LAV Filters - DirectShow Media Splitter and Decoders

[sneaker_ger]

You can set "Don't mix stereo sources", but that's about it.

[oddball]

You can set "Don't mix stereo sources", but that's about it.

Yeah I missed that option which seems to have done the trick. Thx.

[pop]

I can't' play wav WavPack audio file with mpc-hc + LAV audio filter 0.54.1
if .wv file in matroska container plays fine.
win 7, same on win 8.

[nevcairiel]

I can't' play wav WavPack audio file with mpc-hc + LAV audio filter 0.54.1
if .wv file in matroska container plays fine.
win 7, same on win 8.

Works for me.

[andyvt]

People want to use menus!?


I think people want the option to use menus. There are cases where they're useful.

[SamuriHL]

Even simple menus would be useful cause then we could take advantage of SlySoft's speed menu.

[nevcairiel]

Even simple menus would be useful cause then we could take advantage of SlySoft's speed menu.

Those things are hardly useful.

[SamuriHL]

Those things are hardly useful.

I'd argue it's better than no menu. We're a *LONG* way away from having Java menu support. Even SlySoft has been struggling with it. The solution isn't to have no menu support just because speed menus aren't as useful as the original, unsupported, java menus...In any case, this all comes down to where libbluray is on menu support, yes? So it's an irrelevant discussion for this thread since I don't believe you're going to be working on them?

[nevcairiel]

I'd argue it's better than no menu.

Hardly. A player could easily offer a track list like those "Speed" menus without all the effort required for HDMV menu support.

[SamuriHL]

Hardly. A player could easily offer a track list like those "Speed" menus without all the effort required for HDMV menu support.

And some do. And it works well enough. Especially if they use the disc.inf when it's available on titles with that stupid screen pass protection. What I'm hoping for is that SlySoft improves it to show which title goes with what episode on series discs. Hasn't happened yet, but, it could eventually.

[jmone]

Do all discs have HDMV menus (eg even the ones with Java menus)?

[nevcairiel]

No. Although they can have a mix of both, use HDMV for some parts, and switch to BD-J for others.

[jos99]

Getting a lot of jitter & framedrop using LAV for VC-1 blu ray 24p compared to Cyberlink VC-1 decoder, is this a known issue (NVidia 9800GT, W7 32bit)?

[jmone]

No. Although they can have a mix of both, use HDMV for some parts, and switch to BD-J for others.

Sorry to drift OT but
1) how do Java only discs play in old pre-java enabled hardware then?
2) any BD Menu project would need to support both HDMV and Java then? or would it be the case of first HDMV and this would cover some/most/almost all discs?

[SamuriHL]

Sorry to drift OT but
1) how do Java only discs play in old pre-java enabled hardware then?
2) any BD Menu project would need to support both HDMV and Java then? or would it be the case of first HDMV and this would cover some/most/almost all discs?

1) They often don't.
2) AFAIK, libbluray was focusing on HDMV menus first with plans to tackle BD-J later but that may have changed. I haven't looked in a while.

[Redemption80]

The lack of menu's is a bonus when all you want to do is watch the movie, when it comes to extra's it is handy to know what your playing.

Personally i don't think that is the responsibility of Nev/Lav, but it is something i would appreciate as playing your own legal collection of movies is the most hair pulling and expensive side of owning an HTPC.

[turbojet]

Thanks for build 105, fixed the crop problem with cuvid.

[wanezhiling]

http://www.sendspace.com/file/vl06bq

Broken image (http://i.minus.com/iNt5cv9NUZ1Tm.jpg) with three HWA decoders on Nvidia cards, sw mode is fine.:)

[mzso]

People want to use menus!?

One of the biggest advantages of using a HTPC for Blu-ray is that I can just start index.bdmv (which I have pinned to MPC-HC on the taskbar) and the film starts immediately. No trailers/ads/anti-piracy warnings (ironic considering you only see them on legitimately purchased Blu-rays) and no waiting for menu animations to load up etc.

I wish there were an easy way to skip menus like that for DVD, but I haven't found anything yet. The closest I've found is to set AnyDVD to "Remove annoying clips from menus" and "Remove annoying titles shorter than 10 minutes" which has a lot of films either start playing immediately, or at least takes you directly to the menu without all the ads. Some discs do crash like this however, and I need to disable the "Remove annoying titles" option.

Well, you can't properly watch extras without them.

