Matroska playback

[kastro68]

Hi,

you'll have to excuse my ignorance for this question.
I was just wondering what I need to install to be able to playback a mastroska file. And a place to download it would also be nice.

I ran a search for "matroska DSF" and "matroska playback" and no results

[robUx4]

Hello,

We have just released a new version of the Matroska DSF today that you can download from http://www.matroska.org/announce.html

(version 0.4.0)

[bond]

hm the .bat doesnt really works good...

if you rename the install.bat into install.txt and open it you will see:

regsvr32 mkxds.dllrename this line with the paths of your system! for example:

C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\regsvr32.exe "C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM\mkxds.dll"of course you can put your "mkxds.dll" anywhere you want on your system...

save the .txt and rename it back to install.bat and run it!

have fun with matroska!

[robUx4]

Yes, you have to run the .bat from the location the .dll is installed.

[Sirber]

The new version is working well, the seeking works.

Also, MKV is smaller than an AVI :). 800ko for a ~230 Mo AVI.

[unmei]

wouldn't it be a bit simpler to just run regsvr32 by yourself ;)
(esp. if you have Xp's "open command window here")

[Animaniac]

A couple things:

At high bitrates/resolution, there still seems to be a stuttering problem. Bitrate ~3000 KBps, Resolution 1000x540 (It's not a system spec. issue, since it plays well in AVI and OGM.)

In files with dual audio streams and subtitles, seeking seems to be hit-or-miss. Usually, it sits there and you need to seek to a different spot again and again, and eventually it seeks correctly. Secondly, all audio streams are played at the same time. DVobSub (auto-loading) doesn't seem to jump in the filter graph.

These seem to be minor problems since it's a huge functional improvement over the last version. All basic functionality seems to be solid, just the fancy stuff remains. Unbelievable progress! The filter also is working correctly to generate thumbnails in Windows XP given the correct registry keys. Great work. Thanks. ^_^

[BlackSun]

Originally posted by Animaniac
A couple things:

At high bitrates/resolution, there still seems to be a stuttering problem. Bitrate ~3000 KBps, Resolution 1000x540 (It's not a system spec. issue, since it plays well in AVI and OGM.)



Can you tell me what was the audio codec/bitrate/frequency ? thx

[Animaniac]

Originally posted by BlackSun
Can you tell me what was the audio codec/bitrate/frequency ? thx

Vorbis/~128 KBps/44100 Hz

[Lefungus]

I've played a little with matroska today and noticed a few things with the latest directshow filter (iris release or 0.4 i think) and virtualdub mod posted at matroska.org:

-When i just have the video alone, it's ok, but there're still glitches when i seek in time. I've used a clip encoded in xvid. By glitches i mean blocks and artifacts, that appear for a few seconds and then it works good

-When i mux Ogg Vorbis with the video, the playback become jerky. Not always. It's sometimes very noticeable, sometimes not. It's not because i have not enough cpu power (2.4GHz inside)

Anyway, i'll use matroska now ! Keep up the good work :) !

[BlackSun]

Originally posted by Lefungus

-When i just have the video alone, it's ok, but there're still glitches when i seek in time. I've used a clip encoded in xvid. By glitches i mean blocks and artifacts, that appear for a few seconds and then it works good

That's because it doesn't seek to a KF yet. If I can quote robux4: "let's keep some room for improvements during the next week" :D


edit: I'm tired I'm leaving useless vB codes

[ssjkakaroto]

this new filter is a lot better than the previous, thx a lot m8s :)

[Ramirez]

Something strange is going on here,I thought Christian said that WMV9 and Vorbis audio isn’t working as a moment in mkv container, however I just muxed WMV9 with Vorbis audio a few minutes ago and its plays just fine, none a single problem.

Winxp-sp1
DShow 0.4.0

[robUx4]

Originally posted by Ramirez
Something strange is going on here,I thought Christian said that WMV9 and Vorbis audio isn�t working as a moment in mkv container, however I just muxed WMV9 with Vorbis audio a few minutes ago and its plays just fine, none a single problem.

Yes, old Chris has problems to keep up with the progress recently. We like to support unexpected things ;)

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by robUx4 Yes, old Chris has problems to keep up with the progress recently. We like to support unexpected things ;)

:p

You know i cant follow all the talking on the channel as i do usually for the time being .. but you really could have told me you fixed WMV9 playback :D .

Where was the problem ? VdubMod ( i dont think so ) or the parser filter ?

[robUx4]

Originally posted by ChristianHJW
You know i cant follow all the talking on the channel as i do usually for the time being .. but you really could have told me you fixed WMV9 playback :D .

Yes, but it's hard to tell you when you're not there ;)
I know you have more important things to deal with, so it's OK. Even if you're not there, you are subliminally there :rolleyes:

Originally posted by ChristianHJW
Where was the problem ? VdubMod ( i dont think so ) or the parser filter ?

