Whirligig, HEVC and SVP

[Kael13]

I've set up Whirligig so that it passes its video stream to the LAV splitter, which then uses Ffdshow to play the video and interpolate at 90Hz with SVP. This works with anything that ffdshow can play.

Now I know that, unfortunately, ffdshow doesn't support h265 or HEVC. So this means that the LAV splitter uses the LAV video decoder. However, I can't then get SVP to detect anything playing and enable its profile. I can use MPC-HC to work with SVP and HEVC video; it seems to decode the video into a raw stream and then feed that to ffdshow for SVP to work its magic. But I don't know how to do this outside of that video player and translate it to Whirligig or other VR players.

Anyone got any ideas?

[Dein]

+1 for this. A question for developer. We can add ffdshow raw filter as an "external filter" in Media Player Classic Home Cinema, for example. Thus we can use it with any codec, including LAV. Is it possible to implement it in Whirligig?

[Whirligig]

Hi

I'm going to start by saying I'm not sure how to do this myself. I've got limited knowledge of ffdshow. I'm going to research into this but I have to say the people in the comunity are just as in fact probably more likely to know more about this then me.

If I manage to come up with anything then I'll let you know here. If anyone else knows how to do this then please let us know.

Regards

Phil

[Whirligig]

Hi

I don't think this is a fix (I'm pretty certain it isn't) to the original question. But I thought I'd post it here as it might help other people who which to setup SVP with Whirligig.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRQlR-KrOLc

Hopefully this is useful.

[offall]

Sorry for reviving this post fro 3 years ago, i wonder if there is a chance to revisit it now the new 4.821 beta allow to select the VLC installation (which works with SVP for HEVC by integrating the SVP interface into the vlc video filter as a plugin), but unfortunately in whirligig i didn't get it to work.

Phil can you take a look at it
https://www.svp-team.com/wiki/SVP:VLC

search for "Additional steps required in case you don't want to run VLC from SVP's menu:" in above page.

I think there is a chance we finally able to play HEVC smoothly in VR thourgh VLC and solve the ffdshow problem


p.s. for the whirligig 4.821 beta, i found using VLC video path the background glow were show in front of video (so no video can be seen), a minor issue but want you to know

[Shizumauru]

I also tried that a couple minutes ago, I was really hoping that finally it would work with SVP now. As offall said, playing a 5K HEVC video with VLC works wih SVP, but not within whirligig using that new "local 64bit VLC option", SVP doesn't recognize it...

p.s. there are some issues with the latest build: the progress bar flickers during fast forward, and desktop mirroring cannot be disabled. the checkbox is always active when switching to another settings tab

[Whirligig]

Hi

I'll have another look into in but as I don't make the video plugins myself I can't promising anything.

Regarding the bug you mentioned I've updated Whirligig with a fix, also reset position had stopped working so I've fixed that as well. Thanks for mentioning this. The update I've made regarding none VR usage is larger one than most people will realise or even know has been changed so any bugs relating to this that I can fix the better :)

Phil

[Shizumauru]

Thanks alot, both of my issues are corrected! Regarding frame interpolation, maybe you could contact the SVP developer and they could help you? It would bring them lots of new customers for their product too ;) What is the benefit of using the local installation of VLC in comparison to the VLC plugin you already had included in Whirligig?

[Shizumauru]

It seems the problems are not completely solved. The progress bar still flickers when holding a key for fast forward (100% of the bar texture shines trough for a tiny moment for every key press) and desktop mirroring is always enabled when starting Whirligig (it can be deactivated, but it sems not to save until the next session)

[Whirligig]

Thanks for the update again. I'll have another look. I didn't look at the flickering so I'll take a look at that as we.

Regarding using the external rather than internal. To be truthful the reason this got added was that there problems with the internal install and during my fixing of these problems I ended up adding it as an option. The advantage is that it means that people can take advanatge of any VLC updates that might improve things that aren't updated in the installed VLC. Hopefully that means the video lan option will at least continue to be useful as they continue to develop it.

[Shizumauru]

Ok, thanks for the information, that sounds like a good approach. Concerning the flickering, I think it displays 100% progress bar for one frame and then the correct value for the next couple of frames. That repeats for every button press - when holding down the fast forward (I use the keyboard), you notice it as flicker. Just in case it's hard to reproduce on your environment :)

[Whirligig]

I've updated with a fix for the mirroring, hopefully. I've not had any luck in recreating the flicker but I'll have another look tomorrow :)

[Shizumauru]

Hi, thanks, the desktop mirroring works now, i disabled it and it stays off after the next application launch. About the flicker - it's strange. It definitely started with the last big beta where you introduced that novr-feature. When starting playback, I press right arrow for skip (3sec), and the progress bar flickers as long as its size changes. It seems that it even changes sometimes the direction of that diagonal lines (slash to backslash direction) for a frame or millisecond, its hard to determine. But funny thing is: this only occurs during playback. When paused, the progress bar fills and decreases as it should. When I start after pause with 5% progress, I see that flicker when skipping until the bar is full (or back). When I pause, go near the end of the video, (progress bar almost full) resume, and press skip backwards and forwards, everything is fine, no flicker at all. When pausing again, going back to like 10%, resume and press fast forward, the flicker is there again. I don't know how your progress bar works, but it seem like it caches somehow and behaves differently depending on the fill degree of the progress bar at the time the playback starts. Does this investigation make any sense to you? :)

[offall]

Any update on the SVP testing with VLC local instlation ? i tried newest beta and it still doesn't work

[Whirligig]

Yep, currently talking with the developer of both svp and avpro. I'll be releasing a beta later today thst might help. Keep an eye out for an update :)

[Whirligig]

Hi

I've made a new beta whirligig_early_access_v.4.8323 which when using directshow video path prefers ffdshow so that it will run that when both ffdshow and LAV codecs are installed and hopefully therefore allow SVP to work.

To be truthful I'm not that versed in SVP so I don't really know what I'm doing so I've taken the advice from the SVP developers and the AVPro Developers. I've tried it myself and it seems to work so give it a go and let me know if it works for you.

Also let me know if there is any reason why having ffdshow as preferred is a problem.

Phil