LAV Filters - DirectShow Media Splitter and Decoders

[Thunderbolt8]

maybe even a tiny more deeper blue overall, but this one is pretty good as well

edit: actually its ok, leave it :p

[madshi]

I didn't like the font you used, so i did some of my own in white with a slightly different layout

32x32:
http://files.1f0.de/icon/icon32.png or with softer scaling http://files.1f0.de/icon/icon32c.png

16x16
http://files.1f0.de/icon/icon16.png or with softer scaling http://files.1f0.de/icon/icon16c.png
Don't like the font much. It's kinda blurred, but still the diagonals have aliasing. How about this:

http://madshi.net/lav.png

It's missing the background color fade, though. But I think the font is better / clearer.

[pankov]

That's perfect.
What for do you need the other colors?

[nevcairiel]

Don't like the font much. It's kinda blurred, but still the diagonals have aliasing. How about this:

http://madshi.net/lav.png

It's missing the background color fade, though. But I think the font is better / clearer.

Hm, i like that too. What font is that?

Also, your tool seems to use either a better/different downscaler, or font rasterizer. The antialiased edges look totally different to what GIMP produced here.


That's perfect.
What for do you need the other colors?
Splitter, Audio and Video need their own icon each. Blue is for Audio, sticking to the colors ffdshow used for convenience. I had yellow with black font for the Splitter, but the white font would make yellow look odd.

[madshi]

Hm, i like that too. What font is that?

Also, your tool seems to use either a better/different downscaler, or font rasterizer. The antialiased edges look totally different to what GIMP produced here.
That's Tahoma. For "AV" it's size 6, non-bold. For the "L" I've used size 8, and bold. Wasn't happy with the "L", so I've manually tweaked it.

No downsizing involved. The tool I'm using is (don't laugh) XP's MS Paint... :eek: I find it to work pretty well to draw antialiased fonts.

[nevcairiel]

Ah you drew the text on the 16x16 directly, its not downscaled?
I guess that can have its advantages, eventhough i have to do it for at least 16x16 and 32x32

[madshi]

Yes, it's drawn directly to 16x16. IMHO downsizing bigger bitmaps to 16x16 rarely produces satisfactory results. It's usually too blurred for my taste. I prefer creating 16x16 bitmaps from scratch.

[clsid]

I like the looks of madshi's text as well.

For colors I would suggest this:
audio: (dark) blue with white text
video: red with white text (I like the red tint of your current red icon)
splitter: white with black text
cuvid: orange with white text

A single pixel wide border might look nice as well in a dark color (black or a darker tint of the background).

[madshi]

Here's a 32x32 version, Tahoma bold, font sizes 10 + 18:

http://madshi.net/lav32.png

Again, no background color fade (MS Paint isn't good for that). Ideally you would do a nice background color fade with e.g. Gimp, and then add the fonts with MS Paint.

[pankov]

I think for the cuvid decoder you should consider "NVIDIA green" - #77B900
I'm pretty sure they wouldn't mind
;)

[lauhangwoo]

This (http://www.geocities.co.jp/lauhangwoo/etc/sample.zip) sample has no audio when I'm using LAV Splitter + WMP12 Decoder.

Oops, looks like the server doesn't allow direct linking.
Please copy&paste this URL into address bar.
http://www.geocities.co.jp/lauhangwoo/etc/sample.zip

[nevcairiel]

Here's a 32x32 version, Tahoma bold, font sizes 10 + 18:

http://madshi.net/lav32.png

Again, no background color fade (MS Paint isn't good for that). Ideally you would do a nice background color fade with e.g. Gimp, and then add the fonts with MS Paint.

I wish MS Paint could export its font rendering with transparent background for me to put ontop of the gimp background, so i don't have to draw the text 6 times...... :)
I also wish damn MS Paint on Win7 would allow more magnification then 800%, on 16x16 thats still damn small. I believe XP let you do 1600%, wtf MS. :P

[madshi]

I wish MS Paint could export its font rendering with transparent background for me to put ontop of the gimp background, so i don't have to draw the text 6 times...... :)
Yeah, that would be nice. However, MS Paint uses really weird colors for the antialiasing. I don't think a simple transparent background would produce the same results.

I also wish damn MS Paint on Win7 would allow more magnification then 800%, on 16x16 thats still damn small. I believe XP let you do 1600%, wtf MS. :P
No, it's max 800% in XP, too. And drawing the text only works in 100% view. Ouch. The good thing is: You only need to draw the icons once, then once you're done you should be good for the next couple of years.

