Why does the user have to bother with codecs? (1 Viewer)

[Shukuyen]

Hi all,

first a disclaimer ;-) This thread is not meant to offend or upset someone, it is just me wondering why things are how they are! So please be patient with me.

Yesterday I installed MediaPortal 1.2.0 beta and the most time consuming and annoying thing was to get it to play all files and live tv. I first tried with the guides from the wiki and Windows 7 codecs, but many videos didn't play or had no audio or there were delays and other unexpected behaviour (player controls didn't work anymore).

Then I tried SAF, because I it worked easy and good for me in the past. It almost worked, but for one MKV the audio was really dampened. So I tried to fix this but failed.


Long story short: I had some hours of fun, I think I have to reinstall my system as MediaPortal isn't very stable anymore after my experiments and all files play fine in VLC. So why is it that a user has to do all this codec research and configuration? This is a hot topic (thousends of posts here on the forums) and for the average user hard to grasp.

VLC shows that it is possible to play anything you throw at it without knowing about codecs. This is in my opinion what made it big ages ago. What are the reasons this isn't possible with MediaPortal?


Thanks for helping me understand

 

[tourettes]

VLC shows that it is possible to play anything you throw at it without knowing about codecs. This is in my opinion what made it big ages ago. What are the reasons this isn't possible with MediaPortal?

• VLC has internal codecs - such requires quite big dev team (taking care of codecs would be probably requiring more developers than MP has altogether)
• HW acceleration with VLC is quite flanky (at least it was when I tried it last time)
• Not all files play with VLC (I have seen such quite often)

 

[Frank-NL]

Many videos didn't play with the W7 codecs? What kind of videos? With a clean install of W7, you only need a splitter like Hali of LAVF. The MS codecs are great for Live TV or HD - SD videos.

At the moment I use SAF6 because I like to have a choice of more codecs and the development of LAVF, but it´s not really necessary.

 

[Lehmden]

AW: Why does the user have to bother with codecs?

Hello.
The ability to choose witch codec to use is one of the most important things on MePo. The Windows DirectShow System ís a lot more flexible and configurable than VLC. If you get a file VLC can't play, you are a looser. I have some files VLC did not play at all. With MePo you can install another Codec to play this file. Most of my HD- MKV are really ugly played in VLC. And, my AVR is a bit older. he can't play DTS-HD. With free codec choice I can use a Codec able to extract core DTS from DTS-HD Streams and all is well. With VLC I don't have DTS with this files...

And, you can have nearly the same in MePo if you use FFDShow, witch is basically the same Codec than VLC.

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

Shukuyen

Wow, hot topic, even if we supplied splitter + ffdshow, which is still in development and constantly getting fixed, then broken again by some small change\improvement, you can guarantee someone will have file\s that will not play.

A couple of years ago BBC radio (dvb-t) could only be listened too using the ffdshow libmad library and not libavcodec which mpeg1\2 normally uses for audio, there is always something that throws a spanner in the works

 

[Shukuyen]

Thanks for your answers ;-)

So I guess
1. The system as it is is an advantage if you know what you are doing (with codecs)
2. I have to reinstall Windows

I never encountered a file that wasn't obviously broken that VLC couldn't play, but that may have been luck. I will reinstall windows and try again with the packaged codecs (and maybe learn a thing or two about codecs, splitters, ....)

 

[SplatAttack]

Shukuyen
I to have often speent hours trying to get everything to work and ended up with a mess of codes. I do like the modular approach where you can choose which codec to use, but the problem I often have is trying to identify the right coding in the first place. I have spent days in the support area or in the 'how to' areas going through the various bits of advice.

Is there a possibility that a clever media person could put together a media analysis plug-in for MePo? So that you coule turn it on and it can tell you what the video and audio coding is for whatever you are watching, and then tell you if you have the codecs available.

MePo 1.2 beta rocks!!

 

[mm1352000]

Hi SplatAttack

The encodings are actually logged, both in TsWriter and TsReader.
If you're talking videos and you want something more convenient then you can't go past MediaInfo for getting information about the actual encoding of the video and audio within a file (MediaPortal uses it as a library to figure out which codecs to use to play files). Figuring out whether you've got a codec that can play the file might be a little trickier, but you could just try to render the file in GraphStudio.

mm

 

[ced007]

Hi Shukuyen,
I understand your point and I agree with you: if you don't have time for configuration and/or if you are not motivated to dive into the codec world, then you can be upset with MePo configuration. But if you take the time you will see that the result you could have is really great !
Also I highly suggest the SAF pack that works really great with MePo. Try SAF 5, or even SAF 6 that is under progress. With the default settings of SAF you should be able to read almost 100% of your videos. If you have a TV tuner, ask for the Unlock version of SAF (ask SAF author by pm) in order to have PowerDVD that works great for SD and HD channels.

 

[mm1352000]

Mmmmm
We as developers are conscious of the difficulties. Windows 7 makes things much easier because in many cases you can get away without installing any extra codecs by just using the Microsoft codecs. Of course they won't work for AC3 and other advanced encoding formats. Windows XP doesn't have those codecs though, so other options like SAF are required there...

mm