AssFilterMod - DirectShow subtitle renderer (v0.4)

[CCat]

Originally Posted by amayra

VSFilter is more than dead there no need to test or comparing using it
and how about XySubFilter ?

Well, VSFilter is supposed to be the standard definition of what an ASS filter is and what ASS features should or shouldn't be supported, at least kind of. Back in the days Aegisub, MPC and libass developers got together to reach the "decision" to never extend ASS anymore.
In practice this doesn't quite hold, looking for example at the \blur2+, \fax, \fay tags, those are as common as always and then there are the obvious resolution hacks in XySubFilter and AssFilterMod, things which are just too good to not have.

Still, both xy-VSFilter and libass aim to be VSFilter compatible and xy-VSFilter is so close, you could consider it standard.

Can't say much about XySubFilter, I've tested it once and had problems with subs not being properly placed in some videos but not in others. It's weird, the filter seemed to believe the video is larger than it actually is and there were no shenanigans going on with aspect ratio or script resolution, just a 720p video with a 720p script that doesn't get placed right, except when you use \pos, that somehow fixes the issue. So yeah, I don't use XySubFilter for that reason, development also seems to have stopped.

Just for the sake of it and not being completely offtopic, I tested XySubFilter on the above video. It doesn't flicker and it looks identical to the fixed script in xy-VSFilter (well, except for the resolution).
edit: Oops, Jtacdf snuck in while I wrote my response, at least it's confirmed now.

[huhn]

you should compare it to build-in subtitle filter from MPC-BE and MPC-HC they are still development.

[amayra]

xy-VSFilter 3.0.0.306
@Cyberbeing Cyberbeing released this on Dec 6, 2014

XySubFilter 3.1.0.746 BETA3
@Cyberbeing Cyberbeing released this on Oct 16, 2015

that why i suggest you to try it and as huhn said test ISR in mpc hc/be
ps : i am a little curious about results

[clsid]

Originally Posted by huhn

you should compare it to build-in subtitle filter from MPC-BE and MPC-HC they are still development.

VSFilter is part of those projects and shares all parsing and rendering code with ISR. Only the moment and method of merging subs with video is different between ISR and VSFilter.

[huhn]

i now it is vsfilter based but i know that kasper has increased the performance (and other things) of the ISR by quite a lot.

the performance of the ISR renderer got pretty close to xy subfilter.

[amayra]

Originally Posted by clsid

VSFilter is part of those projects and shares all parsing and rendering code with ISR. Only the moment and method of merging subs with video is different between ISR and VSFilter.

i try to fix some memory issues in VSFilter but i end up with reading a masterpiece of spaghetti code and useless/old stuff in it
so i think ISR have decent code compare it to VSFilter

[CCat]

Originally Posted by huhn

you should compare it to build-in subtitle filter from MPC-BE and MPC-HC they are still development.

Originally Posted by amayra

that why i suggest you to try it and as huhn said test ISR in mpc hc/be
ps : i am a little curious about results

Is this still about the "flicker bug" (that's not actually a bug), or what do you mean by "compare", "test" and "results"? If you just want screenshot comparisons, you should look up the first few pages of this thread.
But just to let you know, the "VSFilter" screenshots are actually from ISR, directly out of MPC-HE and I did also test this 2008 version of VSFilter through AviSynth, same results, both don't flicker, but as clsid already said, this should not surprise, as ISR practically is VSFilter and that's also why I called it that.

Also, amayra, if you are so curious, why not open the player yourself, it's really not that hard.

P.S. Sorry for derailing the thread, this really isn't about AssFilterMod anymore.

[huhn]

what do you mean with MPC-HE? BE or HC

and more important is if the spacing is correct or not.
if this was the newest MPC-HC i will ask kasper about this if the bigger spacing is correct.

