LAV Filters - DirectShow Media Splitter and Decoders

[Rinzler]

Thanks for the sample, its fixed for the next version.
MPC-HC should update soon'ish as well, and you can grab a nightly build to play these files again.

Nightly build? You mean this http://nightly.mpc-hc.org ?

[nevcairiel]

Nightly build? You mean this http://nightly.mpc-hc.org ?

Yes, but it will be a few days until the fix shows up in those versions.

[Rinzler]

Thank you

[Rinzler]

One more question about Hardware Acceleration. This is what i have
http://puu.sh/53MKw.png

Which decoder is better to use or may be better not use hardware decoder at all? Is it true that hardware acceleration technologies gives lower video quality than decoding by CPU?

[nevcairiel]

The quality is the same.
If your CPU is fast enough, i would usually recommend to use no hardware decoder at all, because its less error prone and more flexible - otherwise, i would suggest DXVA2 (copy-back) for NVIDIA/AMD or QuickSync if you have a Intel GPU in a Sandy/Ivy/Haswell CPU.

[Rinzler]

The quality is the same.
If your CPU is fast enough, i would usually recommend to use no hardware decoder at all, because its less error prone and more flexible - otherwise, i would suggest DXVA2 (copy-back) for NVIDIA/AMD or QuickSync if you have a Intel GPU in a Sandy/Ivy/Haswell CPU.

I don't have discrete graphics card, only integrated video HD 4000 in my Intel i5-3570K which is pretty fast.

[nevcairiel]

So either none or QuickSync then, i would probably use none with that CPU.

[Rinzler]

I don't know where to ask, may be you can clarify. Which renderer better to use with LAV filters?
http://puu.sh/53R0z.png

[clsid]

Which version did you test? Multi-threading in LAV was improved recently, specifically Monday evening, so not even two days ago.
I see consistent use of 80-90% CPU with that version on a 1080p clip i tested (The Tears of Steel clip from DivX), 170 fps on my system.
I also get low CPU usage in GraphStudioNext performance test. Around 25% with the ToS 720p sample. Here is screenshot with 8 threads:
http://oi43.tinypic.com/2ylqxee.jpg

8 threads: 131.7 fps
12 threads: 135,3 fps
16 threads: 153,0 fps

I would expect gains to decrease with more threads, but instead it increases.

[nevcairiel]

You must be doing something wrong.
I get proper CPU usage, see here: http://i.imgur.com/W2LhZbk.png

Always above 80, most of the time even 90%.

[clsid]

It is better with latest git, around 60% with 720p, 80% with 1080p, and 100% with 4k. Apparently I forgot to install my previous build, lol, my mistake.
4k plays smoothly now ;)

[e-t172]

Which renderer better to use with LAV filters?

madVR is the best by far, but is probably harder to configure optimally.

By the way, the choice of renderer has nothing to do with the choice of demuxer/decoder, as they are usually interchangeable.

[TheElix]

nevcairiel, do you have plans for MVC support? The need to use other players except MPC-HC (with madVR) burns me inside.

[nevcairiel]

If you write a MVC decoder for ffmpeg, I'll support it. :)

[TheElix]

Thanks for the tip. :)

[Soukyuu]

I have an .sfd file (https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/19330332/AT2_OP1D.SFD) that has MPEG video and two audio streams: one .adx (seen and played by MPC-HC/LAV) and one AC3 (not detected by MPC-HC/LAV, but I know it's there and mediainfo sees it too).Any feedback on this?

[nevcairiel]

Any feedback on this?

I downloaded the file and will check it when i get a chance. First tests show that it mis-identifies the second track as adx as well, which results it in discarding it because it thinks its invalid (since its not valid adx)
Not sure when I'll get to it, hopefully on the weekend.

[Thunderbolt8]

Thanks for the sample, its fixed for the next version.
MPC-HC should update soon'ish as well, and you can grab a nightly build to play these files again.could you please release a new official update?

[nevcairiel]

Releases will be released when i think its ready.
It shouldn't be much longer now, though.

