Does anyone have FFDShow DXVA video decoder working?

[GollyJer]

I can get it working outside of Sage with absolutely perfect playback. But, when using Sage the same file will play but only display a green screen.

After going back and forth with Sage support for a week they claim it's an ATI driver problem. However, I tried on my Nvidia based machine with the same results.

Anyone FFDShow DXVA video decoder working?

[redondo_se]

Originally Posted by GollyJer

I can get it working outside of Sage with absolutely perfect playback. But, when using Sage the same file will play but only display a green screen.

After going back and forth with Sage support for a week they claim it's an ATI driver problem. However, I tried on my Nvidia based machine with the same results.

Anyone FFDShow DXVA video decoder working?

For sage recordings? If so it's because of the sage demux.

[jimz06]

I think this is the same issue I'm having with the MPC decoder. Videos play great in MPC-HC however not in Sage using MPC decoder. I think you'll need to register a splitter that it likes to work with. Next step for me is to load the matroska splitter that is contained in the MPC standalone filters package.

[redondo_se]

Originally Posted by jimz06

I think this is the same issue I'm having with the MPC decoder. Videos play great in MPC-HC however not in Sage using MPC decoder. I think you'll need to register a splitter that it likes to work with. Next step for me is to load the matroska splitter that is contained in the MPC standalone filters package.

Yes, it is the same issue. ffdshow got it's dxva h264 code from MPC. If you are trying to play videos, you can use a demux other than the sage demux. If you are talking about TV recordings, sage always uses it's own demux, unless you manually override it, but then you can't watch live TV.

babgvant gave me the quick reason why it doesn't work with the demux here.

And here's a slightly more technical explanation of H264/AVC1 media types.

[GollyJer]

Thanks for the responses guys. I was under the impression the issues with the Sage demux were old news after corresponding with SageTV support.

It really seams like Sage doesn't realize this is a problem. After working with them, sending logs, screenshots, etc, this was the last email I received.

Jeremy,
One of the developers said that FFDShow with DXVA works fine on our test systems for HDPVR recordings. Quite often the audio decoding messes up
things with the graph clock which causes issues with the video; that's why we were having you check that part.

The green problem is likely related to you specific video card/driver. Since SageTV uses the GPU for it's UI, there's sometimes driver issues when DXVA is used along with that which causes problems to not appear when playing the videos outside of SageTV. Numerous ATI driver bugs have been found related to this; and we've worked around some of them; using older ATI drivers resolves most of the other issues with ATI cards.

Since this problem is likely system-specific; you can avoid further frustration and just continue to use the setup that works for you. We don't need any further logs on this.

After testing and finding the same problem with an Nvidia based machine I sent a reply but haven't heard back.

[redondo_se]

Originally Posted by GollyJer

Thanks for the responses guys. I was under the impression the issues with the Sage demux were old news after corresponding with SageTV support.

It really seams like Sage doesn't realize this is a problem. After working with them, sending logs, screenshots, etc, this was the last email I received.

After testing and finding the same problem with an Nvidia based machine I sent a reply but haven't heard back.

Well, I do know they changed some things in the Sage 7 demux. I am actually using the Sage 7 demux with Sage 6. The new demux allows the Mainconcept H264 to work in hardware acceleration mode, which the Sage 6 demux does not allow. I think it was actually the same problem, so the ffdshow DXVA decoder may in fact work with the new demux in Sage 7.

What version of Sage are you using? You could try building a graph in graphedit or graphstudio with the sage demux on your system and see if the ffdshow dxva decoder works. I haven't tried ffdshow dxva in quite a long time because I'm hapily using the Win7 decoder on my family room PC (which obviously has Win7) and Mainconcept on another that's still running Vista.

[GollyJer]

I can't even get the Sage demuxer to make a connection with FFDShow DXVA in GraphStudio.

