Well, after I completed my original decoding chain guide here, I realized that I needed to specify a few things with respect to the intricacies of Windows 7. Thus, this post was born.
Okay, the reason why you may want to reconfigure the defaults on Windows 7′s decoding options is because they are either not working for your current setup with your encoding software (BD Rebuilder or MeGUI for example), or you are just darn curious. Either way, here’s how to get started.
First off, download the Windows 7 Preferred DirectShow Filter Tweak Tool.
The title is a bit of mouthful, isn’t it? From now on, I’ll just be calling it Filter Tweaker.
Step 1)
Unzip and run Filter Tweaker. You will be presented with a screen like the one below (64-bit users, you will see a window with 64-bit decoders as well). I highly recommend that you run through this list and ensure that all of your decoders are assigned to FFDShow.
Note: For those of you on a 64-bit machine, you should install the 64-bit version of FFDShow.
Step 2)
This isn’t really a step as much as an important consideration. While scrolling through that list that I showed above, make sure that the VC-1 entry is set to use FFDShow as its main decoder. When you are done, click the Apply button.
This step is important, because if you followed my first “Setup” guide (link at the top of this page), then you should already have FFDShow set to use the WMV9 codec when processing VC-1 video. This additional step in Filter Tweaker is necessary to wrestle the control of the VC-1 decoder away from Windows and give it to FFDShow.
Step 3)
You will now be taken to the Media Foundation page that I have shown below. You can pretty much leave it at default, but I have posted it here for reference. If everything is set as you desire, click the Apply button again.
Step 4)
You should now be on the More tweaks for Windows 7 page. I chose to disable any built-in windows components that dealt with my decoders as I think they are all crap. I want to give full control to FFDShow, as it is the greatest decoder package available. You can do whatever you like, but I have had absolutely no problems disabling everything as I have shown below.
When you are ready, click Apply once again.
Conclusion)
Well, that is about all of the extra tweaking that you have to do in order to get things running extra smoothly on a Windows 7 machine. Thankfully, a program such as Filter Tweaker exists and makes the whole process so much easier.
If you have any questions, or what to express your opinion, please post in the comments.
Enjoy your problem free decoder setup!
Related posts:
- Setup a Proper Playback Chain in Windows
- Convert Blu-rays to iPad with BD Rebuilder
- Backing up Blu-rays with BD Rebuilder
This tutorial was a big help to me. I have run this tweaker before and was not sure what to check. many thanks
Well, I’m glad that my tutorial was at least some help to you!
Hi Adub
A couple of questions.
At ‘Step 1)’ I see the list of 32-bit decoders but have an option of ‘ffdshow (dxva)’ on a few eg H264. Can you expand on that?
Also on ‘Step 1)’ I see a list of 64-bit decoders as you mentioned but the only option for all of them is ‘Microsoft’. A mention of this would be handy too. Is it just because a 64-bit version of ffdshow doesn’t exist? And if it did WMP12 wouldn’t use it anyway because by default it’s 32-bit? And more to the point why would you run 64-bit WMP12?
Yours (forever barking up the wrong tree)
Richard.
For your first question, my answer is “really? Cool!”
It appears that the ffdshow authors were able to finally add DXVA support. Very cool. This means that you will see accelerated decoding via your graphics card. However, I’m sure support is very circumstantial, so it’s really up to you to discover if it works on your system. If it does, I’d say use it. If not, then use the regular (non-dxva) video decoder.
For your second question, my answer is “You didn’t install the 64-bit version of FFDShow”.
Why would you run 64-bit? Because it offers better performance for “free”. I quote that because it’s only free if you got your system setup as 64-bit by chance, instead of buying a 64-bit system just to have the greater performance.
Quick response! I looked over my shoulder then.
“Note: For those of you on a 64-bit machine, you should install the 64-bit version of FFDShow.”
Ha! I’m blind. Or you just added that!
Anyway, more food for thought. Another evening fiddling with settings :)
Cheers Adub.
