ffdshow tryouts project: Discussion & Development

[davinleeds]

I'm eager to try 46. 44 gave me only multichannel.

[rica]

Originally Posted by davinleeds

I'm eager to try 46. 44 gave me only multichannel.

Just try it.
It's the end of the story
There might be some directors cut later but who cares for now?

[SamuriHL]

I recommend people try the DirectSound: ATI HDMI renderer and see how that works for you. Haven't crashed that one yet.

[gametiger]

Originally Posted by gametiger

Kudos to albain and everybody else who's helping with this, great job!


I'm planning to build a new HTPC and the progress you guys made right here is surely gonna influence my hardware choice.

As I understood it, the Xonar sound card and the ATI 5xxx series are the only cards that currently "support" HD audio bitstreaming.

So what would you recommend? Go for a Xonar sound card + a ATI/Nvidia video card combo or a video card out of the ATI 5xxx series?
What I'm looking for is a solidly working solution. Important criteria are reliability, quality and low heat/noise levels.

What would you guys go for?

Thanks in advance

Can someone give me advice on this please

[SamuriHL]

Originally Posted by gametiger

Can someone give me advice on this please

Let me give you an idea...I pulled my Xonar out of my machine even though it works fine. I have a 5870 which is all I use now. I don't think it makes ANY sense whatsoever to use a card that's tied (officially) to only one player. Yes, albain has it working in ffdshow but it's likely to never be supported in PDVD9, for example. The ATI card is officially supported in PDVD9 and WinDVD 2010. And now of course with ffdshow. And the likelihood is that TMT3 is going to have to support it or risk falling behind. A single card that does all that or a dual card solution that adds heat, power consumption, and complication to your life. Plus the external HDMI cable chaining required. You decide what's better.

[Andy o]

Originally Posted by sub24ox7

so i should leave out Windows and make it C:\program files\arcsoft and so on, I am sorry if this is taking up to much of your time this is the reason i haven't posted before but i am not computer illiterate and have manually registered .ax, .ocx, and .dll files from the command promt before because of fussy installers or should i say fussy vista. anyway thanks for the help samurihl i obviously have the path incorrect because that is what it is telling me. also should i manually move ASAudioRenderer.dll to C:\windows\system32 directory

Next time in Windows explorer you can just go to the folder where the file you wanna register is, and do a shift + right-click on a blank space in the window and choose "open command window here".

Alternatively, you can go back one step (to the folder where the folder that contains that file is), and do a shift + right-click on the folder that contains the file you wanna register.

Or you can just navigate to the file you want to register, and shift + right-click on it, and select "copy as path", and it will copy the full path of it, which you can then paste on the command prompt, quotes and all.

[SamuriHL]

Originally Posted by Andy o

Next time in Windows explorer you can just go to the folder where the file you wanna register is, and do a shift + right-click on a blank space in the window and choose "open command window here".

Alternatively, you can go back one step (to the folder where the folder that contains that file is), and do a shift + right-click on the folder that contains the file you wanna register.

Not if UAC is on. It has to be an admin cmd prompt.

[gametiger]

Originally Posted by SamuriHL

Let me give you an idea...I pulled my Xonar out of my machine even though it works fine. I have a 5870 which is all I use now. I don't think it makes ANY sense whatsoever to use a card that's tied (officially) to only one player. Yes, albain has it working in ffdshow but it's likely to never be supported in PDVD9, for example. The ATI card is officially supported in PDVD9 and WinDVD 2010. And now of course with ffdshow. And the likelihood is that TMT3 is going to have to support it or risk falling behind. A single card that does all that or a dual card solution that adds heat, power consumption, and complication to your life. Plus the external HDMI cable chaining required. You decide what's better.

Alrighty, thanks

The 5770 should be fine, right (I'm not planning to use it for any new games)? The only thing that worries me is the possible noise, but I heard that shouldn't be an issue for those cards?

Some people also mentioned the advantage of having 1 dedicated card for the video and 1 dedicated card for the audio. I didn't quite get that though

[SamuriHL]

Originally Posted by gametiger

Alrighty, thanks

The 5770 should be fine, right (I'm not planning to use it for any new games)? The only thing that worries me is the possible noise, but I heard that shouldn't be an issue for those cards?

Some people also mentioned the advantage of having 1 dedicated card for the video and 1 dedicated card for the audio. I didn't quite get that though

The advantage is if you're into gaming you can upgrade the video card and not affect your audio solution. YAWN. Like ATI is going to suddenly say "hey, you know, with the 6xxx cards we decided to drop bitstreaming support. Sorry!" RIGHT. And you yourself said you're not going to use it for gaming, so issue solved. Noise is not an issue when watching movies. Even my giant 5870 is silent when playing video. Get a video card with bitstreaming in more apps for the same price as an audio only card that's tied to one app, or get that audio card plus a video card....tough call.

[Andy o]

Originally Posted by SamuriHL

Not if UAC is on. It has to be an admin cmd prompt.

