LAV Filters - DirectShow Media Splitter and Decoders

[oddball]

Yes. I noticed that too. I have a very similar setup to Oddball with a Denon AVR connected through a HDMI cable.
I use the MPC-BE internal renderer in exclusive mode, as this does in fact always try to switch the output layout to match the input layout, and it works great for me.

My exact setup is this: I configured the windows mixer to 2 channels, so I can let the AVR upsample it to surround, if I want to, when playing normal audio in Windows.
Then I configured MPC-BE to use "MPC Audio Renderer", which is the internal audio renderer of MPC-BE. I believe that the audio renderer can be used with other players too, though I haven't tried.
I configured the renderer as such: The sound device is just the primary audiodriver, though you can choose whatever you want to use.
I set WASAPI mode to exclusive, and ticked "Allow bit-exact output" and unticked the "Use system layout channels".
I set the Sync method to "Sync video to audio", though I do not think this has any effect on what channel layout is used.

I hope this helps.

Did not work for me. I set MPC-BE the same and I can only have one or the other. MPC-HC actually gives more options in regards to whether you want bitstreaming, just multi-channel decoding etc as far as I can tell. I can't get both multi-channel decoding (not bitstreaming) to HDMI and keep stereo sources sent as just stereo for Dolby Surround. It is always sent as stereo left and right over multi-channel.

[nussman]

You are looking for this (not released yet) https://github.com/alexmarsev/sanear/commit/8e14705e1421851235d7a369c8bc27ea6698414e

This can not be changed by splitter/decoder (LAV). You have to use a wasapi audiorenderer with this feature (reclock should work, not sure about MPC BE).

[fluffy01]

Did not work for me. I set MPC-BE the same and I can only have one or the other. MPC-HC actually gives more options in regards to whether you want bitstreaming, just multi-channel decoding etc as far as I can tell. I can't get both multi-channel decoding (not bitstreaming) to HDMI and keep stereo sources sent as just stereo for Dolby Surround. It is always sent as stereo left and right over multi-channel.

Did you enable the mixer in LavFilters? If so, disable it.

I just bitstream all bitstreamable formats and only decode whats left... Why do you need to decode everything except 2-channel AC3?

[Gleb Egorych]

CUVID in LAV Video also seems fine here. No artifacts.
Which videocard/driver do you use? I do see artifacts in CUVID mode in LAV Video.

[nevcairiel]

Both GTX960 or Titan X, using latest drivers (361.43)

[clsid]

I get artifacts with CUVID using a GTX960 and 361.43 on Win7. LAV 67.0-44.

[Thunderbolt8]

You are looking for this (not released yet) https://github.com/alexmarsev/sanear/commit/8e14705e1421851235d7a369c8bc27ea6698414e

This can not be changed by splitter/decoder (LAV). You have to use a wasapi audiorenderer with this feature (reclock should work, not sure about MPC BE).doesnt wasapi exclusive mode ignore this anyway?

[clsid]

No, wasapi does what you tell it to do. The current MPC-HC renderer simply doesn't do the correct thing for the discussed use case. But it will provide the necessary options in the future.

[Stereodude]

doesnt wasapi exclusive mode ignore this anyway?
Yes, when it's implemented "correctly" (ie: how people want).

[rock]

pardon me to ask something. I have WVC1 files (a file can be downloaded from here (http://media.ch9.ms/ch9/b208/c62d6156-e839-4d1c-8d78-a484a382b208/aspnet26767_Source.wmv)), play with MPC-HC nightly (1.7.10.56). When I play with dxva2 selected, wmv9 mft is used. When I play with intel quicksync selected, quicksync is used. My notebook vga is intel hd 3000. so I wanna ask, dxva2 not support for this kind of file? or actually my vga not support dxva2 for this kind of file?. thanks in advance. :)

[NikosD]

My notebook vga is intel hd 3000. so I wanna ask, dxva2 not support for this kind of file? or actually my vga not support dxva2 for this kind of file?. thanks in advance. :)

For SandyBridge (HD 2000/3000), Intel didn't provide DXVA2 VC-1 HW decoders in drivers.

You need Ivy or better for that.

I have asked them in Intel forums but Intel didn't care to support them in such relative old HW.

QuickSync decoder does support it, as you tested yourself and it's the only way to get HW acceleration for WMV3/VC-1 for Sandy.