When playing in Sage the graph reported by the log file looks like this:
DShowGraphFilters=Default DirectSound Device,VidRend,ffdshow DXVA Video Decoder,ffdshow Audio Decoder,SageTV MPEG2 Demultiplexer,\\Alfred\PVR1\Hoarders-5399807-0.ts
However, when played the screen is green.

The name of the demuxer in the Sage log is strange. I assume it's the same demuxer we were testing back in the "New native recording patch" forum thread days you pointed to a couple posts ago. It's found in C:\Program Files\SageTV\Common\MpegDeMux.ax. But, in any Windows program that displays the object name for demuxers it's not referred to as "MPEG2 Demultiplexer". There is a demuxer in the common folder referred to as "MPEG Demultiplexer", but not "MPEG2". Maybe Sage hard codes the object name in their debugging code?

It would be awesome to get this working as I'd like to use one hardware accelerated video decoder for all my hd-pvr recordings and BluRay (which are almost exclusively h.264 or vc1) playback. This will ultimately provide the ability to do a video screen calibration I can trust will provide optimal playback with almost all the video on my system. i.e.- other decoders will rarely ever be used playback. FFDShow DXVA fits the bill perfectly, if it worked with Sage.

[redondo_se]

Originally Posted by GollyJer

I can't even get the Sage demuxer to make a connection with FFDShow DXVA in GraphStudio.

When playing in Sage the graph reported by the log file looks like this:
DShowGraphFilters=Default DirectSound Device,VidRend,ffdshow DXVA Video Decoder,ffdshow Audio Decoder,SageTV MPEG2 Demultiplexer,\\Alfred\PVR1\Hoarders-5399807-0.ts
However, when played the screen is green.

The name of the demuxer in the Sage log is strange. I assume it's the same demuxer we were testing back in the "New native recording patch" forum thread days you pointed to a couple posts ago. It's found in C:\Program Files\SageTV\Common\MpegDeMux.ax. But, in any Windows program that displays the object name for demuxers it's not referred to as "MPEG2 Demultiplexer". There is a demuxer in the common folder referred to as "MPEG Demultiplexer", but not "MPEG2". Maybe Sage hard codes the object name in their debugging code?

It would be awesome to get this working as I'd like to use one hardware accelerated video decoder for all my hd-pvr recordings and BluRay (which are almost exclusively h.264 or vc1) playback. This will ultimately provide the ability to do a video screen calibration I can trust will provide optimal playback with almost all the video on my system. i.e.- other decoders will rarely ever be used playback. FFDShow DXVA fits the bill perfectly, if it worked with Sage.

The name shown there doesn't have to match the name you see in graphstudio or other dshow apps. Dshow apps are free to use any name they like when adding a filter to a graph.

I can't tell you why you aren't able to hook up the demux to the decoder in graphstudio though, sorry.

[GollyJer]

Originally Posted by redondo_se

The name shown there doesn't have to match the name you see in graphstudio or other dshow apps. Dshow apps are free to use any name they like when adding a filter to a graph.

I can't tell you why you aren't able to hook up the demux to the decoder in graphstudio though, sorry.

Dshow apps are free to use any name they like if they have some sort of mapping code built in. eg.- MpegDumex = MPEG2 Demuxer, but if they don't they would have to look to the object itself to get the name wouldn't they? It can't just come out of thin air. My guess is sage has a their demux name mapped. If I use Haali or Gabest sage reports the same name as GraphStudio.

As far as connecting the video pin of a recording being passed through the Sage demuxer to FFDShow DXVA... is there any chance you could give it a shot and let me know if it works for you?

[redondo_se]

Originally Posted by GollyJer

Dshow apps are free to use any name they like if they have some sort of mapping code built in. eg.- MpegDumex = MPEG2 Demuxer, but if they don't they would have to look to the object itself to get the name wouldn't they? It can't just come out of thin air. My guess is sage has a their demux name mapped.

Yes, sage is hard coded to use their own demux for dshow playback of .mpg (and probably .ts) files for TV recordings. So, I'm sure they also have that "SageTV MPEG2 Demultiplexer" hardcoded. I also see that same string in my debug output files. But trust me, it's the same demux that's named "SageTV MpegDeMux" everywhere else.

