New Ogg Theora/Vorbis/FLAC/Speex Directshow Filter Set

[illiminable]

Thanks very much for the links...

By the way, your website is down at the mo'

Yeah, i know... the server is moving home... it was only supposed to be down for about 4-6 hours... but it's been about 15 now :( I guess these things happen :(

Hopefully the truck didn't crash :) I'm hoping it comes back in the next few hours.

[illiminable]

Another update (0.61.7571) has been uploaded with the following changes...

* Fixed seeking crash problems with theora
* Fixed FLAC playback
* Added a FLAC encoder filter
* Added a very simple .NET media player called DNPlay
* Added a .NET directshow playback library

This is now the full range of codecs with encoders and decoders.

You can download here http://www.illiminable.com/ogg/ I've also put the zipped version of the source (contains C, C++, C++.NET and C#.NET parts) on there too. You need VS2003.NET to build them.

Or it's in xiph svn at http://svn.xiph.org/trunk/oggdsf/ (browsable via the web)

Unless you have a great need, you should download the zip file (7MB) rather than checking out from svn (25MB)... there's no gaurantees the head branch of the svn tree is in working order at any particular time, and it will save your bandwidth to get the zip !

[bond]

cool stuff, keep up the good work :)

[illiminable]

And another update...

A new version (0.62.7673) is now online at www.illiminable.com/ogg also at www.illiminable.com/ogg/sse_builds.html you'll find two different experimental builds, one using SSE and one using SSE2 for all 37 libraries and applications in the distribution. Use these only if you are sure your processor supports the appropriate extended instruction set. More information is on the page.

I also fixed the network streaming that i broke in the last release... it now caches the stream in your TEMP directory as specified in your environment variables. Works a lot better now... though it's still not perfect, and still doesn't pre-buffer to account for user having bandwidth
less than the stream bitrate.

I also removed all the .NET sample applications for those who don't ever run windows update and still don't have the framework.. because of the way the nstaller works it wouldn't let you install until you downloaded it. Later
on, i'll package them as a seperate distribution... they are not really anything more than examples so i doubt anyone actually used them anyway.

And changed the installer to make you click through the BSD licenses, and include an informational dialog so users know where to go for new versions... as many download shell sites are linking directly to the files without any link to the website where people can see known bugs and install
instructions or even know if they are getting the latest version.

Enjoy...

Zen.

[Atamido]

Good news! I've been watching your commits and was wondering when a new version was coming.

Any update on if/when these filters will work with the Matroska filters?

[illiminable]

I'm still working on a few compatability issues... it's still not working to 100%... i'm finding a few problems with a version of Tobias's filters still being partially installed and conflicting, particularly in mpc.

But once i can narrow down and correct these things, i'll be able to spend some testing with the matroska stuff... i haven't looked closely at the matroska filter, but i suspect at the moment i'm using a different timing scheme.

[illiminable]

And another update... 0.63.7755

http://www.illiminable.com/ogg/

You can play theora in WMP9 and 10 now (but can't seek in these two players)... also fixed some bugs that were stopping people creating theora+speex files... which now work.

Cheers,

Zen.

[tiki4]

Hi,

this latest version is the first one that doesn't crash for me every player when playing Ogg Theora + Vorbis. So far, so good. I tried to mux video and audio from a Theora Ogg and a Vorbis Ogg file, but as with previous versions Graphedit closes after a few seconds and leaves an incomplete file. The file that I was able to play was created with ffmpeg2theora from an uncompressed source AVI.

Thumbs up for this project, though.

tiki4

[illiminable]

Originally posted by tiki4
Hi,

this latest version is the first one that doesn't crash for me every player when player Ogg Theora + Vorbis. So far, so good. I tried to mux video and audio from a Theora Ogg and a Vorbis Ogg file, but as with previous versions Graphedit closes after a few seconds and leaves an incomplete file. The file that I was able to play was created with ffmpeg2theora from an uncompressed source AVI.

Thumbs up for this project, though.

tiki4

I suspect the reason that previous versions wouldn't play for you is that the video was high-res... there was a bug where the buffers were too small, and it would just bomb, if it got a large frame.

