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[glynor]

(Heck... It's already tomorrow.)

So... Microsoft did us a solid and included playback filters for h264, DivX, Xvid, and many other types of MPEG-4 video with Windows 7.  You no longer need to jump through all kinds of hoops to get these videos playing at all.  However, if you decide that MS's filters aren't quite up to snuff and you want to use a Third Party filter (like FFDSHOW or CoreAVC) to handle playback instead... Get ready for a wild ride...

This is something NEW with the RTM, so if you're running the RC, you won't see this issue (yet).  Microsoft chose to "lock" their own h264 decoder turned ON in the RTM, and make it very difficult to turn off.  As of the RTM, Windows ignores merit scores in DirectShow in these instances, and refuses to use third-party decode filters.

Now, that said, the Microsoft filters do appear to work quite well (they even appear to support hardware acceleration fairly well).  They may very well be fine for your needs, and then you can just stop reading.  However, there are a few problems with them, and they don't allow you to do some post-processing things that you may want to do in FFDSHOW or CoreAVC (brightness controls and whatnot don't work).

Apparently, this is something Haali can work around in the splitter filter, but to do so you must have written it to use the new Windows Presentation Foundation (doing it the "DirectShow" way no longer works).  AND, even if you DO completely re-write the splitter to allow 3rd party filters, apparently it STILL won't work for AVI file types, and there is nothing you can do to override it for them at all.  Supposedly, Haali is working on updating the Media Splitter to fix this, but no estimated completion date has arrived yet.  So, if you want to use third-party filters (like CoreAVC or even FFDSHOW) to decode MPEG-4 content on Windows 7 RTM, you have two choices right now:

1. Apparently DivX has come up with their own splitter (which handles MP4, TS, and MKV, among other types) similar to Haali's.  There is a beta of this that uses WMF and does the mojo to allow overriding the new MS Filter.  I haven't tried this method.  I'm not really a huge fan of anything DivX, so I'm resisting this hoping that Haali updates sometime soon.  If you want to try this out, Google for DivX beta mkv splitter and you should find what you need.

2. Manually "hack" the system to use CoreAVC (or another filter) using the following instructions.  I did this and it worked:
http://www.timothevs.net/2009/07/29/coreavc-with-windows-7-rtm-take-2/

Also, for the MC Developers... The change by Microsoft also appears to break your fancy File Types dialog in Windows 7.  If you try to override the default Microsoft decoder, MC will crash immediately on attemtping to play one of these files back.  So, if you change MP4 to use CoreAVC or FFDSHOW to play files back, MC will crash if you start playing one of those files.  The video will play, and the filter you chose will load, but MC itself will be crashed and you won't be able to do anything other than end the task on it.

[Daydream]

The way I remember it the keys that matter in the registry are protected, so the word was that one can't gain much going that way (RTM - ver. 7600). I ended up renaming more than one file since I wanted to kill everything they put in there, AVC and MPEG2 and anything in between. Had to gain ownership and kick the TrustedInstaller permissions to sky high to rename the bloody files. Not a problem for people 'in the knowing' but you are right it messes up with file association in MC (in my case it didn't crash, before the hack, it just returned to what Windows had, regardless what I've chosen). Prepare for flood of less experienced folks asking questions once Win7 gets released.

[MrHaugen]

This sort of stuff makes me furious. Just another normal day for MS I guess. Tying our hands on our backs and forcing us to use the codecs of their choice. I'll have to go on a MS forum rampage if this is not solved soon.

[glynor]

This is something NEW with the RTM, so if you're running the RC, you won't see this issue (yet).  Microsoft chose to "lock" their own h264 decoder turned ON in the RTM, and make it very difficult to turn off.  As of the RTM, Windows ignores merit scores in DirectShow in these instances, and refuses to use third-party decode filters.

Apparently this is designed to only apply to Microsoft players, including WiMP and Windows Media Center.  Even without applying the "hack" it does not apply to current builds of Media Player Classic HomeCinema or Zoom Player, which work fine with third-party filters.

Basically what Microsoft is saying is this: If you want to build a third-party player that uses third-party decoders, that's fine with us, just don't expect us to support it in OUR players.  However, for whatever reason, MC isn't doing this (I think they did have to specially code MPC to work right, though) and follows the WiMP/MCE behavior.