[nevcairiel]

Text drawing works in 800% view on Win7, at least. :)
Well lets see if i can fit the chars similarly on my color faded background, and then do the same for two more colors.

[madshi]

Text drawing works in 800% view on Win7, at least. :)
There's been progress, after all!

Well lets see if i can fit the chars similarly on my color faded background, and then do the same for two more colors.
Yeah, that's going to be painful, especially cause you'll need to aim well, so that the letters are at exactly the same coordinates for all 6 icons. Good luck!

[jmone]

Very late to the party, how about something like this for LAV Audio:
32x32
http://www.pix01.com/gallery/84076774-9453-4C66-B83A-0DEA4D24CEB6/LAV_Icons/4386101810.jpg

16x16
http://www.pix01.com/gallery/84076774-9453-4C66-B83A-0DEA4D24CEB6/LAV_Icons/4386101811.jpg

[nevcairiel]

I don't like it, can't cram that much detail into a tiny image like that.

I'm done with my 3 icon sets.

For LAV Splitter:
http://files.1f0.de/icon/white16.png and http://files.1f0.de/icon/white32.png

For LAV Audio:
http://files.1f0.de/icon/blue16.png and http://files.1f0.de/icon/blue32.png

For LAV Video:
http://files.1f0.de/icon/red16.png and http://files.1f0.de/icon/red32.png

I'll do LAV CUVID another night, i needed those for the next LAV Filters release. ;)
Thanks to everyone who gave some input/idea, it was really more of a team effort. :D

[SamuriHL]

Looks good to me, Nev. Quite nice.

[Thunderbolt8]

there seems to be a problem in regards to audio delay when opening playlists of seamless branching movies. though is this case, it was not a movie, but a documentary playlist which played all 3 single parts together after another. problem is that at the end of each part, theres a small .m2ts file with only 7 seconds of length, but no audio or video track. I guess its meant to show the logo at the end of each part for some more time. the audio of the next part already starts playing as soon at he real .m2ts file of that documentary ends. the video stays still for those 7 seconds before the next part begins, but the audio doesnt and then has a headstart of those 7 seconds.

concerning regular seamless branching movies, how does delay behave in those cases? are audio gaps automatically taken into consideration and the movie would stay in sync all time through?

edit: didnt use lav audio, but the mpc-hc dts decoder with spdif output (via reclock wasapi (resampler bypassed))

[JustinChase]

Looks good to me, Nev. Quite nice.

Agreed. Simple, but very professional.

I've been wondering does LAV stand for anything, or is short for anything, or just "sounds good"?

Thanks again for all you do :)

[Andy o]

Yes and on my current ATI h/w (HD6570), multi-ch PCM out via HDMI works fine with 24bit WASAPI Excl. (using jRiver Media Center)

I think it pads 24 to 32 automatically if 24 is not accepted, just like foobar2000 does.

[Aleksoid1978]

Can anybody make Debug version of LAVSplitter ???

[madshi]

i'm done with my 3 icon sets.
lgtm.

[nevcairiel]

LAV Filters 0.32

General
- The installer will now add shortcuts to the start menu to open the filter configurations
- The ffmpeg DLLs have been renamed to carry a "lav" suffix to avoid collisions with other components

LAV Splitter
- Improved detection of AAC LATM tracks (previously mis-detected as mp1/mp2)
- Fixed playback of badly interleaved AVI files
- Smarter default stream selection for RealMedia files
- Improved stream language handling for Blu-rays
- Fixed a crash issue with the Forced Subtitle pin on Blu-rays

LAV Audio
- DTS decoding failures are now handled more gracefully
- Fixed Media Types for Stereo 44.1kHz Audio

LAV Video
- First official version - refer to release notes for details


Download: Installer (both x86/x64) (http://files.1f0.de/lavf/LAVFilters-0.32.exe) -- Zips: 32-bit (http://files.1f0.de/lavf/LAVFilters-0.32.zip) & 64-bit (http://files.1f0.de/lavf/LAVFilters-0.32-x64.zip)

LAV Video
This release officially introduces the LAV Video decoder, a versatile video decoder based on the ffmpeg decoding libraries.
It can decode nearly all mainstream files (except interlaced VC-1), and aims at doing this with the highest quality possible.

