confused about required filters

[neverever]

hi there all...
what i would like to know is what set of codecs and filters one should have on the pc. especially filters... I can understand codecs for video and audio and it is simple to add/remove the ones i need as the need arises but with filters i'm not sure how can i manage the filters i have (i.e. view which ones installed and add/remove them at will) and i also not sure which ones i need for what...
I tried nimo codec pack but there isn't really any info on what should i install and how to uninstall specific ones

the particular reason i came to write this is because i have to pcs on xp1700+ running winXP and the other P3-450 with win98(lite98 version), the later one is connected to the TV for multimedia viewing.
Now, while some filems play fine on both - others seems to stutter (jump in video and some sync problems) on the p3 one. However - I believe that the P3-450 (with a radeon 7000 and 480mb ram) should be fast enough so i thought it is probably down to the set of codecs and filters installed on each....

while i'm at it i would like to know if there is a utility that can tell me how a film is encoded (i.e. which codecs and filters i need to play it) - maybe that would shed light on the reason why some dont play properly...

cheers in advance
Michel

[khp]

Re: confused about required filters

Originally posted by neverever
i'm not sure how can i manage the filters i have (i.e. view which ones installed and add/remove them at will)

There is no good tool for modifying filterinstallations. You can do it by editing the subkeys of the following key in the registry. But make sure to make a backup of the registry first.

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{083863F 1-70DE-11d0-BD40-00A0C911CE86}\Instance

The alternative is to use zoomplayer. Rightclick and select 'player options', select 'manual filters' and click 'Registred filter manager', you can then see which filters are installed and you can selectivly uninstall and change prioirties.

Originally posted by neverever
Now, while some filems play fine on both - others seems to stutter (jump in video and some sync problems) on the p3 one. However - I believe that the P3-450 (with a radeon 7000 and 480mb ram) should be fast enough

It's very likely that your system is way underpowerd to properly play the movies. A 704*400 clip encoded with divx5 using all three Mpeg-4 options at a bitrate of 1500kbps, can require upto 1Ghz to get completly smoothe playback.

Anyways this thread discusses how to reduce the cpu load durring divx5 playback.

http://forum.digital-digest.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=9190

Originally posted by neverever

while i'm at it i would like to know if there is a utility that can tell me how a film is encoded

Gspot may be able to give you some of this information.
But you can't get all the details.

[neverever]

thanks for the reply but i'm afraid i'm still in the dark here... is there anywhere a guite or something to explain the different filters what eachone does and in what order??? if i was to use the manual filters in xoomplayer i need to know a little bit about what i'm doing - like what set of filters is minimal and in what order etc...
any ideas whre to search...
cheers
michel

[khp]

No there is no comprehensive guide to filters in general.

The best way to gain some experience with these things, is to play around with graphedit. It will let you access the properties page for each filter, which should give you some idear about what they do. You can get graphedit at www.doom9.net , to get started you can drag an avi file onto the Graphedit window, this will construct the filter graph used for playing the file.