CoreCodec/H.264 Codec "CoreAVC"

[BetaBoy]

i wonder if...
I've stated that with each release you will see speed increases, 2.5 is no exception and you will see across the board speed boosts but mostly you will see big improvements in 64bit OS's.

[BetaBoy]

Peter has just pushed out a beta of his Stereoscopic Player that includes CoreMVC. So you can get an early glimpse on CoreAVC 2.5 as it is included in CoreMVC which is out now for OEM licensing for 3D MVC playback.

[arapkadri]

hi Will there be support for 10 bits?

[CruNcher]

http://www.3dtv.at/Downloads/StereoscopicPlayer169_en.msi ;)

Though i have no time to test as im currently to much into my GPU Screen Capture Framework

[Nick [D]vB]

Peter has just pushed out a beta of his Stereoscopic Player that includes CoreMVC. So you can get an early glimpse on CoreAVC 2.5 as it is included in CoreMVC which is out now for OEM licensing for 3D MVC playback.I've just been testing it and it's working great, you've made a lot of projector owners very happy, AFAIK this is the only solution for playing 3D Bluray on the more obscure 3D display setups, and the only way nvidia card owners can do it without having to buy a 3Dvision kit. It would be great if we could get CUDA working with MVC for users of older nvidia cards that don't support MVC acceleration through DXVA. It doesn't seem to be enabled at the moment and the decoder properties seem to be locked out through stereoscopic player, will it be availible in the full version of 2.5? I helped test CoreAVC with the first BBC HD streams years ago, I've not checked-in here for a while but its great to see you guys are still at the cutting-edge, keep up the good work! :)

[BetaBoy]

Thank you Nick glad you like it... it has been a hard year working on everything for both CoreAVC and CoreMVC... and we are not done for sure.... there is still plenty if todo's for both products in 2.x and for 3.0 form.

[Nick [D]vB]

Can you clear something up for me Dan? Will MVC support be included in the CoreAVC 2.5 update or in CoreAVC 3? If not will CoreMVC be available to end-users as a stand-alone product in the future? There seems to be some confusion about this on the 3D forums. Also is there a technical reason why CUDA hasn't been enabled for MVC yet? I notice Peter patched a MPC-HC filter to add SSIF support, is this the only demux filter CoreMVC will connect to at the moment or are there others? Sorry for so many questions, thanks again.

[BetaBoy]

No problem.. the confusion is that the 3D Vision Blog stated it was a part of a 'pack' and that is not correct. Although the 'core' of CoreAVC is obviously shared with CoreMVC it is a brand new product altogether. Anytime a CoreMVC release comes out it will include the latest 'core' of CoreAVC. CUDA is a TODO and we need to jump through a few issues.

On splitters... Peter used a custom MPC filter for his player.... but I can tell you that Haali's filter is on the horizon.

On CoreAVC 3.0... it is being worked on now and its 'core' is different then the current 2.x as we are adding High 10 support which is no small task. The plan is to get it out later this year, but we will see as the next few weeks/months progress.

[CruNcher]

Dan does CoreAVC 2.5 DXVA implements a fallback to Software Decoding for to many reference frames streams, Mainconcepts Decoder does that i was quite surprised of this feature, seems they are also the only ones yet doing this :)
CoreAVC 2.0 introduced some nice fallbacks for non compatible nvcuvid situations so it would be great if it would be as smart for DXVA too :)

[Nick [D]vB]

Thanks, I look forward to the full CoreMVC release, CUDA support will be a great USP, HTPCs with ION GPUs should be up to the job now, which is great news because the new AMD Fusion APUs can't do MVC DXVA either. CoreAVC 3 sounds really promising, good luck with it.

[BetaBoy]

Dan does CoreAVC 2.5 DXVA implements a fallback to Software Decoding for to many reference frames streams, Mainconcepts Decoder does that i was quite surprised of this feature, seems they are also the only ones yet doing this :)
CoreAVC 2.0 introduced some nice fallbacks for non compatible nvcuvid situations so it would be great if it would be as smart for DXVA too :)

DXVA resizing and software fallback was one of our last todo's for 2.5.... not sure if they will make it, but they are on the table atm with a few days left for QA and final release.

