Decoder differences between VLC and others

[pethah]

Hello,

I have a clip made by my digital camera encoded in Xvid format that shows visual artifacting (blockiness) during playback on VLC. It only happens under VLC, unfortunately; for some reason WMP, media player classic, virtual dub, real player even don't have any problems.

How is it that VLC has different behavior, doesn't it use the same basic Xvid decoder that I installed (ffdshow)? On my friend's PC the same artifacting shows up under WMP, so I'm wondering how different players access the installed codec, and how we should install codec packs to ensure compatibility.

Thanks,

Peter

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

For the nth time, VLC does NOT use any external video codec, pack codec or any ffdshow, any DirectShow codec. That is why.

[DJ]

Try using post processing.

[pethah]

OK sorry for bothering you all with my inane questions.

According to wikipedia, both ffdshow and VLC use libavcodec to decode MPEG4, yet only VLC (and some other players) show the problem. Would this be a consequence of differences in configuring the libavcodec MPEG4 decoder, through the external player?

Or would this be because VLC uses an entirely different Xvid decoder than ffdshow? How many decoders are there out there, really, are they all just the same decoder with different tweaks?


Thanks for any info, if you know any links to good articles detailing this stuff, that'd be great.

Peter

[DJ]

I guess you could say XviD is one of the most copied codecs in that DiivX, 3ivx, FFDhsow, FFmpeg and of coarse XviD will do XviD.

[matt271]

I noticed after installing codec's on my system, DivX XviD and the good old KL Code Pack, sound/video synk --please stay polite-- up. The video was coming after the audio... it got really bad and annoying.
Video LAN seemed to play them fine, until i installed all my codec's. i also noticed my TV tuner was also un-synked after installing them. and WMV files also became un-synked; but they played fine before i installed any codec's and should not even use any of these codec's.
so would this libavcodec MPEG4 decoder have anything to do with it?

[DJ]

Codec packs (In my opinion) are the best way to screw up Direct Show and they are typically hard to get rid of and or without effecting other codecs installed on your system.

However all the codec packs in the world should not effect VLC.

[matt271]

then how do u recommend getting all ur codec's??
i love videolan and everything would be fine, if only the media center software would use it to display the videos, not the windows media player thing........

[DJ]

Individually, preferably the original codecs used to make the video.

You can use GSpot to determine which codecs are needed. In the case of XviD I use XviD and shut down XviD in DivX. The best MPEG 4 support I have run across other than 3ivx or Sorenson is XviD so I turn on the support in XviD for these as using the original codecs causes conflicts. The only unfortunate thing is updating DivX always turns back on the support for MPEG 4 and XviD.