ffdshow tryouts project: Discussion & Development

[clsid]

@LigH

The encoders from ffdshow come from FFmpeg, so anyone who would like to use the MJPEG (or other) encoder can do so by using FFmpeg or any of the many conversion programs that are based on it. So lets rephrase the question. Is there a specific need for using ffdshow to encode to MJPEG? Also, when do people use MJPEG?

[STaRGaZeR]

Originally Posted by LigH

1. Yes, the test was old, and the first part was quite artifical. But you ignored the second part (VQEG). And you don't seem to care about the magnitude of the advantage either.

2. I'd like to keep that codec because it is good, yes. So if you want it out of ffdshow by all means, don't let it die completely. ffdshow's MJPG codec is not just better. It is by far better than all commercial MJPG codecs with an impressive distance.

3. I am not the one who uses it often. But use my voice vicariously for all those who still use it but are not a board member here (e.g. because they don't speak english) and are not heard here. If necessary, I will collect signatures of those who like it still today.

Do you understand that all these encoders are ffmpeg encoders? We are simply removing from ffdshow those that virtually nobody uses for virtually anything. If you want to use it, it's better to use ffmpeg to have full control over it or, as clsid said, one of the multiple programs that will give you exactly the same. ffdshow is just a wrapper for ffmpeg in this regard.

And yes, it would be useful to know: 1. who uses MJPEG, 2. for what purpose, 3. vfw through ffdshow?

@devs, I have a patch that completely removes x264 from ffdshow, tell me when and if you want it commited.

[Brazil2]

Originally Posted by clsid

By default autodetect is used. That obviously does not work for this sample, so please report it to FFmpeg bug tracker.
https://roundup.ffmpeg.org/

Well, I'm not going to create an account just to report only one bug while I'm quite sure many of you already have accounts and some of you may even be in touch with the ffmpeg devs. So feel free to report this bug.

Originally Posted by clsid

Libavcodec workarounds can be enabled in the ffdshow settings, on the 'Decoder options' page.

Due to the existence of the autodetect option, I assume that there may be unwanted side effect to forcing workarounds when not needed (enable always).

Exactly, that's why I'm asking to keep Xvidcore in ffdshow, at least while awaiting for the ffmpeg decoder to be fixed.

[fastplayer]

Originally Posted by STaRGaZeR

@devs, I have a patch that completely removes x264 from ffdshow, tell me when and if you want it commited.

If _xxl doesn't intend to maintain it anymore and nobody wants to fill in, then please remove it.

[Brazil2]

Originally Posted by LigH

3. I am not the one who uses it often. But use my voice vicariously for all those who still use it but are not a board member here (e.g. because they don't speak english) and are not heard here.

That's a good point, I also think that the vast majority of ffdshow users have never heard about this board and they are using ffdshow because it's quite simple, all-in-one and also to avoid codec packs and their related problems. I do believe that the advanced users of this board are not representative of this vast majority of users.

Originally Posted by STaRGaZeR

And yes, it would be useful to know
3. vfw through ffdshow?

Anyone who is using VirtualDub(Mod) and it seems there is still an army of VD users.

[clsid]

Considering that the current x264 encoder is buggy and there is no maintainer, I agree it can be removed.

@Brazil2, the ability to decode using xvidcore will not be removed. We are just considering to remove the dll from the installer. ffdshow will still be able to use an externally installed copy. Files that need it are very rare and made by buggy encoders, plus there is a known workaround.

I don't have an account there either. Is there anyone here that has one and is willing to report this issue?

[dann23]

@clsid. you said that ffdshow has a DS encoder. how do we use it and where do we find it? also it will be usefull if you recommed a substitute for virtualdub. because, now, with ffmpef mpeg4 removed, virtualdub is useless for me. I don't have a problem if the devs remove all vfw from ffdshow, but we need some alternative if you do this.

