Blue_MiSfit
26th February 2011, 20:45
Hey folks,
A quick warning - this is a fairly long post. Skip to the TL;DR if you don't care about details
In my company, we have to perform Quality Control (QC) on a whole lot of video. Some of this is automatic (pure software), but some of it must be human powered, mainly to verify so-called "Heat Level" ratings on adult content, along with a basic 3 point audio/video sync check, and a quick verification that the file is not truncated or otherwise obviously incorrect.
The important thing here is that QC Operators DO NOT have to watch the media in real-time. Currently (using MPC-HC), we can comfortably play the video at 2x speed, which comes out to 60 frames per second, since this is all 29.97 fps content.
2x just isn't fast enough, however. So, I've begun searching for a player that can meet our requirements. I'll lay those out briefly
1) The player must support splitting an MPEG Transport Stream, and decoding SD MPEG-2 and H.264 (ranging from 352x480 to 528x480). It must also decode AC3 audio.
2) The player must have a timecode display for the aforementioned formats. After all, there's not much point in finding a flaw in a video if you can't communicate the location of said flaw! I don't require true SMPTE NTSC drop-frame timecode display, in fact HH:MM:SS is perfectly acceptable. Furthermore, it doesn't even need to be perfectly accurate (if at all) during high speed playback. It does, however, need to be reasonably accurate (within a second or so) if playback speed is reduced back down to 1x.
3) The player must be able to play video extremely quickly. The goal is 12x realtime, or ~360fps. I'm totally okay with dropped frames, and even losing audio at these speeds. Again, the emphasis is on QUANTITY, and not quality - quite the opposite from most open source projects like MPC-HC!
4) Optional, but wonderful to have would be full support for decoding closed caption data stored in MPEG-2 User Data per SCTE-20 / CableLabs, or in H.264 SEI messages, per ATSC A/72. These definitely don't need to be accurate or even present in high speed playback. Being able to check for the presence and rough sync of closed captions during ~1x playback speeds would be quite nice.
*whew, that was exhaustive, huh?
BTW, the QC PC is a 3.33 GHz Core 2 Duo with a Radeon 4000 series GPU, running Windows XP. I'm open to any version of Windows, or even Linux, if a proper player was ready and waiting!
Here's the story with the usual suspects:
1) VLC
Oh my goodness, VLC is almost completely perfect. It supports playback up to 32x realtime and beyond, though things get dicey above ~12x. Naturally, given my relatively simple MPEG-TS with H.264 or MPEG-2 requirements, it decodes all these files without a hitch. Heck, thanks to recent developments it even decodes and renders closed caption data quite nicely for both formats!
UNFORTUNATELY, its timecode display for MPEG-TS files simply shows no data. I'm not sure why, but I did check on #videolan, and was told this is expected behavior. I suppose we could pay someone to patch in support for this.
2) MPC-HC
Timecode does work here, so that's good news. It also supports my media formats. MPC-HC will play back at 2x RT quite gracefully, but won't even attempt to go higher. It also doesn't meet my "soft" requirement for CC decode without further investigating the possibility of using special, third party DirectShow filters. This is actually the current solution, since it's quite reliable with 2x RT.
3) PotPlayer
The story here is basically the same as MPC-HC, except the user interface allows you to at least attempt playback at up to 12x. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to actually play at much faster than 2x, even if I as for 12x. I'm not as familiar with Pot Player as I am with MPC-HC, so there may be more tweaking I can do to improve this.
4) ???
This is where you come in, fellow doom9ers! Has anyone ever dealt with the desire / requirement to play video OMGFAST?
Apparently some old version of Nero Showtime used to actually handle 12x just fine on the operator's old computer. Every version I've tried doesn't seem to have much luck. Naturally, he's a little sad at having to watch so much mind numbingly repetitive content at 2x.
I welcome any and all suggestions, including payware. If it comes to it, we could probably sponsor a VLC developer to make timecode display with MPEG-TS files.
TL;DR, looking for a software player that can play back SD MPEG-2 and H.264 at very high speeds, with a working timecode display. Closed caption display would be nice!
Anyway, thanks for your time!
-Derek
A quick warning - this is a fairly long post. Skip to the TL;DR if you don't care about details
In my company, we have to perform Quality Control (QC) on a whole lot of video. Some of this is automatic (pure software), but some of it must be human powered, mainly to verify so-called "Heat Level" ratings on adult content, along with a basic 3 point audio/video sync check, and a quick verification that the file is not truncated or otherwise obviously incorrect.
The important thing here is that QC Operators DO NOT have to watch the media in real-time. Currently (using MPC-HC), we can comfortably play the video at 2x speed, which comes out to 60 frames per second, since this is all 29.97 fps content.
2x just isn't fast enough, however. So, I've begun searching for a player that can meet our requirements. I'll lay those out briefly
1) The player must support splitting an MPEG Transport Stream, and decoding SD MPEG-2 and H.264 (ranging from 352x480 to 528x480). It must also decode AC3 audio.
2) The player must have a timecode display for the aforementioned formats. After all, there's not much point in finding a flaw in a video if you can't communicate the location of said flaw! I don't require true SMPTE NTSC drop-frame timecode display, in fact HH:MM:SS is perfectly acceptable. Furthermore, it doesn't even need to be perfectly accurate (if at all) during high speed playback. It does, however, need to be reasonably accurate (within a second or so) if playback speed is reduced back down to 1x.
3) The player must be able to play video extremely quickly. The goal is 12x realtime, or ~360fps. I'm totally okay with dropped frames, and even losing audio at these speeds. Again, the emphasis is on QUANTITY, and not quality - quite the opposite from most open source projects like MPC-HC!
4) Optional, but wonderful to have would be full support for decoding closed caption data stored in MPEG-2 User Data per SCTE-20 / CableLabs, or in H.264 SEI messages, per ATSC A/72. These definitely don't need to be accurate or even present in high speed playback. Being able to check for the presence and rough sync of closed captions during ~1x playback speeds would be quite nice.
*whew, that was exhaustive, huh?
BTW, the QC PC is a 3.33 GHz Core 2 Duo with a Radeon 4000 series GPU, running Windows XP. I'm open to any version of Windows, or even Linux, if a proper player was ready and waiting!
Here's the story with the usual suspects:
1) VLC
Oh my goodness, VLC is almost completely perfect. It supports playback up to 32x realtime and beyond, though things get dicey above ~12x. Naturally, given my relatively simple MPEG-TS with H.264 or MPEG-2 requirements, it decodes all these files without a hitch. Heck, thanks to recent developments it even decodes and renders closed caption data quite nicely for both formats!
UNFORTUNATELY, its timecode display for MPEG-TS files simply shows no data. I'm not sure why, but I did check on #videolan, and was told this is expected behavior. I suppose we could pay someone to patch in support for this.
2) MPC-HC
Timecode does work here, so that's good news. It also supports my media formats. MPC-HC will play back at 2x RT quite gracefully, but won't even attempt to go higher. It also doesn't meet my "soft" requirement for CC decode without further investigating the possibility of using special, third party DirectShow filters. This is actually the current solution, since it's quite reliable with 2x RT.
3) PotPlayer
The story here is basically the same as MPC-HC, except the user interface allows you to at least attempt playback at up to 12x. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem to actually play at much faster than 2x, even if I as for 12x. I'm not as familiar with Pot Player as I am with MPC-HC, so there may be more tweaking I can do to improve this.
4) ???
This is where you come in, fellow doom9ers! Has anyone ever dealt with the desire / requirement to play video OMGFAST?
Apparently some old version of Nero Showtime used to actually handle 12x just fine on the operator's old computer. Every version I've tried doesn't seem to have much luck. Naturally, he's a little sad at having to watch so much mind numbingly repetitive content at 2x.
I welcome any and all suggestions, including payware. If it comes to it, we could probably sponsor a VLC developer to make timecode display with MPEG-TS files.
TL;DR, looking for a software player that can play back SD MPEG-2 and H.264 at very high speeds, with a working timecode display. Closed caption display would be nice!
Anyway, thanks for your time!
-Derek