When you say tried to mux a theora ogg and vorbis ogg file... can you be more specific ?

Was the graph like this...

Ogg Demux --> }
} Ogg Mux
Ogg Demux --> }

???

Or were you transocding or encoding for a raw source ? If so what was the graph setup ?

Cheers,

Zen.

[tiki4]

Muxing was somthing like:



Ogg Demux--|
|->Ogg Mux
Ogg Demux--|



The first Ogg file contained Theora video encoded with your filter suite in Graphedit from an AVS source. The second was an audio only Ogg Vorbis file produced from AC3 with BeSweet.

Cheers,

tiki4

[illiminable]

Originally posted by tiki4
Muxing was somthing like:



Ogg Demux--|
|->Ogg Mux
Ogg Demux--|




The first Ogg file contained Theora video encoded with your filter suite in Graphedit from an AVS source. The second was an audio only Ogg Vorbis file produced from AC3 with BeSweet.

Cheers,

tiki4

Could you perhaps send me the vorbis file ? Or at least the first half meg (not more than 2 megs worth) or so of it to ogg@illiminable.com.... you can just break it arbitrarily... i'll fix up the end if it breaks between a page.

I've just done a few tests, doing encoding like that, and it seems to work for me.

Also... could you try running the vorbis file with the utility

OOOggValidate filename.ogg

And see if it says it's valid. Also if you have trouble breaking the file... do an

OOOggDump filename.ogg>filename.dump

And just with a text editor, edit the text file (the .dump file) and break it after the first 10 or so pages... and send that to me.

Both those utilities are in the installation directory.

Cheers,

PS: Also... if the theora only file that is created by my encoder doesn't play in WMP, then also try running the validation program on it.

Zen.

[tiki4]

Thanks for your input.

I'll try to send you the files, if you have some time...

I'm away for the weekend and can only access my own computer on Sunday evening again. So please be patient.

tiki4

[illiminable]

There's a new update now... version 0.64.7878

It finally fixes the last of the theora problems in WMP 9 and 10 (that i know of anyway !)... it can play and seek in WMP 9 and 10.

Also did a fix that was stopping the filters running inside an activeX control ie in IE or other media players which use WMP control.

www.illiminable.com/ogg/

Cheers,

Zen.

[Sharktooth]

Great!
Just a question. I hadn't time to test OGM support but i read this
If you install ffdshow, you will be able to play ogm style *video only* files (ie OGM\DivX in one stream and non-OGM vorbis in the other).
in your website.
Could you explain what does it exactly means,please?

[illiminable]

It means that it can handle video streams that have an ogm header... ie an ogg file with ogm/divx in one stream and vorbis in the other.

If there is an audio ogm stream (ie mp3 or whatever) and/or a subtitle track, these streams will currently be ignored or may fail.

[Sharktooth]

Thanx:)

[bond]

illiminable, i saw that flac 1.1.1 has been released some days ago. it supports now seeking of flac in .ogg together with (hopefully final) specifications on how to place flac in .ogg, which you can find here (http://flac.sourceforge.net/ogg_mapping.html)
are your filters using this method for storing flac in .ogg already? is it possible to mux already existing ogg flac and theora streams together into one correct .ogg with your filters?

also did you think about adding support for the ogg writ subtitle format to your filters? according to rillian its said to be pretty final already
you can find the specs here (http://wiki.xiph.org/Writ), some sources should be in the xiph svn too

also i saw that you wrote on your hp about problems with gabests MPC with your filters.
this might be caused by MPC, as it has its own .ogg/.ogm splitter inbuilt, which is used by default in mpc and can be disabled via the mpc options

[RadicalEd]

The latest version crashes explorer on my WinXP home/Athlon/DX9 box. Previous versions have caused explorer to hang indefinitely when deleting .ogg files, not sure if this issue is still present (mostly because I don't want to risk locking up my system to see :p). These filters are great, but the instability makes them a bit difficult to live with. Still, keep up the good work.

[illiminable]

Hi,

Yes... someone else pointed this out to me today as well (maybe it was you!)... i'll look into it... i have managed to get explorer to hang now, whereas previously i hadn't. And i rarely use explorer (Total Commander)

I will look into it, now that i can reproduce it.

