LAV Filters - DirectShow Media Splitter and Decoders

[nevcairiel]

Thanks, but my main problem is getting that into a PC. I don't think they like living alongside a NVIDIA card in the same system.

Now that would be weird. I have 3 displays connected anyway, right now my main screen on the NVIDIA, and two on the Intel IGP (only 1 on the NVIDIA because connecting 2 with different resolutions causes it to get stuck in 3D performance mode)
But having 1 on the ATI, one on the Intel and one on the NVIDIA would probably just break my system. :D

Anyhow, a 6450 is really cheap, its not like i couldn't afford it or don't want to spend it, its just i don't know how to setup a working dev environment without setting up a whole new system for it (i have the components, just don't feel like running a second dev system)
If i work on it some day, i might just get one and see if my system really breaks.

[HeadlessCow]

I run my PC with an ATI card as the main display and an nVidia card (with no monitor attached) for CUDA stuff. Doesn't give me any problems.

[pankov]

Guys,
today I tried to bistream some DTS in WAV and sadly it didn't work. It either crashed the player (tested with Zoom Player, MPC-HC and Graph Studio) or resulted in some strange noise clicks in the speakers connected to the receiver (Integra DTR-40.3).
Strangely it worked a few times but only if I start the playback without bitstreaming and enable it afterwards in LAV Audio's config.
Is this problem happening only to me or there is some kind of general limitation? If it's not possible to make it work is it at least possible to make it not crash the player?
I have absolutely no problems with such files if I decode the stream with LAV Audio and then send it as multichannel PCM over the HDMI output of my video card.

Anybody?

[SEt]

LAVVideo.cpp :
// No Stride Request? We're ok with that, too!
No, not really. Guess what will happen here:
pBIH->biWidth = size / pBIH->biHeight * 8 / pBIH->biBitCount;
with negative height for RGB32? We'll get nice negative biWidth !

[mkanet]

Hi Nevcairiel. You were so kind to help me in with looking for a good single-slot Nvidia based card for an HTPC on AVS Forum. I really appreciate your help.

One of the biggest problems I have; and, the reason why I'm looking for a new Nvidia card is VC1 hardware acceleration. I could never get perfectly fluid, smooth frame rate with VC1 1080p/720p video (like I can with H.264 decoding).

I know this might be a ridiculous thing to ask, but have you considered making a universal "HD" video decoder that can handle both VC1 and H.264? Or, possibly just a standalone VC1 decoder? Maybe you might be able to handle VC1 better than other decoders.

I dont know if you know anything about Netflix Silverlight HD streaming; but I have a strong suspicion it uses the Windows DMO decoder as well; since video playback isn't smooth for it either. There are a lot of people who have this problem as well. If you were to make a VC1 decoder, is there any chance it could take the place of the decoder Netflix uses? I know that would make a lot of people happy.

Anyway, thank you for all your hard work.

-Michael

[Andy o]

Isn't LAV CUVID what you're looking for?

NF has never been smooth on any of my PCs, I don't think it's the decoding, progressive VC-1 decoding is trivial in most modern PCs. It's just a crap implementation. Not even on the PS3 it's perfectly smooth, but it's close on closed systems like it and for instance, iOS.

[mkanet]

Oh wow, I didnt know that LAV CUVID handles VC1. I never could get LAV CUVID to work on my PC. I'll try it again when I install a clean OS; and, hopefully with a display card that does full VC1 hardware decoding and newer CUDA support. Thanks!

Isn't LAV CUVID what you're looking for?

NF has never been smooth on any of my PCs, I don't think it's the decoding, progressive VC-1 decoding is trivial in most modern PCs. It's just a crap implementation. Not even on the PS3 it's perfectly smooth, but it's close on closed systems like it and for instance, iOS.

[nevcairiel]

with negative height for RGB32? We'll get nice negative biWidth !

Stupid RGB with its negative height. I'll apply a abs() around it, thanks for noticing.
Luckily, renderes always handle this properly and send a stride request, it would only fail for post-processing filters, i guess.

[betaking]

ffmpeg supports DXVA2 decoding by itself now, no hacking required. All thats needed is adding header-parsing for interlaced frames/fields, so that the correct information can be passed to the DXVA functions.

The MS decoder of course supports interlaced VC-1, however you cannot use DXVA outside of WMP.

in vista!
chanage [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Scrunch\WMVideo]
"DXVA"=dword:00000000
to
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Scrunch\WMVideo]
"DXVA"=dword:00000001
in windows7
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Scrunch\WMVideo]
"DXVA1"=dword:00000000
to
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Scrunch\WMVideo]
"DXVA1"=dword:00000001
other directshow player can use WMVDECOD.DLL(DXVA and interlaced) decoder VC-1!

