quicktime 7 wrong colours in overlay?

[kingmob]

I'm using haali's splitter and than 3ivx for the audio and ffdshow for the video. I also have quicktime alternative installed.
Whenever i play .mov files the video is awfully gray, but i think that's normal?

Anyway, now the problem. Using QT alternative i download HD trailers form apple and rename them to .mp4, like king-kong. When i play these on my computer, it's being split by the splitter and decoded by ffdshow. On my monitor all is fine. But on my television, the colors red and blue seem exchanged. Sky is red and faces are blue. The colors are perfect in such a way that one could easily think it's the way it was meant to be (i thought peter jackson had tought it funny to give everyone blue faces lol :eek: ).
The color problem does not occur when i play normal .mov files, but it DOES occur when i rename the file back to .mov :confused:
This last thing would imply that for the tv-out somehow ffdshow isn't used anymore?

How can i solve this?

[Randall]

Why am I not supprised? ;) Another QuickTime issue albiet a QuickTime Alternative issue. I am not so sure about renaming the extension to .mov, as mov is a QT propritary format, whereas .mp4 is the MPEG-4 format. If you download mplayer, rather then the QT alternative, and try the trailer with that, it might solve your issue. But other then that I'm not sure what is happening to inverse colors like that. :confused:

[bond]

renaming .mov to .mp4 is total NONSENSE!!!! stop doing this right NOW!

[Czarek Kwasny]

I managed to avoid mov->mp4 renaming by uninstalling quicktime alternative and pro version. If you associate movs with MediaPlayerClassic i.e. then Matroska Splitter and FFDShow (if you have them both installed) take care of the mov content... And they play it much more effeciently...

Is it possible to decode movs via MatroskaSplitter+FFDShow even while QuickTime stuff is installed? If yes, how? This would be helpful to avoid renaming issue while keeping usability of both decoding solutions.

[kingmob]

Well the renaming is done by QT alternative, not by me ;). I didn't know that ffdshow could be made to play the .mov files. I'll try that out.
I am playing it with MPC btw, but as you've noticed too, then you can't make it use ffdshow anymore.

[kingmob]

Ok, uninstalled QT. Mov files are now played by ffdshow, though it uses haali's splitter (i have matroska). Quality is much better.
Renaming .mp4 back to .mov does not change the colors on my monitor, so that helped too. But on my tv-out the colors are still crap?

And now i cannot download those movies anymore...

[Czarek Kwasny]

yeah :) that's the problem. Of course you may save the files by diggin in HTML code (find the url and download it manually). Still i wish to have quicktime stuff for html embed videofiles and so on... Hope somebody knows the answer... According to tv-out colors I have no idea... Hope somebody more experienced will take part in discussion...

[stephanV]

But on my television, the colors red and blue seem exchanged. Sky is red and faces are blue. The colors are perfect in such a way that one could easily think it's the way it was meant to be (i thought peter jackson had tought it funny to give everyone blue faces lol :eek: ).

This sounds like swapped chroma planes.

To test this, go to the ffdshow video configuration, enable avisynth, and enter SwapUV in the text box there. Also disable the RGB input colorspaces in that dialog. Now when you open it in Media Player Classic you should see the same thing as what you see on TV.

[bond]

sounds like qt alternative makes wierd things :D

[Czarek Kwasny]

Hello,

Here are my experiences with optimal HDTV (1080p mainly) AVC playback:

Download MediaPlayerClassic:
http://ffdshow.faireal.net/#mpc

Download Haali Media Splitter:
http://haali.cs.msu.ru/mkv/

The same with FFDShow:
http://ffdshow.faireal.net/

1. Unpack MPC to your favorite directory (i.e. "C:\program files\MediaPlayerClassic").

2. Install Haali Media Splitter (keep "Enable mp4 support")

3. Install FFDShow with h.264 and AAC decoding options enabled.

There's no need to uninstall QuickTime, but from my experience you have to avoid (this mean uninstalling) QuickTimeAlternative package.

