New FFDshow Can Now Decode AVCHD

Soopafresh · Craptastic Joined: 01 Jan 2004 Location: United States

Reported at doom9 and I tested it a few minutes ago (quite sloppily), ffdshow_rev1579_20071026_xxl.exe can decode PAFF encoded h264 video. Needs Haali media Splitter installed as well. It's not as pretty and isn't as low CPU as the commercial CoreAVC, but it is free.

http://sourceforge.net/project/downloading.php?group_id=173941&am ... p;56071641

EDIT: As it's only 5 days out of the oven, it isn't quite perfect yet, so early adopters, expect some "unknowns"

Still, this is progress

Bravo to the geniuses who figured this one out.

Using DirectShowSource and Yadif Deinterlacer, resized to 720x400

Ollie6431 · Member Joined: 11 Oct 2007 Location: United States

I just tried this combo (ffdshow / Haali Media Splitter) and found that it offers very smooth video playback even on low-end systems. The sound, on the other hand, is only good on a very high-end system. Still, ffdshow is a great FREE software. Kudo for the developer!

Baldrick · Administrator Joined: 09 Aug 2000 Location: Sweden

What's paff encoded video?

racer-x · Posted: Nov 01, 2007 13:31

Great news for all those crazy people that bought AVCHD camcorders...........

With the latest ffdshow, Avisynth and VFAPIcodec, you can now edit AVCHD footage in any NLE you have. I experimented editing AVCHD footage shot by Canon in Premiere Pro and Vegas 6. No problems..............
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Midzuki · **Banned** Joined: 25 Jun 2007 Location: UNREACHABLE

Baldrick wrote:

Soopafresh · Craptastic Joined: 01 Jan 2004 Location: United States

What's paff encoded video?

It's a flavor of h264 which uses a hybrid interlacing method to record and display, as in AVCHD. Up until now, the only decoders which worked to display the video were commercial products, such as CoreAVC Pro.

The ability to decode PAFF with open source products means the capability will be written into the popular free programs - ffmpeg, VLC, etc.

DarrellS · Member Joined: 28 Nov 2002 Location: United States

For some reason, I'm not getting the video in hardly any of my files in Virtualdub but I'm able to save the audio and use TMPGEnc to convert the video to AVI and then use Virtualdub 1.7.X to put the audio back in and direct stream copy.

Most of the files that I'm converting still don't play very well with the new version of ffdshow but I am able to convert all of the files (except for the 1080p files which are not supported) to AVI and watch them with no problems.

Oh, the m2ts files that I downloaded still won't play or convert correctly. I'm guessing that they are corrupt.

DarrellS · Member Joined: 28 Nov 2002 Location: United States

The files that I used in TMPGEnc were all mp4 files. I tried a bunch of .h264 files and they would not work in TMPGEnc or Virtualdub but by changing the extension to .mp4, I could open in Virtualdub with avisynth but could not open in TMPGEnc.

After converting with VDub, the very beginning of the video stutters a little bit but everything else is fine. For some reason, I don't think that ffdshow is decompressing the files but LEAD evaluation codec which I supposedly deleted after the evaluation ran out since the text is at the bottom of the video. These files play in Nero Showtime as .h264 files but will only play in media player classic when I change the extension to mp4. The other mp4 files play in PowerDVD 7 but most of them are all jittery. Nero is using the ffdshow audio decoder while playing the h264 (mp4) files. I opened one of the mp4 files in Nero and it gives me the message that the evaluation period is over for the AVC decoder but plays the movie anyway and the ffdshow pops up in my tray so it is working on some of the files.

That is my biggest complaint about this format. One codec will not decode every file. You need different codecs and different players to play each and every file. This is the most frustrating format there is and that is the creators intention to get the most money out of the users as they can.

HD-Divx and WMV-HD would've worked just fine but they had to come up with a new format or I should say screw up a free format (the Core h264 codec used to be a free codec) so they could sell billions of dollars worth of hardware and software to use it.

styx · Member Joined: 21 Nov 2007 Location: United States

[quote="Soopafresh"]Reported at doom9 and I tested it a few minutes ago (quite sloppily), ffdshow_rev1579_20071026_xxl.exe can decode PAFF encoded h264 video. Needs Haali media Splitter installed as well. It's not as pretty and isn't as low CPU as the commercial CoreAVC, but it is free.

http://sourceforge.net/project/downloading.php?group_id=173941&am ... p;56071641

EDIT: As it's only 5 days out of the oven, it isn't quite perfect yet, so early adopters, expect some "unknowns"

Still, this is progress

Bravo to the geniuses who figured this one out.

Using DirectShowSource and Yadif Deinterlacer, resized to 720x400

You are mentioning two codecs here that can decode avchd, ffdshow and Haali media Splitter. Can you give some detailed instructions of how to do that? Player used, and steps by step please. I did try, and I failed. Your knowledge seems impressive, babysit some of us please.

Soopafresh · Craptastic Joined: 01 Jan 2004 Location: United States

Sure. Two basic steps should do it. I use MediaPlayerClassic , but it should work with Windows Media Player as well.

1) Install FFDshow and make certain you have AVC h264 decoding support checked during install. You can make sure from the ffdshow video decoder config menu.

2) Install Haali Media Splitter, making sure the following items are checked during install:

Normal caveats apply. AVCHD is still new in FFdshow. If you have $15, I'd use CoreAVC Pro instead for the next couple of months, as it has been around for a while now and is pretty stable. The only reason I bring it up is because being an early adopter of a new feature means inevitable growing pains.