[Chillgurke]

Hi Nev,

seems like that i have a small problem with LAV Audio. Yesterday i watched SKY HD Sport. So it should be Dolby Digital. During the football game i have a constant loudness output level. During the halftime they showed some advertising. Then the loudness output level was also constant. But after they switched back to the game the loudness output level was really quietly. After stopping Timeshifting and tuning in the channel again gave the same output as before.

Im using MediaPortal with your latest splitter / Audio and LAV CUVID. And my AMP is only connected via analoge cabel.

I only can imagine, that during the advertisment they changed the Audio-Signal. Maybe from Dolby Digtal to something else.

Are there any known drawbacks to you Splitter or Audio which could cause this problem ?

[CruNcher]

@nev
could you take a look @ this and why it fails on EVR custom with Lav Splitter (evil tree.ts) :(
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1526099#post1526099

it works perfectly now (perfect telecined 23.97 without manual correction) with MPC-HC splitter + ffdshows-quicksync (send interlaced flags both on auto) and every other Interlaced stream gets properly double framerate deinterlaced, but with lav splitter it fails :(

Hmm could this have something todo with the fact that the Internal splitter is not going over File Source Async ?

Thats it it also fails with MPC-HC Splitter not as source running over File Source Async :)

File Source Async though fails only with this (wrong) stream it seems the others work

[Andy o]

Nev, is there a particular reason wma pro audio is being output in FP32? This makes ReClock's WASAPI mode not work with HDMI cards. Other lossy formats like DTS are apparently output at 24-bit.

[nevcairiel]

Nev, is there a particular reason wma pro audio is being output in FP32? This makes ReClock's WASAPI mode not work with HDMI cards. Other lossy formats like DTS are apparently output at 24-bit.

ffmpegs decoder outputs alot of lossy formats as FP32, because thats the native format of the decoder. This includes AAC, AC3, MP1/2/3, DTS and Vorbis, and maybe some others.

DTS is only output as 24-bit if you're using the ArcSoft decoder.

I also have no issues with ReClock WASAPI over HDMI with FP32 audio. Make sure its set to always output 24-padded-to-32

[Andy o]

Yeah, it's set like that, I double checked cause I thought it could be that too. Maybe some ReClock registry setting got stuck.

[nevcairiel]

WMA Pro may be another issue though. the ffmpeg decoder does some odd things, and i've had some issues before - especially if its low sample rates like 22050 or so.
I disabled the WMA support on my HTPC, using the MS decoders.

[Andy o]

It wasn't that, could you see if you can play this file in exclusive mode with LAV audio? Originally it was a wmv container, I used asfbin to cut it.

http://www.multiupload.com/EJXVC1ZWUQ

EDIT: I meant it wasn't ReClock's settings, apparently. It's probably weird stuff like you say. The MS decoder is working well, but can it do multichannel audio? I recall that there was some trick one had to do with graphstudio. If you notice the file above, it's supposed to be 5.1 but plays only two channels. Maybe it's just a super crappy encode.

[Helios61]

in vista!
chanage [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Scrunch\WMVideo]
"DXVA"=dword:00000000
to
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Scrunch\WMVideo]
"DXVA"=dword:00000001
in windows7
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Scrunch\WMVideo]
"DXVA1"=dword:00000000
to
[HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Scrunch\WMVideo]
"DXVA1"=dword:00000001
other directshow player can use WMVDECOD.DLL(DXVA and interlaced) decoder VC-1!

Hi betaking!

Thanks for the hint, but here in WIN7/32 i can't find [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Scrunch\WMVideo]


Best regards

Helios

[nevcairiel]

From the MSDN directly:

Note If the \\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Scrunch registry key does not exist on your computer, you can create it manually.

Note When running an encoder application in WOW64 mode on 64-bit Windows operating systems, the registry settings will need to be stored in the 32-bit equivalent node \\HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Wow6432Node\Microsoft\Scrunch.

However, i had no luck with the DXVA setting.

[CruNcher]

From the MSDN directly:


However, i had no luck with the DXVA setting.