[Djfe]

I have a question concerning TV recordings with AC3 sound (Transportstreams)
If the number of channels switches (for example) from 2.0 to 5.1 then the sound is missing for a second or so

if I play the same scene with VLC then there is no sound missing

I have an example with speech in which you can clearly hear the difference

is this issue known already?

@nevcairiel
if not and you want the sample just write me a pm ;)

[nevcairiel]

Changed should be immediate from LAV Audio's side, it is however possible that the audio renderer or even audio device re-inits which causes this.
If this is the case, you could test by enabling the mixer in LAV Audio, which suppresses all channel changes on the output. If the missing sound disappears then, you know that its likely the audio renderer or even audio device.

[Manni]

NevCairiel, I said so already in the MadVR thread, but thanks a lot for implementing 3D support in LAV. This is really great news!

[Djfe]

Changed should be immediate from LAV Audio's side, it is however possible that the audio renderer or even audio device re-inits which causes this.
If this is the case, you could test by enabling the mixer in LAV Audio, which suppresses all channel changes on the output. If the missing sound disappears then, you know that its likely the audio renderer or even audio device.

thx for the explanation :)
you are right, the issue doesn't seem to be caused by your filters
turning mixing on "fixed" it

since it happened with mpc-hc
is the reason for it a misconfiguration in mpc or rather in windows/my audio drivers?

or is there no way to fix it rather than turning mixing on, because the hardware just takes its time to switch between channel modes?

my speakers channel configuration here is 2.1 and they are simply connected to one green audio jack
I'm using the realtek onboard soundcard of my Gigabyte mainboard

[nevcairiel]

my speakers channel configuration here is 2.1 and they are simply connected to one green audio jack
I'm using the realtek onboard soundcard of my Gigabyte mainboard

If you only have Stereo speakers anyway, it would probably be easiest to just set LAV Audio to downmix to stereo at all times, then this problem disappears and you don't have to worry about windows doing proper mixing.

[Nullack]

Gday Hendrik. Certainly pleasing to see the following commits in the log

Support MVC frames in internal frame copy functions
Clear stereo image buffers when de-allocating a frame
Implement basic H264 MVC decoder based on Intel MediaSDK

Is there any plan to also share the love with Nvidia users :thanks:

[nevcairiel]

This works on every system. Please consider testing before commenting :)

[Nullack]

Understood :)

Ok so now that I'm home and not limited to looking at GIT like at work, I've done many hours of testing. When it kicks in, it seems to be working well on the latest nightly 0-54 which is up to commit d27597b as stated in the build log.

Can you please provide input into why it might not kick in under DXVA and resort to software even though the 3D file is in h.264? For example, heres an AVC encoded bit of footage that is not using DXVA:

At http://bbb3d.renderfarming.net/download.html And the bbb_sunflower_2160p_60fps_stereo_abl.mp4 file

ffprobe spits out:

Input #0, mov,mp4,m4a,3gp,3g2,mj2, from 'bbb_sunflower_2160p_60fps_stereo_abl.mp4':
Metadata:
major_brand : isom
minor_version : 1
compatible_brands: isomavc1
creation_time : 2013-12-20 20:17:03
title : Big Buck Bunny, Sunflower version
artist : Blender Foundation 2008, Janus Bager Kristensen 2013
comment : Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 - http://bbb3d.renderfarming.net
genre : Animation
composer : Sacha Goedegebure
Duration: 00:10:34.53, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 12491 kb/s
Stream #0:0(und): Video: h264 (High) (avc1 / 0x31637661), yuv420p, 3840x4320 [SAR 1:1 DAR 8:9], 12006 kb/s, 60 fps, 60 tbr, 60k tbn, 120 tbc (default)
Metadata:
creation_time : 2013-12-20 20:17:03
handler_name : GPAC ISO Video Handler
Stream #0:1(und): Audio: mp3 (mp4a / 0x6134706D), 48000 Hz, stereo, s16p, 160 kb/s (default)
Metadata:
creation_time : 2013-12-20 20:17:06
handler_name : GPAC ISO Audio Handler
Stream #0:2(und): Audio: ac3 (ac-3 / 0x332D6361), 48000 Hz, 5.1(side), fltp, 320 kb/s (default)
Metadata:
creation_time : 2013-12-20 20:17:06
handler_name : GPAC ISO Audio Handler
Side data:
audio service type: main

Here's one which does work nicely with DXVA 3D, the video seems pretty much the same under ffprobe.exe except for the frame rate

