dffshow filter

[Caddis]

It's not just you.
I've had the problem too with bsplayer.
This filter does like DivX 5 either does it?
I get a strange transparent vertical bar on the right side with 5.01. I guess that's why it is disabled at install.

[Gazza]

Caddis
I don't use Divx5 but I remember some message regarding the latest version Divx5.01. People reported seeing a bar on the right hand side with this latest version. I think Doom9 may have reported this. Check out the Divx5 forum..

[Uli]

Originally posted by Foxer
16.4.2002..

Is it just me or...

Unfortunately it's not only you...

but anyway, a great filter, especially for 'old' DivX 3 content ;)

greetz, Uli

[milan]

Hi,

I'm ffdshow developer, but the most important code comes from XviD directshow filter, ffmpeg (video decoding) and mplayer (postprocessing).

There was a serious bug in 16.4. version. Now it should be fixed, but if you have any suggestions or bugreports, please let me know.

[omol]

Originally posted by milan
Hi,

I'm ffdshow developer, but the most important code comes from XviD directshow filter, ffmpeg (video decoding) and mplayer (postprocessing).

There was a serious bug in 16.4. version. Now it should be fixed, but if you have any suggestions or bugreports, please let me know.

Not a suggestion but a bug report of your ffvfw here...;) 4 motion vectors per MB with H263P is broken. Also, could you elaborate on what actually it is? And also what actually "High quality" does?

regards,
omol

[Foxer]

@milan

Haven't found any problems with simple(16383) yet :)

[milan]

Originally posted by omol


Not a suggestion but a bug report of your ffvfw here...;) 4 motion vectors per MB with H263P is broken. Also, could you elaborate on what actually it is? And also what actually "High quality" does?

regards,
omol

Yes I knew this, but since ffvfw is only an experiment I didn't care. Libavcodec's encoding routines are improvad constantly so in a few days it may be fixed.
High quality means that compression is better and slower, but is not as good as Xvid's.

[Uli]

The new version (18.4.) works ok for me, the screwing of additional tracks opened in mplayer is gone.
I love this filter ;)

greetz, Uli

[JWillE]

Love the filter!! On the auto presets and the filename
recall button to the left of the preset name box, is
there any way the path could just be deleted and the
filename be used for auto detection. It seem as if all
my paths are too long to use this option.
:(

[Peters]

Originally posted by JWillE
Love the filter!! On the auto presets and the filename
recall button to the left of the preset name box, is
there any way the path could just be deleted and the
filename be used for auto detection. It seem as if all
my paths are too long to use this option.
:(

I don't have this pb with long paths (how long are your's?)

check the entry in regedit

HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\GNU\ffdshow

[JWillE]

I am probabaly just getting ahead of the development of the
auto preset feature as it says clearly on the ffdshow webpage
that this feature will be updated. Anyhow the presets are being
saved in the registry, it just so happened that when I was testing
to see if my settings were "auto loaded" I was using the flip
video setting as an indicator and it seems that this setting isn't
stored successfully (on my machine). In the registry, the "flip"
variable is always zero whether flip is activated on save settings
or not. Also, I was loading the files back and forth without
restarting the player (Zoom Player v2.50, Bsplay wont let me use
the handy >> button next to the preset name box). It seems as if
as of now, I can only rely on the first video played to have the settings autoloaded. Afterwards, those first autoloaded settings
remain until I close the player...

No complaints the just keep up the good work;)

Thanks

[oddball]

It would be nice to have an icon appear in the system tray on playback (Like VobSub and DiVXG400 do) with some of the more common options there to enable/disable. Saves going through the motions to go into the options menu for every movie.

[rui]

I vote in favour of oddball's idea :)
It would in fact simplify matters, in some movies i like to enable noise, others i don't, some movies i like to have more post processing than others, etc...