In the filter, it was fixed maybe a week ago (very very old considering the speed we progressed).

[Demi-god]

With any given video and (single)audio stream Matroska(0.4.0) seems to work quite nicely but when I tried using Windows Media Player 9 with it I hit a couple serious problems:
- divx 3.11 video does not play at all and audio stutters(WMP plays the file as an audio only file), divx5 is fine and zoomplayer plays this file without any problems
- seeking does not work at all, maybe due to a missing feature that WMP uses? The slider won't move when I try dragging it, and when I release the left mouse button the video rewinds to the beginning!
Some may argue that one does not need to use WMP, but hell, OGM works just fine with WMP so Matroska should too, eventually.

Hm, I just tried muxing a divx5/ac3 and divx3/ac3 files into mkv, works like a charm, even in WMP with seeking and stuff. But the divx4/mp3 file did not seek in WMP and divx3/mp3 didn't play video in WMP.

[ChristianHJW]

Thanks demi-god , we will look into this soon. For the DivX3/MP3, what happens if you press 'stop' and then 'play' again ?

[Milkman Dan]

I mentioned this in the channel earlier, but I wanted to post it here as well.

If I have an AVI file that has 2 ac3 tracks, and demux them using Vdubmod, and then try to re-import them (to use in a new .mkv), the import filter hangs right near the end. The ac3's play back fine, and even Scenarist accepts them as valid files. So I don't know what the problem is.

I haven't noticed any high bitrate playback problems.

Two ac3 streams in one file seem to play fine, with a minor exception: the playback with the second stream stutters and jerks a bit, at a seeming 2-3 second interval. Switching back to the first stream makes the problem go away.

I haven't tried subtitles yet (waiting for word on image-subs) so I can't give feedback there.

Great job guys.

[Demi-god]

Thanks demi-god , we will look into this soon. For the DivX3/MP3, what happens if you press 'stop' and then 'play' again ?

Nothing extraordinary. The stuttering audio-only playback stops and when I press play it starts just as if I had just opened the file.

[Herculezz]

Originally posted by Sirber

Also, MKV is smaller than an AVI :). 800ko for a ~230 Mo AVI.

Hmm 800K File compared to 230M file or am i misunderstanding

[outlyer]

Originally posted by Herculezz
Hmm 800K File compared to 230M file or am i misunderstanding
I guess it means 800KB of difference between avi and matroska

[ChristianHJW]

OK, here is a new release of the matroska DirectShow parser :

http://matroska.sourceforge.net/downloads/mkxds-v0.4.1.zip

It should fix most of the jerky playback, although the main problem was not really fixed, we just increaded the thread priority of the filter by one step to 'ABOVE_NORMAL' , and this did the trick for most PCs of the dev team.

robux4 wants to add some more code to solve the queing problem soon, and then even on weaker machines it should work fine.

The Win98 version is here : http://matroska.sourceforge.net/downloads/mkxds-0.4.0-W98.zip BUT IS COMPLETELY UNTESTED !!! USE ON YOUR OWN RISK ;) .... lol

http://www.matroska.org/announce.html

Ok, have fun !!

[Balm]

Hi Christian

http://matroska.sourceforge.net/dow...s-0.4.0-W98.zip this URL isn't Correct. http://matroska.sourceforge.net/downloads/mkxds-0.4.1-W98.zip (http://matroska.sourceforge.net/downloads/mkxds-0.4.1-W98.zip) should be the right one ;)

By the way: the WIN98-version works fine :)

Cu Balm

[Atamido]

I should point out that I still have the problem of jerky playback using Xvid+Vorbis on XP.

[robUx4]

Stay in touch with me tomorrow morning. We'll try to see what happens on your machine.

[CaptainCarrot]

I just noticed something about that jerky playback issue... I have 2 movies here at roughly the same bitrate, one of them (skorpion king) with a lot of action a not so compressible, so it's at 512x208, plays fine, I can not really make out any jerky playback, the other one (about a boy) is highly compressible, so it's at 720x304, plays extremely jerky. So maybe it's somehow related to output resolution? Just a thought...

[[Toff]]

CaptainCarrot, can you give more precisions.
What CPU do you have ?
Can you cut a piece of the movie which is jerky and give us its average bitrate ?

On of my test file is the famous chapter 29 of The Matrix encoded in Xvid with a resolution of 720x416 (anamorphic) and an average bitrate of 2535 kbps (audio is vorbis@96kbps) and it play well without jerk on my Athlon 1Ghz CPU.

[Liisachan]

I tested XviD+Vorbis/AC3/MP3cbr with 0.4.1 on my Win2K
All plays fine.

