dsp2dshow

[milan]

I've developed small DirectShow audio filter which can use Winamp 2 DSP plugins to process sound in DirectShow graphs. This means, you can use almost any Winamp 2 DSP plugin (for example DFX) for enhancing audio in almost every movie player for Windows.
It is still alpha software and surely has many bugs, but at least for me it works. I named it dsp2dshow (not very good name, but better than none) and you can download it from http://sourceforge.net/project/showfiles.php?group_id=53761&release_id=113671 . Sorry, no documentation yet.
Maybe same filter like this exists already. If yes, let me know and I will abandon this project.
I've tried to use dsp2dshow together with MuchFX 2 (http://www.ressl.com.ar/muchfx/) and they've worked perfectly together.

[DSPguru]

sounds great!

[Smiff]

cool, it works. Seems i have to use MuchFX though, without it the plugin config dialogs dont seem to open properly. Also some DSP plugins crash ZoomPlayer, not sure why.

Anyway very interesting, keep it up, thanks.

[Defiler]

Wild.

[MaTTeR]

Wow! DFX used on my movies :-) Too sweet. I'll have to play with it this coming weekend. Thx Milan.

[ookzDVD]

@milan,

nice filter, even BS-player could do that without your filter,
but I think now WMP could do it ;)

[MaTTeR]

True but then you always have to deal with all the crazy issues BSP has with DirectShow.

[milan]

I didn't know about that BSplayer feature. I'm not using it.
Filters configuration dialogs aren't working yet, because they need parent window with message loop (at least I think) and dsp2dshow doesn't provide one for now.

@Smiff
Please which plugins are crashing? I would like to test them.

[Smiff]

things like Ozone and DFX, and normalisers seem fine, but fancier things like Chronotron and Dolby surround encoders upset it... probably not your fault at all :)

[milan]

OK, I will download those filters (it they are freely available) and will test them.
For now filter must not change number of samples. This is current limitation of dsp2dshow.

[kauffmbe]

Milan,

Great concept for audio processing. This line of thought got me thinking... if the Winamp DSP plugins could be useful for movies, why not the much bigger world of pro-audio directx plugins. Right now many of these can be used by loading them in graphedit. There are so many parametric EQs and effects processios (spatilizers, compressors,, etc...) that could easily be used to process movie sound and many of these are even available free. In particular, what I would love to have is a delay filter for my rear channels since I run my 5.1 soundcard directly through an amp to the speakers. There are so many delay plugins out there, but I haven't found one that works with the multichannel output of an AC3 decoder filter and just delays the rears. This should be fairly easy to program, but I hhave no skills:). Anyway, has anyone else tried to use directx plugins for their movies?

[leeperry]

sorry for bouncing such an old thread :)

but I'm looking for a simple solution to use a winamp2 plugin in MPC HC.

I've tried the ffdshow audio filter, but after some time(between 20 to 50 minutes) it gives audio jitter in MPC HC, so I'm looking for a more viable solution.

I can't get this dsp2dshow working on XP SP2, all the options are empty..I can't select anything.

I've installed muchfx2, copied it in the winamp plugin dir as well as the dsp2dshow dir...

or if anyone knows another filter that can use DSP winamp plugins in dshow ?!

:thanks:

[leeperry]

:cool:

[Kurtnoise]

http://www.dsp-worx.de/?n=4

[leeperry]

cool thanks, lemme try!

edit : argh, doesn't work with OzoneMP :(

[leeperry]

anyone ?

[sixthofmay]

anyone ?
I originally posted the solution to getting OzoneMP working with MPC on avsforum around 2006. I couldn't find it on their site anymore but fortunately had saved the webpage because I just used the post to help set this up on my newer machine, now with Media Player Classic Home Cinema. This time I'm having better success with MuchFX v1.0111.1 and the old issues I note at the bottom seem to be gone. I have WMP11 installed too (which wasn't out yet at the time of my original post). Note my OzoneMP I bought in Jan 2006, so can't say if this works with whatever version is on their site now. Also note for movies I have yet to get a proper 5.1 or 7.1 channel setup together and use AC3Filter to downmix to 2 channel stereo. As OzoneMP is for 2 channels only, I don't know what it might do feeding it a 5.1 channel signal. I'm using ffdshow too, and its audio decoder is working ok with it. I'm running Windows XP Pro SP3.