Originally Posted by GollyJer

If I use Haali or Gabest sage reports the same name as GraphStudio.

Are you overriding the sage demux using the registry key:

HKLM\Software\Frey Technologies\Common\DirectShow

or the equivalent with babgvant's registry settings tool?

Originally Posted by GollyJer

As far as connecting the video pin of a recording being passed through the Sage demuxer to FFDShow DXVA... is there any chance you could give it a shot and let me know if it works for you?

I tried, to connect the sage demux to ffdshow DXVA in graphedt, and I also could NOT get it to connect. Since that is happening, I don't see any way possible that sage is actually getting them to connect in the SageTV application, unless they had some hard coding in the demux that only allowed it to connect to ffdshow DXVA when it is running inside the SageTV application. But, I highly doubt that.

My guess is that ffdshow DXVA is not really being used in SageTV when you are seeing the green mess. It may be listed in the debug file, but I bet it's not really being used. Do you have the MPC H264 decoder registered on your system? What other H264 decoders do you have? What OS are you on?

[GollyJer]

@redondo My system configuration is in my forum signature.

@everyone To give you guys an idea of how I'm going about trying to get FFDShow DXVA to work I'm posting my full back and forth with Sage support. My initial request was sent on January 3rd and the last response was received today, January 20th. This response was very promising. It looks like my persistence may have paid off.

Warning: I'm kind of a jerk during some parts of the conversation. Read through the whole thing before holding it against me.

Originally Posted by Jeremy

Hi. I generally use PowerDVD as my video decoder but recently tried getting Sage to use FFDShow DXVA and MPC-HC as they are free, and I venture to say competitive, alternatives. These codecs work great on my machine through Gabest and Haali splitters. And, playing .mkv files through Sage and overriding the default splitter they work great. The problem presents itself when trying to play .ts files recorded by an HD-PVR. These files insist on using the sage splitter (which makes sense, especially for live TV) but when played though MPC-HC or FFDShow DXVA the video is either a black or green screen respectively. Are these codecs not expected to work with Sage's splitter? If not, are there plans to get them working?

Thanks!

Originally Posted by Sage Support

Can you get me logs of this.

Disable the service while testing. It can be disabled in Start > All
Programs > SageTV > SageTVServiceControl.exe. Now just run Sage from the
desktop icon.

To enable logging, disable any custom STV's/ plugins you are using and go to
Detailed Setup > Advanced and turn on Debug Logging. Restart SageTV and
recreate the problem. After you recreate it, you can then close SageTV. Now
look for this file in your Frey Technologies or SageTV folder:
"sagetv_0.txt" Send me that file. Do not paste the text, but rather paste
the whole log file. I want it as an attachment. The quicker you can
reproduce the problem the smaller the log file will be. You can also zip up
the log file to shrink the size down considerably. In Vista the log files
will be placed in C:\Users\"your user
name"\AppData\Local\VirtualStore\Program Files\SageTV.

Sage creates a new log file each time you run it. It will also name the
newest log file "sagetv_0.txt" and the previous log file will be named
"sagetv_1.txt" and so on. Keep this in mind as you send us the log files.
Also, Sage will create a new log file after one reaches 10 megs. So the
"sagetv_0.txt" log file is always the newest. Zipping up the log files will
shrink the files considerably if they get too big.

Then send me a copy of your system information. Go to Setup > Help > System
Information screen and hit the Info button (defaults to CTRL-I on your
keyboard). A txt file named "SystemInfo.txt" will be created in your SageTV
folder. Send me that file.

Originally Posted by Jeremy

Thanks for the response. I'd like to focus on FFDShow DXVA to begin with. It's included with the recent versions of ffdshow tryout. FYI, I frequently check the graphfilter= line in the logs to see how Sage is building it's graph so I'm fairly confident disabling my plugins won't have any affect on this issue. If you really think it would I'll grudgingly disable them all.