[amayra]

Originally Posted by CCat

Also, amayra, if you are so curious, why not open the player yourself, it's really not that hard.

i've made more test than you can count but I can't reproduce the problem so if you went to be kind give ASS file not your suggestions
and there one more think i made improved fork of AssFilterMod and i would try to fix your problem before i send my Pull requests

[Blitzker]

Originally Posted by CCat

That flickers in xy-VSFilter and libass, but not in VSFilter. Most notably it flickers in Aegisub (newer versions at least), MPV and ffmpeg (using "ass" video filter). It can flicker in AviSynth and MPC depending on configuration.

I've isolated the problem. This code

{\t(260,620,\alpha&F00&)}me

"flickers", or rather it goes from fully transparent to opaque three times instead of from half-transparent (which it starts out due to the font style) to opaque once like you'd expect it to.

The problem is the invalid color code "&F00&", which should read "&H00&" ('H' stands for hexadecimal and there is no documented alternative for it, so 'F' makes no sense). If you substitute it, it works exactly like it should in all filters.

So yeah, since it's undocumented and not even xy-VSFilter gets it "right", it's probably a bad idea to "fix" libass (and AssFilterMod for that matter). The only true fix is to search & replace "&F00&" with "&H00&" in the subtitle files.

Nice work looking into this issue. I checked every builds that were released and this problem was there so its good to know that its related to libass.

Originally Posted by CCat

While comparing shots from the video above I also noticed another odd thing relating to the harfbuzz version. For some reason it likes to render dots which neither appear in version 0.3 nor in (xy-)VSFilter.

Comparison: VSFilter vs AssFilterMod harfbuzz

It might just be the font, maybe it has shapes with volume 0 which still get shaped by harfbuzz and are then given a red border, hence red dots. Haven't confirmed this, though.
...
Alright, I needed to know, here's the verdict.

So harfbuzz is as correct as you'd expect. Question is if it's "wrong" to apply a border to a point. It's at least less VSFilter compatible.

This is also pretty interesting: VSFilter vs xy-VSFilter vs AssFilterMod harfbuzz

VSFilter doesn't seem to care much for spacing in this case, but xy-VSFilter does. There really is no filter which isn't broken in at least one way.

Ok, the thing is that i used an experimental build of libass in thoses harfbuzz releases (harfbuzz_x?). This experimental build uses a new stroker that correct issues with some fonts but it seems to introduce unwanted artifacts. The problem is not there with normal builds, even thoses that use harfbuzz (not yet released).

Screenshots of the difference:

Without experimental: https://i.imgur.com/20wSgYv.jpg
With experimental: https://i.imgur.com/iQx9lvV.jpg

Originally Posted by amayra

i've made more test than you can count lyrics but I can't reproduce the problem so if you went to be kind give ASS file not your suggestions
and there one more think i made improved fork of AssFilterMod and i would try to fix your problem before i send my Pull requests

Pull requests and help with the development are more than welcome!

On a good note, the new nightly version of MPC-HC has added my pull request to add AssFilterMod to the list of subtitles renderer. So i won't update my mpc-hc fork and make builds anymore.

[CCat]

Originally Posted by huhn

what do you mean with MPC-HE? BE or HC and more important is if the spacing is correct or not.
if this was the newest MPC-HC i will ask kasper about this if the bigger spacing is correct

Ah, so it's about the spacing. I meant to write MPC-HC (newest nightly), sorry.
I just tested XySubFilter as well and it also has the bigger spacing, so VSFilter/ISR seems to be the odd one out in that regard.

Originally Posted by amayra

i've made more test than you can count lyrics but I can't reproduce the problem so if you went to be kind give ASS file not your suggestions

But it's right there, Jtacdf posted a link to a said problematic file and that's what I've been using.
Or did you test that already when you say you cannot reproduce the problem?

The scene where the screenshots with spacing differences come from is at the 00:46.462 to 00:52.636 timemark, but you should see it everywhere.

Originally Posted by Blitzker

Ok, the thing is that i used an experimental build of libass in thoses harfbuzz releases (...) [which] uses a new stroker that correct issues with some fonts but it seems to introduce unwanted artifacts.

