SageTV Player VS DirectShow

[AWS]

I know it's an issue of codecs but why is it that I can play ALL my MPEG4 videos with the SageTV player but if I select DirectShow a lot of the XVID files do not work; error: there was a problem rendering the audio portion of the file...

How do I make DirectShow player use all the correct codecs that are already installed on my machine? Argh.

Thanks,
AWS

[jimwhite]

Get a hold of Graphstudio and learn how to use it... by then, they'll all work

[AWS]

ok, so I am running GraphStudio... Now what? Am I missing an audio renderer?

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3323/...ed14f834_o.jpg

[stanger89]

Man that's a messed up graph. Open up the file with mediainfo to see what codecs it uses. But ffdshow should be all you need.

[AWS]

Audio details via mediainfo (from above -- Thx for the program link & info)

Audio
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Codec ID : 2000
Duration : 1h 0mn
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 448 Kbps
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel positions : Front: L C R, Surround: L R, LFE
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Stream size : 194 MiB (28%)
Alignment : Split accross interleaves
Interleave, duration : 42 ms (1.00 video frame)
Interleave, preload duration : 500 ms

[AWS]

Originally Posted by stanger89

Man that's a messed up graph. Open up the file with mediainfo to see what codecs it uses. But ffdshow should be all you need.

What am I looking at that would identify this graph as "messed up"? Are things missing or in a wrong order, etc? Sorry never used these pin graphing programs before.

When/if I make a graph change will that affect the playback of that media type via DirectShow from that point forward or is there another step I will need to do before Windows accepts the new "path"?

Thanks

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by AWS

What am I looking at that would identify this graph as "messed up"? Are things missing or in a wrong order, etc? Sorry never used these pin graphing programs before.

Well basically the "AVI Decompressor" and "Colorspace Converter" filters, it's been ages since I've seen those. I'd expect to only see on one video filter, like "ffdshow video decoder" or something.

When/if I make a graph change will that affect the playback of that media type via DirectShow from that point forward or is there another step I will need to do before Windows accepts the new "path"?

No, it pretty much just tells you what's going on.

[AWS]

When in GraphStudio I noticed it counts the number of filters being displayed. It says I have 199 DirectShow filters. Is that a lot or normal?

[kricker]

Do you even have ffdshow installed? If not get a new build from free-codecs.com or afterdawn.com and install it. When it installs you have the options of setting it as the default decoder for almost every format. Then check a file in graph studio, and you should see a cleaner graph.

[AWS]

No I don'thave ffdshow installed at the moment. It has been in the past but not now. I was trying to consolidate/limit my installed codecs so I don't have 20 codecs installed doing the same thing. I've already bought and installed the nVidia codec pack via TheaterTek as well as TotalMedia Theater (figured nVidia codec is pretty much dead these days)

I'll install ffdshow and see what results I get.

[AWS]

Here is the graph post ffdshow install - all install defaults taken. Same problem still exists in Sage when viewing this *.AVI file

[kricker]

Your splitter is not connecting to an audio codec and renderer. Make sure ffdshow is setup to decode ac3 audio.

[AWS]

ok reinstalled ffdshow and set all options to checked. Here is the latest graph:


File now plays correctly. Thanks all!

So why buy codecs from nVidia and TotalMedia? Ugh

AWS

[kricker]

If you let ffdshow add a start menu entry you can configure it from there without having to re-install it. You would have aa shortcut for configuing audio and video codecs that it suports. As for other codecs, when Nvidia was all the rage its mpeg decoding was superior to ffdshow's at the time. I don't know now as I don't use either for mpeg decoding.

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by AWS

So why buy codecs from nVidia and TotalMedia? Ugh

For DVDs and to get Hardware Accelleration for video decoding.

[kricker]

I consider ffdshow a good base codec. Then I install specialty codecs to do just what stanger89 says.

[AWS]

So now what is a good codec packge to use? You mentioned specialized codecs... which ones do you use and for which type of file do you use it for?

Thanks

[stanger89]

Codec packs are bad, don't ever install a codec pack. As far as which decoder to use, it depends on your files. ffdshow is great in that it can decode most everything. But it doesn't support hardware accelleration, so if you want that, you need to look for a (usually commercial) codec that does, like nVidia, Cyberlink, etc.

[AWS]

How do I have ffdshow decode only the *.AVI files which were causing problems to me before? I want to use the existing codecs (TotalMedia, nVidia) for everything else?

Is it better to just start over, from square 1? Is there a matrix that shows what codec does what?

What would be a good replacement/modern/upgrade to the nVidia codecs? TotalMedia Theater? I do run nVidia hardware.

Thx.

AWS

[kricker]

When you install ffdshow it allows you to choose what video and audio formats it will decode. When you choose those it takes over decoding of those types. In the video setup of ffdshow you can also enable or disable which ever format you want another codec to decode.