Hacking Windows 7 Media Center

Check your codecs with GraphStudio

by Michael Healy @ 7:14 am on January 27th, 2009 in codecs, graphstudio, mkv matroska, programs, windows 7 with 15 Comments

At times installing codecs for all your music, movies and what have you seems to be 30% science, 70% voodoo. Fortunately, there is a way to double-check our brew to make sure it’s running the way we originally intended.

GraphStudio will allow you to load your media files and show you the codecs being used to render it. It will show your every DirectShow codec, filter and post-processor in-between you and your files. Best of all it’s free and available for download in both x86 and x64 versions on RadScorpion’s blog.

Monogram GraphStudio

Using GraphStudio is fairly straight forward for basic checking of your codec settings. Load your media files by going to the menu “File > Render Media File..” After a few moments you will receive a graph displaying all the processing your file is undergoing between execution and being rendered.

You are also able to adjust the properties of your codecs, simply right click on the codec you wish to adjust and select properties. If there are any properties that are able to be edited you can adjust and save them from this window. This properties window will also display the input and output variables before and after the selected codec which can be good for troubleshooting things such as audio channels.

Graphstudio FFDShow Settings

Through the basic controls on the menu strip you can even view the before and after results of your settings changes. This gives you the perfect opportunity to fine tune your codec’s settings until you get the best picture and audio results for your setup.

Graphstudio Play Controls

Unfortunately, as of this point GraphStudio doesn’t add an easy way to edit which codecs are used for your media files, just the properties of the currently assigned codecs. Though you can edit filter merits through the “Filters > Manage Favorites” dialog it’s certainly not convenient or intuitive. Other programs like Filter Manager offer a much better interface for editing which codecs are loaded for each file type and will be covered in future articles.

15 Comments


skyfish
Comment #2095 from skyfish [Reply]

This app sounds just what the doctor ordered. Unfortunately the link to RadScorpion’s blog doesn’t seem to work – takes a long time and times-out. Anyone out there know of a different or mirror site for the download?
Thanks
:cry:

Comment left July 12, 2009 at 10:31 am Permanent Link

skyfish
Comment #2096 from skyfish [Reply]

It’s okay now – but for anyone else sufferring this problem, try:

Comment left July 12, 2009 at 10:52 am Permanent Link

Michael Healy
Comment #2097 from Michael Healy [Reply]

You can download it, along with some instructions, as part of the Troubleshooting Toolbox as well

Comment left July 12, 2009 at 11:24 am Permanent Link

skyfish
Comment #2098 from skyfish [Reply]

Problem with GraphStudio – Everytime I try to render a media file (.VOB) from a ripped DVD, the app crashes and goes into the ‘GraphStudio has stopped working’ and ‘Windows is searching for a solution’ pop-up window. Can you help please?
I am using Vista 32-bit.

Comment left July 12, 2009 at 1:02 pm Permanent Link

Michael Healy
@Reply #2099 from Michael Healy [Reply]

This sounds like a serious problem with the codecs that are installed. Do you know what codecs you’ve got installed currently? I would uninstall all codecs and codec packs and start over from scratch.

Comment left July 12, 2009 at 1:45 pm Permanent Link

Anonymous
Comment #2165 from Anonymous [Reply]

Strange, if I playback an .AVI file through graphstudio, what is show is completely incorrect – wrong splitter, AC3 instead of FFDShow audio… don’t have that problem with MKV files. Sorry, but graphstudio doesn’t seem all that reliable at all. Gspot and the system tray menu of directvobsub give me the correct info (ffdshow audio + ffdshow video with raw mode + divx7 + directvobsub)…

Comment left July 17, 2009 at 11:09 am Permanent Link

Michael Healy
@Reply #2167 from Michael Healy [Reply]

GraphStudio simply builds a graph based on the DirectShow output, there isn’t really anywhere to go wrong. It does sound like you have one or more codec packs installed which is causing you some serious problems.

For instance if you’re using FFDShow Audio why is AC3Filter being loaded for the same audio type. Appears you have the two filters configured incorrectly.

Loading both FFDShow and Divx7 and directvobsub is quite redundant. For starters directvobsub is included as part of FFDShow. Also, why pass through FFDShow then send it to DivX as well when FFDShow can decode DivX itself?

Comment left July 17, 2009 at 1:37 pm Permanent Link

clsid
@Reply #2170 from clsid [Reply]

I have to correct some parts of your comment.

DirectVobSub is NOT part of ffdshow. ffdshow uses its own subtitle code, which is considerably different from DirectVobSub.

It is perfectly fine to have both ffdshow and AC3Filter installed. Same applies to ffdshow and DivX 7. ffdshow supports many formats, some of which you could disable if you want to use an alternative decoder.

DivX does not process raw video.

Comment left July 17, 2009 at 5:07 pm Permanent Link

Michael Healy
@Reply #2183 from Michael Healy [Reply]

I know they can work together alright, it just seems like a poor way to implement the entire process having multiple decoders working the same stream when it’s so unnecessary.

I thought I had read somewhere that FFDShow used a version of DirectVobSub, must have been mistaken or bad info.

Comment left July 19, 2009 at 2:14 pm Permanent Link

Nik
Comment #4845 from Nik [Reply]

I have a strange problem with codecs on W7. Here’s the situation, I have some files encoded in avi format x264 with AC3 audio. Using Windows Media player these files playback perfectly, but if I try to play them via the Media Center interface, they will play back.

The system is a clean install of W7 Pro x64 with the Sharky Codecs installed. I’ve tried using the Shark007 codec pack configuation GUI to force the use of the FFDSHOW codecs, but it makes no difference. I’m also seeing this on two completely different machines, so it’s not a local config problem.

Any idea what I’m doing wrong?

Comment left November 15, 2009 at 2:22 pm Permanent Link

Nik
Comment #4846 from Nik [Reply]

In my last comment I meant to say…

“Using Windows Media player these files playback perfectly, but if I try to play them via the Media Center interface, they will NOT play back.

Comment left November 15, 2009 at 2:24 pm Permanent Link

Shark007
Comment #4847 from Shark007 [Reply]

Nik, you need to install the x64 Components to be able to use Media Center on x64 Operating Systems. These components also install a settings interface silmilar to the 32bit version. in the x64 settings interface I suggest you go to the SWAP TAB and select FFDshow for XVID

Comment left November 15, 2009 at 5:06 pm Permanent Link

Nik
@Reply #4848 from Nik [Reply]

I’ve installed the x64 components and swapped things so that FFDshow is the codec in use. I did that rhought the x64 settings applet that comes with the Shark007 package, and yes I was running it as administrator

Comment left November 15, 2009 at 5:08 pm Permanent Link

Shark007
Comment #4855 from Shark007 [Reply]

Nik, please read this thread on my forum. The thread was started by another Hack7MC user experiencing similar issues as yourself. If you require further assistance from me, please bring it to my forum. Using Mike’s webspace to troubleshoot this issue is not the proper place for this conversation to continue.

Comment left November 15, 2009 at 8:17 pm Permanent Link

Nik
Comment #4870 from Nik [Reply]

Thanks, I’ll move the discussion to your message board.

Comment left November 16, 2009 at 11:14 am Permanent Link

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