Coreavc vs FFDshow for H.264 - Any thoughts?

[mcaron1234]

HI all,

Well I just upgraded my client with a Intel E6550 from an athlon 3500+ and a whole new world of video playback has opened up for me. I was using the PowerDVD H.264 codec in conjunction with my Nvidia 8500GT for H.264 play back of ripped dvd's, etc but I just wasn't happy with how finicky this was so I talked my self into the big upgrade. Now that I have the horsepower I can think about one of the software decoders. Anyone messed around with one or both of these and care to share their findings? Obviously I'm most interested in compatibility with sage and with PQ. I'm runnning Vista HP. Thanks for your thoughts.

Matt

[mcaron1234]

I went ahead and jumped with FFDshow for H.264 and configuring it was much easier than I thought it would be. It looks great and only used ~1/3 of cpu. It now decodes H.264 in all my direct show media apps but I can't get Sage to use it. I used graph edit to make sure it is my default direct show H.264 codec. Does anyone no how to get sage to use this codec? I'm interested in check out the dvd upscaling possibilities with it if I can get sage to recognize. TIA.

Matt

[HawgGuy]

I think the programmers are still working on CoreAVC. My SageTV box won't use it. Not for lack of trying:

Looks like it's trying:

Sun 8/12 15:44:00.908 DShowPlayer setVideoDecoderFilter0(CoreAVC Video Decoder) called


But further on down:

Sun 8/12 15:44:01.886 Unable to use the specified video decoder filter

The h.264 streams play well with PDVD7. They maybe play a little better with CoreAVC outside of SageTV in MPC.

[Ryokurin]

use the Haali media splitter if you haven't already. http://haali.cs.msu.ru/mkv/

I usually use the latest ffdshow tryout build, haali and make sure the extention can be seen in sage and its good.

edit: I really don't see why your 3500+ couldn't do it. I run 720P stuff on a 3200+ all the time without issues. It cant do much anything else, but it works.

[corykim]

I've got SageTV, Haali, and ffdshow working together nicely. However, with .mov files, only some of them will play in SageTV. What I've noticed is that the ones that work are processed by Haali, but the ones that don't are processed as if they were mp3, which results in screeching audio and a blank screen. All of my .mov files play fine in WMP and in GraphEdit.

For example, if I play the HD version of the Ironman trailer, I'll get screeches under Sage. The Beowulf trailer plays fine, and I'm seeing the Haali and ffdshow taskbar icons. Does anyone know what the difference is between these?

[eguy]

Use the cyberlink PowerDVD codec and AC3 for audio... I have had major issues with all other codecs.

[HawgGuy]

Correct me if I'm wrong. Isn't Haali useless under SageTV? I was under the impression that SageTV had to use it's own splitter due to the nature of the playback buffer.