Thanks...

[illiminable]

Originally posted by bond
illiminable, i saw that flac 1.1.1 has been released some days ago. it supports now seeking of flac in .ogg together with (hopefully final) specifications on how to place flac in .ogg, which you can find here (http://flac.sourceforge.net/ogg_mapping.html)
are your filters using this method for storing flac in .ogg already? is it possible to mux already existing ogg flac and theora streams together into one correct .ogg with your filters?

also did you think about adding support for the ogg writ subtitle format to your filters? according to rillian its said to be pretty final already
you can find the specs here (http://wiki.xiph.org/Writ), some sources should be in the xiph svn too

also i saw that you wrote on your hp about problems with gabests MPC with your filters.
this might be caused by MPC, as it has its own .ogg/.ogm splitter inbuilt, which is used by default in mpc and can be disabled via the mpc options

Yes... i have considered doing writ... but at the time i was first about to do it... the wiki was gone, and there were still quite a few really bad bugs in the other filters, so i figured my time would be better spent fixing those.

But i do intend to do writ... it just wasn't all that high priority.

Yeah... i've seen the new FLAC spec... but it's not implemented yet.

As for muxing FLAC and theora... i just tried it... and there's a bug in the flac encoder's time conversion and it doesn't work, the same bug was previously in speex, so it's a one line fix.

With that fix, i'm 99% sure it would work, but since it's the old flac bitstream, it wouldn't be a good idea. But hopefully next version, i'll fix it and do the new flac format.

Thanks for the heads up on MPC... there is still a problem with the other filters not cleaning the registry though.

As to the explorer problem... i guess it's one of those bugs that seems so obvious, that no-one ever reported it ! But since i rarely use explorer i never encountered it !

If there are other bugs people know of, that aren't listed on my homepage, please let me know... since if it's not in the list... i don't know about it.

[illiminable]

Just been looking into the explorer thing... seems explorer is holding the exclusive lock for some reason... in doing a bit of a search, i found these ...

http://www.softwarepatch.com/tips/howto-delete-xp.html
http://dot.kde.org/1047362149/1047405830/

The problem comes about... because when you highlight the icon in explorer it actually loads up the filter to try and query it for metadata, and then doesn't release it.

I'm looking into it further at the moment... there must be a registry key somewhere to say "don't preview"... i'm not really sure what's going on... as it doesn't happen in other file managers, and it's not caused by WMP. I'm just going through all the the code again to make sure all the file handles are getting released properly.

[illiminable]

OK... found the explorer problem i think... it's a registry key left behind by the tobias filters...

http://www.google.com.au/search?q=cache:_gSZRQmVhvMJ:svn.xiph.org/trunk/oggds/main.cpp+%7Bc5a40261-cd64-4ccf-84cb-c394da41d590%7D&hl=en&ie=UTF-8

To fix it, run regedit and go to this key

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.OGG\ShellEx]

Right click on ShellEx in the left pane of the registry editor... and delete it. (Be careful editing the registry !! If you break it, it's not my fault ! :)

If you ever reinstall the Tobias Filters... even if you uninstall them, you'll need to do this again... same very likely applies to Core Media Player (but i'm not sure) as i think it ships with the tobias demux filter.

In future versions, in the installation i'll try to clean up all these orphan registry keys that are left behind, before it installs.

[RadicalEd]

Awesome, thanks. It works great now :D
I'll do some more testing, I think I recall having some other problems previously but I'm not sure. That was the biggest.

[RadicalEd]

Alright, here's the next batch of reports. Only tested with vorbis and theora so far.
Encodes using ffmpeg2theora:
-No seeking in WMP 6.4
-No looping in WMP 6.4
-Stopping and playing again causes the first I-frame to be missed
-Seeking in WMP 10 and VLC gives incomplete inter blocks until I-frame (consequence of frame-accurate no-delay seeking I suppose)
-Graphedit stalls at end of file

Encodes using Illiminable directshow encoders:
-Multi-stream files don't play. That is, only vorbis or theora can be played within ogg at a time
-Stopping crashes single-stream files
-Seeking crashes graphedit
-Stopping single-stream files hangs graphedit
-VLC only plays audio and without seeking (stop, pause, etc work)

Don't know how many are directly related to the filters, but hopefully the information is useful.