4. Run MPC, go to View -> Options -> "Formats" section and associate with mp4 files. If you want to playback QuickTime HD movs effeciently find Quicktime format, enable association and in the right column, choose DirectShow by clicking twice on "QuickTime" (a drop-down list will appear). This will enable MatroskaSplitter instead of QuickTime engine (if you have quicktime stuff installed) to decode AVC & AAC content put in MOV container.

Here's screenshot:
http://gfx.artivo.pl/temp/qtviadshow.png

5. For getting more performance enable OverlayMixer for DirectShow in Output section.

6. In Filters section turn off MP4 in Source Filters (if you have one of the latest MPC compilatons) to let Haali Media Splitter split MP4's contents. Also turn off AAC in transform filters. I find FFDShow much more compatibile with MOV AAC audio than internal MPC's filter. The same with MP4 filter. (edit: things has changed since writing this point and recent MPC compiles handle mov container along with aac audio pretty well :))

7. Now try to play any of the HDTV content be it MOV or MP4 file. Check if MatroskaSplitter and FFDShow take care of its content. Appropriate icons should appear in tray.

8. To optimize the playback more (in case of jerky playback) you may go to Codecs section in FFDShow's video configuration window choose h.264 option and turn on "skip deblocking always". It may hurt quality for small bitrates as deblocking is disabled but surely speeds up decoding process of large files.

[bond]

:goodpost:
we need more of those! :)

[kingmob]

Thanks for that detailed post. I'll try it out when i have the time to fiddle again :). For now i had solved the problem by simply not using full screen overlay anymore.

[Randall]

1. Unpack MPC to your favorite directory.

FYI your favorite directory is never system32. Just in case you get a buggy installer that deletes the whole bloody directory the installed app was in on uninstall without checking if there were any files in that directory that have nothing to do with the original install. Not to name names or anything :sly:

[Czarek Kwasny]

haha :) I've never thought somebody would put the player file in windows directory :), especially system32. Anyway MediaPlayerClassic comes without installer/deinstaller for the link I posted. You have to unpack it manually... So there should be no risk. But I'll suggest some "C:\program files\MPC" like directory for the sake of safety :)... Thanks for the information!

The solution works fine with me hope sombody else will make use of it.

[Sharktooth]

FYI your favorite directory is never system32. Just in case you get a buggy installer that deletes the whole bloody directory the installed app was in on uninstall without checking if there were any files in that directory that have nothing to do with the original install. Not to name names or anything :sly:
Installing any software in windows\system32 is not a smart move... well. you're an a$$ if you do it...
and btw i fixed the script to not touch other files/dirs.

[hpn]

For another optimal HD AVC playback you may also want to take a look at this Czarek Kwasny's post:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=727638#post727638

Using Mplayer with these options instead of MPC for playing 1080p may provide even better decoding performance, although I haven't benchmarked both ways (I'll do it now).

mplayer yourmovie.mov -vfm ffmpeg -lavdopts lowres=0:fast:skiploopfilter=all

I managed to play the 1080 movs almost perfectly with my mediocre (already) Athlon 2600+

[Czarek Kwasny]

Thank you for posting it here. MPlayer is very good as well, giving even more performance i guess :) (haven't done any benchmarks yet too). I've had one problem though. I've got my 5.1 speaker system and wanted to take advantage of it... Many of Apple's trailers have 5.1 sound and MPlayer uses 2 channel as output by default. As long as you have 2.1 speaker system or headphones this makes no difference. But when you try to enable -channels 6 weird things start happening:
1. You get no sound and Mplayer indicates increasing A/V desynchronization.
2. If you succesfully decode AAC stream, channels are usually wrongly mapped. I tried with manual remapping but there's no rule... For one clip you get right mapping for another you get wrong mapping.
I guess playing with -afm switch could help but i have no idea what codec to choose... i tried with ffmpeg but standard faac is loaded instead causing the same problem again.

Anyway seems like for stereo output there's no faster solution than MPlayer.