ffdshow development

[oddball]

Any news on progress of this? It seems to have been a long time since there was any news on the devlopment of this filter. Things like playback of DiVX5.03 content (Mentioned by me in an earlier thread) and a working libmpeg2 implementation appear to have been put on hold. Also noted the test version of ffdshow that appears to crash for everybody.

Any news?

[athos]

i havent heard from milan for several months.

latest cvs commit for ffdshow was 2003-02-18 17:00 and for ffvfw 2003-02-11 06:41, i just checked both.

[Chibi Jasmin]

Can you get a working binary out of the latest ffdshow?

[athos]

well, i havent been able to, but if anyone succeeds, please let me know how.

[kilg0r3]

Isn't there any way to contact milan. I do not mean to press him to work on the filter. It would just be nice to know, whether everything is allright. It always feels strange when people disappear from the net just like that.

In any case, if ffdshow were not developed any further, it would be also nice to know which playback filter will realize the simple idct, that is necessary for proper playback of xvid files.

[Sirber]

Milan can be contacted here:

cutka(a)szm.sk

[kilg0r3]

Who will? I don't think that there is any point in flooding him with mail.

[Gazza]

Does anyone know if ffdshow development is still alive & well?

[milan]

I'm not working much on ffdshow currently. There are two development branches now: one for experiments (currently almost completely broken) and one "stable" where I'd like to make just bugfixes and then release it. However I'm now working mostly on ffvfw.

[kilg0r3]

hi milan, glad to hear all's well.

For ffdshow, imo, the most important thing is to make sure simple idct works so as to correctly decode xvid qpel. i understood that the qpel smearing, was due to some bug or incompatibility in this area. so, it would be really great of you, if you could have a look at this.

Thank you very much!

[milan]

Well, I'm not sure what could I do with that. It's related to libavcodec and XviD libraries and I'm not developer of any of them. But be sure I'll try to do something. The fact is I'm not using qpel for encoding yet, so I wasn't aware of this problem.

[oddball]

What about MPEG decoding? That is still broken. Would be nice if that worked. Also DiVX5.03 has issues with smudging. Probably a similar issue to the Xvid one.

Still..

[sysKin]

Originally posted by milan
It's related to libavcodec and XviD libraries and I'm not developer of any of them. But be sure I'll try to do something. The fact is I'm not using qpel for encoding yet, so I wasn't aware of this problem. It's actually very simple: please please pretty please, just make a working build with newest libavcodec :)

There were two problems 'working' together: one was a bug in libavcodec (mpeg4 standard got changed to be constent with.. reference software, yet libavcodec was not aware of the change) and there was a different problem on xvid side - our idct's imprecision was somehow amplified by quarterpel filter.
We are currently switching to 'simple' idct (can be easly selected form current ffdshow config). Libavcodec had its bug corrected somewhere in the middle of January (if I remember correctly).
All we need is this new libavcodec :)

Thanks,
Radek

[milan]

@oddball
I'll try.

@sysKin
Ok, this weekend I'll spend stabilizing ffdshow and next week there will be new alpha build. Not yet stable release, problems similar to that pointed by oddball should be fixed first.

[kilg0r3]

Thank you very much. All the best to you

[Gazza]

Hi Milan, good to hear from you again. Good also to hear that another update to ffdshow can be expected at some time in the future.

Considering that you are more involved with ffvfw at this time, I will have to also divert some time to see what it is all about.

Gazza

[Owen]

Milan,
I just want to thank you for your great work on ffdshow.
This is now an indispensable tool for HTPC's.
I have been using the Resize filter (Bicubic) with Luma & Croma Sharpening and find the results to be outstandingly good.
I started a topic in AVSForum on this.

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?threadid=234832

I thing Resize and Sharpen had been overlooked until I started this thread. But now people are on to it and are very happy with the improvement in quality it provides.
Is there anything that can be done to improve performance with the Resize/ Sharpen filter and the Gradual denoise filter.
This combination of filters is hard to get running without stuttering.
Thanks again, and I hope the see future releases of ffdshow soon.

