It appears that no matter what I try, Windows 7 will not use FFDShow. This has become a problem as some of the videos I am trying to watch will not render properly with Windows media Player, or Windows Media Center. Media Player Classic Home Cinema will not render anything and I get the same result with the iMedian software that came with my HTPC case. when I run graphedit, FFDShow does not get used in the rendering path either. I am running Windows 7 professional x64. I have tried every guide I can find, I have tried the 32 and 64 bit versions of FFDShow. I have tried the 32 and 64 bit versions of MPC-HC. It's possible that the AVI files really want a Matroska, but I already tried installing what I could find based on what I found via Google. Besides, WMP and WMP can play the videos, but they do so with a ton of blocking artifacts and glitches. My XP box plays them just fine and has no trouble creating graphs that use FFDShow. Am I at the point where I just need to write off Windows 7 as total crap I wasted my money on?
Have you tried using VLC? Have you got all the codecs to decode the files? What are the specs of your PC?
Second vote for VLC - it's a terrible program, but is literally the only one out there that will run many of my video files and wins on compatibility alone. I've never found a file it can't play. It just has a ton of codecs that no other apps can be plugged into supporting, including MKV with all the knobs working (i.e. subtitles and multiple language tracks). Try media player classic, too - I believe it comes with the CCC as part of it, and is therefore very compatible too (though its decoding looks horrible on larger files, for some reason I never worked out.)
I'm trying to use Media Player Classic Home Cinema. I assume it is based on the same codebase as media player classic. I have tried installing bot the 32 and 64 bit version of FFDShow from http://ffdshow-tryout.sourceforge.net/. For MKVs, I tried following this guide. I also googled "haali media splitter x64" and tried a few of the packages I found that way. I have also tried to increase the merit in FFDshow, bit the setting never takes, it always gets reset. I tried GSPOT 2.70a[/url to try and force the merit, but FFDShow was not a listed codec, nor was the libavcodec listed. (this was found on one of the threads I found about Windows 7 and FFDShow). I tried to add the codec manually to the media players I have tried, but I did not see them listed there either. I have also tried installing the k-lite codec pack as that is *supposed* to correct installation errors with FFDShow, but that had no effect either. It seems the system will not let me use anything other than the Windows Media Foundation codecs. The board is a Zotac GF9300-G-E with 2gb of RAM. The chassis is an Antec Fusion remote. Additional media players do not seem to resolve the problem. I would also prefer to use the iMedian media player as it works flawlessly with the remote. My 32 bit XP boxes all work fine with JUST FFDShow and Haali media splitter (which may not even be needed, but it seems to be the preferred splitter the players choose on my XP systems).
The K-lite codec pack is dreadful. Almost guaranteed to screw up your codecs. For Windows 7 users I've found the best thing to install is: http://shark007.net/win7codecs.html - there is also a 64bit version available.
Hve you tried the shark007 codec packs it's about the best I've found. I did manage to get ffdshow tryouts to work on windows 7 ultimate but the shark007 code s have been a lot less hastle and I can how happily watch .mkv in media player and media centre.
I have just tried the shark007 codec pack, and now both MCE and MCP crash. there is no change to Media Player Classic Home cinema. I'm going to try a couple other things, and if those don't help, then I'm, going to try another reinstall without a network connection as it may be an update that caused the problem. I seem to remember seeing FFDShow work once, then I didn't have playback problems so I assumed it was still working. I'll also capture the graphs via graphedit of both my XP system and my Windows 7 system. I will also take some video to illustrate the problem.
So far, a reinstall with no updates and just installing the nVidia drivers has resulted in good playback in WMP. Now I'm adding things back in slowly to see if it will all work this time, or what the point of failure is. Codecs will be the absolute last thing as playback is acceptable at the moment.
Critical updates installed, and playback is acceptable. The third party media center is also working after telling it to use the system h.264 decoder rather than the built in one. Nothing is using FFDShow which still bugs me, but as long as things are working, I won't worry about it. I'm still not sure what caused the choppy playback in the first place. This is what caused me to try a lot of things that lead to the first reinstall, then to the list of things I tried above, and finally to the second reinstall. So I am worried it could still pop up. but I guess that's what system restore is for.
First of all, I'm absolutely NOT a fan of socalled "codec packs". They tend to mess up everything. My advice on this matter is: STAY AWAY! Second, why the need for FFDShow. True, it can play many codecs "natively", but AFAIK only with software rendering. Considering that you with all likelyhood have a graphics card capable rendering video with hardware support, you would never want to do software rendering. FWIW, I've recently set up a mate's HTPC (Windows 7 x64) with MPC-HC running with hardware acceleration (DXVA). The trick to make DXVA work is to use the EVR rendering method. Might be something worth trying.
The original problem is that playback was totally unacceptable with the built in codecs. I was only playing 480p video and getting well under 15fps the video would skip and jump. After try #2, I was getting blocks that were not rendered properly This lead to sever blocking artifacts. It seems to be working now but I'm still evaluating the performance of the internal WMF codec. I have been unimpressed with its ability to work right so far, and I'm just keeping my fingers crossed hoping that it does not 'break' again as the only cure seems to be an OS reinstall.
You must, MUST have something else wrong in that case. MPC-HC or VLC can't be the culprits here because I use both on 64bit W7 with no end of intensive programs at the same time with no problems whatsoever. Codec packs have been rendered (wahey!) virtually useless to about 98% of users nowadays and unless you have some very obscurely encoded video, you shouldn't need them.
I'm quite surprised to hear people bashing codec packs in general, including the one that I personally use on all my PCs, the K-Lite pack. I have never (and I mean in 4 years of playing back everything from simple .avi's to HD .mkv's) had a problem with a codec and the only things I've ever used have been the K-Lite pack with MPC-HC, Divx and VLC. Of those three, the K-Lite pack gets the most use. Ran everything fine for me on Win XP 32 bit and has so far ran everything fine on Win 7 64 bit.