You'll probably see in the logs, but I have everything in Sage's Audio/Video settings set to Default and Directshow.
Attached find the two scenarios where it isn't working for me. The logs are named in a way that should help. When I pull either of these files into GraphStudio the graph builds as expected and plays back perfectly. The only difference is the default setup, used by GraphStudio, is set to the MPC-HC (Gabest) splitter instead of the Sage splitter (screenshots attached).

If you're wondering why I wish to use FFDShow DXVA, it's because it provides free hardware accelerated playback of h.264 AND VC1 video.

Originally Posted by Sage Support

One of the developers wants to know if the problems with using sagetv's
splitter for mkv is the same as when you try to play hdpvr files. If so, can
you then get a log from when you play an mkv ok with the other splitter and
another one with our splitter.

Originally Posted by Jeremy

Just to clarify, I'm having no audio issues. These are all video problems.

I believe there are two separate issues...
1) Sage will not build the system default graph for VC1 video. It always falls back to the Microsoft DMO Wrapper Filter for video. Playback is ok with this filter but it doesn't use hardware acceleration. This problem may only exist when VC1 is encapsulated in an .mkv. But I don't have any other containers to test.

2) Sage will not play anything through FFDShow DXVA. This decoder supports h.264 and VC1. I only have mkv and HD-PVR .ts files to test with but I don't see why it would be different with other containers.

For now I will focus on problem #2 as I'd love to use FFDShow DXVA for general recording and live tv playback.

Attached find 3 logs. For each test audio plays back perfectly. One shows perfect playback of an h.264 mkv file using MPC-HC's splitter. One shows the same file crashing the application using Sage's splitter. I control which splitter Sage uses for .mkv files by changing the EnableSageTVStreamDemux registry setting.

The third log shows an HD-PVR h.264 recording playing back with Sage's splitter and all I get is a green screen. This same file plays perfectly when played through GraphStudio with everything the same graph except for being split by the MPC-HC splitter. See included screenshot.

Let me know what else I can do. If your developers are working on the splitter I'd be happy to help. I should be able to simply drop it in my SageTV/Common folder; backing up the existing mpegdemux file somewhere safe of course.

P.S. - I'm using Reclock as my audio renderer for bitstreaming HD audio playback. Not sure many Sage users use it, but that's why your seeing it in all my logs.

Originally Posted by Sage Support

Close SageTV and the service try setting this in your Sage.properties file:

videoframe/dts_audio_decoder_filter=ffdshow Audio Decoder

And one of the developers said we definitely do not recommend using ReClock;
that's caused many people lots of problems in the past so we recommend you
disable that.

Let me know the results with the above setting and also with ReClock
disabled.

Originally Posted by Jeremy

It's the VIDEO renderer that has a problem, NOT the audio. Playback is green REGARDLESS of the audio decoder/renderer I use. If I use the included AC3Filter and the Windows default audio renderer playback is still green. Is the developer you're working with even reading the emails I'm sending? I've been patient and helpful to this point but am starting to feel like my this is a futile effort.

Is there any chance you guys could actually try playing an hd-pvr recording on a test system using your approved audio decoder/renderer and add FFDShow DXVA as the video renderer and view the the results? That seems much easier and productive than asking for logs from me.

To reiterate prior emails, I don't have a problem getting Sage to playback all my content. Generally I use PDVD10 for video output and FFDShow Audio + Reclock for HDMI bitstreaming HD audio output. It works GREAT. I'm simply trying to help you guys get an extremely awesome and free hardware accelerated video decoder to work from within your product.

Originally Posted by Sage Support

One of the developers said that FFDShow with DXVA works fine on our test
systems for HDPVR recordings. Quite often the audio decoding messes up
things with the graph clock which causes issues with the video; that's why
we were having you check that part.