[mzso]

1) They often don't.
2) AFAIK, libbluray was focusing on HDMV menus first with plans to tackle BD-J later but that may have changed. I haven't looked in a while.

Ok, now I have no idea what's a HDMV menu. I thought it was a plain generated list (based on the mpls files I assume) like the slysoft speed menu.

[SamuriHL]

Ok, now I have no idea what's a HDMV menu. I thought it was a plain generated list (based on the mpls files I assume) like the slysoft speed menu.

Speed menu is HDMV, but, it's not just a simple list. It's just another standard....consider it a more advanced type of DVD menu. BD-J, otoh, allows for very complex menus with copy protection added for good measure. Nice of them yea? LOL :) It's not just a generated list, though....that's how SlySoft uses it but there are plenty of discs out there with simplified HDMV menus.

[annovif]

Hello, Nevcairiel , i have got an answer for you :
You write that your decoder is now fastest than coreavc, but i want to know about the quality. In coreavc decoder i can set these two parameters , what about these settings in your lav?

DEBLOCKING
This controls how the deblocking step of H.264 specification is executed by the CoreAVC decoder. Deblocking is a complex process that consumes significant processing resources. If your machine is not fast enough, you might want to turn off deblocking for some frames, but it will degrade visual quality. This setting has no effect when hardware acceleration is in use (except for Intel GPUs using DXVA).

Standard deblocking - do deblocking exactly as specified by H.264.
Skip when safe - skip deblocking step when decoding B-frames.
Skip always - does not perform any deblocking.

USE DITHERING
This controls dithering of the output picture when the output format has less precision than the native decoded format.

Off - does not apply dithering to the output.
On - use dithering to mask banding and increase output quality.

Thank you , Fabio

[sneaker_ger]

LAV Video never skips deblocking, so the pure decoding is 100% identical to CoreAVC's "Standard deblocking". Dithering is only used when converting between formats, e.g. 10 bit H.264 to 8 bit for the renderer. It is neither used nor necessary in 99% of all cases. Just leave it at "Random Dithering" for viewing content. "Ordered Dithering" is really only useful when re-encoding stuff.

[DragonQ]

IIRC, Nev's view on this was that deblocking isn't actually optional in AVC (despite what other decoders support) and quality-compromising options aren't a good idea anyway when all half-modern hardware can handle AVC fine, especially when using DXVA2.

[clsid]

It probably would be possible to provide access to Blu-ray extras once the trayicon functionality is expanded. The splitter already parses the title list to find the longest title. So it could display full title list in the trayicon. List longest at top and rest in order. Start playback with longest as it does now and after that continue with other titles in order. User can jump to a title by clicking on it.
perhaps things are more complex than I have assumed. Nevcairiel should be able to comment on that.

[nevcairiel]

Ok, now I have no idea what's a HDMV menu.

HDMV menus are basically the "HD DVD Menus". You get bitmap overlays over a video or still image, navigation capabilities, some image animations and limited interactivity.

Any more interactive content requires BD-J then.

You write that your decoder is now fastest than coreavc, but i want to know about the quality. In coreavc decoder i can set these two parameters , what about these settings in your lav?

LAVs primary goal is uncompromised quality. It'll give you the best quality ("best" being "as true to the source as possible"). Deblocking is always on, because the H.264/AVC spec mandates it, and dithering is always used when appropriate (when converting 10-bit to 8-bit, for example). DragonQ is right, LAV will not offer options to skip deblocking, because it hurts image quality.

So, don't worry about it. LAV does not cut corners to be fast.
It probably would be possible to provide access to Blu-ray extras once the trayicon functionality is expanded. The splitter already parses the title list to find the longest title. So it could display full title list in the trayicon.

LAV Splitter will not offer Blu-ray title switching. There is too many headaches involved with this. A player could easily choose to do this.

Also, the Tray Icon will only expose functionality already present, i do not have *any* plans to add any complex functionality just for the tray icon.

[clsid]

Could you elaborate on those technical difficulties? It is interesting to know.

Assuming the difficulty lies in switching from one title to another in a single graph instance, would something like this be (easily) possible:
* LAV Splitter exports title list (through some custom interface). By default it just opens longest title.
* Player (lets assume MPC-HC) uses this list to display title selection.
* If user switches to different title, the player creates new graph instance, calls a special function in LAV Splitter to pass title index as parameter. If index is valid, then LAV Splitter picks that title. Otherwise it picks longest.

