Avisynth Playback

[Syco54645]

For various reasons I would like to play back avs files from avisynth onto my tv. I am using an apple tv running linux with xbmc on top of it. I see on the supported format page that avs files are supported but I do not think that this is an avisynth file. Could this feature be added? If it is already there how do I access it? If i can in fact play my avs files then I would be more than happy to pay the price of admission as I do not think that any other dlna server can serve avs up.

Thanks

-Syco54645

[Paul]

Avisynth files are not currently available through Mezzmo - we have been experimenting with this, but don't have any results yet. If there's interest in this area then I'd be happy to give this a higher priority. It may be an interesting area to explore.

[Syco54645]

Well it is definitely an interest and high priority to me. Haha. I would be willing to beta test or provide feedback on it as well. I suppose I should explain how and why I am using this as well. For many years I have been a fan of exploitation cinema... probably almost 20 now (my viewing was not much monitored as a child... which is a good thing though I monitor my children's viewing... haha) and I find it annoying when a movie suchas torso or last house on the left is transferred to be of impeccable quality so I use avisynth to create artifacts akin to the old grindhouse experience. I generally rip all of my films to divx so using avisynth for this makes sense. Also around once a week or so I do double features with my friends and they love the gritty transfers. This would make the experience all the better.

If this has typos I am sorry. I am typing it from my phone...

[Paul]

I can't make any promises on how quickly this will be looked at, but if you can send a sample avisynth script to support (at) conceiva (dot) com, it may expedite things

[Syco54645]

Well as far as I know you need windows direct show support (ffdshow would work) to play back the avs files. Native playback would be nice but I would even take transcoding (technically the avs is transcoding in the first place) but would need to get a more powerful windows machine. I will be sending the script in a few minutes. I use a virtual dub plugin called MSU OldCinema Filter. http://compression.ru/video/old_cinema/index_en.html

The AVS that I suggest using is the one on their page (with the paths adjusted for your paths of course). I really hope this can be figured out... I would be extremely happy by this.

LoadVirtualDubPlugin("..\VirtualDub\plugins\MSU Old cinema.vdf","Old_cinema", 0) 
clip=AVISource("D:\work\video\film.avi", false, "RGB24")
return clip.ConvertToRGB32.Old_cinema(247, 223, 181, 0, 1, 10, 10, 15, 70, 3, 20, 5, 50, 150, 0, 1, 100)

[Syco54645]

Now I see that Mezzmo is using ffdshow. Really this should be a simple compiler switch for avs support. http://ffmpeg.org/faq.html#SEC26
I just got even more excited... Hopefully this pans out.

[Paul]

Mezzmo is using FFmpeg, not ffdshow (they're based on same libraries, but are two completely different things). Yes, there is a compiler switch in FFmpeg to add avisynth support, but that's only one side of the coin - Mezzmo has to tell FFmpeg to run your script before serving the file and there's no infrastructure to accommodate that at the moment.

Thanks for the script, we'll look into this for sure, but no promises on when it'll be available yet

[Syco54645]

That is all I can ask for. Really hoping it can work. ffmpeg can have avisynth enabled at compile time though, but you guys probably already know that...

[LordAshes]

Maybe I am missing something but I though that the general idea of AviSynth was to run between the AVS script file and the subscriber (i.e. player) so that to the player, except for the odd file extension, the file looks like an ordinary AVI or MPEG file. As far as I can tell this is what happens when one tries to play an AVS file in some media player like Media Player Classic.

Instead of incorporating AviSynth into Mezzmo shouldn't it be possible for AviSynth to do its usual work BEFORE it gets to the Mezzmo Media Server and thus the Mezzmo Media Server would see the AVS file contents as a regular AVI or MPEG file. If so then shouldn't it just be a matter of allowing Mezzmo to display AVS files on the Media Server (currently they do not show up on the Media Server) and when the a use requests such a file, Mezzmo would try to stream it like any other file finding its contents to be an AVI or MPEG file (because AviSynth would be passing it the post processed file).

[Paul]

Thanks for your thoughts. We have not yet determined the best implementation for AviSynth within Mezzmo & Mezzmo server, so your ideas are helpful.