[Gamester17]

Can this code help?

Yesterday a new (updated) CoreAVC h264 codec patch was submitted to the MPlayer-dev-eng mailing-list (that's the mailing-list for developer of MPlayer for Linux/Win32)

Date: Mon, 2 Oct 2006 18:20:59 -0700
From: "Alan Nisota" <[email protected]>
Subject: [MPlayer-dev-eng] [PATCH]Add support for CoreAVC h264 codec
To: [email protected]
Cc: [email protected]
Message-ID:
<[email protected]>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"

I posted a similar patch to the mplayer-cygwin list 6 months ago, but
figured I might as well clean it up and post it here in case mplayer
devs are interested in using it.

What it does is to enhance the dshow codec support such that the
CoreAVC h264 codec will run under mplayer. This codec is ~30% more
efficient than ffh264 by my testing with mplayer.

As this codec must be registered, it requires registry entries be
present to use. I have added support for updating registry entries
throgh the codecs.conf file to support this.

There are changes to the wine code to support the codec, including
some nasty tricks with the memory handler which may not be portable.

There are also changes to the dshow filter code to pass correct data
to the codec for intialization. These changes need to be tested to
make sure they don't break other dshow codecs.

Anyhow, the patch is built against SVN 20017.
Install the patch, then add the following to your codecs.conf file:
videocodec coreavc
info "CoreAVC DShow H264 decoder for x86 - http://corecodec.org/"
status untested
format 0x10000005
fourcc H264,h264
fourcc X264,x264
fourcc avc1,AVC1
fourcc davc,DAVC
fourcc VSSH
driver dshow
dll "CoreAVCDecoder.ax"
regval "SOFTWARE\\Licenturion GmbH\\0000032D\\Product Key"
"ABCD-EFGH-IJKL-MNOP-QRST-UVWX"
regval "SOFTWARE\\Licenturion GmbH\\0000032D\\User ID" "Joe User"
guid 0x09571a4b, 0xf1fe, 0x4c60, 0x97, 0x60, 0xde, 0x6d, 0x31, 0x0c,
0x7c, 0x31
out YV12,IYUV,I420,YUY2

(replace the User Id and Product Key with your registration
key...which can be obtained via regedit or by installing under wine,
and getting the values from the user.reg file)
It has been tested with CoreAVC 0.0.4, 1.0, and 1.1.0.5
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The discussion can be followed here: [PATCH]Add support for CoreAVC h264 codec (link)

[Gamester17]

Thought it be interesting for you all to know that the MPlayer-developers are making good progress into implementing support for the DirectShow DLL binary version of CoreAVC into MPlayer. They are however heavily reconstructing the patch(es) so it make same a while before it makes it into MPlayer for Linux/Win32, (and thus longer still before it can make it into XBMC's ported version of MPlayer, as the developers on Team-XBMC will probably not try to add it to XBMC until it has first made it into the CVS of MPlayer for Linux/Win32).

They have also already done some benchmarks in which they decode some AVC videos to show the difference between the latest FFh264 (the MPEG-4-AVC H.264 decoder code in FFmpeg) are CoreAVC on MPlayer, and here are those result:

These benchmark were done on a Linux computer with a Pentium-4 2.8GHz,
(512K Level2 cache Intel Northwood CPU) with Hyper-Threading disabled.

Each stream was benchmarked 3 times with the average result used
(reproducibilty was very good)
encoding was done using:
mencoder -ovc x264 -oac mp3lame -vf scale=320x180 -srate 8000
-lameopts cbr:br=48 -x264encopts xxxx

decoding was done using:
mplayer -vc coreavc/ffh264 -vo null -nosound -benchmark

frame comparison was done using:
mplayer -vc coreavc/ffh264 -vo md5sum -nosound
every frame was different. I guess the next step would be to do a
frame diff but let's do this one step at a time. The one thing I can
say is that the output from CoreAVC looks very good.

Note! CABAC / CAVLC, and loop filter / disabled loop filter was not tested!