Regards,

Owen

[athos]

Finally, I managed to make a working build of ffdshow. It seems I had managed to screw up DirectX 9 SDK :\

Anyway, ffdshow-20030418.exe was built from a fresh checkout of the CVS tree, V1 branch, which is supposed to be stable. Did some quick testing only.

Take note: the property page (config) will crash unless you have ffvfw installed. I think this is due to milan working on integrating these two projects (either that or i screwed something else up ;)). For this reason I will not put up this build on sourceforge.

You can download this build of ffdshow, as well as my latest build of ffvfw from http://athos.web1000.com/ffvfw.html. I am aware that some people are having trouble downloading from this site, so please feel free to help me out by mirroring this file. I will put up a build at sf.net when the ffvfw issue has been resolved.

Also note that sh0dan has compiled later builds of ffvfw, located at http://cultact-server.novi.dk/kpo/avisynth/avs_cvs.html and nitrogen has mirrors at http://homepages.pathfinder.gr/ffvfw and http://nitrogen.kicks-ass.net/ffvfw/. I only tested with my ffvfw-20030325 build, dont know what other ones work.

the changelog for ffdshow since 20030103:

2003-04-16 14:05 milan_cutka

getParamStr2, autoload preset by file extension,
IffProc::processRGB_2, working on resizing using IffProc

2003-04-15 10:05 milan_cutka

file helpGrab.txt was initially added on branch V1.

2003-04-15 10:05 milan_cutka

"ffvfw needed for JPEG" info

2003-04-15 09:21 milan_cutka

also look in ffdshow.ax folder for dynamic libraries

2003-04-15 09:20 milan_cutka

no message

2003-04-15 06:47 milan_cutka

quantStride

2003-04-14 08:50 milan_cutka

updated VC6 project

2003-04-14 06:50 milan_cutka

file aws_api.h was initially added on branch V1.

2003-04-14 06:50 milan_cutka

file aws.obj was initially added on branch V1.

2003-04-14 06:50 milan_cutka

file TimgFilterWarpsharp.h was initially added on branch V1.

2003-04-14 06:50 milan_cutka

file TimgFilterWarpsharp.cpp was initially added on branch V1.

2003-04-14 06:50 milan_cutka

file Cwarpsharp.cpp was initially added on branch V1.

2003-04-14 06:50 milan_cutka

file helpWarpsharp.txt was initially added on branch V1.

2003-04-14 06:50 milan_cutka

file Cwarpsharp.h was initially added on branch V1.

2003-04-14 06:50 milan_cutka

file warpsharp.html was initially added on branch V1.

2003-04-14 06:50 milan_cutka

aWarpSharp (binary only) by Marc FD, separated warpsharping
filters, updated libavcodec and libmpeg2, quantizer array for
libmpeg2 (inspired by mplayer), newver IffProc interface for ffvfw,
support for temporary (in memory) presets

2003-03-31 16:27 milan_cutka

no message

2003-03-31 16:24 milan_cutka

libpostproc 5-tap lowpass deinterlacer switch

2003-03-31 16:11 milan_cutka

edge bug workaround switch

2003-03-31 15:51 milan_cutka

no message

2003-03-31 14:14 milan_cutka

updated libavcodec, updated postproc

2003-03-31 06:46 milan_cutka

trying to simplify startup, updated libavcodec

2003-03-28 06:46 milan_cutka

IffProc3

2003-03-27 16:35 milan_cutka

va_end

2003-03-27 06:36 milan_cutka

libswscale version

2003-03-16 21:59 milan_cutka

no message

2003-03-13 09:35 milan_cutka

fixed tray icon menu preset selection

2003-03-13 08:54 milan_cutka

dlls moved to ffdshow.ax directory, xvid_malloc->pp_malloc in
libmplayer

2003-03-13 06:50 milan_cutka

updated libavcodec, libmplayer can be static or dynamic, fixed mpeg
decoding with libavcodec, quantizer display, updated swscaler, and
maybe more...

