LAV Filters - DirectShow Media Splitter and Decoders

[nevcairiel]

LAV Filters 0.79.2 (released 2024/04/08)
including LAV Splitter, LAV Video and LAV Audio.

-----------------------------------------------------------

Hi folks,

We've been working on this for quite a while already, and i feel its time to release it into the wild for some more comprehensive testing.

LAVFSplitter is a multi-format media splitter that uses libavformat (the demuxing library from ffmpeg) to demux all sorts of media files.
The project has been growing in my mind for quite a while, until i found out that Ti-BEN from the XBMC DSPlayer team was working on this as well,
so we joined forces and developed the first prototype together. Since then some time passed, and this is the third design that came out of
our combined efforts. It is already in use in the XBMC DSPlayer branch as the internal splitter, and now available as a standalone for everyone!

At this point i would like to thank Ti-BEN for his contributions. Without his work on this project, it probably would have stayed a design in my mind.

State of the project
Note that this list only lists properly tested formats/codecs, many others may just work!

Containers
MKV/WebM, AVI, MP4/MOV, MPEG-TS/PS (including basic EVO support), FLV, OGG, and many more that are supported by ffmpeg!

Video Codecs
H264, VC-1, MPEG-2, MPEG4-ASP (Divx/Xvid), VP8, MJPEG and many more.

Audio Codecs
AAC, AC3, DTS(-HD), TrueHD, MP3/MP2, Vorbis, LPCM and more.

Subtitles
VOB, DVB Subs, PGS, SRT, SSA/ASS, Text

BluRay Support
Support for opening BluRay playlists (.mpls), as well as the index.bdmv file, which will try to detect the main movie playlist!
Full support for Seamless Branching Blu-rays as well as HD audio (including native full DTS HD-MA support as of 0.65!)

Other Notable Features
- MKV Edition/Ordered Chapters/Segment linking support
- Full Stream switching
- MKV Embedded Fonts
- Audio Bitstreaming (through LAV Audio)

Note:
Not all containers are equally supported, so some formats may fail in one container and work in another.
Also note that "tested" doesn't mean it won't fail eventually. There are many combinations of codecs, and its impossible to test all of them for me.

How to Use
Here are some guides that include LAV Filters (but are usually not limited to them):

Advanced MPC-HC Setup Guide (by mindbomb)
Watching H.264 videos using Compute Unified Device Architecture (CUDA)

Those guides are in no way "official", and I do not guarantee for the accuracy of these guides, but they should get you started.
If you know about a good guide that should be added here, please say so!

Feedback
When reporting problems, please always state the Container Format, the Codec, and the Decoder you're trying to use. If possible, a short sample will help greatly to resolve any issues!
Please report issues on the GitHub project page: https://github.com/Nevcairiel/LAVFilters/issues

Download
The source can be found on the GitHub project pages:
https://github.com/Nevcairiel/LAVFilters (development repository)

LAV Filters work on 7/8/8.1 and Windows 10. Older versions of Windows are not supported.
Note that some functionality may require newer operating systems (primarily hardware acceleration options).

Binaries for the most recent version are available here:
Version 0.78: Installer (both x86/x64) -- Zips: 32-bit & 64-bit
Download 3D Plugin: 32-bit & 64-bit

Debug Symbols: 32-bit & 64-bit
The debug symbols can be used to help determine the cause of crashes, usually you only need them when trying to create a crash dump.

You can find the slightly modified/tuned version of ffmpeg used for LAV Filters here:
https://gitea.1f0.de/LAV/FFmpeg

Nightly testing builds are available here:
https://files.1f0.de/lavf/nightly/

Previous releases are available on GitHub:
https://github.com/Nevcairiel/LAVFilters/releases

Changelog
0.79 - 2024/03/25 - Release Notes

LAV Splitter
- NEW: Support for demuxing VVC video
- Changed: Updated language lists to support all relevant language codes
- Changed: Improved resilience of streaming HLS
- Changed: Tweaked frame rate detection logic

LAV Video:
- NEW: Support for decoding VVC video

0.79.1 - 2024/03/28 - Release Notes

LAV Video
- Fixed: Resolved a glitch when playing HEVC video

0.79.2 - 2024/04/08 - Release Notes

LAV Splitter
- Fixed: Buffering media from a high latency source was slower then expected (since 0.79)

LAV Audio
- Fixed: Bitstream AC3 audio could fallback to PCM on streams that start with a corrupt audio frame (since 0.78)
- Fixed: Resolved a memory leak when bitstreaming AC3

For the full changelog, see CHANGELOG.txt in the download!

