (http://forum.kodi.tv/showthread.php?tid=80247)).

Adding a refresh rate-based delay in LAV Audio would open up the ability to apply this type of correction universally to any player that uses LAV Filters.

[Asmodian]

I don't think LAV even knows the current display's refresh rate, does it? That sounds more like a player feature to me, I can see it being useful but I think it is important to keep LAV's feature list as light as possible. :)

If I understand this correctly, these features are compensating for different amounts of input lag in the display due to it using different modes with different refresh rates, not desync between the audio and video as it leaves the computer?

[nevcairiel]

Asmodian is right, LAV Audio of course doesn't know the current refresh rate, it has nothing to do with video afterall, and I'm not exactly eager to add stuff to try to detect the current refresh rate, especially considering things like automatic display mode changers and whatnot.

[ang3l]

Asmodian is right, LAV Audio of course doesn't know the current refresh rate, it has nothing to do with video afterall, and I'm not exactly eager to add stuff to try to detect the current refresh rate, especially considering things like automatic display mode changers and whatnot.

since madVR and more generally any players who uses this feature determines the refresh rate starting by the frame rate, lav could do the same for the audio delay and give two possibilities to set the value, the current method or an advanced text string as madvr does

something like

1080p23@-300, 1080p50@-150 ...

just an idea

[nevcairiel]

LAV Audio also doesn't know the frame rate of the video, it deals with the audio, not the video. And such guesses would be extremely inaccurate anyway, and I don't do broken features. Just get whichever player you are using to do it.

[cengizhan]

hi nevcairiel,
could you make the installer skip downloading decoder if it alreadys exists?

[an3k]

Even if LAV has to be responsible for A/V delay it would be the Splitter but actually the Player has to take care of it and to be honest I never experienced any delay regardless of the displays refresh rate. Maybe because I use digital connection between the playback device and the display.

Do you use an external Amp/Surround system?

[Warner306]

LAV Audio also doesn't know the frame rate of the video, it deals with the audio, not the video. And such guesses would be extremely inaccurate anyway, and I don't do broken features. Just get whichever player you are using to do it.

Understood. I thought adding this feature further up the chain would make it easier to implement for the end user.

[madshi]

At some point I could implement an option to do video delay (instead of audio delay) in madVR, depending on refresh rate. But probably not any time soon.

[Warner306]

I don't think LAV even knows the current display's refresh rate, does it? That sounds more like a player feature to me, I can see it being useful but I think it is important to keep LAV's feature list as light as possible. :)

If I understand this correctly, these features are compensating for different amounts of input lag in the display due to it using different modes with different refresh rates, not desync between the audio and video as it leaves the computer?

Given the cause of this still remains unknown to the developers I've talked to, the player is simply delaying the audio by a preset amount before it outputs to the audio output device.

The Kodi thread has people blaming a number of features and claiming solutions found in the Kodi audio settings. But, in my experience, I think it comes down to the display lagging when it uses its 24 Hz mode. In either case, an easy fix is to add a delay to 23.976 content.

[Warner306]

Even if LAV has to be responsible for A/V delay it would be the Splitter but actually the Player has to take care of it and to be honest I never experienced any delay regardless of the displays refresh rate. Maybe because I use digital connection between the playback device and the display.

Do you use an external Amp/Surround system?

Sure, it could also be the AV receiver struggling to lock-on to 24 Hz content. But I've used a very new and a reasonably old (2-3 old) Onkyo and they both display this flaw.

I think it could be a flaw of some LED TVs. They all struggle with motion in some way. I am using a very common, supposedly high-end Samsung LED.

[huhn]

this issue is called input lag. TV can have easily an input lag of over 100ms there are even TV with an input lag of over 200 ms.

this changes with refresh rates and settings like crappy frame interpolation and TV mode like game(low delay)/cinema(very high delay).

[nevcairiel]

Many TVs have input lag defined in number of frames (due to their processing), which makes it noticeable longer on 24Hz since frames are just so much longer (41.6ms instead of 16.6ms at 60Hz)

[zerowalker]

When it comes to bad frame timing with video and MPC-HC frame time correction helps, can LAV filter also solve this or is it a completely different matter?
Codec is H264.