[madshi]

@BetaBoy, can you already publish the exact input/output pin "specification" of CoreMVC? That might help speed up development of splitters and renderers. Thanks.

[BetaBoy]

madshi.... email me directly: betaboy AT corecodec DOT com and i'll get you into the internal discussions with Peter, Haali and our staff.

[BetaBoy]

Got the email madshi... and sent it off to everyone to comment.

[madshi]

Thanks, appreciated.

[BetaBoy]

Madshi.... also find the MPC patches here... that will show you how its done. http://www.3dtv.at/OpenSource/

I also see you are talking to Peter about it here: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1479589#post1479589

[madshi]

@BetaBoy, thanks for the link. As far as I can see, those patches show me the splitter -> CoreMVC connection. That's a good start. But I also need the CoreMVC -> renderer connection. Actually, that's more important for my needs, as I'm writing a renderer and not a splitter... :)

[BetaBoy]

We are compiling a CoreAVC 2.5 GM version to QA now. If all goes well emails will be going out soon on its availability.

[BetaBoy]

We have now released CoreAVC 2.5 Professional Edition for Windows. Current customers are being notified now.

CoreAVC 2.5 represents over a years worth of work by the CoreCodec teams. This milestone release includes the major addition of DXVA 1 and DXVA 2 support and unifies our core 32/64 bit code which inturn has increased the overall effeciency of playback (ie; it's faster than before!).
While the changelog is shorter then most of our milestone releases, it does not even touch on the total amount of work that went into 2.5 as many of the changes also relate to both the upcoming additions of High10 support as well as the release of CoreMVC, our 3D MVC based decoder.


HOW TO UPGRADE/INSTALL FROM 2.0 to 2.5
-------------------------------------------------------------
- Log into the customer portal: http://customers.corecodec.com
- Click 'View My Products'
- Click 'Software - CoreAVC 2.0.0'
- Click the top link 'Product upgrade is available.' to upgrade.
- Click through the two pages to get the upgrade confirmation.
- Now go back to 'Client area > View my products' and click on CoreAVC 2.5 to download it.
- Copy the CoreNumber on your product page.

NOTE: CoreAVC 2.5 SERIAL NUMBERS HAVE CHANGED!!!
This means that once you upgrade to 2.5 your 2.0 serial number will not work. This also means if you try and install CoreAVC 2.5 over 2.0 it will not work since the serial numbers are different.

1 - Uninstall CoreAVC 2.0 (Start > Control Panel > Programes > Uninstall > CoreAVC)
2 - Enter the email you used to purchased CoreAVC.
3 - Now paste the CoreNumber from the customer portal into installer when asked.
4 - Click though the installer to finish.

For those that want to work around the restriction that Windows 7 Media Foundation imposes,
We recommend using the Win7DSFilterTweaker

Download it here:
http://www.codecguide.com/windows7_preferred_filter_tweaker.htm


What's new in this release
======================================================
CoreAVC H.264 Video Codec - Version 2.5.0.0 (20110326)
- ADD: DXVA1 support (with red tray icon)
- ADD: DXVA2 support (with red tray icon)
- ADD: new x64 blit asm code (unified with x86)
- FIX: SPS memory leaks
- FIX: Properly support SPS resolution changes (soft/cuda decoding)
- FIX: Bug in YUV->YUV blit code
- CHG: Unify x86 and x64 CUDA asm code
- CHG: Unify x86 and x64 AVC asm code, enabling SSE2/SSE3/SSSE3/SSE4 for x64
- CHG: Increase max supported resolution (approx 8100x8100)
- CHG: Refactor directshow frontend code
- CHG: Modify CUDA locking method
- CHG: Rearrange/enlarge settings dialog
- OEM: YASM padding bug for OSX target
- OEM: Android support added to SDK


Haali Media Splitter (20110303)
- ADD: AC3 in MP4 support
- ADD: WebM support
- ADD: More H264 aspect ratio options
- FIX: Show error code in GDSMux when muxing is aborted
- FIX: Accept more AAC media types in the muxer
- FIX: Use correct timescales when processing MP4 edit lists
- FIX: Scan the folder for more segments only if the file references external segments
- FIX: Fixed a lot of issues with the mp4 muxer
- FIX: Better support for VC1 in MPEG Transport Streams
- FIX: Aspect ratio processing in certain Matroska files
- FIX: Bug in uninstaller that prevented it from properly unregistering all filters
- FIX: Unrecognized video track in some transport streams
- FIX: Occasional excessive disk I/O when paused