DXVA will not be accepted for certain bitstreams such as WMVA inside .wmv
the best results in multipurpose playback so far i had with Potplayers DXVA Framework and Arcsofts Decoder (on different hardware now) both try to play everything with DXVA (WMVA,WMV3, VC-1) except WMV1,2 there you have to fallback to Software Libavcodec or Microsoft :)
Some WMV3 bitstreams also don't work @ all and fail on Hardware though completely, even some very old ones released far far ago by Microsoft (2002) ;)

Though even Lav Video fails with them only Microsofts Decoder decodes them 100% correct

[mrcorbo]

It wasn't that, could you see if you can play this file in exclusive mode with LAV audio? Originally it was a wmv container, I used asfbin to cut it.

http://www.multiupload.com/EJXVC1ZWUQ

EDIT: I meant it wasn't ReClock's settings, apparently. It's probably weird stuff like you say. The MS decoder is working well, but can it do multichannel audio? I recall that there was some trick one had to do with graphstudio. If you notice the file above, it's supposed to be 5.1 but plays only two channels. Maybe it's just a super crappy encode.

FWIW, that file plays fine in WASAPI exclusive mode w/ LAV audio here. ReClock shows 48000hz, 6 channels, PCM IEEE Float for audio input.

[Andy o]

On an HDMI device? If not, which device?

[mrcorbo]

On an HDMI device? If not, which device?

Yes. Radeon HD 6970.

[Andy o]

That's what ReClock is outputting though, right (what it indicates as "audio stream")? Not input. That's weird cause the AMD driver also isn't supposed to accept 32fp, you can confirm this by outputting 32fp manually with ReClock, you'll get an error message. I think there's something strange going on, cause when I played that file outputting 24-padded-to-32, I also got PCM IEEE as "audio stream" and no sound, but also no error message. The MS decoder works fine though.

[mrcorbo]

That's what ReClock is outputting though, right (what it indicates as "audio stream")? Not input. That's weird cause the AMD driver also isn't supposed to accept 32fp, you can confirm this by outputting 32fp manually with ReClock, you'll get an error message. I think there's something strange going on, cause when I played that file outputting 24-padded-to-32, I also got PCM IEEE as "audio stream" and no sound, but also no error message. The MS decoder works fine though.

No, that's not what it's outputting. That's the input. Try different sources and check for yourself. Just to be sure, I added the ffdshow audio processor to the playback chain and checked different output formats in the filter while playing that file. 16, 24, 32i and 32fp all worked fine and the audio stream info changed as the output coming from the ffdshow audio processor changed.

[Andy o]

Right, I got confused. Don't know what's happening then, maybe with NV it just doesn't work.

[nevcairiel]

I think its related to the silent stream bug. If the buffer isnt full enough,the hdmi connection might be lost. And something odd is going on with the output buffering with the wma decoder. It outputs odd sample sizes.

[bur]

I was trying LAV audio and compared the output of a 6 channel ac3 to ffdshow. I have 2.0 speaker configuration with onboard 24bit soundchip (RealTek ALC662) and Win 7.

LAV:
Channels: 6
nBlockalign: 24
AvgBytesPerSec: 115200
Frequency: 1.0

ffdshow
Channels: 2
nBlockalign: 6
AvgBytesPerSec: 288000
Frequency: 4.0

Both at 48kHz and using Extensible Wave Format.

Is there any way to make LAV output the audio with 2 channels? Does it even matter?

And what is the cause and result of the other discrepancies? I couldn't find an explanation for Frequency, but noticed that in both cases Frequency * nBlockAlign = 24. Is there any meaning to that?

I also saw that both output as 32bit FP. I found a thread here saying INT would be the better choice. Is that so and then why are both not using it? And is the 32bit output in my case any use (maybe during processing) because I guess DirectSound will cut it down to 24bit for output anyway.

[Pix]

Is there any way to make LAV output the audio with 2 channels? Does it even matter?

I've got the same problem. Yes it matters. If you try to output a 6ch audio to 2ch setup the sounds are just too quiet.
I've tried using different audio decoders and when they output 6ch to 2ch setup --> they output 2 channels. The sound is louder and easier to hear(at least for me).

[nevcairiel]

If you're on Windows 7, the default DirectSound mixer will do a pretty good job at downmixing your audio to your actual number of channels (assuming you told Windows that you only have 2 channels). On WinXP, the mixer is rather bad, and this will not give you any useful result.

Being able to down-mix with LAV Audio is a planned feature, however the priority isn't all that high.

[Pix]

Yes. I'm on Win7. I did the Control Panel --> Sound --> 2ch setup. But I just always see the 6ch output but it seems it should be like that, right?

So, I should just use the System Default audio renderer(with LAV Audio decoder)?

Because, voice channels are sometimes hard to hear and the environment/music volume is too high most of the time.

I think I've watched Inception and the soundtrack, which plays through the entire movie, got so irritating I couldn't finish the movie without fixing the problem. I couldn't hear the things they were saying.

[hoborg]

I have the same problem. If i use old analog stereo speakers, sound is downmixed by WinXP muxer correctly to stereo, but if i use HDMI connection to my TV, some channels are nearly muted, make it useless.

