Codec control

[Ted Wagner]

After uninstalling my K-Lite codec pack and (re-)installing (32-bit) K-Lite 800 Mega pack, my MTS playback improved dramatically, but the more I learn, the less confidence I have in my codec configuration.

I did a set of playback quality tests with 4 different video files. The results, and the files, can be found here:

http://justsoar.com/public/stuff/

What I am stuck on is the inconsistency between the indicated codec (fourcc, codec name, and filter name), and the actual playback results.

For example, the .MTS and the .MP4 files both indicate the same format: fourcc = AVC1, code name = "AVC1 Unknown", and filter name = "ffdshow Video Decoder". But when I play them, the .MTS file quality is nearly 100%, where the .MP4 achieves only 20 fps and drops 33% of frames.

Most (maybe all) of my MP4 files do this -- playing 20 frames per second while dropping a third.

(To track frames, I create an array of frame times, setting each element in the player's OnProgress() event callback. After 30 or 40 seconds of playing I stop and inspect the array, while comparing elapsed video time to elapsed actual time. I'll be happy to email my test application to anyone interested in trying to reproduce any results.)

I'm using Boian's latest & greatest, XE2 VCL, on a high end, high performance Windows 7 Pro 64-bit platform ...