ffdshow dxva is amazing but I have a few bugs

[fluxcapacitor]

I just installed the newest releases 2.33, and 2.37 and WOW I must say I'm very impressed and pleased with DXVA in ffdshow. I have several 1080P Planet Earth MKV files that when being decoded via regular ffdshow will get super choppy when there's thousands of birds flying across the screen at once, or anything else extremely detail oriented. A couple releases back I tried ffshdow DXVA and only got a frozen image but with audio. Now on these newest ones, ffdshow DXVA works exactly as I'd hoped: all 1080P MKV's run as smooth as butter! No matter what the detail level, the framerate never chugs at all, and the CPU usage is staying at or under 10/15%! I couldn't be happier in this regard.

BUT...for some reason when ffdshow DXVA is ENABLED for h264, thumbnailing is broken. If I go to a folder that needs a thumbnail generated, either via Windows Explorer or Windows Media Center, it will simply crash.

Changing to regular ffdshow and then going into most of my video folders and generating a thumbnail FIRST alieviates this problem. That is, if the thumbnail was already generated before I open the folder when ffdshow DXVA is enabled it won't crash.

Just seems for some reason Windows doesn't like generating the thumbnails with ffdshow DXVA enabled. This is ok though because at least I know what the problem is, even if going around it until an update is annoying.

But any ideas what is causing this?

[Shark007]

(01-27-2010 08:41 PM)fluxcapacitor Wrote:  any ideas what is causing this?

The answer is simple. Development takes time.

[fluxcapacitor]

Right right ok I was thinking along that line as well. DXVA is new to ffdshow so there's gonna be issues to be found and worked out. Honestly though as well as it performs for me though the bugs are worth dealing with.

Thanks for the reply.

[fluxcapacitor]

OK so I tried those improvedDXVA files u sent me and I couldn't get ffdshow to work with them. They DID fix the explorer and MCE crashing but only because using them stopped any new thumbnails from generating. But ffdshow, DXVA or regular, were not decoding anything when I had those files in the filters folder. I tried rendering an MKV with GraphStudio, but it just crashed upon loading a file. So I had to uninstall the x64 and x86 codec packs, reboot and reinstall. So now I'm back to the original post: awesome DXVA performance albeit with the crashing/thumbnail issues.

[Shark007]

I will continue to keep you informed of progress . . .

[fluxcapacitor]

Very cool, thanks.

For those that care about my DXVA experience, my system is:

E7200@3.8Ghz
Gigabyte GA-EP35-DS3L
4GB DDR2800 OCZ
PNY 8800GT
Auzentech X-Fi Prelude 7.1 via optical to Onkyo 5.1 setup
Win7x64 Ultimate

Not top of the line at all, but I always figured that this rig could easily handle 1080p videos and now with DXVA working, it does.

Also...I know that there are alternatives to ffdshow. The reason why I'm so set on it is because of Media Control. Until MS adds native FF/RW to MCE for non-native filetypes, we're stuck with Media Control, which requires ffdshow as the decoder to function properly.

[fluxcapacitor]

Shark, those newest files you sent me are great!!! A million thank you's!

They have fixed the stability issues. No more crashing in MCE and Windows Explorer. However, thumbnailing is still broken. With DXVA enabled via these newest files, it still won't generate a thumbnail. But thats a small price to pay for the lack of crashing.

One thing I forgot to mention is this thread is that with 2.33/2.37 installed, they are so buggy that with DXVA enabled, Media Control will simply crash MCE more often than not when using FF/RW. Bringing up the Media Control "page/overlay" thing never caused a problem, but as soon as I tried to FF/RW a 1080P/x264 MKV, MCE would just crash.

These newest files fix that too. FF/RW via Media Control seem to work fine. I was able to crash MCE once but I sat there rewinding and fast-forwarding all over the place just for the sake of testing stability. All in all though Media Control is usable once again with these newest files.

Great Job, Shark!!! Thanks for all your hard work, time and devotion to your codec projects!

[fluxcapacitor]

*EDIT*
Quick update...it would appear that the thumbnailing issue is only with MKV's. I have ffdshow dxva enabled and it just created thumbails for a folder of AVI's just fine.

**EDIT 2**
Forgot to post ealier that it also appears that no matter what combination of settings I choose, subtitles are NOT working with ffdshow dxva as the video decoder. Regular ffdshow brings subtitles up just fine. This is with those newest files you sent me Shark.

[fluxcapacitor]

Thanks for the updated files, Shark. They definitely seem more stable. Using Media Control for FF/RW ing they are for sure. That used to crash Media Center 9/10 times. Now that seems fine.

Subtitles are working with DXVA as well.

And these still won't thumbnail an MKV file though. They certainly don't cause crashing either. But still no thumbnails.

As always though thanks for all the help.

[Shark007]

IMO, thumbnails are a minor issue.

Having H264 playback using DXVA via ffdshow is... f a n t a s t i c.
The dev's are doing an excellent job.