Commercial decoders are available from various vendors. Free decoders are available and described below. Some machines prefer one or the other. Also tick the DVD decoding box. Failure to do these things will cause DVD Decoding to fail. This process is explained on the Dolby AC3 page. Some of these alternative options, if properly configured, can provide absolutely stunning playback quality which meets and often exceeds the quality available from the best set-top upscaling DVD Players commercially available.
As mentioned above, CCCP does not include each and every filter you could possibly need to have in order to support your media. However, here are a few of the big ones:. Real Alternative is a free, open source implementation of the Real playback engine, which handle Real Media file types without having to install the "real" RealPlayer. KL Software the group that releases the Real and Quicktime Alternative packages now has a "Lite" edition of both Alternatives that are identical to the full version but it doesn't include Media Player Classic.
MC uses Quicktime as its "fallback" rendering engine if DirectShow playback fails. So, it's a good idea to have Quicktime installed even if you don't use any Quicktime Media. Quicktime Player is available for free from Apple. You do not need to choose the version that includes iTunes -- there is still a standalone player version available. Quicktime is available free of charge from Apple for a variety of platforms. You can spend a lot of time discussing the relative merits of and problems with Apple's QuickTime engine and player software.
It is certainly far from perfect, but it does work for a large number of users and is well supported. Installing Quicktime can sometimes create more problems than it solves because of some of the default settings the application uses when you install it. All of these annoying qualities can be mitigated or eliminated by being very careful as you proceed through the installation process, and by taking a few steps after the installation is complete.
For a detailed guide to installing Quicktime in the least annoying method possible, refer to the Quicktime Installation Guide at CodecGuide. Similar to RealAlternative, you can also choose to install Quicktime Alternative instead of the "real" Quicktime. It is actually a good idea to install at least the Splitter portion of Quicktime Alternative, even if you use the full, Apple version of Quicktime.
MC12 can handle Quicktime files as long as either QuicktimeAlternative or the official Apple QuickTime package is installed on the system. Apparently, Quicktime Alternative may not be updated as regularly anymore the current status is unclear. An alternative to the alternative is QTLite. FLV, flash video, is a format widely used for streaming.
For example Google video and YouTube use this format. This format should play correctly in Media Center without user actions. However, if you do have problem playing them, you need to make sure the following filters are properly installed and configured. You need to configure it so it will decode FLV video. Media Center should configure it for you automatically, but here is how you can do it manually:. Choose "Codecs" from the top of the left panel. On the right panel, find FLV1 in the first column "Format" , and change the value in the second column "Decoder" from "disabled" to "libavcodec".
Click OK. First, you need to download the file. You can get it from Source Forge here. Then unzip and Register it using these instructions. While CCCP is the easiest way to get your system working, there are alternatives of course. For more information on many of the available alternatives, please read the DirectShow Playback Guide:Alternative Filters page. Many of the components listed are the same ones included as part of the CCCP set.
These are all available separately though and can be mix-and-matched on your own for advanced purposes. There are a number of other tools that, while not actually DirectShow Filters, are extremely useful to have installed on your system to help in diagnosing any issues you may have and for altering DirectShow related settings and configurations. As mentioned previously, J.
Most of these new features can be found in the DirectShow Playback Options dialog. On the right hand side of the dialog is the DirectShow filters list. The primary purpose of this list is to allow you to enable and disable DirectShow support based on what type of file it is. If the box next to the given file type is checked, MC will attempt to decode any files you play of that type via DirectShow. Conversely, if the box is unchecked, then MC will try to render the file via other means often via Quicktime.
On the left side the dialog gives you a range of global options over how the video and audio will be rendered. These options are not File Type specific, but universal to all DirectShow types. Note that the Video Controls only work while you have a file actively playing back.
The other controls here include:. You can also tag individual Video files with specific settings for many of these controls see Customisable Video Playback. Perhaps more importantly, if you select one of the file types from the list and then hit the Select Filters button, it opens a new dialog where you can configure the specific filters that you'd like MC to try to use to render whenever it plays that particular file type.
This dialog is pictured on the right. In this dialog, you can choose a Source Filter maximum one , and one or more Other Filters which are mostly just Transform decoding filters.
You may choose more than one Other Filter and MC will try to render a graph using all of them. While I am not clear on the exact mechanism used to do this internally, MC essentially overrides the Merit score on the filters you choose here when a specific file type is played back.
This is far more powerful than is available via modifying the Merit Scores for filters directly, because a particular filter only gets one Merit score, but may be able to handle many different file and codec types. Please bear in mind, this dialog does not force DirectShow to use only the filters you have selected and no others. Demultiplexes MPEG-2 transport streams that are delivered in push mode, and program streams that are delivered in push or pull mode. Parses a simple file format that enables multiple file names to be specified as though they were one file.
Designed specifically for DVD playback and broadcast video streams with line closed captioning. Superseded by Video Mixing Renderer. QuickTime Movie Parser. Used in video capture graphs to split the video stream into a preview stream and a capture stream. Provides an efficient means to duplicate streams of data within kernel mode without the expensive transitions between kernel and user mode.
Provides control of television audio decoding, stereo or monoaural selection, and secondary audio program SAP selection. Controls the allocation of VBI buffers in analog television graphs with hardware video port capture scenarios. The default video renderer in Windows XP. Offers advanced rendering and video mixing capabilities.
Enables the Video Mixing Renderer to work seamlessly on systems where video data is transferred directly from a video capture device or hardware decoder to the graphics chip. Connects to any video transform filter that produces decompressed video data. I looked around a bit for a MOV codec that would allow it to play them, but didn't have great success making that happen perhaps I just didn't set things up right?
I finally broke down and downloaded Apple Quicktime. But I may be confusing that with FLV files Medialooks has one, and there's a demo you can get to try it. You really need to try it to decide if it's good enough for your purposes. Unfortunately what I'm supposed to do is put together a package that we can deliver to others, and I don't think requiring them to purchase or otherwise aquire 3rd party filters is an option.
If it turns out that I have to deal with formats such as MOV for which there aren't stock-delivered filters, I'm either going to have to learn how to write the filters myself, or take another approach. This stuff is all pretty new to me - I've been working with the Directshow filters for a few weeks and I think I've got a good handle on them, but I realize they are just part of the picture when it comes to dealing with media.
So - does anyone know of a resource that has a good overview on the relationship if any between drivers, codecs and filters? I'm rather fuzzy as to how they related to each other. Using Directshow filter graphs seems to nicely abstract those details from me for the formats that have filters.
If you're doing a commercial project, then talk to the vendors about their licensing. Many have royalty-free distribution, so you send out their filter, etc. You pay for a developer license. It's really common.
Saves you grief. Or you make arrangements with the vendor to bulk buy a number of licenses, and work the cost into your software's price. We've done both at work. So shipping extra stuff is pretty common.
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