320x180_lo_no_b.avi: AVC: 1.6983 FFh264: 2.1397 Diff: 20.63%
320x180_no_b.avi: AVC: 2.5720 FFh264: 3.6647 Diff: 29.82%
320x180_2_b.avi: AVC: 3.0217 FFh264: 4.3490 Diff: 30.52%
320x180_only_i.avi: AVC: 3.6400 FFh264: 5.5330 Diff: 34.21%

640x360_lo_no_b.avi: AVC: 7.4727 FFh264: 9.0733 Diff: 17.64%
640x360_no_b.avi: AVC: 11.6083 FFh264: 15.1547 Diff: 23.40%
640x360_2_b.avi: AVC: 13.2737 FFh264: 17.6897 Diff: 24.96%
640x360_only_i.avi: AVC: 13.9900 FFh264: 20.8660 Diff: 32.95%

960x540_lo_no_b.avi: AVC: 16.3263 FFh264: 19.5637 Diff: 16.55%
960x540_no_b.avi: AVC: 25.7600 FFh264: 34.7473 Diff: 25.86%
960x540_2_b.avi: AVC: 29.5473 FFh264: 40.3160 Diff: 26.71%
960x540_only_i.avi: AVC: 32.3753 FFh264: 47.0533 Diff: 31.19%

1280x720_lo_no_b.avi: AVC: 28.5677 FFh264: 34.8783 Diff: 18.09%
1280x720_no_b.avi: AVC: 46.9833 FFh264: 62.9510 Diff: 25.36%
1280x720_2_b.avi: AVC: 51.2857 FFh264: 70.2810 Diff: 27.01%
1280x720_only_i.avi: AVC: 56.2217 FFh264: 81.0200 Diff: 30.61%

If the same 20-30% FPS speed increase also holds true for videos encoded with CABAC, CAVLC or LOOP (DEBLOCKING) then XBMC might be able to pull of decoding of 480p (720x480) H.264 AVC videos on the Xbox in the future, which would be great.

However, those who thought they someday would see 720p (1280x720 progressive) or 1080i (1920x1080 interlanced) playback of H.264 AVC videos on the Xbox 733Mhz CPU will be disappointed by these results.

[pike]

and this is still without any hwacceleration whatsoever I take it ?

[gronne]

Yhere appears to be a lot of optimization possible for h264-video, and I guess(hope) they can make it even more efficient. I just hope it'll eventually get implemented as well as possible in xbmc. Anyways, I thought this was a core issue so I hope you won't stop trying to implement it.

[ultrabrutal]

My Dream... Offloading decoding on GPU resulting in true 720p decoding of HD content. Then replacing drive with a HD-DVD(/Bluray) drive playing back what the Xbox 360 can. Ofcourse all the menu code for DVD cannot be used. Now code must be implemented.
The Xbox1 can live for many more years

[jarod71]

My Dream, hd-dvd and bluyray hacked so we can backup our new hddvd and blueray disks. I will use divx or xvid at at least hr-hdtv resolution thats 960x540. xbmc plays wonderfully at this resolution...

[pike]

dream on...

[finas]

Now that a new mplayer.dll is being cooked, are there any news about CoreAVC decoder running on XBMC?

What is the status on this issue?

[gronne]

A bit OT, but is there an ETA on the next mplayer version? If it could help improve avc on xbox I'd say it's probably the only thing xbmc lacks.

[Gamester17]

As far as I know the developers of MPlayer (for Linux/UNIX/BSD/Win32) over at www.mplayerhq.hu haven't even gotten the CoreAVC DLL's to with with their latest SVN tree, ...and until they do I don't see it comming to XBMC, (as XBMC 'only' uses a ported version of it). So I think you have to ask/lobby them to add support to it in their SVN before we can add it to XBMC.

Please read this on how to do and what to expect when making a codec and format requests (link)

[finas]

well, from one point of view, it's sad, because being CoreAVC the most efficient decoder out there, it would be our best shot at playing h264 files without problems on xbox. From another point of view, it's also good to know that maybe one day it will be possible....

[afruff23]

When and if this gets ported to XBMC, will the Xbox be able to play 720p x264 encoded video?

[spiff]

Lol

[Gamester17]

When and if this gets ported to XBMC, will the Xbox be able to play 720p x264 encoded video?

No!!! That has already been asked and answered earlier in this topic thread!!!
CoreAVC decoder could probebely do 576p at best on an Xbox, (so 720x576).

[Black]

so, there's nothing of new?