[BetaBoy]

While 2.5 gets around we are still working on a few of the last todo's for CoreAVC 2.5.x, those being:

-----------
- DXVA Fallback when the stream isn't compatible
- DXVA Handling mid-stream resolution changes
- Different handling of quant matrices for ATI/NVidia
- Long slice mode / intel support
- Clean up/merge DXVA defines

[pankov]

BetaBoy,
I've just installed CoreAVC 2.5 Pro and I'm sad to report that my long standing problem with Deinterlace field order (Ticket #175597) is still not fixed.
I've also found a bug in the installer - despite the fact that I selected to not install Haali Media Splitter (cause I've already installed it a couple of weeks ago) it changed the registry value for "Use custom media for H.264" from the "No" that I've been using to "Yes" - the default value.

[BetaBoy]

Pankov..... we will look into the Haali bug... But in the deinterlace field order, iirc we commented on that a long time ago in this thread and that we could not duplicate your results. I will double check internally.

[BetaBoy]

pankov... pls do send me a sample so we can look more closely at that potential bug.

[pankov]

Here is the sample
http://www.mediafire.com/?fwxb108j7l2asrw

I was about to make you .grf file so you can see the exact configuration that I use but I've also noticed that CoreAVC 2.5 can't be inserted as a filter in Monogram GraphStudio - it crashes, while v2.0 didn't have any problems. So I guess I'll just have to explain it now:

Haali's Splitter -> CoreAVC -> EVR
-> FFDShow Audio Dec. -> Def. Direct Sound Device

[CiNcH]

DXVA2 seems to be working for ATi.

HOWEVER!!!

After years I still experience jaggyness with interlaced (1080i) content when using NV12 color space and hardware deinterlacing. It looks as if fields have the wrong order.

Me and several others reported it a thousand times in this thread...

These are the final screenshots from me. If you still don't think it is worth fixing, I'll give up...

CoreAVC / NV12 / hardware deinterlacing:
http://forum.doom9.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=12150&stc=1&d=1301145259

CyberLink / NV12 / hardware deinterlacing:
http://forum.doom9.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=12151&stc=1&d=1301145584

[CiNcH]

Sidenotes to the interlace/field order problem for reproduction:

- use VMR or EVR with NV12 colorspace and hardware deinterlacing (do not use Haali Renderer!)
- happens with both, ATi and nVIDIA
- same problem with ffdshow (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1300535#post1300535)

[madshi]

Update to 2.5 worked fine here - and it's free, as promised. Thanks to BetaBoy and Core! :)

[betaking]

TO betaboy.last Haali Media Splitter not support dts-hdma audio ,but mpc-hc Splitter is Support! can you Report it to haali?

[Gleb Egorych]

Sidenotes to the interlace/field order problem for reproduction:
...
- same problem with ffdshow (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1300535#post1300535)
ffdshow does not have the problem with the clip (Win 7, EVR, YV12 & NV12), try the latest version.

[Barlow]

Nice update :)

Unfortunately I've found a file which causes corruption in DXVA mode, whereas it's fine when decoded by the MPC Videodecoder (with DXVA) or CoreAVC in software mode.

Screenshot (http://i.imgur.com/VW0Wf.jpg)

Sample (http://www.mediafire.com/?rd24yzq8cer9o4m)

Edit: forgot to mention, card is a Radeon 4850. OS is Win7 64bit.

[BetaBoy]

DXVA2 seems to be working for ATi.

If you still don't think it is worth fixing,


Of coarse we do... and we thank you for the report!!

[CiNcH]

Another issue...

CoreAVC pretty much relies on the source filter's information. Thought this was once fixed already.

Source material is 720p50. If the source filter propagates the following (wrong) information...