[avih]

@riu and oddball:

then you should leave wmp6.4 and switch to zoom player or bs player. they both have access to all the filters by right clicking on the movie area. (powerdivx will have this feature as well in the upcomming 4.0 release).

you'll gain many more features, like resizing, changing aspect ratio, seeking the movie while in full screen and many more.

avi.

[BlackSun]

Originally posted by avih
@riu and oddball:

then you should leave wmp6.4 and switch to zoom player or bs player. they both have access to all the filters by right clicking on the movie area. (powerdivx will have this feature as well in the upcomming 4.0 release).

you'll gain many more features, like resizing, changing aspect ratio, seeking the movie while in full screen and many more.

avi.

PowerDivX 4 can do that :)

[rui]

avih, i use bsplayer, but, like you said, you still have to right-click on the picture, then select properties, and only then you have access to the dffshow filter properties.
And since i see my divx(for xvid i still use Nic's ds filter)on the tv's, at a res. of 640, i have some trouble to get to the properties option (it's one of the last options)
With vobsub, one just has to click on the system tray symbol and have access to the subs properties. If dffshow filter could have such an icon in the system tray, one could just click over it, and have access to all the dffshow properties.
Or even better, some kind of hot-key, to avoid to switch off full-screen, to see the system tray ;)

[Neo Neko]

Yes the option to have controlls for it in the system tray would be quite usefull. Easy and at your finger tips. It would also solve the problem that Microsoft screwed things up with WiMP 7 & 8 so you can't access the filter settings from inside or while the movie is playing!


____________________________________________________
PS: Anyone else having problems figuring out BlackSuns new avatar? MaTTer was so far off last night it scarred me! He does that some times. ;)

[morello12]

rui:
If dffshow filter could have such an icon in the system tray, one could just click over it, and have access to all the dffshow properties.
Or even better, some kind of hot-key, to avoid to switch off full-screen, to see the system tray

During the installations there is a choice to allow it to make a shortcut for configuration in your startmenu. Do that. Right click the shortcut, and assign it a shortcut key. Viola! Problems solved :)

[rui]

morello12, thanks for the tip :)

[Gazza]

I downloaded the latest version of ffdshow (ffdshow-20020521.exe) and have found that it will crash either bsplay or the zoomplayer. It crashes in two modes;

With the picture properties box first checked, then attempting to move the gamma correction slider, or

Without the picture properties box first checked, moving the gamma correction slider is fine until the pictures properties box is checked.

Seems to be a conflict between the slider control and the picture properties checkbox.

Gazza

[milan]

There is a bug in gamma correction code. It is fixed in CVS now. Next compile will be availabe today or on monday.

[avih]

@milan:
nice progress on ffdshow, great :)

i thought of a new feature for ffdshow (it's usefull for me at least).

i don't re-encode, i capture once in cbr, and therefore can't use filters to correct the image during re-encoding.

the problem (not ffdshow related): sometimes the chroma (u/v) signal 'bleeds' (usually to the right), prob because under-optimal cables, or other signal related problems (prob the luma and chroma signal use different frequencies, and with non-optimal cabes, it creates this 'offset' on tv/capture). so in the resulting clip, the chroma layer is shifted to the right by few pixels. it's not a problem 'fixing' this in ffdshow, and in a private ffdshow build, i used one of the sliders to control the horizontal chroma displacement, compiled, and it's working nicely to my satisfaction.

can u add this feature to ffdshow so i won't have to re-compile every new version ? ;). i prefere not touching the ffdshow cvs, and it would be much faster for you to do that (just offset the image->u, image->v by +-<slder> ehere slider can be -10..10 for example).

i also have a small problem with ffdshow. no matter what idct i use, i sometimes get those faint green/purple shades (especially on dark scenes, with complex blocks). while the xvid dshow filter shows them correctly.

so can u add the xvid idct to your filter? at least you'll have a 'genuine' module of the xvid decoder.

cheers for the great work
avi.