[SamuriHL]

That's already happening with MC18. It's the player's responsibility to pick the proper title to play, not the splitter. The splitter only enumerates them for the player. MC18 also added functionality to look for a disc.inf file on the disc so that it can find valid playlists on screen pass discs. Those have dozens of fake playlists that don't play correctly, so, "picking the longest title" fails miserably in that case. In any case, the splitter enumerates the playlists, and the player determines which one to play. That's how it should be.

[nevcairiel]

MPC-HC also has title switching functionality on its own already.

[STaRGaZeR]

I need to establish priorities for the upcoming tasks for LAV again, all i wanted to do on high-priority is about done, so whats next up after 0.55 is still in the air. We'll see.

Any chance of advanced matrix mixing ala ffdshow? LAV now covers most use cases with the basic options, but mixing all sources as 4.0 or 4.1 output with different coefficients for each channel for example can't be done.

[nautilus7]

I would ask for upmixing capabilities, as well. Are you going to offer any options for that? I am mostly interested in a way to playback my 2.0 stereo music into my 7.1 surround system without having to use ffdshow to create a custom matrix.

[ddjmagic]

Those things are hardly useful.

Speedmenus aren't just a simple list of playlists/titles, it lists the main feature correctly everytime for easy selection, even when MPC-HC/JRiver/XBMC all fail to figure out the main movie correctly.

If that's not useful then what is?

JRiver the closest but only because it can use the same information that the Speedmenus use (using the disc.inf)
But since the disc.inf is currently only listing the playlist for Screenpass titles, JRiver stills fails on quite a few titles.

I respect everything you do with LAV Filters but I think your comment is completely wrong.

If you can figure out the main movie everytime then please make a player/program of your own with this feature, or show the developers of JRiver/XBMC/MPC how to add it.

I'm sure you will ignore this post anyway.

Edit - XBMC 12 actually get a few playlist selections right that JRiver gets wrong, not the Screenpass titles though, so I would call it a tie between those 2 players, still neither are perfect like the Speedmenus selection.

[nevcairiel]

If they have this magic, they should expose it in the disc.inf, and not require people to use those terribly ugly menus. Any menu is rather annoying if all it does is offer you a button to start playing the main movie anyway.

So still, the menus are rather useless, people that would use those would probably very much prefer direct playback of the movie over this.
You're entitled to your opinion of course, but i would never use them. The number of times the wrong playlist is even selected is extremely low for me, in fact, i can't remember when it happened last.

[dansrfe]

Utilizing DXVA2 Native doesn't take away GPU processing power from scaling (with power hungry algorithms like Jinc 3) and rendering does it?

Also, does anyone know how I can tell whether a certain GTX card supports 8 channel PCM output? I bought a GT card about 5 years ago and I assumed that all NVidia cards >= GT supported 8 channel PCM over HDMI but I guess that wasn't the case because I've been stuck bitstreaming DTS-HD core for a while now. I'd much rather get rid of the bitstream thing and send properly decoded DTS-HD -> PCM over HDMI through Reclock via LAV Filters utilizing dtsdecoderdll.dll.

[ddjmagic]

If they have this magic, they should expose it in the disc.inf, and not require people to use those terribly ugly menus. Any menu is rather annoying if all it does is offer you a button to start playing the main movie anyway.

So still, the menus are rather useless, people that would use those would probably very much prefer direct playback of the movie over this.
You're entitled to your opinion of course, but i would never use them.

Its not a question of if they have it they do have it.
Slysoft have confirmed that they may add the magic playlist information to all discs.inf files in the future.

Until then unfortunately you are stuck with those hardly useful/rather useless Speedmenus if you want perfect main movie playback.

Remember, some people make backups to discs for standalone players that can only do main movie playback with something like Speedmenus.

But you have to be right all the time, so I will agree these Speedmenus are useless and not useful.

[nevcairiel]

I rather switch the title manually once in a blue moon then click myself through a menu on *every* disc.
It doesn't matter anyway, since there is no menu playback in any of those players you listed. :p (possibly except XBMC, i think they are working on some things for the next version)

[SamuriHL]

Yes, SlySoft needs to expose the valid movie titles on every disc. Hopefully they add it soon.

