Best format to use HAP on windows?

dbengali

Hi I am about to do an Isadora show on Windows, have always used Mac for playback before, and also I am editing content on a Mac.

I'm planning to encode my movie files as HAP. My question is, what container should I be using for best performance?

According to http://troikatronix.com/support/kb/izzy20-playback/ , DirectShow supports HAP, so I had been planning to use ffmpeg to rewrap my Quicktime HAP mov files to AVI in order to use DirectShow

However, according to posts in this thread: http://troikatronix.com/troikatronixforum/discussion/2034/hap-codec-isadora-magic it is stated that Hap is only a Quicktime codec, and that "although there is a directshow extension available from a 3rd party vendor, DirectShow playback has not been extended to support this extension. The only way to play HAP with gpu acceleration is as QuickTime." Another user in that thread did state that HAP encoded AVI files with Quicktime playback was fastest, better than HAP mov/qt files.

How can I get the best performance with HAP on windows, what is needed to use DirectShow instead of Quicktime engine to play back HAP files, and should I be using avi or mov to contain HAP files?

thanks!

mark

Dear @dengali,

v2.5 of Isadora supports accelerated of playback of HAP AVI files – this is a new feature that was added just before I created the final v2.5 build.

Get it here: http://troikatronix.com/isa25beta

We're still looking at the best (and cheapest) ways to encode these files. You'll need to get the [Renderheads HAP codec](http://renderheads.com/product/hap-for-directshow/) for to encode your files.

However, this codec only seems to work with certain tools – it does not appear as an export option in every app I've tried. (We'd like to find a free solution obviously and we're looking into that.) @DusX uses Vegas Pro (correct me if I'm wrong Ryan) and that's how he encoded the test files. We believe Adobe Premiere will also also encode to HAP.

If you try something else and it works, please let us know.

Best Wishes,

Mark

dbengali

Thanks Mark,

This is exciting news.

Trying to wrap my head a bit around the requirements since I don't know a lot about DirectShow

Am I right in understanding that the Renderheads codec is actually fully different underneath than the HAP codec for QuickTime?

Working on a Mac, which is my edit platform, I am able to use ffmpeg to quickly re-wrap a HAP mov file to AVI with the -vcodec copy option, but is this file, even though it has an AVI wrapper, unable to work with DirectShow? It sounds like there are different flavors of the Hap codec itself, and that it is not just a container issue?

What decoding method gets used for a file rewrapped to avi like this if it started as a QuickTime Hap file but is now AVI? (Btw, to make the original mov I am encoding from jpg or png frames to mov using the HapInAVFoundation library from vidvox)

Concerning the Renderheads codec, the installers I have found look like Windows only. Does anyone know if there is a way to install and use it for encoding on a Mac? Or is a windows computer required to encode with Renderheads' codec?

DusX

Actually using Vegas Movie Studio (consumer/lower cost version)

I like it because it supports Many codecs, and doesn't limit the shape of the media (any non standard dimensions, eg 10px tall x 1280px wide)

Its seems all encoders that use QT engine for encoding fail to provide Directshow AVI codecs (eg: Batch from Livid)

Other rather powerful encoders like MediaCoder x64 and MPEG_Streamclip also don't seem to offer this Hap avi codec.

I have had success with Virtual Dub. http://virtualdub.org/

It requires additional plugins to be installed if you want to open Quicktime video files, but supports most Windows formats by default.

This will likely be the Free option that I recommend.