[illiminable]

Originally posted by RadicalEd
Alright, here's the next batch of reports. Only tested with vorbis and theora so far.
Encodes using ffmpeg2theora:
-No seeking in WMP 6.4
-No looping in WMP 6.4


OK... old versions of WMP use an old seeking interface which i haven't implemented yet... for the seeking that should be easy to fix... possible looping won't be supported.

-Stopping and playing again causes the first I-frame to be missed
-Seeking in WMP 10 and VLC gives incomplete inter blocks until I-frame (consequence of frame-accurate no-delay seeking I suppose)


Yep... neither can seek to keyframe yet...


-Graphedit stalls at end of file


Yeah... i'm not really sure why this happens yet... i have noticed it once or twice... but it doesn't seem to affect players.



Encodes using Illiminable directshow encoders:
-Multi-stream files don't play. That is, only vorbis or theora can be played within ogg at a time


I haven't come across this... i've made quite a lot of multi-stream files... (also note in graphedit you must add vorbis to the top pin and theora to the bottom pin, for them to appear in the corrct order in the file).

If you have a file where this is the case... run the program
oooggvalidate oggfile.ogg

This program is in the install directory... and tell me whether it says it's valid.


-Stopping crashes single-stream files
-Seeking crashes graphedit
-Stopping single-stream files hangs graphedit


Never come across this either... so you mean, you can't play any vorbis files ?


-VLC only plays audio and without seeking (stop, pause, etc work)


Are you sure you encoded the streams in the correct order ?

As shown here... http://www.illiminable.com/ogg/enc_theora_graphedit.html


Don't know how many are directly related to the filters, but hopefully the information is useful. [/B]

Yeah... thanks for that... there's a few things to look at... if you have any files that crash a player... please run oooggvalidate on them, if they say they are valid, run oooggdump on them (redirect output to text file), and cut and paste the first 10 pages or so of the hex dump into a file and email it to me.

Cheers,

Zen.

[RadicalEd]

Oh well ignore all the reports on your encode filters then, the ordering was probably it. I'll have to check that out in the morning.

[RadicalEd]

Okay, obviously that error on my part was the main cause of the problems for the Illiminable encode. I re-did and came up with a new, much smaller list.

-Directshow/WMP10 playback is b0rked in a strange way. The streams take turns playing every few seconds, and sometimes simultaneously (but out of synch by this time).
-Seeking in VLC stops audio, sometimes audio restarts later, sometimes audio overlaps with previous parts.

Those are the only remaining bugs I can see with vorbis + theora. If any further information/testing is needed, let me know.

BTW, looping works fine in WMP10

[Yong]

Here's another easy solution to disable the Video preview function in explorer:
Open the regedit, go to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\clsid,
search the word "video thumbnail extractor"
rename the key(with a lot of nuumber) that contain the value "video thumbnail extractor" form {xxxx...} to {xxxx...}+ or something else(easy to rename back when u want the video thumbnail function again).

NOTE: this will disable all type(avi,ogm,mpg,wmv ect.) of video preview in explorer.
May be speed up opening folder that contain large number of video.:)

[illiminable]

Originally posted by RadicalEd
Okay, obviously that error on my part was the main cause of the problems for the Illiminable encode. I re-did and came up with a new, much smaller list.

-Directshow/WMP10 playback is b0rked in a strange way. The streams take turns playing every few seconds, and sometimes simultaneously (but out of synch by this time).
-Seeking in VLC stops audio, sometimes audio restarts later, sometimes audio overlaps with previous parts.

Those are the only remaining bugs I can see with vorbis + theora. If any further information/testing is needed, let me know.

BTW, looping works fine in WMP10

Thanks, for taking the time to do some tests and give me some feedback, it's greatly appreciated ! Now i just need to clone a few hundred more like you !

Could you please give me some more information about what/how you encoded, ie what types of file did you transcode/encode from ? What res/quality/framerate was the video ?

Also, could you try running OOOggValidate on the produced file to see if it is valid.