1. [DVB Source]/(Video) -> [CoreAVC Video Decoder]/(Input)
Major: MEDIATYPE_Video
Subtype: {8D2D71CB-243F-45E3-B2D8-5FD7967EC09B}
bFixedSizeSamples: FALSE
bTemporalCompression: FALSE
lSampleSize: 1
cbFormat: 136
Format: FORMAT_MPEG2_VIDEO
VIDEOINFOHEADER2:
rcSource: (0,0,0,0)
rcTarget: (0,0,0,0)
dwBitRate: 10000000
dwBitErrorRate: 0
AvgTimePerFrame: 400000
dwInterlaceFlags: 1
dwCopyProtectFlags: 0
dwPictAspectRatioX: 16
dwPictAspectRatioY: 9
dwControlFlags: 0
BITMAPINFOHEADER:
biSize: 40
biWidth: 1920
biHeight: 1088
biPlanes: 1
biBitCount: 24
biCompression: 0x34363248
biSizeImage: 6266880
biXPelsPerMeter: 0
biYPelsPerMeter: 0
biClrUsed: 0
biClrImportant: 0
MPEG2VIDEOINFO:
dwStartTimeCode: 0
cbSequenceHeader: 0
dwProfile: 0
dwLevel: 0

video looks like that...

http://forum.doom9.org/attachment.php?attachmentid=12152&stc=1&d=1301162176


If the source filter passes...

1. [DVB Source]/(Video) -> [CoreAVC Video Decoder]/(Input)
Major: MEDIATYPE_Video
Subtype: {8D2D71CB-243F-45E3-B2D8-5FD7967EC09B}
bFixedSizeSamples: FALSE
bTemporalCompression: FALSE
lSampleSize: 1
cbFormat: 136
Format: FORMAT_MPEG2_VIDEO
VIDEOINFOHEADER2:
rcSource: (0,0,1280,720)
rcTarget: (0,0,0,0)
dwBitRate: 0
dwBitErrorRate: 0
AvgTimePerFrame: 200000
dwInterlaceFlags: 0
dwCopyProtectFlags: 0
dwPictAspectRatioX: 16
dwPictAspectRatioY: 9
dwControlFlags: 0
BITMAPINFOHEADER:
biSize: 40
biWidth: 1280
biHeight: 720
biPlanes: 1
biBitCount: 24
biCompression: 0x34363248
biSizeImage: 2764800
biXPelsPerMeter: 0
biYPelsPerMeter: 0
biClrUsed: 0
biClrImportant: 0
MPEG2VIDEOINFO:
dwStartTimeCode: 0
cbSequenceHeader: 0
dwProfile: 77
dwLevel: 40

... everything is OK.

Most other decoders detect the format on their own without relying on the source filter's information.

[CruNcher]

Nice also the changes (fixes) in Hallis splitter are there any estimations of how much the CUDA part efficiency improved compared to 2.0 ? :)
We have 2 other free filters now for CUDA (nvcuvid) based decoding via dshow benchmark of their efficiency will sure come, btw Betaboy you should go for Nvidia based DSPs the way of Bad/Incompatible stream(DXVA)->Bad/Incompatible stream(CUDA)->Bad/Incompatible stream(Software Core) ;)
Mainconcept is a simple Bad/Incompatible stream(DXVA)->Bad/Incompatible stream(Software Core) fallback as they dont yet implement nvcuvid :)
Also a nice feature would be entirely avoiding 10 bit decoding and 4:2:2 stream and falling directly back into the Dshow chain this would make it possible to pair CoreAVC for now with other solutions for optimal Decoding results (creating such dynamic decoding chains manually currently is rather complex, most of the times decoder try to playback everything and obviously fail with a lot of streams they do not support crash or visual errors, its hard to understand why only a few leave such streams untouched or fallback as Mainconcept does for too much reference streams and DXVA) :)

[Chumbo]

@BetaBoy,
I just installed 2.5 and plays the 23.976 stuff fine, however, I have some interlaced stuff that's not so good. I uploaded a sample here (http://www.mediafire.com/file/njnk9zijvq23m6i/interlaced-sample.mkv) if you want to take a look. I use MPC-HC 1.4.2744.0 x64 version under Windows 7 Ultimate x64 with Sp1. Plays the same on laptop with ATI Mobility HD5730 and desktop with HD4830.

These are my settings
http://img268.imageshack.us/img268/4795/coreavcsettings.jpg

[BetaBoy]

You are using 'low latency' for any specific reason?

