LAV Filters - DirectShow Media Splitter and Decoders

[RealSnoopyDog]

Originally Posted by nevcairiel

Its not like 4K content is an every-day thing, besides some tech-demo clips, what else is there?

Not yet, but (e.g.) ASTRA will start 4k test broadcasting next year:

http://www.digitalfernsehen.de/Astra...3.95013.0.html (german language). But they even don't know, which video compression they will use. Maybe, HEVC or H.265...

But hey, i'm pretty satisfied with 1920x1080 on a 46'' flat screen. Higher resolutions make sense only on bigger displays.

The other thing is 3D. I think except the latest Cyberlink software, there is no codec so far that can decode 3D content properly. On Blu-Rays, additional information is stored in the SSIF subdirectory along the normal m2ts streams.

[VipZ]

Nev, I have noticed WMA/WMV are not configurable on LAV Source/Splitter, would this be possible to add now that LAV fully supports WMV playback?

[nevcairiel]

Originally Posted by VipZ

Nev, I have noticed WMA/WMV are not configurable on LAV Source/Splitter, would this be possible to add now that LAV fully supports WMV playback?

Its "asf", which is the same format.

[VipZ]

Originally Posted by nevcairiel

Its "asf", which is the same format.

Ah ok, wasn't sure if it was just ASF or covered WMA/WMV as well

Thanks, maybe adjust the description to indicate WMA/WMV as well then?

[wanezhiling]

nev, UHD only supports Nvidia VP5? I tested Intel hd4000, failed.

[nevcairiel]

LAV Filters 0.54

LAV Splitter
- Subtitle selection in "Default" mode now properly takes the "Default Track" flag into account
- Fixed an issue that could cause graph flush events to be send out of sync

LAV Video
- The DXVA2 Native decoder can now properly detect hardware support for video resolutions
  - Allows 4K DXVA2 decoding on NVIDIA/Intel
- New options to control which resolutions are being handled by the hardware decoder (SD, HD and 4K/UHD)
- Added support for DVD menu overlays and DVD subtitles with DXVA2 Native
- Improved DXVA2 Native support with madVR
- Fixed a freeze when playing corrupted H.264 streams in DXVA2 Native
- Fixed a few rare DVD menu issues when using the QuickSync decoder

Download: Installer (both x86/x64) -- Zips: 32-bit & 64-bit

Even though this versions change list is somewhat shorter, i still decided to go with a new major version, instead of just a point release, because the changes are somewhat important.

DXVA2 Native auto-detection of hardware support
Before this version, DXVA2 Native mode had a hard-limit of 1920x1200 for the video resolution, and any video over this was refused and software decoding was used.
In this version, LAV will now try to ask the hardware about its supported resolutions, and based on this decide if DXVA2 Native should be used, or not.

This means that recent NVIDIA cards will now allow DXVA2-Native to decode 4K material (and possibly Ivy Bridge GPUs will as well).
AMD on the other hand is blacklisted in LAV, because some AMD driver versions accept 4K material, but then crash or even BSOD (and newer driver versions simply refuse it completely, so nothing lost). As before, only material up to 1920x1200 is allowed with AMD hardware.

Additionally, there is also a new option to control which resolutions are handled by the HW Accel, which allows you to use DXVA, CUVID or QS for just SD/HD, but always use Software for 4K, even if your hardware supports it. You could also simply disable SD HW decoding, if you have one of the AMD cards which have problems with SD DXVA. Note that Ultra-high-definition (UHD) / 4K is disabled by default because of performance and/or possibly hardware compat issues.

Full DVD Menu and DVD Subtitle support with DXVA2 Native
One could say this build focuses mainly on Native DXVA, and it wouldn't even be all wrong.

DXVA2-Native can now also be used for DVD decoding without any disadvantages over the other decoders. DVD Menus and DVD subtitles should now work equally well as with software decoding or any of the other HW decoders.
Note that i have not performed wide-spread performance tests on the DXVA2 Subtitle support, but i hope that even AMD can manage to deal with this.


Have a good weekend!

[nevcairiel]

Originally Posted by wanezhiling

nev, UHD only supports Nvidia VP5? I tested Intel hd4000, failed.

Its possible that Intel only allows it through QuickSync for some reason. I know that QS can do 4K decoding on my HD4000, i didn't test DXVA (because the HD4000 is not in my Dev PC)

What does DXVAChecker say on it?