[Warner306]

Many TVs have input lag defined in number of frames (due to their processing), which makes it noticeable longer on 24Hz since frames are just so much longer (41.6ms instead of 16.6ms at 60Hz)

I've read dozens of posts attempting to diagnose this issue and this is the most logical I've heard. It would mirror my suspicion of unoptimized processing being at fault. It is one of the ongoing factors that have weaned me off the belief that LED TVs are a great investment.

[FDisk80]

I can't answer that. But I don't understand what you said about playing MVC Blu-Rays with AnyDVD HD, that shouldn't work yet. Currently only 3D Blu-Rays remuxed into MKV by MakeMKV are supported. Playing 3D Blu-Rays as is in m2ts format shouldn't work yet.

Shouldn't work yet? :o
So there is hope?

[Nullack]

To clarify, that puzzle existed for a number of days. In the end I finally got an answer from Samsung about how to turn off 3d enhancement that's auto done for 3d content when in 3d mode. To add to the puzzle too, Nvidia drivers also fiddle with it as well. It was a big mission to stop the auto 3d from 2d content when in 3d mode.

[LigH]

@ zerowalker:

Usually, decoders decode streams of a media source in sync, according to their multiplexing. It will probably be mainly the player being responsible for either requesting asynchronous decoding, or delaying a stream relative to others.

[XTrojan]

Is there any statistics on how much CPU power is needed for the upcoming HEVC blurays? Will for example 3770k be able to decode in realtime without hardware acceleration?

[huhn]

maybe 100 mbit with 24hz.

[Piyoko]

I've read dozens of posts attempting to diagnose this issue and this is the most logical I've heard. It would mirror my suspicion of unoptimized processing being at fault. It is one of the ongoing factors that have weaned me off the belief that LED TVs are a great investment.
I always assumed this was the cause. The extra processing of the "movie" mode on the TV coupled with the longer frame time at low refresh rates.

I have one of the newer 4K Samsungs and at 60Hz PC/game mode the input lag is extremely low (for a TV) but at 24Hz movie mode I have to apply an almost 200ms audio delay. Thankfully everything I watch is 24fps so I can just leave the value as it is.

[Manni]

Is there any statistics on how much CPU power is needed for the upcoming HEVC blurays? Will for example 3770k be able to decode in realtime without hardware acceleration?

I have a 3770K at 4Ghz with 8Gb RAM and it's not able to decode HEVC 10bits UHD without H/W acceleration. It does it, but it stutters as soon as there is too much info, for example in pans etc.

My HD7870 isn't the bottleneck, I tried with a Fury and it was the same. It's the CPU.

I'm waiting for Arctic Islands now.

[hu1kamania]

I recently "upgraded" to Windows 10. Unsatisfied with MadVR's deinterlacing, and yadif, I wanted to see if I could get CUVID + hardware deinterlacing to work. Years ago this was the best method, but more recently on Windows 8.1 I noticed quality was almost identical to MadVR's, so I just stuck with DVXA + copy back.

Flash forward to CUVID, and right away I was getting very unstable results. After some research, this is a known issue with Windows 10 + CUVID. I know it's not recommended by nevcairiel and the problem was identified by the developers of SVP here:

Windows 10 - video player hangs and/or crashes (http://www.svp-team.com/forum/viewtopic.php?id=2671&p=2)

As you can see, using an driver equal to or before 350.12 fixes the issue. The problem I had was, this driver doesn't support my GTX 980Ti. So I modified and installed the 350.12 driver using the following guide:

Nvidia INF driver modding (http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=377158)

This allowed stable use of CUVID with Windows 10, and hardware deinterlacing was significantly improved.

I'd like to see CUVID support improved in newer drivers. Since something was broken after 350.12, it would seem the ball is in Nvidia's court to fix the issue. However, if something can be done on your side to bring compatibility in line with recent drivers, that would be nice!

That was all I had to say. I hope somebody finds this helpful, insightful or interesting!