ffdshow, how?

[David Lawrance]

How do I use ffdshow with SageTV? Is there a particular codec that I have to enable, a registry value to change, to get ffdshow to worm its way into the video filter chain?

David

[mlbdude]

Set ffdshow to use raw video, then you need to use VMR7 (Default on XP) or VMR9. It should insert itself automatically. Set ffdshow to show an OSD to you can tell when it is working.

[stanger89]

FWIW, I've never seen it insert itself with anything but "Default" on my system.

I'd really like to see explicit support for ffdshow like TT and FWMM have.

[David Lawrance]

Thanks!

No luck so far. VMR9 and the Moonlight Elecard 2.2 decoder is what I'm using. Turned the OSD on in ffdshow (and left the DScaler histogram filter on, too. Tred playing with the GraphEdit technique to adjust brightness just to see if I had a working version of ffdshow. That worked.) No on screen display, no histogram.

[stanger89]

Change your renderer to "Default" that should work.

[David Lawrance]

That did work. Thanks. VMR9 does not.

[mlbdude]

Another thing that might help, with VMR9 I can only get it to work when 3D Accelerated in Sage is disabled. VMR7 seems to take it either way.

[stanger89]

May have to try that mlb, I rarely disable 3D acceleration.

[stanger89]

mlb,

I tried disabling 3Dacceleration and choosing VMR9, and sure enough ffdshow now loads. Thanks a lot!

[mlbdude]

You will also notice that there is no tearing with VMR9 when 3D Acceleration is off. I wonder if that means anything?

[stanger89]

I'm guessing the extra work accelerating the Sage UI may be just too much for the cards, or Sage is doing something wrong drawing the UI that's breaking vsync.

[sticky]

I get nothing but freezagw with vrm 9 and teh 3d accecleration turned off, but DVD works fine... lol..

[stanger89]

Hey, I think I may know why there's no tearing with ffdshow, no 3D Acceleration, and VMR9. It's not using VMR9, it renders to VMR7.

As I mentioned earlier, I disabled 3DA, and switched to VMR9, which was great for a while. Then I noticed the studdering, so I figure I'll give reclock a try. While I was playing with it I notice that in the Renderers block, it said VMR7. Thought maybe it was a bug, but if I turn DXVA on (no ffdshow) it says VMR9. So I guess that explains why there's no tearing with the above setup. Darn.

[mikejaner]

Hey, stupid question. How does FFDshow compare in quality against the Hauppauge Non-CSS and Nvidia Codecs in quality? I have those two, and wonder if it's worth my time messing around with.

[stanger89]

ffdshow isn't a decoder, it is a post processor, so by itself it's useless. However, it can be quite useful for tweaking/improving the picture beyond what the decoders themselves are capable of. For instance you can add noise reduction, sharpening, resize, deinterlacing, etc. You can also use various dscaler filters, such as histogram for setting brightness/contrast.

On really neat feature of the latest 20040312 build is the Warped Resize, basically a non-linear stretch. The Dscaler, linear correction filter could probably do this also.

[mikejaner]

FFDSHOW is a DirectShow decoding filter for decompressing DivX, XviD, WMV, MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 movies. It uses libavcodec from ffmpeg project for video decompression, postprocessing code from mplayer to enhance visual quality of low bitrate movies, and is based on original DirectShow filter from XviD, which is GPL'ed educational implementation of MPEG4 encoder.

I must be interpreting this incorrectly. Is libavcodec a decoder part of this engine? According to the quote from above, off of the FFDshow site, they do decoding and post processing. I am not doubting you, just questioning the wording of their description.

[stanger89]

Well, yes, it can decode various flavors of MPEG-4 (DivX/Xvid) and others, you are correct there. I actually do use it for MPEG-4 type stuff since I don't have enought to make it worth installing more codecs on my system.

But, in the context of your question, ffdshow is only a post processor, the MPEG-2 decoding doesn't work (so I guess the answer to your question would be that ffdshow sucks as a decoder). It accepts raw video from the decoder and can apply postprocessing to it. Most of the references to ffdshow on this board and at the AVSForum are referencing ffdshow as a postprocessor only.

[GbrNole]

there's a newer build than that, stranger.

3/25 i believe is the latest.

[gplasky]

New version 3/29

Gerry

[GbrNole]

now i just need to get my pc upto spec so i can actually run the darn program!!!