DXVA setting doesn’t play nicely with BD Rebuilder (‘Inspect’ throws up some warnings) and the version of FFDShow recommended for BD Rebuilder is incompatible with RipBot (requires rev3500 or higher).
Hmm. I guess it’s a case of which app I need/want most.
Other than that everything is spot on.
BD Rebuilder will be happy with newer versions of FFDShow. So will RipBot (at least it should. Sometimes it’s detection algorithms can be a little off).
As for the “DXVA setting doesn’t play nicely with BD Rebuilder…”, I’m not entirely sure what you mean. As far as I know, BD Rebuilder doesn’t have DXVA settings.
I’m at work on my laptop at the moment but on my home PC I think I’m going to have to go back a little and check these settings more carefully but what I meant was…
RipBot requires new versions of FFDShow. For BD Rebuilder jdobbs hosts an older version. The general consensus over on Doom9 seems to be to not deviate from jdobbs’ recommedations as BD Rebuilder is still in beta. I recall that when I installed newer versions of FFDShow for RipBot I got warnings from the ‘Inspect’ tool in BD R. I’ll double check that but I’m sure I did.
Re: DXVA. When I ran Windows 7 Preferred DirectShow Filter Tweak Tool and chose the DXVA options as previously mentioned, I’m fairly sure ‘Inspect’ gave me grief again.
On a separate note, since doing all this WMP12 won’t play DVDs for some reason. Ho hum.
Hi, Re Windows 7 – proper de-coding chain
Great, great articles – I might now preserve some of my hair!
I am not a techie and have found the different codec options so, so confusing. After weeks of trying to get MKV movies playing smoothly – your advice (cutting out all the confusing crap) has enabled me to get 720p & full HD movies running great on my Zotac Ion (with DXVA assist).using 64 bit windows 7
Howvever, I have a number of “foreign” films for which I need to see the sub-titles . Rather than I tweak the settings for more frustrating weeks – can you advise the setting for these, please?
I have a variety of MKV, HD , MP4,Divx, avi dvd rips so need the subtiltes for all these formats.
If there are issues with these under Windows 7 media player would the installation of Media Player Home Classic provide an answer and how should this be configured for ffdshow etc? (or some other player software)
Grateful thanks
Alan Bennett
Richard,
Yes, you are correct that the general consensus seems to follow using the specified build. However, sometime ago, Jdobbs (the developer) said that it would be okay to use some newer versions of FFDShow.
As for your warnings in the Inspect tool, would you mind posting them? Or a link to a screenshot would do just fine.
If you are having problems using the ffdshow DXVA filters, then I suggest you resort to the ffdshow non-DXVA filters, as these should have no problems on the decoding side. They may just be a little slower. But honestly, if it works, than it doesn’t matter that it is theoretically a little slower than a non-working solution.
As for WMP12 not playing DVD’s, that may be because you have disabled some of the internal Microsoft filters. Which for all intensive purposes, is just fine. Still FFDShow, should work just fine with WMP12, but I can’t really confirm that right now (I’m on a Mac).
Personally, I use Media Player Classic Home Cinema for all of my playback needs. It’s small, has uses a tiny fingerprint, and is very configurable. But to each his own.
Alan, I’m glad that I was able to help get you started!
As for playing media files with subtitles and using DXVA, it’s get’s…sticky. Currently, I believe there are only a few players that can do it. And yes, Media Player Classic Home Cinema happens to be one of them. I believe the developers added some hackery that allows them to render subtitles in DXVA mode. I think that you have to use the internal DXVA renderers, but those should be just fine.
You will need to adjust the video output settings to do so.
First open MPCHC, then got to View->Options, or press the ‘O’ (thats “oh”) key. Go to Playback->Output. Under “Directshow Video”, select the VMR-9 renderer. That should allow you to use DXVA and subtitling.
A quick reply once again Adub. Thank you. At the moment I don’t have any way of showing you screenshots of the ‘Inspect’ tool so it’s good old copy/paste I afraid.
Using ffdshow rev 3326 20100319 clsid (32 and 64 bit installed)
- Windows Version: 6.1 [7600]
- AVISYNTH Version: 2.5.7.0, Ok
- HAALI Splitter: Ok
- FFDSHOW: 3326, Ok
- WIN7 preferred AVC CODEC: Ok
- WIN7 preferred VC-1 CODEC: Ok
- WIN7 preferred MPEG2 CODEC: Ok
- FFDSHOW VC-1 set to “wmv9″, Ok
- FFDSHOW MPEG2 set to “libavcodec”: Ok
- FFDSHOW AVC set to “libavcodec”: Ok
- BD Rebuilder v0.34.0.7, Ok
- X264: Ok
- AFTEN: Ok
- FAAC: Ok
- MP4BOX: Ok
- WAVI: Ok
- TSMUXER: Ok
Using ffdshow rev 3326 20100319 clsid (32 and 64 bit installed) with DXVA checked in Windows 7 tweak tool
- Windows Version: 6.1 [7600]
- AVISYNTH Version: 2.5.7.0, Ok
- HAALI Splitter: Ok
- FFDSHOW: 3326, Ok
- WIN7 preferred AVC CODEC: Not Set correctly
- WIN7 preferred VC-1 CODEC: Not Set correctly
- WIN7 preferred MPEG2 CODEC: Ok
- FFDSHOW VC-1 set to “wmv9″, Ok
- FFDSHOW MPEG2 set to “libavcodec”: Ok
- FFDSHOW AVC set to “libavcodec”: Ok
- BD Rebuilder v0.34.0.7, Ok
- X264: Ok
- AFTEN: Ok
- FAAC: Ok
- MP4BOX: Ok
- WAVI: Ok
- TSMUXER: Ok
Using ffdshow rev 3529 20100811 clsid (32 and 64 bit installed)
- Windows Version: 6.1 [7600]
- AVISYNTH Version: 2.5.7.0, Ok
- HAALI Splitter: Ok
- FFDSHOW: 3529, not recommended version
- WIN7 preferred AVC CODEC: Ok
- WIN7 preferred VC-1 CODEC: Ok
- WIN7 preferred MPEG2 CODEC: Ok
- FFDSHOW VC-1 set to “wmv9″, Ok
- FFDSHOW MPEG2 set to “libavcodec”: Ok
- FFDSHOW AVC set to “libavcodec”: Ok
- BD Rebuilder v0.34.0.7, Ok
- X264: Ok
- AFTEN: Ok
- FAAC: Ok
- MP4BOX: Ok
- WAVI: Ok
- TSMUXER: Ok
As mentioned elsewhere BD Rebuilder works fine on the non-DXVA setting and with the older FFDShow. It’s just that RipBot shouts for a newer version. Just thought I’d point it out.
Re: the DVDs. I intend to stick with WMP12. Any idea which filters I could play with to get DVD playback again? I don’t often play DVDs on my PC but it would be nice to get it back.
Richard.
Uhuh. My theory was correct. BD Rebuilders Inspector tool is looking to ensure that the non-DXVA version of FFDShow is in control of the Win7 AVC/VC-1/MPEG-2 decoders. It is fine to go ahead and use rev 3529 as you are, along with the non-DXVA versions of the filters. You honestly aren’t losing that much speed when you use the non-DXVA of the DXVA version, at least for the smaller stuff. HD video can be a bit of a bog, but if it keeps BD Rebuilder happy, I will leave the choice up to you as to if you want to stick with the DXVA versions of the filters or go with the non-DXVA versions.
Frankly, if you are not receiving any encoding errors in BD Rebuilder, I’d go with the filters that give you more speed. But that is up to you.
As for the DVDs. Take a look at step 4 of my guide. See the top 2 filters? Try re-enabling those. Those are the only ones that come to mind (other than possibly MediaFoundation as a whole, but that causes a whole bunch of other problems with BD Rebuilder and RipBot as well).
Well I just did a movie only backup (it had Java) onto a DL DVD and it worked just fine using the newer versions of FFDShow. Cheers Adub.
Re: the DVD thing. I’ll fiddle with that later. It’s not like I watch DVDs on my PC.
Good news! Glad to hear it worked out.