SAF v4.00 ''stable'' (StandAlone Filters) - DXVA ready (H.264 and VC-1). (6 Viewers)

[akajester]

Any way to add wmv and to get MP to select MPC as the default player for VC-1? Or is this outside the scope of SAF? Thanks! I appreciate all the help and quick responses.

Main problem is used MS ASF/WMV format. This format is not open source, and it can be DRM protected, etc. Best way how to solve your problem is to change video container from WMV to MKV. But that is not easy task, you can look over internet for some tool, but i am not sure if you can found one.
By other words - ASF/WMV format is bad.

There isn't any problem with the VC-1 file I linked to with DRM- it works fine with DXVA with the MPC video decoder in MPC-HC. MPC-HC also plays normal WMV9 files no problem using the MPC decoder (but without DXVA). The problem is that WM Video Decoder overrides the MPC decoder in mediaportal, presumably because it has a higher merit. In theory you could fix this by using SAF to make sure WM Video Decoder has a lower merit than the MPC video decoder.

That was my next question. That would be excellent if that could be part of SAF.

 

[jo16v]

That was my next question. That would be excellent if that could be part of SAF.

I looked around the net and people don't seem to have too much luck messing with the merit of the wm video decoder so maybe there is just a way to force mediaportal to use the MPC decoder for just VC-1 - presumably MPC-HC does this somehow but I don't know how it does it.

 

[hoborg]

Main problem is used MS ASF/WMV format. This format is not open source, and it can be DRM protected, etc. Best way how to solve your problem is to change video container from WMV to MKV. But that is not easy task, you can look over internet for some tool, but i am not sure if you can found one.
By other words - ASF/WMV format is bad.

There isn't any problem with the VC-1 file I linked to with DRM- it works fine with DXVA with the MPC video decoder in MPC-HC. MPC-HC also plays normal WMV9 files no problem using the MPC decoder (but without DXVA). The problem is that WM Video Decoder overrides the MPC decoder in mediaportal, presumably because it has a higher merit. In theory you could fix this by using SAF to make sure WM Video Decoder has a lower merit than the MPC video decoder.

That was my next question. That would be excellent if that could be part of SAF.

That is not that easy as it look like. I think MPC-HC player have somekind of code that prevent to use MS video decoder. This have nothing to do with merit... I did some tests, but i was not able to found solution. I will do some more tests, but cannot promise anything...

That was my next question. That would be excellent if that could be part of SAF.

I looked around the net and people don't seem to have too much luck messing with the merit of the wm video decoder so maybe there is just a way to force mediaportal to use the MPC decoder for just VC-1 - presumably MPC-HC does this somehow but I don't know how it does it.

Just small correction - VC-1 video can be in MKV/MP4 too, WMV container doesn't mean it is VC-1, can have a lot of formats.
So it can be "...video decoder so maybe there is just a way to force mediaportal to use the MPC decoder for just ASF/WMV - presumably MPC-HC does this somehow but I don't know how it does it."

Hello.
First of all, fill your system specification in your "User CP"!
Try to play your problematics DVD/videos and connect Graphstudio to check if graphs are created corectly (if corect filters are in use).
Post small example of problematic video, so i can check it.

DVD's should be working just fine...

Sorry about the information, it´s filled in now.
Regarding the DVD-playback i actually did solve the issue by (as it said in the guide) copying the CLVsd.ax to C:. The only thing wrong there is that I get washed out colors (black is gray, not black). And that there are two black bars (about 1cm) on screen top and bottom.

The h264 etc. formats however does not play correctly, some does. But as shown in the screenshot below, some movies gets large pixel shapes (edit. I think this it what is called "macroblocking") all over the picture. This is happening i Media Player Classic HC to, so I guess it has something to do with the DXVA not working properly.

Well, i did a little test and i have same problem as you have.
I reencode your video example and it is OK now = file is wrongly encoded...

 

[jo16v]

Just small correction - VC-1 video can be in MKV/MP4 too, WMV container doesn't mean it is VC-1, can have a lot of formats.
So it can be "...video decoder so maybe there is just a way to force mediaportal to use the MPC decoder for just ASF/WMV - presumably MPC-HC does this somehow but I don't know how it does it."

Yes, I know VC-1 can be in other containers- but there is only a real advantage to force MPC for VC-1 as only VC-1 can use DXVA, at least on newer ati chipsets. I think some older nvidia chipsets may be able to accelerate WMV9. If mediaportal can specify a preferred h.264 decoder presumably there must be a way to do something similar for VC-1.

 

[hoborg]

Just small correction - VC-1 video can be in MKV/MP4 too, WMV container doesn't mean it is VC-1, can have a lot of formats.
So it can be "...video decoder so maybe there is just a way to force mediaportal to use the MPC decoder for just ASF/WMV - presumably MPC-HC does this somehow but I don't know how it does it."