Notable features:
- Full support for H.264, including 4:4:4 and 10-bit
- Support for native output of YUV 4:2:0, 4:2:2 and 4:4:4, in 8 or 10-bit each.
--- Dithering for 10-bit sources when using 8-bit output
- Proper flagging of interlaced fields for deinterlacing in the renderer.
- A wide range of formats:
--- H264, VC1, MPEG1/2/4, MS-MPEG4 (DivX3), VP3, VP6, VP8, WMV1/2/3, MJPEG/MJPEGB, DV, Theora, FLV1, SVQ1/SVQ3, H261, H263, Intel Indeo 3/5, Fraps, HuffYUV, TSCC/Camtasia, Bink, Smacker, Real Video 1-4, Lagarith, Cinepak, Camstudio, QPEG, ZLIB/MSZH, QTRle, QTRpza

Known issues:
- Converting YUV to RGB is not working optimally. You can choose between a very low quality variant (but fast), and a very slow variant (but high quality). A new RGB converter is planned, and will be available soon.
- Pixel Format conversions in general are slow. Its also planned to replace/optimize the most critical conversions. To avoid this, use madVR or another renderer which natively supports all pixel formats. This will only affect you if you actually play content that needs to be converted, though.

The decoder has already been tested extensively over the last month through the test versions posted here, and i'm quite confident that there are no major bugs left.
You can check the TODOs, open issues and plans on the bugtracker: http://code.google.com/p/lavfilters/issues/list

When reporting bugs in the video decoder, its crucial to get a sample file, and all important information about your playback setup - which player, which renderer and which source filter you used.

Everything else
The Installer will now install shortcuts into the start menu to open the configuration of the filters without requiring a player to do it.
Anyone that wants to integrate the filters in a codec pack, or something similar, you can now of course also offer a direct link to the property pages. The command is simple: "rundll32 LAVSplitter.ax,OpenConfiguration". The same for LAV Audio and LAV Video, of course.

The other changes all seem straight forward, the main focus since 0.31 was on the video decoder, and not much was done on the splitter or audio side.

Have fun with this version, and please report any issues you might have.

[betaking]

LAV Filters 0.32

General
- The installer will now add shortcuts to the start menu to open the filter configurations
- The ffmpeg DLLs have been renamed to carry a "lav" suffix to avoid collisions with other components

LAV Splitter
- Improved detection of AAC LATM tracks (previously mis-detected as mp1/mp2)
- Fixed playback of badly interleaved AVI files
- Smarter default stream selection for RealMedia files
- Improved stream language handling for Blu-rays
- Fixed a crash issue with the Forced Subtitle pin on Blu-rays

LAV Audio
- DTS decoding failures are now handled more gracefully
- Fixed Media Types for Stereo 44.1kHz Audio

LAV Video
- First official version - refer to release notes for details


Download: Installer (both x86/x64) (http://files.1f0.de/lavf/LAVFilters-0.32.exe) -- Zips: 32-bit (http://files.1f0.de/lavf/LAVFilters-0.32.zip) & 64-bit (http://files.1f0.de/lavf/LAVFilters-0.32-x64.zip)

LAV Video
This release officially introduces the LAV Video decoder, a versatile video decoder based on the ffmpeg decoding libraries.
It can decode nearly all mainstream files (except interlaced VC-1), and aims at doing this with the highest quality possible.

Notable features:
- Full support for H.264, including 4:4:4 and 10-bit
- Support for native output of YUV 4:2:0, 4:2:2 and 4:4:4, in 8 or 10-bit each.
--- Dithering for 10-bit sources when using 8-bit output
- Proper flagging of interlaced fields for deinterlacing in the renderer.
- A wide range of formats:
--- H264, VC1, MPEG1/2/4, MS-MPEG4 (DivX3), VP3, VP6, VP8, WMV1/2/3, MJPEG/MJPEGB, DV, Theora, FLV1, SVQ1/SVQ3, H261, H263, Intel Indeo 3/5, Fraps, HuffYUV, TSCC/Camtasia, Bink, Smacker, Real Video 1-4, Lagarith, Cinepak, Camstudio, QPEG, ZLIB/MSZH, QTRle, QTRpza

Known issues:
- Converting YUV to RGB is not working optimally. You can choose between a very low quality variant (but fast), and a very slow variant (but high quality). A new RGB converter is planned, and will be available soon.
- Pixel Format conversions in general are slow. Its also planned to replace/optimize the most critical conversions. To avoid this, use madVR or another renderer which natively supports all pixel formats. This will only affect you if you actually play content that needs to be converted, though.

The decoder has already been tested extensively over the last month through the test versions posted here, and i'm quite confident that there are no major bugs left.
You can check the TODOs, open issues and plans on the bugtracker: http://code.google.com/p/lavfilters/issues/list

When reporting bugs in the video decoder, its crucial to get a sample file, and all important information about your playback setup - which player, which renderer and which source filter you used.

