LAV Filters - DirectShow Media Splitter and Decoders

[tetsuo55]

That is really inconsistent behavior.
This is how it should work:

* The internal filters when enabled should always override any external filter, even when one is preferred.

* When no internal filter is enabled, a preferred external filter should be used.

* When no preference is set, the directshow merits should be used to determine the filter to be used.

IEven these behaviour is uninituitive. If we had a willing developer the whole internal/external filter selection and preferences could be changed into a unified and logical interface.

[Ger]

Originally Posted by tetsuo55

* The internal filters when enabled should always override any external filter, even when one is preferred.

I disagree, because of what I said in the previous post. Prefer should always mean prefer which also allows fallback to internal filters if the preferred filter fails.

If an external filter is not set to prefer, then I agree that an internal filter should override any merit set for the external ones.

[madshi]

@Ger, I think we all agree with that, it just lacks devs to make it work that way.

[tetsuo55]

The *'ed items are the currently intended behaviour.

As madshi also says, we would all like to see "preferred" override everything.

[Ger]

nevcairiel fixed the source filter preference recently, so we could always hope he gets inspired again.

[nevcairiel]

I disable most of the internal filters anyway, it was just a PITA that preferences for source filters were not working at all.

[SamuriHL]

I have ALL the internal filters disabled, as well. I provide my own.

[mindbomb]

right now, it seems when a source filter is set to prefer, it can't override an internal one, but when a transform filter is set to prefer, it will override an internal one.
I don't mind it too much the way it is now, but I would rather preferred filters always override internal ones.

Also, nev, did you get my large sample?
If not, is there any other way i could send it to you?

[nevcairiel]

Originally Posted by mindbomb

Also, nev, did you get my large sample?
If not, is there any other way i could send it to you?

I got it, well, still downloading the last parts of it.

[SamuriHL]

So to all that helped me get the ArcSoft video decoder up and running, I wanted to report back on my progress. That checkactivate.dll thing is definitely required whether using a fully installed TMT instance or not. I dropped that in the Codec dir and now the codec works perfectly. I just want to step back for a moment and look at what I now have set up. Just to think about this for a moment. MPC-HC...all internal filters are disabled. Audio switcher is disabled. Subtitles are enabled. Renderer is madVR which of course just added subtitle support for MPC-HC hence why I'm using MPC-HC's subtitle support. Video is decoded by ArcSoft or Cyberlink video decoder (depending on my mood I guess) and sent into ffdshow raw video for post processing, before being sent to madVR for rendering. Audio is handled by ffdshow for perfect bitstreaming. Splitting, obviously, being done by LAVF. What this means is that I now have *THE* perfect MKV playback environment!!! I'm actually EXTREMELY happy with this setup right now! To recap:

MPC-HC with subtitles turned on, internal filters turned off
ArcSoft and Cyberlink video decoders
ffdshow audio bitstreaming
madVR renderer
LAVF splitter

Absolutely LOVE IT!

[Plutotype]

Hi Samuri,
Nice setup. Why do you prefer to use ArcSoft and Cyberlink video decoders and additionally pass them over to ffdshow raw?
Im just curious if Arcsoft decoders doing better job than ffdshow video decoders. Im using ffdshow for H.264/AVC+VC1+MPEG2 decoding and outputting as YV12 to madVR. Is there any PQ improvement or cpu/gpu saving by using your setup?
Thanks
Pluto

[SamuriHL]

I can honestly say that with the Cyberlink decoder I'm getting great CPU utilization and incredible PQ with the way I have it set up. I'm using ffdshow for resizing when necessary. (I.E. DVD's I've remade into MKV's). It's quite outstanding. If what you have works, don't mess with it. I mean, it's simple really...just add the video decoder, set it to prefer, and uncheck ffdshow and compare. If it's not an improvement, go back to your original setup. That's what I've been doing. I wanted to see how the ArcSoft decoder compared. It's not bad, but, I think the Cyberlink decoder works better in this environment. For my bedroom machine I use CoreAVC because the CPU is too slow for video decoding. Nonetheless, this setup works PERFECTLY for all videos I've tried it on.

[SamuriHL]

Originally Posted by robpdotcom

To get DXVA in Cyberlink to stick, I have to do this:

Open MPC-HC > go to external filters and double-click Cyberlink Decoder > change decoding to DXVA. Then, without closing MPC-HC, drag a VC-1 encoded file into it.

You may also need to add GUID {31435657-0000-0010-8000-00AA00389B71} as a media subtype to MEDIATYPE_Video of CyberLink Video Decoder in MPC-HC's external filter page.

The bad thing about Cyberlink's decoder though: it doesn't seem to work well for VC-1 inside an mkv. For that, Arcsoft's decoder seems best when dealing with interlaced VC-1 (ironically, at least on my system, I get stuttering on progressive VC-1 inside mkv with Arcsoft ).

Ok, I'm now configuring my laptop for DXVA in MPC-HC and I did indeed have to add that mediatype to get DXVA to work. So thanks for that! It wouldn't connect in DXVA without it. Now it works great. I have it setup so I can switch between ArcSoft and Cyberlink decoders on all my machines now. On my main HTPC, I'm still determining what looks best with madVR, but, so far I think Cyberlink has the edge. Testing a movie with ArcSoft decoder now. With my bedroom machine and laptop I've yet to get the Cyberlink decoder to work with DXVA until now, so, I haven't done a good comparison. On the plus side, my bedroom machine is able to use the ArcSoft decoder to play in 24Hz a VC-1 MKV which is damn hard to do. So, I think I'm really getting there with all these machines and my MKV playback. Nev, keep up the most excellent work. I look forward to Blu-ray support.

[robpdotcom]

Glad to hear I could help (that's a rare occurrence for me ).

On my system, it takes much longer to open a VC-1 file with Cyberlink, and interlaced VC-1 is also not as smooth as it is Arcsoft. I'm interested to hear if you have similar results.

[SamuriHL]

I'll give it a try maybe tomorrow with a VC-1 MKV I have. (Golden Compass blu-ray...created to torture ArcSoft cause they can't play it in an MKV container. Interestingly it can from MPC-HC now. ) I don't have any interlaced VC-1 content, though. But yea, you definitely helped so thanks.

[nevcairiel]

Classic DXVA disables madVR, which is a no-no, but there are other hardware acceleration solutions..

<teaser>If you're an NVIDIA user, i'll have a treat for you soon.</teaser>

[madshi]

Originally Posted by nevcairiel

<teaser>If you're an NVIDIA user, i'll have a treat for you soon.</teaser>

CUDA Decode?

[nevcairiel]

Technically its not using CUDA to decode, just to access the hardware decoder.
I like to call it what NVIDIA calls that interface, a CUVID decoder.

[madshi]

Yeah, it's looking quite promising, I have the sample on my harddisk, too... There's one disadvantage: You'll have to copy the decoded frame back from GPU -> system RAM, but from what I've measured (madNV12Test) that should be very fast (~ 500fps with 1080p content on newer cards), so no real problem.

[nevcairiel]

Yeah, NVIDIA put real focus on getting data from the GPU back to the CPU, its used alot in CUDA. I didn't actually measure performance when using the CUDA interface to copy the frame back instead of using the D3D functions to read a surface, but i figure it'll not be slower, possibly even faster. A quick test in GraphStudios decoder performance gives me about 70fps in a 1080p H264 file (don't remember the complexity of it right now, though), about the same as CoreAVC in CUDA mode, so i must be doing something right.

I'll post some more measured stats when i release it.

(Oh, the main difference to CoreAVC? In addition to H264, mine supports VC-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 ASP as well - given hardware support, of course.)