What's the current status on MSS2 decoding support?

[x2305andy2305x]

Hi

I ran across a MSS2 encoded file that i was trying to transcode to x264. FFMPEG can't make anything of it:
"could not find codec parameters"
I googled the issue a bit, apparently at some point there was support in mplayer for decoding MSS2, probably could have been extended from ffmpeg, but probably dropped along the way (replaced by WMV 7 and/or 8 maybe?) so at least all the (more current) versions of FFMPEG i tried to transcode with failed with the same message.

VLC player also does not support it and has the support for this codec filed under Features paradize section, which most probably means that it won't be happenning too soon.

Does anyone know the status on supporting this codec? Or if there is a way currently to make ffmpeg speak MSS2 decoding?

[nm]

32-bit MPlayer should be able to decode MSS2 with Microsofts binary codec, wmsdmod.dll. Apparently nobody has still bothered to reverse-engineer it, so there's no support in FFmpeg/libav.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

According to the MPlayer Codec Status Table (http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/codecs-status.html), MSS2 is "Windows Media Screen Codec 2" and it's supported in MPlayer not via FFmpeg (libavcodec) but via "wmsdmod.dll" (which is a proprietary Microsoft DLL). x264 uses FFM2 (FFmpegSource2) input, it does not use any proprietary third-party DLL's for decoding...

(Nonetheless you may be able to dump your MSS2 video with MPlayer to a raw YUV file. Or even better: Pipe it into x264 directly from MPlayer)

[x2305andy2305x]

So one way would be to transcode with 32 bit mencoder?

[nm]

So one way would be to transcode with 32 bit mencoder?

Yes. Or pipe from MPlayer/MEncoder to x264 CLI as LoRd_MuldeR suggested.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

...or use x264 with Avisynth input and DirectShowSource()/DSS2().

[x2305andy2305x]

I forgot to mention that i'm running on 64 bit CentOS Linux. From what i know (please correct me if i'm wrong), dlls and avisynth are for windows FFMPEG installations.

Do i still have an option?

[nm]

I forgot to mention that i'm running on 64 bit CentOS Linux. From what i know (please correct me if i'm wrong), dlls and avisynth are for windows FFMPEG installations.

It might be possible to get DirectShowSource running in Wine, but I doubt it. AviSynth works pretty well, but Wine's DirectShow support hasn't seen that much development, AFAIK.

So, your options are MPlayer/MEncoder or an actual Windows installation (in a virtual machine, for example).

[x2305andy2305x]

I see... no use going through all that trouble. Thank you guys very much for your responses and the timely fashion in which they came.