2003-02-18 17:00 milan_cutka

new macro in nsis 2 script

2003-02-18 16:37 milan_cutka

V1

2003-02-18 15:48 milan_cutka

removed read only checkbox from open file dialogs

2003-02-18 09:51 milan_cutka

V2 cleanup

2003-02-18 09:50 milan_cutka

V1 cleanup

2003-02-18 09:02 milan_cutka

optimized uncompressed YV12 input

2003-02-17 19:19 milan_cutka

xvid stride fix

2003-02-17 19:08 milan_cutka

V2

2003-02-17 18:32 milan_cutka

no message

2003-02-17 18:21 milan_cutka

no message

2003-02-17 18:18 milan_cutka

no message

2003-02-17 17:05 milan_cutka

faster YV12,I420 uncompressed input

2003-02-17 16:30 milan_cutka

moved bswap

2003-02-17 16:24 milan_cutka

updated libavcodec (more encoding code removed)

2003-02-17 15:28 milan_cutka

updated postproc and swscale

2003-02-17 13:59 milan_cutka

updated legal headers, removed 3 from classes names

2003-02-17 13:55 milan_cutka

V1 - stable branch

2003-02-17 13:45 milan_cutka

V1 - stable branch

2003-02-17 13:42 milan_cutka

V1 - stable branch

2003-02-17 13:39 milan_cutka

V1 - stable branch

2003-02-17 06:49 milan_cutka

no message

2003-02-13 14:35 milan_cutka

I'm not sure...

2003-02-12 14:20 milan_cutka

trying to get colorspaces work

2003-02-11 06:40 milan_cutka

no message

2003-02-05 15:02 milan_cutka

no message

2003-02-05 13:39 milan_cutka

better showMV, working on ...

2003-02-05 07:17 milan_cutka

can connect to mpeg2 decoder filters (cyberlink, intervideo),
working on colorspaces

2003-01-29 15:45 milan_cutka

no message

2003-01-28 15:58 milan_cutka

no message

2003-01-27 06:47 milan_cutka

no message

2003-01-24 15:46 milan_cutka

no message

2003-01-23 07:06 milan_cutka

no message

2003-01-22 17:19 milan_cutka

saving ffdshow settings to bytestream (no loading yet), alligned
alocator for lavc

2003-01-22 06:46 milan_cutka

ffdshow is partially working again

2003-01-21 15:09 milan_cutka

trellis quant not allowed for mjpeg

2003-01-21 06:40 milan_cutka

working on better support for multiple colorspaces 3 (not working
now)

2003-01-20 15:07 milan_cutka

virtual base destructor

2003-01-17 14:21 milan_cutka

working on better support for multiple colospaces 3 (ffdshow can't
be compiled right now)

2003-01-16 15:23 milan_cutka

no message

2003-01-16 07:01 milan_cutka

Twindow for TffdshowPage, DPRINTF from XviD, working on better
support for multiple colorspaces 2

2003-01-16 06:59 milan_cutka

no message

2003-01-15 15:01 milan_cutka

Twindow

2003-01-15 11:12 milan_cutka

Twindow

2003-01-15 11:11 milan_cutka

updated libavcodec, Twindow

2003-01-15 10:00 milan_cutka

removed #undef ARCH_X86 - was left from debugging

2003-01-07 15:48 milan_cutka

working on better support for multiple colorspaces

2003-01-07 09:26 milan_cutka

fixed vc6 compilation

2003-01-07 06:41 milan_cutka

updated libavcodec, preliminary avisynth scripts support, subtitles
font autosize
edit: link fixed

[Doom9]

@athos: the link either goes to a web1000 search site and one in 5 times I tried I ended up on a swedish site.

[mwillberg]

if you remove the last "." from the link it seems to work ok...

[cult]

same here :(

[Swede]

I've just put up a mirror of these 2 files at:
http://leffe.dnsalias.com/ffdshow-20030418.exe and
http://leffe.dnsalias.com/ffvfw-20030325.exe

Hope this helps.

[Best]

I still cant get MPEG1 and 2 playback to work:(
am I doing somthing wrong or is it stil broken?

[bbq@KL]

Oh yeah, even Avisynth is added to ffdshow now. Is it working or not?

Thank you.

[kilg0r3]

Oh yeah, even Avisynth is added to ffdshow now. Is it working or not?

How is it supposed to work?


Ok, just tried it. You can just enter the filters you want, and levae the clip position unspecified).