[Chumbo]

You are using 'low latency' for any specific reason?
Actually, no. I just checked it temporarily to see if it would help "fix" the playback and forgot to uncheck it. Thanks for reminding me. ;)

[EDIT] I updated the settings image to the correct one.

[BetaBoy]

Keep the reports coming! Although this is a the first DXVA release, i'd like to see is anyone would like to do performance diffs from 2.0 to 2.5.

[BetaBoy]

Also, we had to delay the emails going out a few hours to fix a portal bug. So mass emails are going out now to all registered users.

We have also made CoreAVC 2.5 available now for purchase: https://customers.corecodec.com/cart.php?a=add&pid=10

As a thanks use the code "25launch" for $4.00 off for friends, family, Twitter, new PC, etc.

[BetaBoy]

btw Betaboy you should...
Thx for the suggestion! We are hoping to get DXVA fallback into one of the next 2.5 follow-up releases.... and i'll address your suggestion with the teams.

[Tom Keller]

CoreAVC 2.5 crashes GraphStudio (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=133928) for me, when trying to load the decoder filter. Since CoreAVC 2.0 worked pretty well, i assume it's in some way related to v2.5!? Could someone confirm this problem?

[pankov]

Tom,
I've reported the same problem a few posts up.

[Twingo]

Just try to help a little bit, I have same problem after using ATI DXVA today. I was using software on my HD5570 card before to decode h264 movies, but today I updated Coreavc to use DXVA for ATI cards, then my MPC-HC is asking me to update my directx after I set it to vmr9-renderless as described on MPC-HC website. It was okay before I updated directX but after I updated my directx to june 2010 release then the same problem (as reported by Barlow) occurred to me, my original directx is from windows xp sp3, never updated before today.

Nice update :)

Unfortunately I've found a file which causes corruption in DXVA mode, whereas it's fine when decoded by the MPC Videodecoder (with DXVA) or CoreAVC in software mode.

Screenshot (http://i.imgur.com/VW0Wf.jpg)

Sample (http://www.mediafire.com/?rd24yzq8cer9o4m)

Edit: forgot to mention, card is a Radeon 4850. OS is Win7 64bit.

[Tom Keller]

Tom,
I've reported the same problem a few posts up.
Sorry... must have missed it :o . In the meantime i tested DSGraphEdit - it crashes too. Only the "good" old Microsoft GraphEdit seems to work though...

[BetaBoy]

Can anyone elaborate on an MKV seeking bug in WMP. Seems in certain systems it does not seek. What we are looking for is your settings (DXVA or CUDA) and content type.

[Twingo]

Can anyone elaborate on an MKV seeking bug in WMP. Seems in certain systems it does not seek. What we are looking for is your settings (DXVA or CUDA) and content type.

I have exactly the same bug with my laptop using intel X3100 integrated video, I tried various settings but it won't work, dxva on/off, deterlacing on/off, low latency on/off or agressive on/off they all won't let me seek by pulling the progress bar. I was playing Mad Love 720p X264 mkv by Dimension.

[BetaBoy]

We have samples now and can reproduce it. Thank you for the follow-up.

[cmbe]

Hi,

after upgrade from CoreAVC 2.0 to 2.5 with MediaPortal 1.1.2 i always get "Unable to play video" error on mkv files, besides everything works in Windows Media Player.

Before the upgrade everything works with CoreAVC 2.0 .

If I switch to another h.264 Codec in MediaPortal configuration as: MPCVideoDEc, FFDSHOW, etc. everything works fine.

I have tried to get more info with GraphStudio but it crashes (as reported a few posts back) with CoreAVC 2.5.

Has anyone experienced such problem?

[BetaBoy]

ok... we found the bug for ImediaPosition and ImediaSeeking (WMP not being able to seeking in some MKV's).... gonna take a look at the issue with MediaPortal and Rad's Graph Studio next.

[BetaBoy]

- ImediaPosition and ImediaSeeking bug, FIXED.
- Graphstudio bug, FIXED.

Going to see about MediaPortal next but I am assuming its fixed as well as it was the same bug as Graphstudio.

[Ruklaw]

Is an updated download available yet to fix the seek bug?