[wanezhiling]

Originally Posted by nevcairiel

Its possible that Intel only allows it through QuickSync for some reason. I know that QS can do 4K decoding on my HD4000, i didn't test DXVA (because the HD4000 is not in my Dev PC)

What does DXVAChecker say on it?

My fault, now it works.

Maybe you should change the log:
- Allows 4K DXVA2 decoding on NVIDIA/Intel

[DragonQ]

Originally Posted by 6233638

I guess I don't properly understand how HyperThreading works then. I was under the impression that it helped more with multi-tasking operations by allowing the virtual cores to make use of resources that may be stalled and waiting for a task to finish on another core.

That's about right. However, your CPU being at 100% in Task Manager doesn't mean every single component is being used. HyperThreading uses components that a CPU core isn't using right now to form another virtual core that can be used for other things, essentially.

Originally Posted by 6233638

With fully multithreaded tasks that max out all cores, such as video encoding, the tests I had seen only showed around a 5% improvement at the same clockspeed for a 50% increase in price, and were actually detrimental to performance with tasks that didn't know how to handle HT properly.

Maybe things have changed with the latest Ivy Bridge processors though.

Dunno what benchmarks you were looking at but HyperThreading typically increases speed by 30-50% for video encoding (x264 specifically). This has always been the case, I tested it myself many years ago on my Nehalem CPU.

HyperThreading being detrimental to performance is usually overblown. It's possible it makes a slight difference (<5%) but the main complaints I see about this is in regard to certain games, which are obviously coded poorly if they can't handle HyperThreading.

For 99% of people, HyperThreading is beneficial. Whether it's worth it for the price is another matter though.

[kasper93]

FWIW, maybe someone could contact AMD folks and tell about problems with 4k dxva decoding. I guess they are aware of that, but maybe it will encourage them to fix this faster. Or if they can't do DXVA 4k decoding at least their driver shouldn't report they can. I would do this, but I can't test DXVA decoding right now, and I shouldn't say about things that I can't test myself.

[VipZ]

Originally Posted by kasper93

FWIW, maybe someone could contact AMD folks and tell about problems with 4k dxva decoding. I guess they are aware of that, but maybe it will encourage them to fix this faster. Or if they can't do DXVA 4k decoding at least their driver shouldn't report they can. I would do this, but I can't test DXVA decoding right now, and I shouldn't say about things that I can't test myself.

AMD has updated their drivers to simply remove 4K decoding, its only old drivers which fail with a crash or BSOD. I have reported HDMI audio issues few times and pretty sure others have done the same and AMD has yet to fix it so don't really feel like wasting time to try get AMD to fix something like 4K which is hardly used.

[wanezhiling]

Originally Posted by VipZ

AMD has updated their drivers to simply removed 4K decoding

Could you post any info about this you knew?

Of course, I will try Catalyst 12.11 Beta8 later.

[VipZ]

Originally Posted by wanezhiling

Could you post any info about this you knew?

Of course, I will try Catalyst 12.11 Beta8 later.

And LAV fallback worked as expected to use software on 4K content pre blacklist.

[wanezhiling]

Originally Posted by VipZ

And LAV fallback worked as expected to use software on 4K content pre blacklist.

Thanks.

AMD is aware of their "lie"

[aufkrawall]

New versions fixes the menu issue, thanks.

[kasper93]

So blacklist added in cea9c97 will not be needed with newer driver, fallback should work fine

[wanezhiling]

Originally Posted by kasper93

So blacklist added in cea9c97 will not be needed with newer driver, fallback should work fine

Still lots of people use the older drivers.

[kasper93]

Thats is why I said "will not be" Anyway hardware acceleration UHD/4K is disabled by default, I guess people are not so stupid to enable it, there is even a note in the tooltip

...On AMD GPUs, 4K support is very fragile, and may even cause crashes or BSODs, use at your own risk.

but @nevcairiel will do as he thinks I don't like when software decide for me, but maybe it's better this way. (・へ・)

BTW. No need to quote post above ;p

[nevcairiel]

I'll still keep the blacklist for AMD right now, because there is no downside. People have tested on the latest drivers, and it doesn't work, people have tested on older drivers, and it crashes. Its MPEG-2 support all over again, they claim it works, but it takes like 2 hardware generations more until it actually works.

[Prinz]

And don't forget: All ATI 2000,3000,4000 are on legacy support now and can't use the current drivers.