This could be a nice weapon agains the black locking issue, without having to modify the the stream during the encode. It was suspected that the phenomenon is caused by luma values which are invalid for TV display. If this is true, a simple 'limiter()' inserted in ffdshow should do the trick.

Very nice! THANK YOU MILAN!

[kairen]

i wasn't able to configure ffdshow on Win Xp
it give me an exception on ffdshow.ax,configure

thank you

[kilg0r3]

@kairen

Have you installed ffvfw? It is required.

[kairen]

yes, but it was the older version, i'll try the newer version

really thank you

[kastro68]

@Kilgor3
Do you know if the latest ffdshow solves some of the earlier qpel/b-frame smearing?

[kilg0r3]

@kastro68 My only sources of info are the doom9 forum and the changelog. sorry.

[Didée]

Doesn't work for me, grrr!

I had shodan's compile of ffvfw from 04-15 installed: "exception on ffdshow.ax,configure"
Re-installed ffvfw from 03-25: "exception on ffdshow.ax,configure"
I tried every mathematically possible mutation of de-installing, rebooting and re-installing ffvfw and ffdshow ...

:devil:

BUT, atm I'm sitting at my old Athlon-Classic machine. Could it be that ISSE extensions are required (compiler options?) ... ?

The good news is, that for the first time ever, the input pre-processing in ffvfw is working ;)

[moko]

Where did the divx3, ms mpeg-4 and mpeg-1/2 support gone in ffdshow? tried to check it in the decoding tab in ffvfw but it didn't help either.

[sysKin]

Hi,

I just wanted to confirm that smearing, which used to be visible when decoding XviDs with quarterpel enabled, is history.

Thanks!

[unplugged]

Originally posted by sysKin
I just wanted to confirm that smearing, which used to be visible when decoding XviDs with quarterpel enabled, is history.
Hmmm... not be too sure.
To me smearing hasn't gone, not even with quant. 2. :(
I'm using ffdshow-20030418 and ffvfw-20030415 and tested these with XviD videos made with the good uManiac's build 20030414 (in fact is an excellent :) build, one of my suspects is that ICL7 or ICLx with its "aggressive" optimizations is penalizing quality of Koepi's ones; maybe?).

But, I could strongly advise to download latest version of Envivio MPEG-4 player (www.envivio.com) v1.5, with this updated version latest XviD videos look perfect and even better decoded than internal xvid routine!! :D.
(previously converted from AVI to MP4 container with MP4creator.exe by MPEG4IP 0.9.8 tools)


Edit: love love love how well works now XviD ISO MPEG-4 compilance
I have performed videos using Qpel, chroma me, B frames, VHQ4 and with all the incredible stuff xvid has, and it compresses and looks damn good with MP4 player!!
Congratulations to all developers!

P.S.: waiting DivX 7.0 for a worth web comparison/review :D.

[athos]

Please note that this build works even without ffvfw installed, but not the config page. I think milan intends ffvfw and ffdshow to be independent, but like I wrote, he is working on making them able to work together. I probably checked out the CVS in the middle of his work. But at least we have a working build after 4 months ;)

There should be no need for SSE instructions, I compiled it with Code Generation: Blend in VC6 and -march=586 -Mcpu=686 in gcc, ie should work on all processors.

[sysKin]

Originally posted by unplugged
[B]Hmmm... not be too sure.
To me smearing hasn't gone, not even with quant. 2. :(
I'm using ffdshow-20030418 and ffvfw-20030415 and tested these with XviD videos made with the good uManiac's build 20030414 (in fact is an excellent :) build
Umaniac's builds use old 'xvid' iDCT which can't cope with qpel correctly. Set ffdshow's idct to 'xvid' and maybe it will halp, maybe not - that's why Koepi uses 'simple' idct in his builds, and xvid will only use 'simple' soon.
P.S.: waiting DivX 7.0 for a worth web comparison/review :D.Aaaagh you're being mean! ;) You are going to allow DXN to create and tweak their 'standard' as much as they want, and you'll compare it against poor XviD which has to stick to some old and ugly mpeg4? Mean mean mean ;PPPP

I could tweak mpeg4 a lot and improve compression with my bare hands ;P yet I won't because I can't create my own codec just like that. Anyway, what I mean is, it's reasonaby easy :) so please, compare xvid against other mpeg4 codecs :D

Radek

[Koepi]

Originally posted by unplugged
build, one of my suspects is that ICL7 or ICLx with its "aggressive" optimizations is penalizing quality of Koepi's ones; maybe?).