Also... if possible could you try and make a small file which exhibits the bug (less than 750k)... or just arbitrarily chop the file off at the 750k mark... or do an OOOggDump, and send me the first few dozen pages of output in a text file, and email it to me at ogg@illiminable.com (put something like radicalEd or doom9 in the subject so it doesn't get deleted as spam)

Thanks,

Zen.

[RadicalEd]

Found the source. Keyframe distances > 64 cause the problems mentioned above to occur in increasing magnitudes. The resolution I'm using is 352x288 at 29.97 fps. The other two encoding params are default (400000 and 30 I believe). I think the problem is generic, but if you still need a sample I can provide.

Btw, the printout for OOoggstat.exe with no params is "Usage: OOOggDump <filename>"

[illiminable]

Originally posted by RadicalEd
Found the source. Keyframe distances > 64 cause the problems mentioned above to occur in increasing magnitudes. The resolution I'm using is 352x288 at 29.97 fps. The other two encoding params are default (400000 and 30 I believe). I think the problem is generic, but if you still need a sample I can provide.

Btw, the printout for OOoggstat.exe with no params is "Usage: OOOggDump <filename>"

Actually no, no need to send me a sample yet... the information you gave should be enough for me to reproduce it.

I think i see one potential problem already... i think i didn't account for drop-frame fps's like 29.97... i think it's probably trying to round it to the nearest integer.

Thanks for the info about oooggstat... i'll change that.... (most of the OOOxxxxx tools are pretty much identical, so some of the code was copy pasted)

Cheers,

Zen.

[RadicalEd]

Bingo. 30 fps playback is flawless.

[bond]

cool seeing things going on :)
these filters are really cool stuff, sad that i dont have much time to do some testing myself :(

[Yong]

Bug report here:
Recent bulid DShow can't play the FLAC v1.1.1 encoded OggFLAC.

[illiminable]

Yeah... the new flac encapsulation spec came out after that build... i have it in the next build... however there is a problem i'm waiting to hear from Josh about.

The new version of flac doesn't conform to it's own spec, so i need to find out whether to try to detect files made by flac.exe and correct the error plus produce files from my code that confrom to the spec (but won't be able to handled by the flac tools), or whether he's going to just change the spec to be inline with the implementation (my preference).

I just want to find out before i do a release, as i don't really want to make the problem any worse by having two different imlpementations that don't work the same.

One of the header fields is incorrectly set.

[Yong]

Thanks for the reply, i'll continue to test this DShow filter and report if it's have bug(hope no bug in future release:)).
This DShow filter is Great!!

[bond]

btw zen, you asked on the theora maillist why ffdshow only outputs to .avi. the reason is that ffdshow's encoder is a vfw encoder, which can be used in virtualdub, which outputs to .avi (of course in virtualdubmod you can also output with it to .ogm, but guess what, not in a .ogg compatible way...)

[illiminable]

Another update just went up 0.66.8063

Fixed up the explorer bug, and it supports the new Ogg FLAC format... also fixed quite a few memory leaks... so it's not such a memory hog !

http://www.illiminable.com/ogg/

[RadicalEd]

What's the status of fractional framerates in this build? :O

[illiminable]

The fractional framerate works for mpegs... but for some reason it seems a lot of AVI's at 29.97 still come out, out of sync... even though the time stamps are properly corrected for the fractional rate.

I can't really see whats going on with that... i just wanted to get this one out, because it has teh new support for ogg flac 1.1.1 in it.

With the AVI's they seem to be out by a constant amount... rather than drifting as you'd expect if from a rounding bug.

I'm still looknig into it.

[RadicalEd]

Interesting reports on the new version.
Foremost, FFDShow decoding now works with illiminable output, whereas with the last version it didn't at all. I'm not sure whether the change was on the ffds side or yours.
The seek bar is now enabled in WMP 6.4, but seeking in it and WMP 10 freezes the player with ffdshow or illimiable decoding. Seeking in graphedit works with illiminable decoder but freezes with ffdshow. VLC works as usual.

[illiminable]

Hmmm... dunno why the seek bar is enabled in WMP 6.4 it's not for me ! Must only be when ffdshow is decoding.

The change was on their side.

Are you saying that theora fails to seek at all even with my decoder in all cases ?