[milan]

Chroma displacement will be added soon, it shouldn't be a problem. Problem will be the placement of another two sliders :)

I will add xvid IDCT routine, hope it will help. It would be good if there would be one which would be good for every codec, but I'm not sure if this is possible.

P.S.

Right now I've got an idea how to organize configuration dialog: the tree with categorized filters on the left and rest of dialog filled with configuration page with short help about selected filter at the bottom. This layout is becoming something like standard (see Mozilla, whole KDE,...) so why not use it for ffdshow too?

[kilg0r3]

great idea!
i have come to love this kind of layout in the preferences dialogs of opera and textpad.

[kilg0r3]

-

[kxy]

RadicalEd reported a bug(he call it a cool discovery) a while ago, I confirmed that. That was back in the 22nd May 2002 10:18.

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=24542&pagenumber=2

[-h]

Just a note on the IDCT precision - the MPEG4 spec is supposed to force every block to be encoded as intra at least every 132 frames (despite MoMuSys not doing it). I'm guessing the green/purple blocks appear after 4 or 5 seconds from an I-frame?

I doubt this has been addressed in XviD yet, so I'll have a look at it. I think it was on the ffmpeg mailing list a while back, so it might have been addressed in it.

-h

[avih]

-h, milan.

the green/purple color appears (VERY very faint) about 2 sec (might be less, but it's very hard to tell) after a key frame, and increases. then clears at the next keyframe. it reminds me of the old divx decoder with mpeg quant bug, but fainter.

it only shows with ffdshow (with any idct option), and not with vdub or xvid dshow filter or divx(4) dshow filter after fourcc change. it's mostly noticable on dark static scenes with relatively high complexity (grid/forest/fence/fabric texture/etc). it doesn't look like in bock or mb boundry, but rather 'floating' over a larger area.

clips: 416x288, cbr capture (bitrate 650-950 kbps), pal, search precision 6 (with all latest builds, didn't test ffdshow with old encodings)

i don't know enough about the decoding process to determine whether it's an idct issue or other decoding issue though.

cheers
avi.

ps.
is there a way i can capture dshow output image so i can post an example?

[-h]

the green/purple color appears (VERY very faint) about 2 sec (might be less, but it's very hard to tell) after a key frame, and increases. then clears at the next keyframe. it reminds me of the old divx decoder with mpeg quant bug, but fainter.

That feels pretty quick for an IDCT issue, perhaps something else is at fault? I'm not sure.

is there a way i can capture dshow output image so i can post an example?

You can set up avisynth to use the dshow filter for decompression instead of going through vfw with "DirectShowSource("foo.avi")". Be warned that excessive seeking in vdub has a habit of crashing when using dshow via avisynth.

-h

[avih]

You can set up avisynth to use the dshow filter for decompression instead of going through vfw with "DirectShowSource("foo.avi")". Be warned that excessive seeking in vdub has a habit of crashing when using dshow via avisynth.
of course i can ;) thx.

i've made a page that demonstrates the ffdshow green/purple bug when decoding xvid clip.
it shows a frame from 3 locations: frame 250 (keyframe), 300 and 549. using xvid vfw decoder, xvid nic's dshow filter and ffdshow ref-idct. the page has all the info regarding the encoding method and image capture method.

interesting note: the xvid dshow decoder seems to delay the clip by 2 frames, so i had to select frames 252, 302 and 551. the ffdshow seems to delay the clip by 1 frame. but this might also be an vdub-avs problem (still, there's a 1 frame difference between ffdshow and xvid dshow).

check it out at http://www.geocities.com/avihpit/ffdshow-xvid-bug/index.html
the whole page is about 200K with all 9 images.

hope it helps
avi

[milan]

I encountered similar bug too when watching one scene from AI. Selecting normal idct helped.
Because of increasing number of messages reporting bad image quality I'm thinking about solutions:

1. wait until libavcodec would give good results for all movies and then make new ffdshow release
2. implement XVID IDCT into ffdshow
3. add ability to use XviD decoding routines

XVID IDCT is implemented in ffdshow CVS (you can checkout it from http://sf.net/projects/ffdshow ). This should help for XVID movies, but I'm not sure if it would be good for DIV3 - needs testing.
Yesterday I've tried to compile xvidcore with stripping encoding routines. Size of resulting dll was < 150KB which is acceptable and I'm sure Xvid developers would know better which routines to strip to create smallest possible decoding only XVID dll. I think it would be quite easy to add this to ffdshow with an option to choose "xviddecore" or libavcodec on decoding startup.
Of course best solution for me would be correct libavcodec, but in the meantime I could try to add "xviddecore" library

P.S. for some time libavcodec contains simple motion vector visualization. Now ffdshow CVS version can use this.

[avih]

hi milan.
since afaik, the complilation in not streight forward, can u compile it and release an alpha or similar title?

(or is it simple?? is msvc enough??)

thanx
avi.

[milan]

You need Cygwin/Mingw and nasm too and have to run 2 makefiles and then compile msvc project.
I think I should write some short compilation instructions.

Today I have to finish automatic preset loading and offset filter. I hope it will be possible to release new compile tomorrow.

[avih]

great to hear, and thanx for your commitment to ffdshow.

however, i find cygwin quite annoying (i always have hard times configuring it correctly), i can live with mingw though ;)

thx again
avi.

[milan]

I've just released new ffdshow compile on SF.NET. It still may contains some bugs, so please test it and send me bugreports (and suggestions too).
For now I don't want to add new features. I will focus on testing and documentation writing.

[mwillberg]

Wow. For some reason I haven't remembered to check for new versions of this filter since the 19.4-release. Great new interface, and loads of new features that sound interesting. Can't wait to get home and play around with it.

Great work!

[avih]

milan, it's working great, and the features are really nice and usefull.
unfortunately, i deleted the test clip that i was talking about with the green/purple bug. so i can't test the same one with xvid idct. it is however my defaulty idct now, and i'll find some clips that show buggy with the reference idct, and compare them to the xvid one.

cheers for the great work.
avi

ps
did i ask about the yuy2 input?? i can't remember that ;)

[oddball]

I love the new crop and ratio functions! :)

[Vanos_b]

A very nice tool indeed, but I would have 2 remarks: 1. the best quality I can get is with the reference IDCT but it's extremely slow (on my Duron/900 I can't watch a movie 640/352 even with all the other options turned off). Any chance to improve the speed? 2. The noise effect introduced by ffdshow it's a very good ideea, but somehow I find the algorithm in DivX 5.02 better as in ffdshow there is sort of flickering with both algorithms; but I guess you can't know how it's done to implement it too so this was just an ideea. BTW the speed for DIVX 5 if just great, I mean for the rips done with Q-pel where there's no way I can get 25fps with postprocessing even at 2 in DivX Decoder but it's just fine with ffdshow even with max postprocessing+noise. Great work!
Regards.

[Shayne]

This filter does not seem to work so great on my machine.

Athlon
Matrox g400 max dual head

The ffdshow19.4.2002 build would produce big green macro blocks and lock up

The ffdshow-20020606 build does nothing it takes a long time to start playing then black screen with the timer counting.

This is tested with xvid and divx3 the xvids works fine with Nics ds filter

[Didée]

Shayne: NoNoNo,

I´m sitting here at my old comp, Athlon (Classic 700) with Matrox G400MAX DualHead, running WinXP Pro.

ffdshow works great and without any problems.
All builds did so.

There must be something screwed up in your system. Such can happen quite easily, with myriads of codec/filter/etc installations/deinstallations all the time ...

[Uli]

Your new filter works great :)
Even the subtitle function is working, but the subtitles have a constant delay of about 19 seconds. I have .srt subtitles and they are recognized fine, only they are 19 seconds behind. But i cant input negative delay to compensate. All other functions are working great ( P III 1 GHz, 256MB RAM, Notebook ). I will test further on my *real* machine.

greetz, Uli

[slavickas]

worx great just one note
why motion vectors are postprocessed?shouldn't it be on final stage?