This is updated and edited from the original post, now for MPC-HC (I was using the original MPC project back then):

Summary of how I got iZotope OzoneMP to work with Media Player Classic Home Cinema. By default it will work with Winamp 2, 3, and 5, and Windows Media Player 9 and higher, but not MPC-HC:

You'll need:
Media Player Classic Home Cinema.

Winamp. I use v2.91 (http://www.oldversion.com/program.php?n=winamp), as the latest is kind of bloated and unstable on my system. It only needs to be installed to help with the installation of the plugins. You don't have to actually have any file associations set to it, if you use another audio player like foobar2000 or whatever. If you use a newer version of Winamp, post if this tweak works or not.

Windows Media Player 9 or higher. Ozone says it requires it.

iZotope OzoneMP (http://www.izotope.com/products/audio/media/ozone.html), full version (I didn't try it with the demo).

MuchFX2 v1.0111.1 (http://www.winamp.com/plugin/muchfx2/775)
Apparently this is the latest version which seems to work fine and cured the issues I note at the bottom. The installer says 0.1101 but the readme says v1.0111.1.

Dsp2dshow v20020930 (http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/ffdshow/dsp2dshow-20020930.exe?download). In case the link dies, filename to search for is dsp2dshow-20020930.exe. The project seems to be dead as I couldn't find it directly, only by a post that had a link to Sourceforge which is still mirroring it.

While in theory, you don't need MuchFX2, MPC-HC was unable to directly run Ozone for me (it would try but MPC-HC and Ozone would freeze). MuchFX2 acts as the glue between Ozone and Dsp2dshow and MPC-HC. Dsp2dshow allows MPC-HC to see Ozone and MuchFX2. If you're really slick with manually registering components and hacking installers, you may not need Winamp, but cause I'm dumb, and still like Winamp, it's easier to just let the plugins install automatically.

Run the installers for everything, doing the players first of course (if you didn't already have them installed). I had Ozone install to just Winamp and Windows media player. I'd recommend testing Ozone in Winamp or Windows Media Player first, because that's when it'll ask you to enter your license info, and you can confirm that it's working.

Start up MPC-HC with no video playing. Go to View -> Options -> External Filters -> click Add Filter. Scroll over and click on Winamp DSP to Directshow. Click Ok, then Ok again. Close MPC-HC, and now click on a video file you have associated with MPC-HC. Once it's playing click on Play -> Filters -> Winamp DSP to Directshow. Select MuchFX2. Click Ok. The MuchFX2 window should now be on your desktop somewhere (the first run, it's sometimes off to the bottom, barely visible, and if your taskbar is more than one level, you may have to temporarily shrink it to one level, close MPC-HC, and restart it, move the MuchFX2 window and then set your taskbar back to multiple levels). On the MuchFX window, click the "+" button and select iZotope Ozone. Click Ok, and check the enable checkbox in the list. If you don't see the Ozone window, it'll be in your task tray, and clicking it there will bring the window up.

Main 2010 additions:
I searched again for the sourceforge project page for dsp2dshow, and the main hit is for the ffdshow project page, but no source for dsp2dshow, yet the link above still works. Heh.

Originally I had to use MuchFX2 v0.9901, as the v0.9902 didn't work with OzoneMP. The v1.0111.1 (or v0.9901) doesn't seem to be on sourceforge, but here's the v0.9902 if you're curious:
http://sourceforge.net/projects/muchfx/files/

With v0.9901, I found that sometimes MPC would shutdown its window, but still be running in the tasklist. I would have to kill it from task manager or else the next MPC instance would hang. The solution was to press stop before closing MPC. I also noticed that MuchFX2 would sometimes not close, and had to be killed from the task manager. The v1.0111.1 MuchFX2 seems to have cured all that (I did try the v0.9901 on the newer box and still had the issues).

[markanini]

Let me offer a hot tip for analogue tape sources, Tape restore live:
http://www.hansvanzutphen.com/tape_restore_live/

It uses an empirical approach to enhance audio from analogue tape sources in regard to azimuth and bias. it tightens bass and makes treble clearer without any adverse side effects IME. No smiley-face EQ prestets or volume maximizers here, so if that's your thing look elsewhere. You can think of it as a software fix for hardware problems during tape transfer which are to unvoidable with analogue mediums.