[clsid]

ffdshow is feature rich, but not an "all-in-one" solution. Some people think they can do everything with it, but that is just not true. I have needed to help people many times that were missing for example a source filter, thinking ffdshow would take care of it, possibly after being told that ffdshow was 'all they need'. Some even think it can convert their files. The number of people that actually have real problems with codec packs are much much smaller than codec pack haters like you think. Plus most problems are user errors or unrelated problems caused by other software. Besides, a codec pack is not suddenly needed if ffdshow no longer supports MJPEG encoding. Many encoding tools rely on their own private encoders.

Adding/keeping features is not something we must do simply because we can, it must be done if it has significant benefits for the users. If something is used rarely and there are good enough or even better alternatives available, then we might better off without it. Manpower for maintaining/fixing things in ffdshow is simply too scarce.

[clsid]

Originally Posted by dann23

@clsid. you said that ffdshow has a DS encoder. how do we use it and where do we find it? also it will be usefull if you recommed a substitute for virtualdub. because, now, with ffmpef mpeg4 removed, virtualdub is useless for me. I don't have a problem if the devs remove all vfw from ffdshow, but we need some alternative if you do this.

Why is VirtualDub suddenly useless? If you want to encode MPEG-4, then simply install Xvid (or DivX). That is also better than the encoder offered by ffdshow.

If you want to use the ffdshow filters inside VirtualDub, you can still do that, even regardless of your chosen encoder. Simply use the VirtualDub plugin (ffvdub.vdf) that is included with ffdshow.

The GUID of the DS encoder is {4DB2B5D9-4556-4340-B189-AD20110D953F}, but it has the same functionality as the VFW one.

[dann23]

then the DS encoder is useless to
I used ffmpeg mpeg 4 because it was there and I didn't have to install other encoders. So in this case I have to get used to virtualdub external encoders and comand line parameters.

[GrofLuigi]

I use commercial MJPEG codec, but I would imagine many users would still benefit from it in ffdshow.

Mainly because of VFW interface and capture, either from screen or external source. Yes, even webcam, it can be quite useful.

I don't know much about the current implementation, but if it isn't broken and doesn't break other things, why not keep it?

GL

[clsid]

It would mostly just mean size reduction for ffmpeg.dll (edit: diff is about 240 KB).

The question I still haven't seen answered is: why use MJPEG instead of some other video formats like Huffyuv (lossless) or Xvid/H.264 (lossy)? Is it faster, does it have better compression/quality ratio for certain types of content, etc. I rarely do any encoding, so I don't have any experience with the MJPEG format.

[STaRGaZeR]

Originally Posted by Brazil2

That's a good point, I also think that the vast majority of ffdshow users have never heard about this board and they are using ffdshow because it's quite simple, all-in-one and also to avoid codec packs and their related problems. I do believe that the advanced users of this board are not representative of this vast majority of users.

Anyone who is using VirtualDub(Mod) and it seems there is still an army of VD users.

Let's get real here. The vast majority of ffdshow users don't even know it encodes, let alone its MJPEG capabilities. So yes, you're right, this forum is not representative of the vast majority of users. Besides, the encoder part of ffdshow is far from being all-in-one, easy to use and bug free.

You forgot 1. and 2., please answer these before answering 3. otherwise it's meaningless. We are talking about the MJPEG encoder, not about the vfw encoder in general.

Originally Posted by clsid

Considering that the current x264 encoder is buggy and there is no maintainer, I agree it can be removed.

OK, I'll remove it then.

Originally Posted by GrofLuigi

I use commercial MJPEG codec, but I would imagine many users would still benefit from it in ffdshow.

Mainly because of VFW interface and capture, either from screen or external source. Yes, even webcam, it can be quite useful.

I don't know much about the current implementation, but if it isn't broken and doesn't break other things, why not keep it?

GL

The vfw interface is not going away. Again, x264 and xvid have really good vfw interfaces that are a lot better, are updated and bug free, ffdshow is not. People using vfw should use them.
Just curious, why do you capture to MJPEG and not to a higher quality, easier to use format?

[HeadlessCow]

I've used the MJpeg functionality in the past because it was significantly lower size and CPU usage than using one of the lossless codecs and I didn't care about perfect quality.