As for seeking, ... a short test clip (like 2-min) is ok,
seeking in a longer one (like 20-min) is not so comfortable for me.
(1) On moving the seekbar, I get a broken, brocky pic.
(2) Then, everything stops for like 3-10 secs.
(3) After that, seeking works gradually.
This happens only in a long clip. Seeking in a short clip is instant and decent.
So, it might be that I just need a faster CPU. My PC is old, 850 MHz :( What is the minimum/recommended spec to play Matroska, I wonder?

On the other hand, unofficial sub support is exciting.
I can switch subs more smoothly than ones in OGM.
It is amazing that you can even switch subs instantly when a sub is on-screen. It's as tho, sub-pictures were not buffered but ran real-time. cool :) (This means, Karaoke should work fine by default, in softsub)

Plus, seems you can already store sub texts in UTF-8, tho playback is not yet supported by DSF.
Surely UTF-8 subs will make ppl happy in such language areas as Chinese/Japanese/Korean/Russian etc., who are not so happy with today's OGM. (I am one of them)

[Animaniac]

Even more jerky (than 0.4.0) with my high resolution and high bitrate clip. Seeking seems much quicker and smoother though.
Resolution: 1000 x 540 pixels
Bitrate: ~3000 Kb/s
Codec: XviD decoded by ffdshow-alpha 24-4-2003
Audio: Vorbis ~128 Kb/s, 44100 Hz

[oddball]

Even more jerky here. XP SP1 P3 800. 640x480 divx clip with dual OGG audio.

[robUx4]

OK, the jerkyness seem to be due to high image resolution, regardless of the encoding bitrate. Yesterday I made some tests with AVI with uncompressed 720x576 and HuffYUV 720x576 + PCM audio short captures... On my XP-2400+ (twin bank RAM) it was very jerky ! So apparently the problem is more into DirectShow... Maybe the amount of data for each pin is limited and because of caching for synching audio and video it cannot get enough memory to work...

For those with jerky files, is the same file in AVI jerky ?

[Atamido]

My file isn't jerky in AVI, but I also don't have the Vorbis audio in the file in that case.

[Animaniac]

My test clip was orginally in an OGM container, which played perfectly using the OggDS filters. So, I doubt it's a DirectShow limitation.

[ChristianHJW]

To everybody with jerky playback :

We have indication that the problems may be cause by Vorbis audio only. Can you guys make those tests please :

- Demux the audio in VdubMod ( 'streams' list, disable Vorbis streams, 'Video' 'Direct stream copy', 'save as ... MKV ' ) and play the MKV video file alone

- transcode the Vorbis to MP3, mux with video and try again

Sorry for the work this may cause, but we have to be sure ....

[lighty]

@ ChristianHJW

Hrmmm- hasn't Animaniac just said that his clip plays flawlesly when muxed in OGM container? If that is the case then why would Vorbis have to do anything with it?

I am just curious I am not trolling...;)

[Kb_cruncher]

skippy playback for vorbis can be fixed by changing to default wave_out device from default direct sound_device(or the other way round,i can'nt remember now).

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by lighty @ ChristianHJW: Hrmmm- hasn't Animaniac just said that his clip plays flawlesly when muxed in OGM container? If that is the case then why would Vorbis have to do anything with it? I am just curious I am not trolling...;) ... you guys go testing and leave thinking to us :D .. LOL !
It could be that the error occurs on the interface between the matroska parser filter and the OggDS Vorbis decoder filter ....

[Animaniac]

Ok doing the two test produced unexpected results, which could mean that it's not the OggDS Vorbis Decoder that's the problem. Wait, I'm not supposed to be thinking. ;)

1) Matroska video only: Played smoothly, however, there were a couple minor jerks in video playback that didn't occur the second time the video was played.

2) Matroska with Vorbis audio: As mentioned above, very jerky

3) Matroska with MP3 audio: Just as jerky as with Vorbis audio.

I think we need to give Tobias credit where credit's due, and stop automatically jumping to the conclusion that his filters are flawed. Although some may say they are flawed in design, but they are pretty darn solid in application.

[Atamido]

Originally posted by Kb_cruncher
skippy playback for vorbis can be fixed by changing to default wave_out device from default direct sound_device(or the other way round,i can'nt remember now).

For my test clip using Vorbis, I can use Graphedit to map to 4 different audio renderers from the Vorbis decoder.

1. Default DirectSound Device. This is what is mapped by default and has the jerky playback.
2. Default WaveOut Device. The video is smooth, but the audio sounds like a scratched record.
3. Directsound: SB Audigy Audio [D000]. Audio and video both play fine.
4. SB Audigy Audio [D000]. Exact same results as Default WaveOut Device.