[littleD]

Which version did you test? Multi-threading in LAV was improved recently, specifically Monday evening, so not even two days ago.
I see consistent use of 80-90% CPU with that version on a 1080p clip i tested (The Tears of Steel clip from DivX), 170 fps on my system.Works well now, thank you.
Edit
It's all good other that than my laptop runs 35fps (32bit decoder) oh well ;)

[Rinzler]

Can't make MPC-HC 1.7.0 use DXVA in Windows XP. Just installed previous version MPC-HC 1.6.8 and it works fine. Is this a bug?

[vivan]

Windows XP doesn't support DXVA2.
Read MPC-HC changelog - http://mpc-hc.org/changelog/

[Rinzler]

oh my mistake

[leeperry]

Hi again nev, is there any way to set the "input buffer size" in your splitter like in Haali's?

I've scored a cheap 4X Liteon BD reader, the darn thing starts at 1X and ends at 4X. I've updated its firmware and yet LAV usually stutters at the beginning of my remuxed BD movies, I've set a high input buffer size in HMS and that seems to do the trick, it would be great if I could do the same in LAV :)

I read other customers feedback complaining that it's not fast enough to read BD movies so I guess PDVD & other commercial players might also suffer from the same issue.

:thanks:

[DragonQ]

I've scored a cheap 4X Liteon BD reader, the darn thing starts at 1X and ends at 4X.
An interesting choice by the manufacturer considering 2x is the minimum required for reading BD-ROMs correctly in all scenarios.

[leeperry]

Well, cheap is cheap: http://www.hotukdeals.com/deals/21-85-delivered-blu-ray-internal-drive-liteon-ihos104-06-4x-bd-rom-from-mymemory-1539984 :D
It's dead silent with FLAC compilations and 720p movies but yeah, it takes a little while to reach 2X: http://thumbnails106.imagebam.com/28534/acdfb1285331962.jpg (http://www.imagebam.com/image/acdfb1285331962)

Forcing 65MB cache in HMS would appear to do the trick nicely on untouched remuxed BD's, and at least the drive is still silent :)

[Ver Greeneyes]

Now that the LAV filters are built into MPC-HC, is there any advantage or disadvantage to using the internal version over standalone? For the renderer I use madVR.

[wanezhiling]

No difference.

[clsid]

The standalone LAV Filters support more formats. However, the internal one is more than sufficient for the majority of people. The difference is mostly all kinds of rare and exotic formats.

[Ver Greeneyes]

Formats as in codecs? Why is there a difference? (not that I'm particularly worried about it, just curious)

[kasper93]

The standalone LAV Filters support more formats. However, the internal one is more than sufficient for the majority of people. The difference is mostly all kinds of rare and exotic formats.

Internal LAV supports all formats. Exotic formats are in low merit mode, but they are supported.

Why is there a difference?

It's mostly problem with current mpc-hc ui. We don't have space for very long formats list. But there is planned some work on this.

[sneaker_ger]

(quoting here since I don't think it's related to HEVC in mkv specifically)
2160p works in realtime with LAV on my system. Note that the LAV built into MPC-HC is a bit older and doesn't have the latest version of the HEVC decoder yet.
I'm only reaching ~11.4 fps with that sample (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1651083#post1651083) on my Core i7-860 and roytam's 11-1-2013 nightly. Is that still based on an old ffmpeg or is my CPU that outdated? CPU usage is >90% with all the latest builds.

[Soukyuu]

I downloaded the file and will check it when i get a chance. First tests show that it mis-identifies the second track as adx as well, which results it in discarding it because it thinks its invalid (since its not valid adx)
Not sure when I'll get to it, hopefully on the weekend.Thanks for the reply. I have a suspicion that the .sfd format writes an .adx header for all streams, including the .ac3 one. Or maybe something like [adx-header][actual adx stream][adx-header][ac3-header][actual ac3 stream].

[nevcairiel]

I'm only reaching ~11.4 fps with that sample (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1651083#post1651083) on my Core i7-860 and roytam's 11-1-2013 nightly. Is that still based on an old ffmpeg or is my CPU that outdated? CPU usage is >90% with all the latest builds.

On that particular sample i get around 23 fps, not quite fast enough, but close, however its also relatively complex compared to other 2160p samples i have, which play faster.
I amended my post slightly to express the dependency on sample complexity :p

[sneaker_ger]

Well, the sample is around 30 Mbit/s which I think we would be looking at for some kind of 4k Blu-Ray. Let's hope we'll see more optimizations until then.

[filler56789]

Hopefully not-so-OT :o , but now the evil :D Strongene Lentoid Decoder is compatible with the MKV and MP4 demuxers of LAV Splitter, and besides, now it (finally) can be used in Graphstudio's performance test as well :)

[NikosD]

I think that decoder is H.265 only.

Is it faster than LAV Video decoder or divx H.265 ?
Have you done any tests ?

[nevcairiel]

Please keep discussions of other software to a more appropriate place. I believe it has a thread somewhere on the forum.

[James Freeman]

Is there any way to make it possible that LAV Video will show the decoded (Input) Bitrate in Kbps ?

If not, please make this an option to view the decoded bitrate.

Thanks.

I'm only reaching ~11.4 fps with that sample on my Core i7-860 and roytam's 11-1-2013 nightly. Is that still based on an old ffmpeg or is my CPU that outdated? CPU usage is >90% with all the latest builds.

I got 20fps with i7 3770K 4.5Ghz.

I don't think UHD needs 30Mbps too eliminate visible artifacts compared to HD, 10-15Mbps will be enough (especially with HEVC).

I think the studios can shove 3 Hours, 35Mbps, H.264, in a 50GB disc.
Lets wait and see what they can do with UHD, H.265, and 100GB disc.

Bitrate/Size Calculator: http://www.dr-lex.be/info-stuff/videocalc.html

[nevcairiel]

LAV Filters 0.59

LAV Splitter
- Support for demuxing H.265/HEVC and VP9
- Improvements for H.264 in AVI or as raw video streams
- Improved stream detection in files which start with a few seconds audio before the video
- Improved timestamp handling when demuxing seamless branching Blu-rays, fixes a few hicups/freezes mid-stream

LAV Video
- Support for decoding H.265/HEVC and VP9
- Accept H.264 from the MainConcept demuxer
- Added support for DV Video from Canopus cameras

LAV Audio
- Fixed playback issues on a few DTS and DTS-HD tracks


Download: Installer (both x86/x64) (http://files.1f0.de/lavf/LAVFilters-0.59.exe) -- Zips: 32-bit (http://files.1f0.de/lavf/LAVFilters-0.59.zip) & 64-bit (http://files.1f0.de/lavf/LAVFilters-0.59-x64.zip)

Its been quite a while since the last release, however the changes still look relatively short - and well, yes they are.
I was on vacation, on various business trips and generally very busy. However I hope that development will pick up again in the coming month.

Anyhow, the big thing in this version is of course support for HEVC. While its certainly not perfect yet, it is relatively fast on 1080p content already.
Please do not bother to report HEVC files which do not play, instead report them to FFmpeg directly, since they are still actively working on the HEVC decoder. Many older files from early versions of the encoders may also be invalid, and therefor not play properly.

Other then that, a bunch of fixes and improvements, some named in the changelog, some internal or too small to make the log.

Another maybe note-worthy change is that i moved to Visual Studio 2012 and GCC 4.8.2 with this build.
I have even considered moving to VS 2013 in the near future, LAV already builds just fine with it, and I like the improvements Microsoft made - just for anyone curios what I use to build official versions.

Anyway, have fun!

[Thunderbolt8]

I have a question regarding playing games & video playback using multiple monitors:

I play dota on my laptop at 1080p and also like to watch twitch.tv streams (720p resolution in this case) on my second screen (1280x1024) alongside. my aim is to find a way of playback of the twitch stream which results in least decrease of fps in the game (dota running on the nvidia card, the stream/vlc/mpc atm with the intel hd 4600).

when only playing dota, then my fps varies about 35-45. when using VLC to play the twitch stream (using the normal browser via adobe plugin is definately slower) then I get the least decrease of fps do far with usually still being around 33-39 fps

when I now try to achieve this or better with mpc & lavfilters for video decoding I dont seem to be able to get better results than VLC does. regarding video decoder settings, selecting no hardware acceleration at all does still offer the best results with fps of ~29-35 ( (also with v0.59). its gets a bit worse with dxva2 copy back and is worst when using quicksync. from what Ive heard, the more load is on the intel HD alongside the nvidia, the more it could slow down the nvidia because of copying stuff to video ram or something like that?

as for the renderer, madvr wont work at all as the intelHD gpu is way too slow for that. VMR9 renderless does provide slightly better results than EVR.

still as said, I dont know what VLC does, which renderers or decoders it uses to achieve a better result than mpc & LAV. would anyone know what settings I could try with mpc & lav for improvement?

[STaRGaZeR]

It's nice to see that the x64 version is faster now, I remember it being a bit slower before. Around 5% faster with H.264 and 8,5% faster with that H.265 2160p sample.

[mindbomb]

would anyone know what settings I could try with mpc & lav for improvement?

enhanced video renderer (the regular one, not custom) with dxva native decoding should be virtually equivalent to not playing anything at all.
you can also try madvr with dxva image scaling, bilinear chroma scaling.

[Thunderbolt8]

enhanced video renderer (the regular one, not custom) with dxva native decoding should be virtually equivalent to not playing anything at all.
you can also try madvr with dxva image scaling, bilinear chroma scaling.tried it, fps rate is ~26-34 then. so VLC is still faster.

[andybkma]

Greets, thanks for new .59 update. After updating, the very first mp4 file (AVC;AAC) I played started in pause mode and had no sound. Sound would try to stutter every 30 seconds as if it was trying to play but failing so mostly the video was just silent with the occasional sound burst. Reverting back to 58.1 the files played with no problems. So am assuming that this new mp4 AVC/AAC problem with version .59 will be reported by other users soon. If not, I will losslessly cut out a sample out post it up. Cheers

[mindbomb]

tried it, fps rate is ~26-34 then. so VLC is still faster.

do you think it might be an issue with power settings? that is, vlc is using the cpu, thus preventing throttling, leading to increased performance?
cause i dont think anything can impact the system less than evr and dxva native.
also, check to make sure dxva native is actually being used in lav video, it may not be compatible with a filter you are using or something.

[nevcairiel]

Greets, thanks for new .59 update. After updating, the very first mp4 file (AVC;AAC) I played started in pause mode and had no sound. Sound would try to stutter every 30 seconds as if it was trying to play but failing so mostly the video was just silent with the occasional sound burst. Reverting back to 58.1 the files played with no problems. So am assuming that this new mp4 AVC/AAC problem with version .59 will be reported by other users soon. If not, I will losslessly cut out a sample out post it up. Cheers

So far you seem to be alone. I also tested a variety of files and couldn't reproduce any issues here.
MPC-HC has also been using a version close to 0.59 for a while in nightly builds, and i haven't heard anything from them, either.

[Blight]

LAV Splitter
- Support for demuxing H.265/HEVC and VP9

LAV Video
- Support for decoding H.265/HEVC and VP9
- Accept H.264 from the MainConcept demuxer


Hi Nev,
What are the new SUBTYPEs associated with H265/VP9 and possibly the update for "MainConcept h.264 demuxer" ?

[nevcairiel]

HEVC uses the FourCCs 'HEVC' and 'HVC1', VP9 uses 'VP90', the new H.264 type is {D2D71CB-243F-45E3-B2D8-5FD7967EC09B}

[DragonQ]

Another maybe note-worthy change is that i moved to Visual Studio 2012 and GCC 4.8.2 with this build.
I have even considered moving to VS 2013 in the near future, LAV already builds just fine with it, and I like the improvements Microsoft made - just for anyone curios what I use to build official versions.
I'm going to move to VS 2013 this week. The Asynchronous Debugging feature in particular looks really useful - just the other day I had to move some code out of a background thread and into the main UI thread just to debug it.