My preference (for what it matters) is to leave the formats that libavcodec supports internally and ditch all the formats that are using external libraries (xvid, x264, WMV, ??).

The bare minimum I'd like to see kept is HuffYUV and FFV1, though I mostly use Lagarith lately instead.

[XhmikosR]

How much size will we gain if the encoders supported by ffmpeg are removed from ffdshow? Of course someone can use ffmpeg directly but one might not want or know how to use ffmpeg through the commandline, or simply it's easier to configure the settings through ffdshow. Maybe they shouldn't be removed.
I still want to have different output dirs based on the compiler used. ffmpeg and gcc built files will still be in the bin directory since I don't wanna mess with the makefiles at the moment. This way we can make sure everything goes well for people using different compilers. Does everybody agree with this?

[clsid]

Avidemux is an easy to use, VirtualDub like, interface for using FFmpeg encoders.

Removing MJPEG and Lossless JPEG saves about 240KB in ffmpeg.dll

Use these dirs: bin\x86, bin\x64, bin\x86_icl
Installer should then use a defined value "bin_dir", set by user settings, and use non-icl dir otherwise.

[XhmikosR]

I don't like your suggestion for the simple reason that there are a lot of configurations and I want to keep the compiled files, the pdb files etc in one dir. I'm still thinking about it but it will be something like root\bin10 for VS2010 and root\icl12 for ICL12 (this will fix those warnings about the OutDir and the linker's dir).
I don't really care about VS08 so I may not even touch those projects. The same goes for the ICL10 projects. Whoever uses and maintains those can make any changes they want.
Oh, and it's a good time to remove the random solution files.

As for the installer, that's what my plans are. Also, I have a few suggestions for the installer.

-remove the types since only one is used.
-remove the various MinVersion and use a MinVersion in [Setup] section. Since Inno Setup Unicode is used the minimum version is 0,5.0.
-the main ffdshow component shouldn't be uncheckable like it is now.

[STaRGaZeR]

Originally Posted by HeadlessCow

I've used the MJpeg functionality in the past because it was significantly lower size and CPU usage than using one of the lossless codecs and I didn't care about perfect quality.

Do you use it now? If yes, for what, and would you use it with xvid and x264 around, considering the compatibility, highly customizable compression/speed/size ratios of these 2 encoders? These are the questions to answer. So far no responses, the closest to a good reason has been yours, and you're comparing it to lossless codecs (why?). Still waiting to see some evidence of LigH's "all those who still use it but are not a board member here" though, sounds like a lot of people.

On a side note, I just encoded something with it. Ignoring the crashes because of access violations I got, man it looks horrible. For the same size and encoding speed, x264 and xvid look a lot better, night and day. If you can use ffdshow vfw for webcam capture or something like that as previously mentioned, you can also use x264vfw and xvid, so do yourself a favor and use them instead.

Originally Posted by XhmikosR

How much size will we gain if the encoders supported by ffmpeg are removed from ffdshow? Of course someone can use ffmpeg directly but one might not want or know how to use ffmpeg through the commandline, or simply it's easier to configure the settings through ffdshow. Maybe they shouldn't be removed.

It's not about the size gain, which is nice, is about why keep them there if nobody realistically uses them, they're buggy and there are way better alternatives. We do have evidence that people use the lossless encoders a lot, none so far about MJPEG, lossless JPEG and the others.

[Valeron]

Hi, XhmikosR.
I've a question regards to your MSVC10 build.
Can MSVC10 build ffmpeg now? Afaik, MSVC10 is still incapable of compiling C99 codes, isn't it?

[betaking]

BUG report! installed last ffdshow_rev3680_20101213_xhmikosr_MSVC2010(X86) or ffdshow_rev3680_20101213_MSVC2010(X86)form xvidvideo.ru click stat-ffdshow-Video decoder configuration click about- Version details,The settings interface did not automatically turn off any tips!
but not happen on ffdshow_rev3679_20101212_MSVC2010(X86) form xvidvideo.ru & ffdshow_rev3680_20101213_xhmikosr_icl12!