At no point during any of this does the CPU usage break 15%, and most of the time it is far less than that. Does anyone else with an Audigy get a result like this?

[Animaniac]

Originally posted by Pamel
For my test clip using Vorbis, I can use Graphedit to map to 4 different audio renderers from the Vorbis decoder.

1. Default DirectSound Device. This is what is mapped by default and has the jerky playback.
2. Default WaveOut Device. The video is smooth, but the audio sounds like a scratched record.
3. Directsound: SB Audigy Audio [D000]. Audio and video both play fine.
4. SB Audigy Audio [D000]. Exact same results as Default WaveOut Device.

At no point during any of this does the CPU usage break 15%, and most of the time it is far less than that. Does anyone else with an Audigy get a result like this?

Hmm, that's odd. Default DirectSound should be the same as "DirectSound: SB Audigy Audio" for you. It should map to the DirectSound for whichever sound card one has. Default WaveOut should map to the "legacy" filter for one's soundcard, in your case "SB Audigy Audio." So in theory, 1 and 3, and 2 and 4 should produce the same results. It's odd since 2 and 4 do, however 1 and 3 do not.

[Atamido]

That is exactly what I thought. But switching back and forth between 1 and 3 produced the same results for each, each time. 1 was always jerky, and 3 was always smooth.

Very strange indeed. Thats why I was wondering if anyone out there has an Audigy that they could try and duplicate this with.

I am using the latest beta drivers for my Audigy off of Creatives web site. They actually have a link to Tom's Hardware for the download. :confused:

[Animaniac]

Ok, even more odd. All 3 versions are playing fine now, however WMP now requires ~60% of system resources. Before it was ~15%. Something let WMP take more resources for a while... After restarting WMP, it's gone back to being jerky... This jerky playback seems a little more random now.

[Demi-god]

Version 0.4.1 of Matroska DSF was supposed to have better seeking, right? Well it totally broke seeking for me, no matter which player I use! In WMP I can sometimes seek but then video plays super fast without any audio..the previous filter used a technique like this to synch audio and video but this phase never ends with the current DSF. And the memory leak still seems to be there, try opening a mkv file with vdubmod and watch the allocated memory for VDM grow.

[ookzDVD]

Originally posted by Animaniac


I think we need to give Tobias credit where credit's due, and stop automatically jumping to the conclusion that his filters are flawed. Although some may say they are flawed in design, but they are pretty darn solid in application.

That's why I'm still using .ogm :)

[Animaniac]

In the filter packaged with CoreAAC, jerky playback... is gone. BUT, the video lags the audio. =( The audio seems to resync itself by skipping at even intervals.

Edit: It seems that I can't reproduce this behavoir. However, sometimes the vorbis audio file plays fine, the MP3 audio file no longer plays smooth at all. This filter seems to produce unpredictable results. >.<

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by Animaniac This filter seems to produce unpredictable results. >.<

??? Toff is reporting the very same. However, none of my files show this behaviour at all, even my anamorphic encoding at 720 * 432 res and 1300 kbps is playing smotthly on both of my machines, a 1GHz PIII laptop and a SMP PIII 800 server ..... we just cant reproduce this behaviour :(

The only team member with those problems is Toff, and he has found differences also between his builds of the DShow parser ( the one coming with CoreAAC package, its built by Toff ) and the 'official' version on the download page, built by robux4. Toff also can confirm that this strange jerkiness is not always there, and we have no idea so far where the problem could be.

Nic, please come to our rescue :scared: !!!

[ChristianHJW]

Ok, as we still have no clue whats going on with this stupid jerkiness, lets try to get things organized :

To everybody with jerky playback problems !!!

Please post here and tell us precisely what movies give you problems

Hardware : CPU, video card, soundcard, mainboard
OS : version, SP version, DX version
Video : codec, resolution, average bitrate, framerate
Audio : number of streams, codecs, sampling rate
Subtitles : number of streams
DShow filter : are you using ffdshow, and what version ( stable or unstable )

Please test with both parser filters, the one released in the 'AAC in matroska' thread ( http://matroska.sourceforge.net/downloads/mkxds_aac_multichannel_20030521-2.rar ) and the official version ( 0.4.1 ) from http://matroska.sourceforge.net/downloads/mkxds-v0.4.1.zip and please report if there are any differences.

Thanks so much for helping us to track down the problem !!

[ChristianHJW]

Stop !

No action required guys, take your seats again. Toff has found a bug in the calculation of the sample duration when lacing was used in audio, and as VdubMod is very advanced ( to save overhead ) its using lacing already on most audio codecs, especially Vorbis and MP3.

Toff has fixed the problem already in CVS, and we hope to be able to relase a new version of the filter tonight.

[Sigmatador]

erf i've to stop my 4 tester PCs ^^

good news, good job :cool: