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[kartman]

Running MC15 on WinXP with Haali and FFDSHOW installed. New to MC15, so bear with me... After import, I see thumbnails and I can get the files to play... When played, the MC player correctly identifies the length of the video (eg: x:xx / y:yy).

So why don't I see the durations entered into the library?

[Daydream]

It's dark magic at work, nobody knows why it doesn't show .

From my own experience (which may or may not apply in your case) - use a different decoder, not ffdshow, at import time or when you force MC to pick up the details (Update library from tags). Switch back to it when all is done and you need it for playback alone. If in the process your DirectShow config gets messed up, don't blame me.

Now, if somebody would tell me why the bloody Dimensions are not picked up right, that would make my day...!

[kartman]

OK... Dark magic... has anybody at JRiver addressed or commented on the issue?

All of my M2TS files are h264/AC3. I'm only testing at the moment so there are only 49 files in my library:

3 x no dimensions, no duration, no bitrate
3 x WITH dimensions, WITH duration, WITH bitrate
43 x WITH dimensions, no duration, no bitrate

This makes no sense to be as I'm sure the graph for all would be the same (at least it should be, using Haali/ffdshow)... they all play fine. The bulk were muxed into M2TS by me. I just don't see a pattern that explains why some are read correctly and others are ignored.

Getting this fixed and working reliably would be nice as this info is what the DLNA server reports to media players when browsing media.

[Yaobing]

Library Tools > Update Library (from tags)

Does that help?

MC relies on DirectShow filters to play and import the files.  There is no dark magic.  If the dimensions do not get entered into the library, the DirectShow graph must have had some trouble in a background process.  Often doing an update will fix it.

[Daydream]

I usually expect 3 fields to be populated during import (or during an Update Library from tags), for video files: Duration, Bitrate, Dimensions.

My thoughts on this, from personal experience and various bits and pieces around the forum, go like:
- using ffdshow as video decoder for almost everything doesn't work well. Almost none of those 3 fields get populated, or, in let's say 10% of the cases, bitrate and duration gets filed with astronomic values. Using bleeding edge ffdshow version.
- it seems that if the analyzing background thread fails on one file, it will fail on all the subsequent ones (this might need to be better documented)
- if I ditch ffdshow and use other combination of filters, Duration and Bitrate gets filled right, in a much faster manner. Dimensions however will never, ever be right. I have a zillion of 1080p files ripped from Blu-Rays and the likes. NONE shows up as 1920x1080. This brings me back to some old topic I was reading about on Doom9 at some point that for the life of me I can't find it now. Talking about when the dimensions of a video are retrieved for a DirectShow player. I believe the analysis takes aspect ratio (or some combination of actual Dimensions and SAR/PAR/DAR/whatever) into consideration and it returns incorrect numbers. I still have no idea why most 1080p videos are shown as having a 2048x1080 resolution, while for music video clips it's clear that the aspect ratio flag plays a role (so Dimensions appear 768x576, 1024x576, etc).

That is however NOT what I expected. I'd like the actual Dimensions of the files. This may or may not be possible using the method of rendering the file through the DirectShow chain, since I believe you can only return the values after the process is complete. The other option I was thinking is to read the specs from the files headers/tags (MediaInfo style), and not render the files. Would that be possible?

[Yaobing]

Have you configured FFDShow to resize videos?  If yes, it can be one explanation why you get "wrong" dimension values.  This is different from the problem of not getting dimension values.

Getting dimension from the output of a DirectShow video decoder is the best we can do for now.

[kartman]

Library Tools > Update Library (from tags)

Does that help?

MC relies on DirectShow filters to play and import the files.  There is no dark magic.  If the dimensions do not get entered into the library, the DirectShow graph must have had some trouble in a background process.  Often doing an update will fix it.

No... doesn't help...

I think we all can agree that not having these basic fields populated during import (with accurate info) is a problem. I tend to like installing the bare minimum of crap on my system. In this case, this means Haali Media Splitter and ffdshow. I'm not hooked to these beyond the simplicity of the situation.

What DirectShow codecs/filters are recommended and supported? (i.e. what does the graph look like when someone at JRiver opens a M2TS with h264/AC3?). I'm willing to conform to get MC15 working correctly but I need to know what to conform to... I'm assuming that JRiver's MC15 install works flawlessly, right? If not, I'd call that a bug.

[Yaobing]

Haali Media Splitter ---- FFDShow Video Decoder ------ EVR or VMR9

or

Haali Media Splitter ...... Microsoft DTV-DVD Video Decoder ---- EVR or VMR9

Both work for me.

[kartman]

Haali Media Splitter ---- FFDShow Video Decoder ------ EVR or VMR9

this is what I get on my system when checking the graph for my M2TS that contain h264 and AC3. What version of ffdshow are you using when you say this works for you? I seem to be getting the right dimensions in most examples but the bitrate and duration are not being populated.

That said, it's mostly this way but, for some reason, a couple of my files did get all fields populated.

[Yaobing]

FFDshow tryouts version 3154 Dec 8 2009.  This is not the latest version, but we found this to be a fairly good build.

[Yaobing]

As far as duration and bitrate is concerned, file source filter (or splitter) is more important than video decoder.  I am using Haali media Splitter version 1.10.175.0.  Previously I used 1.10.120.15, which is also good.  If you have something older than this, you should update.