[bur]

Being able to down-mix with LAV Audio is a planned feature, however the priority isn't all that high. Ok thanks. And about the other settings like ByteAlign is there any reason they differ?

[BeNooL]

I run my PC with an ATI card as the main display and an nVidia card (with no monitor attached) for CUDA stuff. Doesn't give me any problems.

Same here. Windows 7 handles that real easy.

[nevcairiel]

Ok thanks. And about the other settings like ByteAlign is there any reason they differ?

Different number of speakers give different alignment.

Bits per Sample * Channels / 8 = Align.

You really shouldn't worry about that, its all working as it should.

[bur]

You really shouldn't worry about that, its all working as it should. I'm not worrying just curious. So the alignment says after how many bytes the next samples starts. Good to know. ;)

[Rectal Prolapse]

Hi - how does the LAV Filters handle subtitles in m2ts? Does it render them? If not, who does it connect to? I am seeing some odd behavior where it appears to render incorrectly use LAV Splitter compared to internal and I'm trying to figure out the problem.

I am using a 2 month old MPC-HC with only LAV Splitter, LAV Audio, and LAV CUVID installed. This could be an MPC-HC internal subtitle renderer bug that just behaves differently when connected to LAV Splitter - but probably more noticeable with LAV Splitter than internal (ie. buffering is different).

[Rectal Prolapse]

Ok I did some googling around and it appears to be an intermittent bug that won't be fixed by the main mpc-hc devs. My guess is it is 100x worse using LAV Splitter. What renderer do you recommend that isn't fubared like the internal one?

Reference: http://sourceforge.net/apps/trac/mpc-hc/ticket/48

[nevcairiel]

You can try ffdshow, but i'm not sure its really that much better of a sub renderer...

[Andy o]

Same here. Windows 7 handles that real easy.

So, you can use the AMD display with AMD HDMI audio, and use a CUDA decoder like LAV CUVID, with its hardware deinterlacing?

[nevcairiel]

So, you can use the AMD display with AMD HDMI audio, and use a CUDA decoder like LAV CUVID, with its hardware deinterlacing?

You can, but you wont get the highest quality deinterlacing. For the best, you need D3D Interoperability, which is only available if a display is connected.

[Andy o]

I haven't found that I need true deinterlacing yet for the content I watch. I'm mainly using it for IVTC, and there should be no quality difference there, right?

[nevcairiel]

Who knows how the driver behaves.

Btw, if IVTC is really all you need, could as well do that through AVISynth as well, when you're loading it already for decimation anyway.

[CruNcher]

You can, but you wont get the highest quality deinterlacing. For the best, you need D3D Interoperability, which is only available if a display is connected.

And copy the framebuffer over to the other card ;)

[mindbomb]

Being able to down-mix with LAV Audio is a planned feature, however the priority isn't all that high.

just curious - when it is added, is the downmix processing going to happen in 64 float like it does in eac3to?

or in other words, is it going to be superior even to windows mixer and ffdshow?

[e-t172]

64-bit float processing for audio is way overkill (except, maybe, for some insanely complex filter combinations). 32-bit float is sufficient. There's not "superior" way of downmixing, just correct and incorrect ones.

[Andy o]

Who knows how the driver behaves.

Btw, if IVTC is really all you need, could as well do that through AVISynth as well, when you're loading it already for decimation anyway.

I just couldn't find anything that did it very well, even DScaler had glitches on DVD content.

[Moti172]

Hi

Since my HTPC is based on i5 core 2400 (Without "external" GPU), I must relay on software decoding (no madvr or DXVA for me...)
Does Lav-Video can improve the quality of HD-movies (x264), over ffdshow video decoder? If so, what are the recommended setting?

Thanks

[Superb]

Hi

Since my HTPC is based on i5 core 2400 (Without "external" GPU), I must relay on software decoding (no madvr or DXVA for me...)
Does Lav-Video can improve the quality of HD-movies (x264), over ffdshow video decoder? If so, what are the recommended setting?

ThanksH.264 decoding produces the exact same picture no matter which decoder you use. It's designed this way. You should see absolutely no difference, assuming the decoder is working properly (of course).

[mindbomb]

if you are not using madvr, you want to uncheck everything but rgb32, and check "use high quality format conversions"

so it will improve the quality of your movies if you configure it like that.

btw, have you tried madvr configured for bilinear scaling? it might work on your intel hd2000.

[Moti172]

I tried madvr bilinear scaling (the movie is 720p) + lav splitter and lav video, the GPU load is about 40% and the CPU load about 20%.
I guess it should be o.k.
Is it suppose to be better than evr (bicubic) + lav splitter and lav video?

Thanks a lot