I'm fairly sure it will fail with ffdshow decoding as i'm guessing they are using different seek signals.

[RadicalEd]

Now THIS is odd...
The seek bar was enabled with illiminable decoders and freezing as I said. However, to make sure it was *only* the illiminable and default directsound/video renderer filters running, I also disabled ac3filter, and crashing stopped... however, something else also happened: seeking worked 0_0
So, somehow, seeking now works in wmp 6.4 (and all other players), with illiminable or ffdshow decoding. Cool?

On the downside, I tried encoding last night and the odd desynch problem is now present no matter the fps (30, 24, 23.976)... unless that was ac3filter too ¬_¬ ...
edit: bug confirmed not to relate to any other filters

[Yong]

Finally i can play the OggFLAC with the DShow-based player, Thanks Zen. AFAIK there is only a few audio player can support this kind of format.

Feature request:
That will be nice if this filter set can retrive file info similar like this while playing the file:

New logical stream (#1, serial: 0000546c): type Theora
New logical stream (#2, serial: 00004348): type vorbis
Vorbis headers parsed for stream 2, information follows...
Version: 0
Vendor: Xiph.Org libVorbis I 20030909 (1.0.1)
Channels: 2
Rate: 44100

Nominal bitrate: 95.681000 kb/s
Upper bitrate not set
Lower bitrate not set
User comments section follows...
ENCODER=ffmpeg2theora 0.10.2
Logical stream 1 ended
Vorbis stream 2:
Total data length: 1393747 bytes
Playback length: 2m:10.011s
Average bitrate: 85.761507 kbps

May be you should consider combine the OOOggCommentDump.exe, OOOggStat.exe, OOOggValidate.exe and ogginfo.exe(from vorbis-tools-1.1.0-win32), make this filter set more complete.;)

[illiminable]

Feature request:
That will be nice if this filter set can retrive file info similar like this while playing the file:


Yeah... i'd like to, but the problem is, there's not really anywhere to show it in media player.

I really need to write a custom UI plug-in for WMP to do this kind of stuff... all the information is available internally... there's just nowhere to show it at the moment.

Those command line tools are pretty incomplete... they are mainly just examples. BUt at some point, i'll make them do something a bit more useful ! :)

[Yong]

Show the informations in the wmp9/10 may be too hard, how about show it in the filter propeties page(others media player)?;) Costum-UI? Console style already enough(that's mean display text only).:)

[Yong]

New Version (0.67.8171) - 05/11/2004 dshow filter update;)
The author say he is busy, so i help him to update this post.

[bond]

zen, when doing a quick test with the theora encoder filter i noticed that the option sliders in the settings are a little bit cut visually at the bottom

also because you wrote about implementing ogg writ support: the specs seem to be up again in the wiki (http://wiki.xiph.org/index.php/OggWrit), also there now seems to be a reference writ encoder/decoder available here (http://svn.xiph.org/trunk/py-ogg2/)

keep up the good work with the most complete ogg tool available :)

[bond]

illi, i noticed two things lately:

1) when muxing one flac .ogg and one vorbis .ogg together with your muxer, the output .ogg is very big (oggzinfo tells me 4 EOSes, all using the flac's stream serial)

2) is it right that your decoders can only be used once in the graph? it seems as if mutliple vorbis streams arent supported (only one is played, altough the ogg parser outputs two vorbis pins)
playing a file with flac and vorbis together works fine (as every audio decoder is only used once it seems)

[bond]

other issues:

- seeking doesnt seem to be to keyframes only, as your decoder shows typical "missing keyframe" artefacts after seeking
- your parser seems to have problems with ffdshow as theora decoder (very slow playback, picture freeze after a few seconds)
- this sample (http://www.linuxdj.com/audio/lad/contrib/zkm_meeting_2005/video/paul_nasca-zynaddsubfx.theora.ogg) shows green artefacts at the beginning, as if the first keyframe isnt recognized/there
- when importing the vorbis decode filter in graphedit and than going to the filter properties i get a crash in dsvorbisdecoder.dll (doesnt happen when the filter is used in a full graph)
- i dont see the codec settings in the vorbis encoder filter