Input #0, matroska,webm, from 'LG_3D_Air.mkv':
Metadata:
title : LG_3D_SOUND_DEMO_2_1_1.Title7.Bluray3DRip
encoder : libebml v0.7.8 + libmatroska v0.8.1
creation_time : 2012-09-11 05:16:35
Duration: 00:03:51.68, start: 0.000000, bitrate: 12811 kb/s
Chapter #0:0: start 0.000000, end 231.680004
Metadata:
title : (01)00:00:00:000
Chapter #0:1: start 232.065000, end 231.680004
Metadata:
title : (02)00:03:52:065
Stream #0:0: Video: h264 (High), yuv420p(tv, bt709), 1920x1080, SAR 1:1 DAR 16:9, 23.98 fps, 23.98 tbr, 48003.07 tbn, 47.95 tbc (default)
Stream #0:1(kor): Audio: dts (DTS-HD MA), 48000 Hz, 5.1(side), fltp (default)

The curious thing is that when I use MKVToolNix to make the bbb file into an MKV as "bbb_sunflower_2160p_60fps_stereo_abl.mkv" I still dont get DXVA acceleration. I thought it did support muxing 3D, so if thats true its not a simple container format problem as "LG_3D_Air.mkv" just works fine. Also I tried "bbb_sunflower_2160p_30fps_stereo_abl.mp4" and that uses software too so its not a high frame rate issue. So ffprobe doesnt seem to give me much help as to why some 3D isnt using DXVA. The only visual difference I can see between the 3D AVC encoded files is the working one is side by side, and the non working ones are top by bottom.

[madshi]

The recently added 3D support is for MVC streams, which is how Blu-Ray encodes 3D, so both left and right eye have full resolution. Side-by-side and top-by-bottom are from LAV's point of view simply 2D encodings.

[Nullack]

Thanks for that Madshi, appreciated :) I have a large DVD/Bluray/Bluray 3d collection. All the 3D blurays with MVC streams Ive played in my hours of testing today using the nightly build with MCP-BE and AnyDVD HD have worked super great. What I dont have my head around, is if SBS and TBB AVC encodes are just 2D to LAV, why is seemingly similar video footage falling back to software in some cases?

[madshi]

I can't answer that. But I don't understand what you said about playing MVC Blu-Rays with AnyDVD HD, that shouldn't work yet. Currently only 3D Blu-Rays remuxed into MKV by MakeMKV are supported. Playing 3D Blu-Rays as is in m2ts format shouldn't work yet.

[nevcairiel]

The dimension of the first file you referred to is way too high for DXVA (3840x4320), its 4K OU 3D, which is more than most DXVA devices can decode.
As madshi said, there are no changes to such files (and none planned) since they are "just" 2D files which happen to contain 2 images in the stream, but nothing the video decoder has to care about.

The only new format supported right now is MKV 3D files created by MakeMKV from a 3D Blu-ray.

[Nullack]

Understood. Im happy to fix any error in my test process - test errors occur just like dev errors. Im using the 3D bluray movie "Gravity" from the 3D disc. I know for sure Im entering 3D mode on my UHD display, cos one it has a little window saying so, and also while its a UHD display when in 3D mode it only does 1920x1080. I have 3D clearly visible in the render. I switched temporarily to EVR CP as yours (which is awesome thanks) doesnt have CPU / GPU utilisation in the render stats menu, and I plainly see the GPU being used with little CPU in 3D bluray playback. Please find attached a screenshot of the render stats. I dunno mate.

http://s12.postimg.org/3xeapwqst/mvc.png

[nevcairiel]

MVC 3D decoding also only works with madVR, or you will only get a 2D image.
You could also always decode 3D Blu-ray before, you would simply only get a 2D image. And nothing has changed in that. Like repeated many times now, the only supported format are MakeMKV MKV 3D files created from a 3D Blu-ray, and only if you use the latest madVR release.

[Nullack]

I get what your saying I'm not challenging that. Given I *am* seeing 3D, as I also clearly stated, I'm not sure where it's coming from then if LAV is just doing 2D in such use cases. I'll look into my TV manual as maybe its some sort of 2D->3D conversion it auto does in that mode or something.

[rock]

For SandyBridge (HD 2000/3000), Intel didn't provide DXVA2 VC-1 HW decoders in drivers.


thanks for answering. anyway I do some testing on other player, potp, it show dxva native when using built-in dxva decoder. as you said "For SandyBridge (HD 2000/3000), Intel didn't provide DXVA2 VC-1 HW decoders in drivers.", I wanna ask to answer my curiosity, how to check when player really use h/w acceleration, in this case dxva2? thanks.

sorry for thread owner if its off-topic.

[madshi]

I get what your saying I'm not challenging that. Given I *am* seeing 3D, as I also clearly stated, I'm not sure where it's coming from then if LAV is just doing 2D in such use cases. I'll look into my TV manual as maybe its some sort of 2D->3D conversion it auto does in that mode or something.
As I've explained in the madVR v0.90.0 announcement, if you have 3D activated with NVidia drivers, NVidia itself tries to convert 2D movies to 3D, at least when using D3D11 presentation. Maybe you're seeing that. Or maybe your TV is doing the conversion, I don't know.

[Manni]

@Nevcairiel
Please could you provide the name of the Intel DLL downloaded during setup, and in which folder it's located?
I have to install LAV on a different PC because I use KCP on my HTPC, so LAV isn't installed in the default location, and then copy the installed files into the KCP folder.
I don't think the Intel dll is in the LAV Filters folder, which might explain why the 3D playback with LAV+MadVR doesn't work on my HTPC.

[nevcairiel]

The dll is inside the LAV Filters folder if you used the latest nightly installer and didn't disable installation of the H.264 MVC components (libmfxsw32/64.dll)
I cannot support such a setup however, please just execute the installer on the system its supposed to run on, it does more than just install files.

Anyone running a custom setup for some reason is on their own, I am afraid. I provide the installer to avoid setup issues.

[Manni]

The dll is inside the LAV Filters folder if you used the latest nightly installer and didn't disable installation of the H.264 MVC components (libmfxsw32/64.dll)
I cannot support such a setup however, please just execute the installer on the system its supposed to run on, it does more than just install files.

Anyone running a custom setup for some reason is on their own, I am afraid. I provide the installer to avoid setup issues.

Thanks, and yes to both conditions (latest nightly and both options enabled). I guess I'll have to either wait for KCP to update its components or leave KCP behind and install all the components separately, which I'm tempted to do anyway to move to 64bits. The main drawback for me is that MPC-BE handles most file types internally by default, I'm not sure how to get the same setup as the one I get with KCP, where LAV handles everything.

Last time we discussed this, you said it was fine to simply drop the LAV files in the LAV Filters folder in the KCP folder, hence why I tried this way, but I totally understand you can't support this.

[Nullack]

Manni I run nightlies of MPC-BE x64 and LAV Filters x64. You can easily disable all the internal filters and just run with the LAV ones as external, with priority on all three being splitter / video / audio. It works well, actually very well, stable and robust most of the time for what are nightly builds. Its a real credit to Hendrik and the MPC-BE Team. To do so just go into the various internal filter sections of MPC-BE, right click and choose disable all. Then in the external filters, after installing the LAV filters (I only use x64 builds for both software) manually add the three LAV splitter / audio / video by clicking add filter and choose the prefer option for all three.

[nevcairiel]

Last time we discussed this, you said it was fine to simply drop the LAV files in the LAV Filters folder in the KCP folder, hence why I tried this way, but I totally understand you can't support this.

Most of the time this works fine, however sometimes the setup functions need to be executed again - especially if support for new formats is added like in this case.

[Manni]

Most of the time this works fine, however sometimes the setup functions need to be executed again - especially if support for new formats is added like in this case.

Manni I run nightlies of MPC-BE x64 and LAV Filters x64. You can easily disable all the internal filters and just run with the LAV ones as external, with priority on all three being splitter / video / audio. It works well, actually very well, stable and robust most of the time for what are nightly builds. Its a real credit to Hendrik and the MPC-BE Team.

Thanks, will try to move to x64 and separate installs of MPC-BE, LAV and MadVR tonight. It will certainly make updating each component as needed easier. :)

[clsid]

Has anyone benchmarked the performance of the Intel Media SDK decoder yet?
Does it use hardware acceleration on systems with an Intel GPU?

[akim]

nevcairiel

Please do audio normalization in Potplayer and MPC-BE and then the MPC-HC will must have.
If the answer is not whether it is planned in the future?

[huhn]

mpc-hc/be have an normalize feature.

[filler56789]

If the answer is not whether it is planned in the future?

Nope :)

[Nullack]

Hello Hendrik, with todays nightly I have observed I can no longer seek forward or backward by clicking the mouse in the player's seek bar somwhere else other than current playback and have it work OK in webm / VP9 using this sample for example:

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?111230-Google-VP9-4K-HD-Sample

Im not sure when this was last working/if it worked off the top of my head. I tried seeking in other container and video codec formats, all is seeking OK including even similar footage such as VP8 / webm

Thanks

[NikosD]

Has anyone benchmarked the performance of the Intel Media SDK decoder yet?
Does it use hardware acceleration on systems with an Intel GPU?
Is there a sample to test it ?

[huhn]

how to test? it only actives when madVR is the renderer right?

[NikosD]

@nev and anyone else that can help regarding MVC MKV support

1) Your last nightly builds (installers executables) can't be uncompressed properly using latest Inno Setup Unpacker v0.45 with the command innounp -x "installer.exe"
It misses the Intel DLL.

I saw that you are using 7za.exe, possibly to extract the libmfxswXX.dll ?

Is there a proper way to extract the latest nightly installer ?

2) For manually registering properly the latest nightly builds, do we need to register the libmfxsw*.dll besides the .ax files ?

Even on Intel systems ?

I searched my C: disk and didn't find the SW libraries - libmfxsw64.dll

Only the HW dlls, like libmfxhw64.dll

3) Does the use of SW Intel libraries by LAV mean that even on Intel systems which have already installed HW Intel libraries, only SW decoding of MVC can be done ?

Do you plan to add HW acceleration for MVC decoding ?

4) Can we use MVC decoding with EVR/EVR-CP or is it supported by madVR only ?

Thanks!

[madshi]

1) The installer doesn't contain the Intel DLL. The installer downloads it during installation in case you have the MVC decoding option checked. The reason for this is that the DLL is quite big, so it would increase the size of the installer quite a lot, and not all users might want/need it.

4) Currently only madVR has the necessary interfaces in place to properly receive the decoded 3D frames from LAV. Maybe other renderers will add support for that sooner or later, or maybe not. It might be possible for LAV to create a side-by-side view for renderers which don't support 3D, but I don't know if nevcairiel is planning to do that.

[NikosD]

Thanks for the reply.

I don't have a BluRay 3D or a MVC MKV on my HDD (only SBS and top-bottom files) but your reply at 4) looks like that it's impossible to see a MVC MKV file without madVR!

Or is it the implementation of LAV MVC MKV decoder that needs explicitly madVR ?

[madshi]

At the moment madVR is the only way to see an MVC MKV file with LAV, that's correct. LAV isn't written to specifically only support madVR. LAV outputs the frames in a way that any renderer can implement. madVR is simply the first that does. The standard DirectShow APIs don't really support 3D frames, so nevcairiel and I developed a new interface for that. It's not very complicated and easy enough to implement for other renderers, too, they just need to invest the time and effort to do so.

[NikosD]

Very clear answer.

And the question is:

How all the other decoders/players display MVC MKV files without using madVR renderer ?

[madshi]

Which other decoders/players do you mean? PowerDVD? That one has its own 3D decoders and renderers, they're not using LAV or madVR. So they could implement their own private interface between decoder and renderer.

[NikosD]

It's been a long time since my last involvement in MVC.

IIRC, Stereoscopic Player can decode/ display MVC MKV and I think it was using CoreMVC ?

And i think there is another one player that I don't remember its name.

[madshi]

I'm not sure which interface CoreMVC uses to output 3D frames. AFAIK CoreMVC has never been publically released. I think Stereoscopic Player and CoreMVC did their own private thing.

[Manni]

Which other decoders/players do you mean? PowerDVD? That one has its own 3D decoders and renderers, they're not using LAV or madVR. So they could implement their own private interface between decoder and renderer.

It's been a long time since my last involvement in MVC.

IIRC, Stereoscopic Player can decode/ display MVC MKV and I think it was using CoreMVC ?

And i think there is another one player that I don't remember its name.

I'm not sure which interface CoreMVC uses to output 3D frames. AFAIK CoreMVC has never been publically released. I think Stereoscopic Player and CoreMVC did their own private thing.

I don't know about CoreMVC but Stereoscopic Player doesn't work on AMD due to a bug in the drivers (see https://community.amd.com/thread/168983).

It's been a while since I last tried, I hope it won't be the case with the MadVR/LAV implementation, hopefully not as it relies on the Intel DLL.

By the way, PowerDVD doesn't support 3D MVC in mkv files. It simply does a 2D > 3D conversion of the left eye stream which looks awful. Works fine with 3D Bluray though (apart from a levels mismatch issue in 3D vs 2D with AMD).