dex Otaku Posted February 11, 2005 Report Share Posted February 11, 2005 I tried to do a test with FFDSHOW vs. system codecs and got some very strange results.I know of very few applications that will tell you [honestly] what the active codecs in use are. I tend to look towards Media Player Classic [havnig disabled its internal decoders] and mplayer2.exe. If anyone has any suggestions on what to use to see what codecs are active, please make them. I'm gonig to go looking for such a tool after posting this.FFDSHOW has a control panel that lets you select whether it decodes what formats, and what of its available decoders to use, as well as their output bit depths and such.My presumption before this was that FFDSHOW's problems were caused by its defaulting to all output bit-depths being available [16, 24, and 32-bit integer as well as 32-bit floating point].I'm not sure what to think now, to be honest.My "normal" sytem codec for mp3 is a version from FhG.FFDSHOW lists both libmad and mp3lib as available to it.Here's the weird part: [iMO]If I switch things so that FFDSHOW is not 'disabled' for mp3 and to use either of its decoders, MP Classic switches from the FhG codec to FFDSHOW.mplayer2, on the other hand, *always* uses the FhG codec.SS does not have a way to report what codec is active, therefore the following is unreliable until I remove the FhG codec completely and redo everything.Test conditions:* Using FFDSHOW version 2005-02-01 and SonicStage 2.3.* I made several test files, then encoded them to 320kbps mp3 using both lame 3.96.1 and a version of the FhG encoder.* I made multiple copies of the files, and put them in folders titled with the settings I would be using with FFDSHOW, i.e. "disabled", "all bit options on", "processing limited to 16-bit", "output limited to 16-bit" and so on, including the names of the two FFDSHOW codecs as well.* I shut down and restarted SS between each trancoding to try and ensure that the changes to FFDSHOW's settings would "take". There is no way of knowing which codec was actually in use, however.* The first test was with FFDSHOW disabled; presumably, SS would be using the FhG decoder.* Three basic tests were perfomed for both FFDSHOW decoders: 1) all bit-depth options on2) processing depth limited to 16-bit3) processing and output depth limited to 16-bitThe Results:All files transcoded properly. FFDSHOW did not interfere with SonicStage's trancoding process in any way, regardless of whether it was set to be the active decoder or not.In all honesty, I was very surprised with these results. They were not what I was expecting.Tomorrow I will be removing the FhG codec and redoing this to see what the results are then. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bug80 Posted February 11, 2005 Report Share Posted February 11, 2005 This is very interesting.Personally, I don't think SonicStage uses the codecs of ffdhow, if they're enabled. It's maybe just that the filters of ffdshow may have a problem with some versions of Fraunhofer's codec, for instance, and that will be the reason SonicStage crashes on some systems with ffdshow installed.However it's strange that SS crashes, while other programs work fine. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dex Otaku Posted February 11, 2005 Author Report Share Posted February 11, 2005 It's also possible that I have no problems with it because I'm using a more recent version than most people seem to. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bug80 Posted February 11, 2005 Report Share Posted February 11, 2005 It's also possible that I have no problems with it because I'm using a more recent version than most people seem to.←Which one? I'm using the newest version I could find (oct 12 2004).If I have some time left this week, I will try to reproduce your tests on my PC. Maybe I can find out where things go wrong exactly. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dex Otaku Posted February 11, 2005 Author Report Share Posted February 11, 2005 Using FFDSHOW version 2005-02-01 and SonicStage 2.3. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bug80 Posted February 12, 2005 Report Share Posted February 12, 2005 ←Sorry I will test that version as soon as I can. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bug80 Posted February 12, 2005 Report Share Posted February 12, 2005 (edited) Sorry I will test that version as soon as I can.←I downloaded ffdshow 2005-02-01 and installed it. I tried converting a "problem" mp3 within SonicStage 2.3 with the following ffdshow settings:* mp3 codec disabled (worked)* mp3 codec "mp3lib" (didn't work)* mp3 codec "mp3lib" and bit-depth to 16 bits only (didn't work)* mp3 codec "mp3lib" with Fraunhofer system codec disabled (didn't work)* mp3 codec "libmad" and all possible bit-depths (worked!)So, the problem lies in the mp3lib codec.FYI, here are my specs:Athlon Thunderbird 800 MHz, 384 MB RAM, Windows XP SP2System codec: Fraunhofer IIS MPEG Layer 3 codec (advanced)Disabling the Fraunhofer codec didn't prevent SS from crashing, but it started decoding (this problem mp3 crashes at 19%). I guess SS doesn't use the system codec, but it's own.* EDIT *dex Otaku, what kind processor do you have, an Intel? Maybe the problem is processor specific. As far as I know, ffdshow uses instructions like SSE and MMX, if available. Edited February 12, 2005 by bug80 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dex Otaku Posted February 12, 2005 Author Report Share Posted February 12, 2005 Athlon XP 2500+ Barton. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bug80 Posted February 12, 2005 Report Share Posted February 12, 2005 Athlon XP 2500+ Barton.←Hm. Maybe my system just isn't fast enough It's going to be hard to find out where the bottleneck is. There are a lot of options. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dex Otaku Posted February 12, 2005 Author Report Share Posted February 12, 2005 I haven't tried it with FhG removed yet. I expect I would get the same results you did. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Daijoubu Posted March 5, 2005 Report Share Posted March 5, 2005 mp3 decoding with ffdshow + SS is problematic, don't use it until it's fixedI'll suggest your guys to use this DirectShow decoder instead of Fhg, little bit faster, use mpg123 (best decoder), ReplayGain support :!:http://f23.aaa.livedoor.jp/~kanetuki/download.htmlEdit: Here's my bug report from Oct 2004http://sourceforge.net/tracker/index.php?f...761&atid=471489 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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