What is the advantage of CoreAVC over FFDShow? (ffdshow works fine for me so far)

[sofakng]

I'm using an Opteron 165 (dual-core, 1.8 GHz, I think) and an nVidia 8400GS video card to play H.264 videos and it's working fine at 720p resolution.

What would be the advantage(s) for me to buy CoreAVC?

I'm really interested in this codec based on the praise I see all the time, but I'm wondering if there is any advantage to it... (eg. better quality, etc).

Keep in mind that my machine decodes H.264 720p perfectly fine right now with FFDShow...

[Dark Shikari]

Its faster, and supports PAFF. That's about it.

No decoder should ever have "better quality"; all H.264 decoders should have equivalent output.

[Manao]

all H.264 decoders should have equivalent outputIn a perfect world. Since it's used in a DirectShow architecture, the world is far from being perfect. Quality may differ because of the conversion from YV12 to the native input of your graphic card, handling of the overlay, etc... Quality may also differ because one play smooth while the other doesn't (and that is not just a problem of decoding speed, though speed is the most important factor).

In any case, if it works for you right now, I don't see the point of using CoreAVC.

[Dark Shikari]

In a perfect world. Since it's used in a DirectShow architecture, the world is far from being perfect. Quality may differ because of the conversion from YV12 to the native input of your graphic card, handling of the overlay, etc... That's the job of the renderer though, not the decoder.

[sofakng]

Thanks for the replies.

I thought I read somewhere that CoreAVC "cheats" and doesn't follow the H.264 specification which is how it achieves it's incredible speed.

Is this true?

From your description it sounds like it's NOT true.

Either way, I suppose I don't need it since I really don't need anything "faster" at the moment. Maybe when I upgrade to 1080p I'll need it (as well as a faster CPU).

By the way, FFDShow's decoder support multiple CPU cores, right?

[Dark Shikari]

Thanks for the replies.

I thought I read somewhere that CoreAVC "cheats" and doesn't follow the H.264 specification which is how it achieves it's incredible speed.

Is this true?Not as far as I know.
By the way, FFDShow's decoder support multiple CPU cores, right?FFDshow-tryouts has threading for CABAC decoding only; its not very efficient either, so it requires X% more CPU usage for Y% more speed, where X > Y. But its better than nothing, and helps for higher-bitrate content.

[sofakng]

Ahhhh, OK. That's good to know.

CoreAVC has full multicore/multithreading though, right?

[Dark Shikari]

Ahhhh, OK. That's good to know.

CoreAVC has full multicore/multithreading though, right?Yes, it does.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

I thought I read somewhere that CoreAVC "cheats" and doesn't follow the H.264 specification which is how it achieves it's incredible speed.
As long as it produces correct output from all proper H.264 bitstreams, everything that speeds-up the process is allowed and I wouldn't call that "cheating" but "optimization" :D

[shinedot]

i think the most important is that ffdshow doesnt support avchd in 100%. i got many videos from camcorders and ffdshow has many problems toplay it. its useless. coreavc has not so mcuh problems but still has some. for example i found oxygen avchd player and it plays every content from camcorders with no problem. but ist only beta version :/

[foxyshadis]

That's because most AVCHD is PAFF interlaced. If you need PAFF, you need to use CoreAVC or one of the other commercial decoders, it's quite simple.

[bond]

libavcodec (as used in ffdshow) also supports paff. or did i miss something?

[Shinigami-Sama]

libavcodec (as used in ffdshow) also supports paff. or did i miss something?

I thought it was M(B?)AFF

[nm]

I thought it was M(B?)AFF
x264 has basic support for MBAFF interlaced encoding.

libavcodec supports both PAFF and MBAFF, and as far as I know, the support is almost complete. However, there still seems to be problems with certain PAFF streams.