NO! no. no.

As I wrote on that particualar thread, those optimizations don't affect the quality at all.

EDIT: rant deleted. But PLEASE forgot what you read there. It's like I replied there, NO quality loss due to compiler optimizations.

Regards
Koepi

[cdrips]

I didn't know what to search for for this, so don't hurt me. I was just wondering if the 6/17 ffdshow will decode qpel or GMC. I know the alpha does, but not sure if it is just me or the old build which doesn't. Also, are there any filter like qpel or gmc that would mimic what these xvid options do?

[mf]

Originally posted by Koepi
EDIT: rant deleted. But PLEASE forgot what you read there. It's like I replied there, NO quality loss due to compiler optimizations.

Regards
Koepi
:( :scared: :( Why do I always read a post after the rant has been deleted! Poor me I never get to read a good rant :(.

[ummon]

I have the same Problem as moko. With the 20030418 version of ffdshow I can only select the Codecs played by xvid.dll everything that should be played by libavcodec is not selectable. Has anybody an idea why this happens? The older versions of ffdshow don't show this problem.
I use Win98SE, DirectX 9.0a, ffvfw-20030325

[iago]

@athos,

Thanks a lot for the new build.

Btw, latest ffdshow-20030418 OSD doesn't report QPEL frames I guess. Or is there something that I miss?

[esby]

Mmm I'm getting the same problem as Moko,
All i can encode to with ffvfw is:
Theora, Mpeg1 & Mpeg2

It's like if choosing an encoder discard the possibility
of using a default encoder profile,
one allowing div3 etc.

esby

[drebel]

Btw, latest ffdshow-20030418 OSD doesn't report QPEL frames I guess. Or is there something that I miss?
Confirmed with more than 5 qpel clips.The clips were encoded with umaniac's 14.04.03.No smearing though...

[HarryM]

This ffdshow build use forced-using xvid.dll for decoding. Logically- it can't q-pel smearing no more.
It using (only) external xvid.dll for decoding!

[Kyo]

whis a clip encoded with custom matrix (andreas_78) and qpel+ 2bframes I get this "evil" problem :(

See This Pic (http://pwp.007mundo.com/kyo/andreas+ffds.jpg)

The problem is gone when I check the "Use XviD"

[CruNcher]

@Kyo

thats a known dequantization problem with some custom matrices and libavcodec the same happens with Trbarrys SoftMatrix try to lower the quant values a bit and it should work XviD as decoder has no problems with it but ffdshow doesn't like it wich one now is doing it right thats a good question anybody knows the matrix specs ?

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=50673

[mf]

Could someone merge this with this (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=48511) ?

EDIT by Koepi: Ok, done ;) Happy easter everyone!

[cweb]

Has anyone yet tested ffvfw to make analog captures using huffy-yv12 or
even mpeg2, using Virtualdub+vcr, or using VirtualVCR?

I think I'll have a go at it.. :)

[cweb]

I tried it with mpeg2 - Virtualvcr wouldn't capture
and gave me this error:

could not render filter
Smart Tee-> Compression Codec -> Flow Meter

I did use the highest possible bitrate and force yv12, so that might have something to do with the error :)

Edit: Back in the ffvfw codec I lowered the mpeg2 bitrate to 1470, changed the setting to Interlaced, and disabled force YV12.
I'll next try again but with the highest bitrate and see what happens.


Edit2: I raised the mpeg2 bitrate. Moving the Virtualvcr window
during the capture was more difficult - I guess more processing
power is going to the codec.
Now how do I play these 'avi's? They don't seem to playback
at all.. I used the default mpeg FOURCC, should I have used
something else?

Edit3: I read the ffvfw webpage and it's clear now. Only XviD
playback is supported so far. Ok, it will be interesting when
mpeg1 or 2 playback is added.


Next I'll try Virtualdub+VCR.

[Valky]

And has ANYONE had any divx-codec or mpg1 decoded with this one..?