Everything else
The Installer will now install shortcuts into the start menu to open the configuration of the filters without requiring a player to do it.
Anyone that wants to integrate the filters in a codec pack, or something similar, you can now of course also offer a direct link to the property pages. The command is simple: "rundll32 LAVSplitter.ax,OpenConfiguration". The same for LAV Audio and LAV Video, of course.

The other changes all seem straight forward, the main focus since 0.31 was on the video decoder, and not much was done on the splitter or audio side.

Have fun with this version, and please report any issues you might have.

GOOD JOB!:thanks:

[jmone]

Well done! Couple of Q on the LAVVideo:
1) Can you just reject connection for VC1(i) or can you only reject all VC1?
2) What is everyone doing for a high quality de-interlacer?

[nevcairiel]

1) Can you just reject connection for VC1(i) or can you only reject all VC1?


I tried that, but it also blocks progressive content that was encoded at 60i with forced pulldown, like HD-DVDs, so i removed it again.



2) What is everyone doing for a high quality de-interlacer?
I only watch interlaced content with LAV CUVID. :)
If i werent, i would use ffdshow raw with yadif.

[jmone]

Yup LAVCUVID is still the best Video Decoder IMO as you get all the benefits of LAV Video + VC(i) and a quality deinterlacer all in one! Anyway, I know that we are in a holding pattern with ffmpeg support of VC(i), but in regards to deinterlacing, where do you see that it should be done:
1) adding something like YADIF to LAV Video, or
2) should it be the job of an existing Renderer (eg, a feature enhancement to madVR?), or
3) should it be a separate filter (possible to use the GPU for this)?

[fastplayer]

Thanks for LAVVideo, nev! :)

Found a small typo in /demuxer/LAVSplitter/SettingsProp.cpp, line 168:
switchign --> switching

[adam777]

great work, nev!
Something weird I noticed - when using the installer, although I setup MPC-HC to prefer the following filters (in order): File Source (Async.) -> LAV Splitter -> LAV Splitter source, it's LAV Splitter source that gets loaded.
In fact, in order to use File Source (Async.) + LAV Splitter, I need to explicitly block LAV Splitter Source, so it won't get loaded.
When using the ZIP file, everything seems OK, File Source (Async.) + LAV Splitter loads as expected.
Not sure it's that big an issue (what is File Source (Async.) good for, again? :) ), just weird...

[nevcairiel]

Technically thats a bug in MPCHC. The installer assigns lav splitter source directly to the expansion, using just the zip doesnt. If mpchc find such a extension mapping, its always stronger then any other setting, only when you block it completely, it overwrites it.

[fastplayer]

nev, can you change the line endings of changelog.txt and readme.txt to DOS instead of UNIX-style? It's just one long line in Notepad.

[nevcairiel]

Thats actually harder then it would appear to be, because Git stores text files with normalized line endings (meaning Unix style)
I can probably set it to make it Windows style on checkout..

[JarrettH]

Now for downmixing and I can kiss ffdshow goodbye :cool:

[fastplayer]

This file doesn't display correctly when using LAVSplitter:
http://www.mediafire.com/?to56a070x43dskn
It shows just one grey frame whereas Haali shows a horizontal gradient. Can somebody reproduce this?

[nevcairiel]

This file doesn't display correctly when using LAVSplitter:
http://www.mediafire.com/?to56a070x43dskn
It shows just one grey frame whereas Haali shows a horizontal gradient. Can somebody reproduce this?

The file seems to be H264 AnnexB muxed into MKV, such an format is very uncommon, not MKV spec-conform, and not supported (yet). :)
http://code.google.com/p/lavfilters/issues/detail?id=43

Someone reported that file already. :p

[fastplayer]

Argh, sorry for the noise then!
I'll just convert this abomination to spec-conform MKV :)

[adam777]

Technically thats a bug in MPCHC. The installer assigns lav splitter source directly to the expansion, using just the zip doesnt. If mpchc find such a extension mapping, its always stronger then any other setting, only when you block it completely, it overwrites it.

Oh, OK. :thanks:
Not a big issue, anyway.

[ppp0941]

There is some problem with changing the audio track
I get the same language from all track
But there are different language when not using LAV filter

[6233638]

Thought it might be of interest to people, just tested power consumption of my PC using LAV CUVID vs LAV Video Decoder and MadVR.

In short, LAV Video Decoder dropped power consumption of my system by about 50 watts.

I suspect the reason for this is that LAV CUVID keeps my GPU in its high performance mode, whereas LAV Video Decoder lets it drop down into the low power consumption mode after 20-30s of playback.

CPU usage on playback is 5-10% with CUVID, 20-30% with LAV Video Decoder.

