Video freezing - ffdshow installed

[orangat]

I'm troubleshooting a hard to pin down freezing problem with mp4 files. The video freezes for about 5 secs, the audio keeps going and then the video catches up. This happens every 2min-4min. The cpu utilization shoots up for an instant during the freeze and goes right back down. The player program is the one which eats up all the cpu cycles, not any spyware or tsr.

mpg1/2 files plays well without any problems. The mastroka pack installed which includes the ffshow codec pack. I haven't tried klite since ffdshow should work.
Realplayer, powerdvd, mediaplayer all have the same issues with the same files.

The problem is not due to spyware, viruses, disk activity/issues, other programs running in the background, memory, swapping etc. Tweaking the pci latency timings did not help.

What I found in Gspot is that problem files (divx/xvid/mp4) has the 'Codec not installed' status in the video box. Sometimes the 4CC box is also n/a or it says DX50/divx.
The video path for all problem files is "(S) --> AVI Splitter --> ffdshow MPEG-4 Video Decoder --> (R)"
Many files from many sources have the same problem so its a problem of bad encoding I think.

Anyone having similar problems with ffdshow?

 

[rbV5]

I'm using the ffdshow 8-22-05 release and it works fine using libavcodec decoding Mpeg4. Are the problem files using libavcodec decoder or Xvid? Are they all encoded with the same codec? Which is....? What audio decoder are you using?

I have to get some sleep, but I'll revisit the thread after I get back up later today, good luck.

 

[orangat]

The clips are various clips I download from the net. Instructionals and highlights and what not. So I have no idea on what codec was used. All I know is that divx/xvid (non-mpeg1/2 clips freeze temporarily).

As I said, gspot says no video codec installed which is strange since ffdshow is installed. But it plays fine except for the freezes. The ffdshow config says libavcodec for all mp4/divx/xvid. I left it on default settings and didn't mess with it.

Gspot says 4 (usually multiple) audio codec installed. When I click render, I get:
(S) --> AVI Splitter --> ffdshow Audio Decoder --> (R)

 

[FlyingPenguin]

I would not be using any FFDShow release except the 20041012 alpha and ONLY if downloaded from SourceForge: http://sourceforge.net/projects/ffdshow

SourceForge doesn't even list a newer version, and there's a lot of hacked versions out there that may even contain spyware.

You also don't want to have any other Divx and XVid codecs installed along with FFDShow. All I have installed is FFDShow, AC3 and a DVD Decoder and I can play just about everything just fine. Having multiple codecs that decode the same video can cause a problem.

I have a blog entry on how to deal with some of these problems here: http://soldcentralfl.com/flyingpenguin/penguin_blog.shtml#divx-fix

Hope this helps...

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: FlyingPenguin
You also don't want to have any other Divx and XVid codecs installed along with FFDShow. All I have installed is FFDShow, AC3 and a DVD Decoder and I can play just about everything just fine. Having multiple codecs that decode the same video can cause a problem.

DirectShow has a merit system to prevent this from happening. What this doesn't prevent is different splitter/decoder combos. Those generally aren't a problem, especially if the splitter is the regular AVI splitter from Microsoft (it is in this case) which all the codecs are probably based on.

Also, I highly doubt any of the new ffdshow builds contain spyware. I think it's being updated by the same people who work on x264. Well, at least the x264 decoder probably is. I believe they are just being recompiled with a new x264 decoder and libavcodec, but that's just my theory.

See if you can reproduce the freezing issue with ffmpeg-based players and avoid DirectShow entirely, for debugging purposes.

http://oss.netfarm.it/mplayer/gui/mplayer-gui-rtm-cvs-20051012.zip

If this player doesn't work, it's probably a problem with your hardware, or it being inadequate for the purpose. If it does, then we've eliminated the hardware aspect of it. Well, provided that player can actually open that file anyway.

Next thing I'd try is a different splitter. What is the extension on the file that has the problem? avi?

This issue happens to me when I specify too many things to postprocess in ffdshow (and its completely understable), so the first thing you should really do is uncheck all the boxes in ffdshow video config (but save your config beforehand).

 

[orangat]

I'm almost certain that there is no spyware involved. The matroska pack is well regarded and I scanned the pc using spybot/aaw/spysweep/anti-v already. In any case the same problem existed before installing the matroska pack when the pc had an older version of ffdshow.