Yes, I know VC-1 can be in other containers- but there is only a real advantage to force MPC for VC-1 as only VC-1 can use DXVA, at least on newer ati chipsets. I think some older nvidia chipsets may be able to accelerate WMV9. If mediaportal can specify a preferred h.264 decoder presumably there must be a way to do something similar for VC-1.

I am not sure if you understand it correctly. If you can change WMV container to MKV (without reencoding), your file will be played perfectly under MP. It is as i wrote many times, all is based on splitter - in this case it is WM ASF Reader.

 

[akajester]

Just small correction - VC-1 video can be in MKV/MP4 too, WMV container doesn't mean it is VC-1, can have a lot of formats.
So it can be "...video decoder so maybe there is just a way to force mediaportal to use the MPC decoder for just ASF/WMV - presumably MPC-HC does this somehow but I don't know how it does it."

Yes, I know VC-1 can be in other containers- but there is only a real advantage to force MPC for VC-1 as only VC-1 can use DXVA, at least on newer ati chipsets. I think some older nvidia chipsets may be able to accelerate WMV9. If mediaportal can specify a preferred h.264 decoder presumably there must be a way to do something similar for VC-1.

I stumbled upon a program called radlight filter manager. http://www.dvbviewer.com/griga/rlfm_bin1_5.zip
you can look at all your filters and change the merits. I checked and both the wmp and mpv are set to Merit_normal. I'm wondering if I raise the MPC merit to Preferred if that would affect which one MP chooses? I'll try it tonight and see if it helps. Or if someone can test it sooner.

Well, i did a little test and i have same problem as you have.
I reencode your video example and it is OK now = file is wrongly encoded...

Ok, after much playing around with XVID4PSP the best (quickest) option to re-encode is to pick Q21 Turbo. According to their online docs, this is the quickest re-encode but changes the video the least, therefore your file should stay similar in size. It used to take me 14 hours to re-encode a 8gb video, now it's less than 2 hours. Sweet!

I am not sure if you understand it correctly. If you can change WMV container to MKV (without reencoding), your file will be played perfectly under MP. It is as i wrote many times, all is based on splitter - in this case it is WM ASF Reader.

ok, I think I misunderstood too. Because a different splitter is being used, it's near impossible to tell the player to use MPC. I should either change from wmv to mkv container, or rename the file. does that sound right?

Thanks!

 

[MrOrsh]

Well, i did a little test and i have same problem as you have.
I reencode your video example and it is OK now = file is wrongly encoded...

I see. If this discussion is not allowed in this forum feel free to delete this paragraph. However, the file is not an actuall hd-rip that I´ve done myself, it´s downloaded from.. well, somewhere. Althou I´ve have had this problem with at least 3 or 4 downloaded files (of 6 - 7 total). So I guess it´s fairly common that files are wrongly encoded then?

Since I had the exact same problems (and some working movies) with catalyst 8.11, then I guess it can do no harm to upgrade from 8.5 again, since the DXVA worked just the same for me in both versions. Is it something universal that 8.10-11 etc. never does DXVA correctly or is this just some times/under some speciell conditions?

Also, how did you reencode the file? I guess I could try the same.

 

[jo16v]

I am not sure if you understand it correctly. If you can change WMV container to MKV (without reencoding), your file will be played perfectly under MP. It is as i wrote many times, all is based on splitter - in this case it is WM ASF Reader.

I changed the extension to .mkv but it still uses the wm asf reader- I think that will always be the case for all VC-1 as it is a microsoft codec (basically a newer version of WMV9). In MPC-HC it uses the wm asf reader but passes it to the MPC decoder not the wm video decoder.

 

[hoborg]

ok, I think I misunderstood too. Because a different splitter is being used, it's near impossible to tell the player to use MPC. I should either change from wmv to mkv container, or rename the file. does that sound right?

Thanks!

Simply rename VMW to MKV desn't help here, becouse Haali media splitter doesn't support WMV.

 

[jo16v]

I stumbled upon a program called radlight filter manager. http://www.dvbviewer.com/griga/rlfm_bin1_5.zip
you can look at all your filters and change the merits. I checked and both the wmp and mpv are set to Merit_normal. I'm wondering if I raise the MPC merit to Preferred if that would affect which one MP chooses? I'll try it tonight and see if it helps. Or if someone can test it sooner.

Actually radlight doesn't show up the WMVideo decoder, just windows media video- filmerit allows you to change the merit of WMVideo decoder but I tried it and it doesn't seem to make any difference.

ok, I think I misunderstood too. Because a different splitter is being used, it's near impossible to tell the player to use MPC. I should either change from wmv to mkv container, or rename the file. does that sound right?

It can't be impossible as MPC-HC does it.