[ddjmagic]

I rather switch the title manually once in a blue moon then click myself through a menu on *every* disc.
It doesn't matter anyway, since there is no menu playback in any of those players you listed. :p (possibly except XBMC, i think they are working on some things for the next version)

XBMC 12 works fine with Speedmenus, playlist selection has also been improved, its actually quite good, better than JRiver/MPC in some cases.

[nevcairiel]

And 12 is the next version, isn't that what i said? :D

PS:
I tried to find their "playlist selection" code, but there is none. They seem to just iterate through libblurays titles and pick the longest, which is also what LAV does (libbluray has some smarts to filter titles with repeats and whatnot)
Note that MPC-HC chooses the playlist if you play a Blu-ray with MPC-HC, and not LAV - well it used to anyway, i fixed that like 3 days ago in MPC-HC.

But then, i don't remember which of my discs even misdetected. "Screenpass" or what its called isn't used on EU discs apparently (at least i havent found one, US editions of one movie can have it, and EU ones of the same movie don't).

[SamuriHL]

Screen pass is annoying as all hell on discs that have it.

[ddjmagic]

And 12 is the next version, isn't that what i said? :D

PS:
I tried to find their "playlist selection" code, but there is none. They seem to just iterate through libblurays titles and pick the longest, which is also what LAV does (libbluray has some smarts to filter titles with repeats and whatnot)
Note that MPC-HC chooses the playlist if you play a Blu-ray with MPC-HC, and not LAV - well it used to anyway, i fixed that like 3 days ago in MPC-HC.

But then, i don't remember which of my discs even misdetected. "Screenpass" or what its called isn't used on EU discs apparently (at least i havent found one, US editions of one movie can have it, and EU ones of the same movie don't).

I'm not sure how XBMC 12 playlist selection works, but it definitely gets some right that JRiver/LAV/MPC doesn't.
I check later and report back.

This (http://blog.dvdfab.com/stealthyclone-anti-protection.html) is a decent list of Screenpass titles - There are a few EU disc on there, mainly US though :)

[DragonQ]

Utilizing DXVA2 Native doesn't take away GPU processing power from scaling (with power hungry algorithms like Jinc 3) and rendering does it?
In my experience, no. On my laptop, I tried using CUVID for decoding and the Intel IGP for MadVR (and the other way around) and there was no improvement over just using one or the other for both. I think different parts of the GPU are used.

[ddjmagic]

I'm not sure how XBMC 12 playlist selection works, but it definitely gets some right that JRiver/LAV/MPC doesn't.
I check later and report back.


Just a bit of data taken from some discs I have that playlist selection can be a problem.

I picked 10 that first came to mind, their are others but these are the ones I have tested today.

Results are from the latest versions of AnyDVD HD, JRiver and XBMC Frodo.

Black Hawk Down

JRiver - 00042.mpls {02:31:20} Special Features - Incorrect
XBMC 12 - 00009.mpls {02:24:20} Main Movie - Correct
SpeedMenu - 00035.mpls {02:24:20} Main Movie - Correct

Brave

JRiver - 00801.mpls {01:34:12} Spanish Main Movie - Incorrect
XBMC 12 - 00800.mpls {01:33:37} Main Movie - Correct
SpeedMenu - 00800.mpls {01:33:37} Main Movie - Correct

Dark Knight Rises

JRiver - 00091.mpls {02:57:30} In Movie Special Feature - Incorrect
XBMC 12 - 00091.mpls {02:57:30} In Movie Special Feature - Incorrect
SpeedMenu - 00100.mpls {02:44:33} Main Movie - Correct

Hellboy

JRiver - 00066.mpls {02:23:08} Special Feature - Incorrect
XBMC 12 - 00030.mpls {02:12:28} Main Movie - Correct
SpeedMenu - 00030.mpls {02:12:28} Main Movie - Correct

Inception

JRiver - 00101.mpls {03:10:20} In Movie Special Feature - Incorrect
XBMC 12 - 00100.mpls {02:28:07} Main Movie - Correct
SpeedMenu - 00100.mpls {02:28:07} Main Movie - Correct

Iron Man 2

JRiver - 00846.mpls {02:07:27} In Movie Special Feature - Incorrect
XBMC 12 - 00846.mpls {02:07:27} In Movie Special Feature - Incorrect
SpeedMenu - 00847.mpls {02:04:39} Main Movie -Correct


Wall-E

JRiver - 00082.mpls {01:38:41} Spanish Main Movie - Incorrect
XBMC 12 - 00081.mpls {01:38:11} Main Movie - Correct
SpeedMenu - 00081.mpls {01:38:11} Main Movie - Correct

The following are Screenpass titles I didn't test today but I know the results

Expendables 2 (Screenpass JRiver using Disc.inf)

JRiver - Main Movie - Correct
XBMC 12 - No clue :) - Incorrect
JRiver - Main Movie - Correct

Hunger Games (Screenpass JRiver using Disc.inf)

JRiver - Main Movie - Correct
XBMC 12 - No clue :) - Incorrect
JRiver - Main Movie - Correct

Warrior (Screenpass JRiver using Disc.inf)

JRiver - Main Movie - Correct
XBMC 12 - No clue :) - Incorrect
JRiver - Main Movie - Correct


As you can see XBMC and JRiver definitely are sometimes different and not always using the longest.

Totals

JRiver - 3/10 Thanks to 'disc.inf'
XBMC Frodo - 5/10 - Has no idea on Screenpass titles
Speedmenu - 10/10 - Magic ;)

I'm guessing MPC-HC would of been 0/10 since it would of had the same results as JRiver but would not of been able to use the 'disc.inf'

Obviously there are hundreds of discs that they all get correct, I just picked these because I remember them having problems.

EDIT - These tests were wrong, I was testing XBMC incorrectly. XBMC 12 actually gets 0/10 and the new JRiver 18.0.110 has been retested to get 6/7 (3 untested but may work)

[nevcairiel]

JRiver uses its own code to figure it out. Since none of these tests include LAV, not relevant at all. :p
LAV Splitter itself does not and will not support any kind of BD menus, speed menus or otherwise, so its really rather off-topic here. From what i can see in XBMCs code, LAV and XBMC use the same mechanism to figure out which title to use.

[SamuriHL]

jriver uses its own code to figure it out. Since none of these tests include lav, not relevant at all. :p

lmao! :)

[ddjmagic]

JRiver uses its own code to figure it out. Since none of these tests include LAV, not relevant at all. :p

So the fact that the useless Speedmenus get it right 100% is not relevant? :confused:

What player can I setup with LAV to test? Is it useful enough to get 10/10?
I didn't mention LAV in the tests, if I did please point it out.

Edit - Providing the player for LAV is free, don't want to buy another player lol

[nevcairiel]

So the fact that the useless Speedmenus get it right 100% is not relevant? :confused:

Speedmenus are not relevant to LAV Splitter, because it does not support BD menus, and never will.

This is not a generic BD discussion thread, please stick to LAV relevant topics.

[ddjmagic]

Speedmenus are not relevant to LAV Splitter, because it does not support BD menus, and never will.

You said Speedmenus are useless, so I'm showing real data where they are proving very useful, or will you dismiss that too :rolleyes:

If you didn't want Speedmenus talked in your thread, don't comment on them in your thread in a negative and dismissive way, when obviously you had never even used them properly or understand what they even did, it is very frustrating.

It shows your lack of respect for anybody other than you that might have achieved something that you can not.

Speedmenus are making huge steps in helping BD playback, its perfect when used with the new XBMC.

I won't mention it again, but I hope you understood my frustration with your comments, but to be honest I'm sure you don't.

Back to LAV - Please link to a player that can use LAV for playlist selection so I can test, preferably free. Thanks.

[SamuriHL]

You should respect Nev's work even if you don't appreciate the manner in which he provides answers. It's his product, his thread.

Enough about that. The real issue here is what's involved in what SlySoft has done to make the Speed Menus work. The underlying code and how long it took them to develop it. Ever wonder why Slyce isn't released yet? Think it might have to do with the code they've had to develop for menus that NO ONE else has been able to do? Even libbluray hasn't been able to get menu support done. It's not something you can just whip up in 10 minutes. If Nev focused on it, which he said he won't, it'd take away from all the other things he's working on. And there are more important issues to work on. I believe that the players need to implement this functionality. J River, for example, appears to have a lot of work to do.

[madshi]

@ddjmagic, if nevcairiel's comment about Speedmenus was incorrect then I'm sure it was posted without any intended or implied disrespect to other developers. Everybody makes a mistake once in a while. I didn't know myself that Speedmenus seemingly work that well. What I'm seeing right now, though, is intended disrespect from your side. So could you please either stop posting, or alternatively change your attitude? Thanks.