[Mercury_22]

Thought it might be of interest to people, just tested power consumption of my PC using LAV CUVID vs LAV Video Decoder and MadVR.

In short, LAV Video Decoder dropped power consumption of my system by about 50 watts.

I suspect the reason for this is that LAV CUVID keeps my GPU in its high performance mode, whereas LAV Video Decoder lets it drop down into the low power consumption mode after 20-30s of playback.

CPU usage on playback is 5-10% with CUVID, 20-30% with LAV Video Decoder.

It'll be very interesting to know how this stands compare to MPC-HC's DXVA + EVR CP
P.S. My guess another 50 watts drop :p

[nevcairiel]

P.S. My guess another 50 watts drop :p

It'll most likely increase again.

[6233638]

It'll be very interesting to know how this stands compare to MPC-HC's DXVA + EVR CP
P.S. My guess another 50 watts drop :p
Initial power consumption with LAV CUVID + MadVR: 180W
LAV Video Decoder + MadVR: 130W
LAV Video Decoder + MadVR + Maximum Windows & BIOS Power Saving Options Enabled: 110W
EVR-CP + MPC-HC DXVA: 100W
Idle: 90W

I'm pretty happy with that, and 10W is worth it for the improvement MadVR + LAV brings.
Idle power consumption is a bit higher than I expected, but I do have five hard drives and two optical drives in there.

[Mercury_22]

Initial power consumption with LAV CUVID + MadVR: 180W
LAV Video Decoder + MadVR: 130W
LAV Video Decoder + MadVR + Maximum Windows & BIOS Power Saving Options Enabled: 110W
EVR-CP + MPC-HC DXVA: 100W
Idle: 90W

I'm pretty happy with that, and 10W is worth it for the improvement MadVR + LAV brings.
Idle power consumption is a bit higher than I expected, but I do have five hard drives and two optical drives in there.

As I was expected :)
But with an ( HTPC ) video card (like mine :p) the gain (in %) I'll bet it's much bigger

P.S. It'll be more interesting (more accurate) a comparison using EVR for all

[nevcairiel]

The difference will be smaller if your video card is actually a low-powered card specifically for HTPC dutys.
Maybe its already running on a certain level just with madVR so it pushes itself into high-performance mode.

Such a high difference is quite natural when your GPU is totally overpowered for video playback. The performance mode eats more power when its clocked higher. ;)

[mindbomb]

I have 2 inter-related questions about lav video:
by default, i assume hardware deinterlacing is used with evr cp since nv12 is used?
also, the high quality conversion option, that doesn't apply to outputting blurays to nv12, right?

[nevcairiel]

by default, i assume hardware deinterlacing is used with evr cp since nv12 is used?

It should work with both NV12 or YV12, but yes.


also, the high quality conversion option, that doesn't apply to outputting blurays to nv12, right?

It mostly only affects RGB conversions.

[pirlouy]

You mean LAV CUVID uses more power than LAV CPU Video decoder ??? I though one reason of CUVID was the fact it uses a dedicaced GPU processor which save ressources ??!!!!

Thanks for the new Video decoder. I'm doing tests right now. I notice MPEG1 videos are not decoded by LAV Video decoder if I disable MPEG1 support in ffdshow. It's the Windows default one which is used. Is it intended (lower merit) ? Does the MS one better then the ffmpeg one ?
Also, it does not decode MP1 audio (whereas ffdshow do). Intended ?

[CruNcher]

The difference will be smaller if your video card is actually a low-powered card specifically for HTPC dutys.
Maybe its already running on a certain level just with madVR so it pushes itself into high-performance mode.

Such a high difference is quite natural when your GPU is totally overpowered for video playback. The performance mode eats more power when its clocked higher. ;)

Btw nev did you compared (Bitstream support, eventual Software Bugs,Decoder Bugs and limits) Nvidias VP4 stability vs Intels yet also Deinterlacing Performance and Quality ?
We know that Performance through the shorter Paths is much better now but what about the SDK quality compared to Nvidias Ecosystem NVcuvid (heavily influenced from the get go by Donald Graft and Doom9),Nvcuvenc vs Intel MediaSDK 3 :) ?
Most reviews also not really go into details here and some HQV tests are quiet subjective after all and retests are virtually never done based on a new SDK release (UVD3 being the best example which suffered especially from this being so problematic in the beginning in bitstream support terms) :)

[nevcairiel]

If you use EVR-CP or something like that, Intels decoder is fine, deinterlacing quality is similar to the others. But the GPU itself is too slow for madVR.
The next generation might make it a good HTPC chip, if the GPU gets some more shader power, and the 24p bug is fixed.