[ARDA]

@Shayne

I have a Matrox 550 and the ffdshow filter works great. But sometimes ago,
I had a similar problem and the cause was; in the beginning if I do not remember wrong, the ffdshow did not include and installer and I had made it manually by copying the ax and dlls in my system32,etc. Look for old ffdshow.ax,libavcodec.dll and llibposproc.dll in your system; delete them. Reinstall and told us if that could help you.

Arda

[milan]

@avih
You asked for separate postprocessing filter - now it's done with just one filter :)

@Vanos_b
Both noise algorithms in ffdshow are very simple - just variations or random noise. If anyone has idea how to do this better (to realy emulate film noise) let me now. I will try to implement this.

@Uli
Subtitles aren't finished. Subtitles parser is taken from mplayer and I haven't test it much. Subtitles delay and fps changing will be implemented.

@slavickas
For now motion vectors are drawn by libavcodec during decoding. They should be exported and drawn by ffdshow. I will try to modify libavcodec to do this.

[Rick83]

I love your work - ffdshow is really good! It´s small and it´s fast - you can´t really say that about the DivX 5.x decoder-package...

However, I´d like to say that I´d keep on optimizing the code so that people with old pc´s can also watch some movies... You´ve done great work when I look how much cpu-power your decoder needs, but maybe you can make this even better?
Not everyone has got a cpu with 1 ghz or more... You know, my fan is controlled by the motherboard, and if the usage of my cpu is high, this fan gets faster - and louder. ;-(

But I don´t want to complain about something, just my "2 cents". ;-)

Ciao, Rick

[milan]

libavcodec used for decoding isn't my work. It is realy fast and its developers are working on making it even faster.
Postprocessing filter (deblocking, deringing, level fix) and resizing code was developed by Michael Niedermayer. I think it is very fast.
Colorspace conversion routines are taken from XviD project and they propably could be replaced with faster ones.
Other postprocessing filters are created (or at least implemented) by me. Many of them are MMX optimized, but since this was first time I used MMX instructions they aren't optimal. I could try to do this better, or I could ask someone more skilled in MMX optimization to help (any volunteers?).
If ffdshow with all postprocessing filter disabled is still slow for you, you can wait for new libavcodec or you try to install mingw and compile libavcodec with optimization options targeted to your CPU. I will write compilation instructions today or tomorrow, watch ffdshow SourceForge page.

P.S.
DIVX 5.0.2 can use hardware overlay. I'm trying to use it too, because this may increase speed too.

[raistlin2k]

Pictures in Bram Stoker's Dracula coded in DivX 5.02 look bad, a lot of picture distortion. Unfortunately, I can't get a picture of it at the moment, I'll post it later. Anybody aware of this problem? Pixels are moving around, for example a door, moves like it is a chewing gum?!?

Raist

[athos]

milan> i tried ffdshow and i love it! i use it instead of all divx's and xvid now, and i recommend it to my friends. I have a fast enough CPU for decoding using slower codecs, and i dont use much postprocessing (just deringing), but the more efficient code makes seeking a lot faster. also i like the "divx3"-style searching (blank until frame found) better than divx4/5 (fast-forward video).

now, i have a question: could you put up a (small) description of the different iDCT algorithms? i have read the readme, and i understand the default ("simple") is the fastest and "accurate enough", while reference produces the best quality, but what about the other ones (for example there is another "simple" - what's the difference?).

keep up the good work!

[Rasi]

dont know if this has been posted, otherwise ignore it...

there seems to be a bug at least in divx3 playback.. it occours everytime i drag & drop a new clip, while playing one already... the picture looks like being painted then.. only way to get 2 clips working is restarting the player.. if i uncheck divx3 decoding in filter everything is fine tho...