[nevcairiel]

Known issues

Audio Decoder
- DTS Express and other "core-less" DTS-HD streams cannot be bitstreamed

Frequently asked Question

Q: Will you write a Subtitle Filter?
A: Its possible, nothing has been determined yet. But its not likely going to be anytime soon.

Q: Can LAV Audio decode DTS-HD?
A: Yes! As of 0.65 DTS-HD is fully supported!

Q: I do not get any audio when using ffdshow as a post processor. What gives?
A: When using ffdshow as post-processor, under some circumstances, you might need to force ffdshow to only use one output format. In this case, i recommend turning off all output formats in ffdshow, except one, preferably either 24-bit int or 32-bit float.

Q: GraphEdit crashes after i installed LAV Video!
A: This is a GraphEdit bug. It will crash as soon as one filter supports more then 100 formats. There is nothing to be done. Personally, i suggest using GraphStudio instead!

Building LAV

Building LAV requires Visual Studio 2015 Update 3, and a recent version of mingw-w64 GCC with a MSYS environment and YASM.

You can get the GCC i use to compile here: http://files.1f0.de/mingw/
I recommend to combine it with MSYS2, or a MSYS package from XhmikosR (http://xhmikosr.1f0.de/tools/msys/)

[b66pak]

thanks a lot...
_

[pdanpdan]

I only tested it for mkv with h264 video and multiple AAC audio tracks and subtitle tracks. Everything seems to work fine, except:
I found 2 problems
- the track title is not displayed anywhere (even though this filter shows much more info than any other)
- in mkv files, the default track flag is not respected
And a request:
- can you please implement stream selection order priority by language list?

Thank you,
PDan

[nevcairiel]

Smart stream selection is not implemented yet, but that will be done, including configurable language priorities and default/forced flags.
Name of the streams is one thing on my list as well, right now the whole stream naming just dumps the descriptive codec info from libavformat into there.

[liquidskin76]

Hey nev,

About to test now. Can't wait to see the finished splitter and see it in mpc-hc!

Are mkv chapters supported yet? Also, how about sup and sub/idx subtitles?

Thanks

[nevcairiel]

Chapters are not yet supported, but thats one of the things to do next.
For the subtitles, well, try it. If it works, yay, if it doesnt, send me a sample =)

[nevcairiel]

LAVFSplitter 0.3
- Added Chapter support
- Improved stream descriptions
- 64-bit support

Download: 32-bit & 64-bit

[Sebastiii]

Thanks Nev

[_xxl]

Great work! LAVFSplitter could be added to MPC-HC?

[nevcairiel]

Its the plan to replace the majority of the internal splitters in MPC-HC at some point when its more complete.

[_xxl]

I had just tested LAVFSplitter 0.3 with MPC-HC 2235 (VS 2008 build) and some random XVID in avi sample. Internal avi splitter is disabled. MPC-HC stops responding when I try to exit, also it takes a lot time to seek. Thanks for your work!

[nevcairiel]

Are you sure its really using it? AVIs have generally always worked rather good.
You can check the filters menu, if the last entry has a sub menu that shows streams, its probably active, as no other avi splitter does that.
Also, x86 oder x64?

[stax76]

Exiting news, thanks a lot. Would it be possible to configure which formats it should handle?

[nevcairiel]

Yes, that will be in there as well. I'll build a typical property page for the filter where you can select what formats it should be handling, and some other options for preferred languages, and similar things.

[tetsuo55]

_xxl, please provide a sample too if you can

@all, think of this as a full replacement with all the features the current splitters have.
But its only a begin, and obviously not everything is in there yet.

[nevcairiel]

Originally Posted by _xxl

I had just tested LAVFSplitter 0.3 with MPC-HC 2235 (VS 2008 build) and some random XVID in avi sample. Internal avi splitter is disabled. MPC-HC stops responding when I try to exit, also it takes a lot time to seek. Thanks for your work!

I found the issue why it was causing MPC-HC to freeze on shutdown, fixed for next version, sorry about that.
Still wondering why your seeking was slow. Seems pretty good for AVIs for me.

[STaRGaZeR]

Looks awesome, keep pushing it!

[Underground78]

Originally Posted by tetsuo55

@all, think of this as a full replacement with all the features the current splitters have.
But its only a begin, and obviously not everything is in there yet.

Really interesting ! I understand why all the slitters related bug reports have been assigned to nevcairiel now ...

I will test if the issues I reported earlier about the MPEG TS Splitter are fixed with the new splitter. Thank you very much for your work nevcairiel !

[STaRGaZeR]

Only 1 pin per stream type (video, audio, subs) + stream switching = win