The HW should be sufficient. It is an A64, 6800GT, 1Gb mem. I installed mplayer in your link and still had stutters. The difference was that the stutters were very quick almost like a blip. And it affected both video+audio whereas the original issue was that video freezes for about 4 secs while audio was perfectly fine.

I think all of the problem files have the .avi extension.

How would I use a different splitter or avoid directshow? No codec packs were installed except for realplayer,quicktime,matroska (includes ffdshow). I use MS mediaplayer or powerdvd to play media files.

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: orangat
I'm almost certain that there is no spyware involved. The matroska pack is well regarded and I scanned the pc using spybot/aaw/spysweep/anti-v already. In any case the same problem existed before installing the matroska pack when the pc had an older version of ffdshow.

The HW should be sufficient. It is an A64, 6800GT, 1Gb mem. I installed mplayer in your link and still had stutters. The difference was that the stutters were very quick almost like a blip. And it affected both video+audio whereas the original issue was that video freezes for about 4 secs while audio was perfectly fine.

I think all of the problem files have the .avi extension.

How would I use a different splitter or avoid directshow? No codec packs were installed except for realplayer,quicktime,matroska (includes ffdshow). I use MS mediaplayer or powerdvd to play media files.

mplayer-gui is avoiding DirectShow. This has demonstrated that either there is an issue in the libavcodec library, or your PC being incapable. Never underestimate media...H.264 1080p will destroy even most dual Opteron systems. xvid with enough deblocking selected may too. What you should try now is downloading the latest xvid build. Go in ffdshow, and disable DivX/xvid decoding, and get this: http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Koepi_XviD.htm

 

[orangat]

You're right. HD video samples totally destroyed my own rig and would pwn this problem pc well. But I'm only playing smaller videos which should be well within the capability of this pc.

I took flyingpenguin's advice and installed ffdshow from sourceforge and the problem seems to be reduced to mere skipping for about a sec or less and it only happens infrequently. I think the newer builds have code tweaks which aren't well tested.

I did notice though that the SSE2 version had significantly higher cpu utilization which is surprising. The sse1 and no-SSE had similar cpu util so I just used the non-sse. I did not fiddle with the postprocessing options.

At this point I consider the problem closed. It could be some bad frames or some conflict with Nero own decoder which is also installed. Thanks for your help xknight and penguin.

 

[NatePo717]

how do you get this thing to work?

 

[orangat]

Originally posted by: NatePo717
how do you get this thing to work?

huh? It was working, just that I got annoying video freezes. The problem is now greatly reduced after changing to the official version.

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: orangat

Originally posted by: NatePo717
how do you get this thing to work?

huh? It was working, just that I got annoying video freezes. The problem is now greatly reduced after changing to the official version.

I think he means ffdshow: just install it and it will register itself.

woohoo, 2500th post. also your 666th post...scary...

 

[OCedHrt]

You can get ffdshow updates here: http://m17n.cool.ne.jp/freeware/mpc/

 

[rbV5]

I would not be using any FFDShow release except the 20041012 alpha and ONLY if downloaded from SourceForge

Thats not bad advice

On your playback issue, I wouldn't rule out the "audio"decoder.

 

[Gronich]

Originally posted by: orangat

The problem is not due to spyware, viruses, disk activity/issues, other programs running in the background, memory, swapping etc. Tweaking the pci latency timings did not help.

Have you ruled out USB devices? I have a memory card reader which hogs the CPU time on a rythmical basis.

 

[orangat]

Originally posted by: OCedHrt
You can get ffdshow updates here: http://m17n.cool.ne.jp/freeware/mpc/

Absolutely not. Look at the warnings on that site. "testing only not for general use" "may be unstable or even unusable" etc.
From the version history, it looks like people are mostly playing around with different compilers and trying to make it 64bit compatible.

Have you ruled out USB devices? I have a memory card reader which hogs the CPU time on a rythmical basis.

The only usb devices plugged in is an mx510 USB mouse.

 

[xtknight]

How is CPU usage when playing in 'mplayer-gui'?

 

[orangat]

Just by eyeballing task manager, I think mplayer takes slightly less cpu.

Also I was wrong about the sse2 version of ffshow being more cpu intensive, I may have accidently enabled some postprocesing or something. The non-sse version used 100% cpu when I enabled some nr/pp while sse2 took less.