The green problem is likely related to you specific video card/driver. Since
SageTV uses the GPU for it's UI, there's sometimes driver issues when DXVA
is used along with that which causes problems to not appear when playing the
videos outside of SageTV. Numerous ATI driver bugs have been found related
to this; and we've worked around some of them; using older ATI drivers
resolves most of the other issues with ATI cards.

Since this problem is likely system-specific; you can avoid further
frustration and just continue to use the setup that works for you. We don't
need any further logs on this.

Originally Posted by Jeremy

Awesome. That was the kind of info I was looking for. Very helpful. Thanks. I do have an ATI card. Will test with one of my nvidia machines.
Sorry for being such a jerk.

Originally Posted by Jeremy

OK. Tried this tonight on my Nvidia based system with the exact same results. It doesn't seem to be a driver issue. It must be a Sage/FFDShowDXVA issue.
Log attached.

Do you guys really have a working FFDShow DXVA video decoder setup? It is a completely different decoder than FFDShow Video decoder.

Thanks for working with me on this. I'm working on a blog post explaining how to easily set up HD hardware accelerated video and uncompressed HD Audio playback with subtitle support in Windows 7 for free and with as few install steps as possible. I have it working with all other directshow players but I don't really want to post until everything also works with SageTV. In its current state a registry hack is required to override the sage splitter for non-recordings which forces the system to use the Sage splitter and a different video decoder for recordings. Ideally the same playback graph could be used for everything.

Originally Posted by Sage Support

Just to let you know, the developers have found an issue and are looking into it further.

[jimz06]

I'm interested to see what you find out.

After my post, earlier in this thread, about installing a different splitter that plays nice with MPC decoder, I had a video decoder meltdown. For the first time ever I couldn't even get MPC-HC, not to mention STV, to play a .m2ts or .mkv properly. To make a long story short after much confused filter manipulation, I ended up going into the MPC-HC external filters configuration and (on a hunch, based on seeing the graphfilter results in the Sage log) started blocking anything that was listed as a Sage demuxer or splitter. I hit paydirt when I blocked "SageTV MpegDeMux" and now files play correctly in MPC-HC again...STV still needs work.

Is it possible that when I registered the MPC splitter it somehow elevated that rogue Sage filter that seemed to take over my system? My inclination is just to go into the filter manager and drop it's merit way down but I'm concerned that will break something else.

[redondo_se]

GollyJer,

Is your reason for wanting to use ffdshow DXVA primarily so you can show subtitles while using DXVA? If so, I know where you're coming from. I addressed this problem before ffdshow had DXVA.

I have customized ffdshow in several ways, one of them being to prevent it from connecting to the SageTV demux. Then I also customized it so that when it receives a connection from the MPC matroska splitter, it inserts CoreAVC in between the demux and ffdshow. With this graph, I get Cuda decoding of h264 and then ffdshow handles the subtitles.

I set ffdshow as the highest merit h264 decoder (or on win 7 make it the preferred h264 decoder). Then I set the decoder I want to use for h264 TV to the 2nd highest merit. I set sage to use the "Default" decoder for h264. Then, when sage tries to play a TV file it will always use it's demux. It will first try to connect to ffdshow, which will fail. Then it connects the the filter I want to use for h264 television, which works. When sage loads a mkv with h264, it uses the mpc matroska splitter, and successfully connects to ffdshow, which injects CoreAVC into the graph.

However, for you, now that ffdshow supports DXVA decoding AND subtitles, AND it already doesn't connect to the sage demux, YOU ARE IN LUCK! Here's what you can do:

• Win7 doesn't use filter merit alone when rendering a graph. It has "preferred" filters for different media types. You need to use the Win7DSFilterTweaker to set ffdshow (DXVA) as the preferred decoder for h264
• Use your favorite tool to set the other h264 decoder you want to use for TV to highest merit, I like DirectShow Filter Manager. (Since you're on Win7, I highly recommend the microsoft dtv-dvd video decoder)
• Set sagetv to use "Default" for h264

That should be everything you need. Let me know if you need any clarification.

Sean