Ah, that's good to hear, because that means it's not a direct issue with harfbuzz. Makes me wonder though if the problem is more of the side of the stroker or of the side of the fonts, maybe there's a reason that there are seemingly random points in those kanji glyphs, but to a layman's eye those look like errors.

[Jtacdf]

Here is another problematic file that does not play nice with AssFilterMod v0.1, 0.2, 0.3. Probably related to libass.
https://mega.nz/#!UsR1AIoC!jqweOJhzW...3zV3NjC7mv34Uc

With the default heavy Kfx ass file, the front/end of each karaoke sentence display as transparent and seems "chopped" off. There is also some misalignment of the white fill fx. Works fine with XySubFilter and MPC-HC/BE ISR.

[CCat]

Originally Posted by Jtacdf

Here is another problematic file that does not play nice with AssFilterMod v0.1, 0.2, 0.3. Probably related to libass.

That seems to be an issue with "@ fonts", the OP Romaji style uses "@A-OTF CapieN Std B" as a font.
From what I know, the "@" is supposed to flip (certain?) kanji on it's side, which has uses in vertical writing I believe, but in this case it seems to also shrink the size of the font, here's a comparison out of Aegisub (xy-VSFilter):

If you change the subtitle provider to libass, both fonts are of the larger size, which is the cause for what you're seeing.
The OP was designed with (xy-)VSFilter in mind, so the larger font gets cut off on the sides by \clips (which are used for colored stripes in the text) and because the white fx was generated to fit on the smaller font, it's misaligned.

[clsid]

A bug report:
https://trac.mpc-hc.org/ticket/6132

[Blitzker]

Originally Posted by clsid

A bug report:
https://trac.mpc-hc.org/ticket/6132

Interesting bug. It seems that windows doesn't play nice with UTF-8 filenames. I've made a little hack in libass to support loading of UTF-16 filenames and it seems to work.

I'll release it when i've made more testing of different UTF-8 strings.

[nevcairiel]

Originally Posted by Blitzker

Interesting bug. It seems that windows doesn't play nice with UTF-8 filenames. I've made a little hack in libass to support loading of UTF-16 filenames and it seems to work.

Thats how it is, Windows is internally all UTF-16 (ie. wchar_t), and file access should convert to that, the plain char APIs don't take UTF-8, only plain ASCII. MultiByteToWideChar is what you want to use to go from UTF-8 to UTF-16.

[Blitzker]

Originally Posted by nevcairiel

Thats how it is, Windows is internally all UTF-16 (ie. wchar_t), and file access should convert to that, the plain char APIs don't take UTF-8, only plain ASCII. MultiByteToWideChar is what you want to use to go from UTF-8 to UTF-16.

Yes, MultiByteToWideChar is what i use to convert UTF-8 to UTF-16. Still, i spent a bit of time wondering what was wrong till i decided to google for that info. At least its something i won't forget!

[Blitzker]

Here is a new version of AssFilterMod that should fix the problem with unicode path names. The simple way to do it was to fix libass to support UTF-16 but i'm still not sure if i'll go with that or support it only in assfiltermod (more work).
Anyway, i decided to release a test build so users can test files with unicode paths.

x32: assfiltermod_utf-8_x32.zip
x64: assfiltermod_utf-8_x64.zip

I also made a build with harfbuzz and a new version of the experimental stroker which fix the dots on some japanese fonts.

x32: assfiltermod_harfbuzz_x5_x32.zip
x64: assfiltermod_harfbuzz_x5_x64.zip

[JayeDog]

I am trying to use assfiltermod with kodi dsplayer but it can only display embedded subs. It won't load external srt files. My files srt files are in the correct format ie same file name and 2 letter language code. It is working fine in mpc-hc. Any idea why the external srt files won't display in kodi displayer?

[ashlar42]

May I ask why the decision of starting almost from scratch instead of working on improving XySubFilter? Was it not open sourced?
Simple curiosity, not criticism of any kind, as devs are clearly free to do whatever the hell they want with their own time.