Was wondering about that. I never have UAC on.

[SamuriHL]

Originally Posted by Andy o

Was wondering about that. I never have UAC on.

I leave it on in 7 as it's not obnoxious like Vista. But yes, it requires elevated privs to register a file.

[gametiger]

Originally Posted by SamuriHL

The advantage is if you're into gaming you can upgrade the video card and not affect your audio solution. YAWN. Like ATI is going to suddenly say "hey, you know, with the 6xxx cards we decided to drop bitstreaming support. Sorry!" RIGHT. And you yourself said you're not going to use it for gaming, so issue solved. Noise is not an issue when watching movies. Even my giant 5870 is silent when playing video. Get a video card with bitstreaming in more apps for the same price as an audio only card that's tied to one app, or get that audio card plus a video card....tough call.

Thanks man, you were a great help

On another note... does anyone know if this will work in MediaPortal? Well it should, right?

Originally Posted by SamuriHL

I recommend people try the DirectSound: ATI HDMI renderer and see how that works for you. Haven't crashed that one yet.

Is that with the ATI drivers, or Realtek drivers?

[SamuriHL]

Originally Posted by honai

Is that with the ATI drivers, or Realtek drivers?

The ATI Cat 9.11 HDMI driver. Someone said the realtek driver is the same as the ATI one now, but, I don't think that's accurate from what I've seen. I just use the one from ATI. AFAIK, the realtek one still isn't capable of bitstreaming, even with ffdshow, but I haven't tried the latest realtek driver with the latest ffdshow. It'd be a good thing to try though. If I get a chance I can try them tomorrow.

[Andy o]

Does the MPC audio renderer use wasapi exclusive mode? As in, will it switch channels/sample rate automatically when playing decoded audio?

[albain]

Originally Posted by SamuriHL

@albain

The MPC-HC crash with Monsters Inc using probably Waveout on this crash:

Level	Date and Time	Source	Event ID	Task Category
Error	12/3/2009 4:40:26 PM	Application Error	1000	(100)	"Faulting application name: mpc-hc.exe, version: 1.3.1373.0, time stamp: 0x4b153037
Faulting module name: ffdshow.ax, version: 1.0.7.3280, time stamp: 0x4b17fc74
Exception code: 0xc0000005
Fault offset: 0x00257135
Faulting process id: 0xdb0
Faulting application start time: 0x01ca74612f1db569
Faulting application path: C:\Program Files (x86)\MPC HomeCinema\mpc-hc.exe
Faulting module path: C:\Program Files (x86)\ffdshow\ffdshow.ax

Fault offsets for different renderers:
0x00257152 -Default Waveout
0x0024da7a - Default DS

I'm not sure if those offsets help you, but, it's definitely crashing in ffdshow.

Thanks SamuriHL, this crash dump states that FFDShow is responsible of the crash.
This will be difficult to figure it out : visual studio with ffdshow compiled in debug mode is required to get the exact location of the crash.

Is there a developer/or compiler person who owns a radeon 5xxx ?

[Snowknight26]

Under ffdshow's video output, the tooltip for Standard under Input levels says that ffdshow automatically uses Full range for Fraps videos, even though it does not. The only way to get Full range is to select it, which is quite annoying having to change that setting back and forth, depending on what content is being decoded. Should be an easy fix, though.

[THX-UltraII]

I have a question that s not related to the new bitstreaming thing, hope thats ok :

When I play a movie which has True-HD audio MPC-HC does not load ffdshow. So after some testing I figured out that it has something to do with Haali Splitter. So I uninstalled Haali Splitter and enabled the internal TS filter in MPC-HC. Ater this FFdshow audio does load fine now. However, something is wrong with the decoding. I enabled all codecs in FFdshow and checked only 16-bit as output. I can see in the info of FFdshow (when playing the file) that True 5.1 decoding is active. However, the video stutters like hell. What could I be doing wrong here?

[albain]

Originally Posted by THX-UltraII

I have a question that s not related to the new bitstreaming thing, hope thats ok :

When I play a movie which has True-HD audio MPC-HC does not load ffdshow. So after some testing I figured out that it has something to do with Haali Splitter. So I uninstalled Haali Splitter and enabled the internal TS filter in MPC-HC. Ater this FFdshow audio does load fine now. However, something is wrong with the decoding. I enabled all codecs in FFdshow and checked only 16-bit as output. I can see in the info of FFdshow (when playing the file) that True 5.1 decoding is active. However, the video stutters like hell. What could I be doing wrong here?

Hi,

the number of channels may not be accurate.

Have you tried the last beta 46 from the earlier post ? Because I also brought some changes to decoding mode

[liquidskin76]

Originally Posted by gametiger

Can someone give me advice on this please

Put it this way... i have a xonar however as soon as a low profile ati 5xxx arrives in early 2010, i'll be pulling my xonar out and taking a hammer to it!