[X3] A tool to fix your directshow codecs (sound problems and performance)

Ask here if you experience technical problems with X³: Reunion, X²: The Threat, X-Tension or X-Beyond The Frontier

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Fed
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Post by Fed » Fri, 7. Dec 07, 15:40

You bet, I do so every day. I generally use Windows Media Player Classic for that, if it's at all relevant or helpful. The Filter Manager did have the Fraunhofer (spelling) MP3 codec in my list, and it was set to preferred.

CBJ
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Post by CBJ » Fri, 7. Dec 07, 15:46

WMP classic? Try reinstalling WMP 10 or 11.

Fed
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Post by Fed » Fri, 7. Dec 07, 15:50

Shoulda mentioned I tried that - it was one of the usual pieces of advice given. For the record WMP Classic is a third party non bloatware media player, and despite the name is by no means old or anything like that (but it also doesn't install any of its own codecs so personally I'm thinking it's entirely irrelevant).

CBJ
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Post by CBJ » Fri, 7. Dec 07, 16:06

If it doesn't install codecs then yes, it's irrelevant in itself. But if you'd uninstalled WMP 10 or 11 to get rid of the "bloatware" then doing so might have removed codecs that were needed. If WMP Classic doesn't install codecs then does it use the ones that are already installed or is it like VLC and has them built in? In the latter case, the fact that you can play mp3 there doesn't help and you'd need to try playing mp3s in, say, WMP 10 or 11.

Anyway, either way it does look like we've hit upon a possible source of your problems. Getting the standard codecs back onto your system, and registered correctly so that the game (and DShow) can find them would seem like the next step, but I'm not sure how you'd go about that as I've not seen them go MIA before.

Fed
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Post by Fed » Sat, 8. Dec 07, 05:40

You've hit upon my implied point there - it doesn't install it's own codecs or use any built-in ones, so it uses whatever Windows gives it which implies that the standard codecs, or at least MP3-capable ones, are installed and work. I'm not sure why DS Viewer has these problems - even with MPEG!! And yes, my standard Windows Media Player can play MP3s also.

So all in all I don't believe that the standard codecs are missing - what I've already said about the media players plus the fact that the Filter Manager from the first post does have all the codecs in there that are in DS Viewer's cheat sheet like I mentioned means that the codecs are all there. What's going wrong though is really beyond me :/

pjknibbs
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Post by pjknibbs » Sat, 8. Dec 07, 08:50

I think you're missing the point. Not all MP3-capable codecs are created equal. All of the speech in X3 is encoded into a single massive MP3 file--the game then asks the codec to play the piece of that file that is required for whatever audio it's speaking. Some MP3 codecs just aren't very good at picking bits out of the middle of a file like that and will produce unexpected results. This is why we recommend everyone use the WMP10 or 11 codecs, because they're known to work!

Fed
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Post by Fed » Sun, 9. Dec 07, 17:20

No offence but I think you've not read through all the posts, which I don't blame you for cause there's quite a few now. Speech works absolutely fine 100% of the time in-game. As does everything, except Music. Likewise everything in my media players (including my freshly reinstalled WMP 10) plays just fine. Further, the codecs that have the Preferred merit in the Filter Manager are the standard Windows ones - quartz.dll and l3codecx.ax. Personally I thought my problem was a bug in DS Viewer before it turned out that the game can't play music either, but I'm hesitant to bunch together the two issues since DS Viewer has trouble with MPEG, SPEECH and MP3 whilst the game has no problems with video and speech.

Unicycle
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Post by Unicycle » Thu, 13. Dec 07, 18:42

Can I just say what a boon this thread and the two tools have been for me.
Was tearing my hair out over freezes and CTDs (and not just in X3) - this showed up ac3filter as being used instead of quartz.dll, and having got shot of it, everything is back to normal.
Thanks very much!

carelesshx
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Post by carelesshx » Sun, 16. Dec 07, 04:14

Sorry if this question has been posted before but unfortunately this thread is massive and I haven't read it all...

Here's my problem:

[ external image ]

Originally there were 3 codecs in addition to "Default DirectSound Device", all of which were wrong. I had to manually install wmspdmod.dll and add it to the list using DSFM. With this done, it appears correctly in DShow Viewer as shown above. However, DSFM does not recognise the Merit, Company, filename (module) or CLSID of this filter, so I cannot change its merit. Lowering the merit of wmpasf.dll to "Do not use" or lower causes DShow Viewer to report an error and means that no dialogue is present in the game at all. Changing the merit to anything other than this has no effect at all. I'm reluctant to remove the filters from the list as this causes the same problem and it is impossible to re-add it afterwards (I tried, and had to do a system restore to get it back).

Since DShow Viewer states that everything should be fine with the filters listed on the cheat sheet, and I have all those filters, it seems that it is the extra filters that are causing the problem. Unfortunately, attempting to remove them fails to solve the problem and instead causes more problems, so I hope you can understand why I'm confused and annoyed. Any help gratefully appreciated.

Fewdy
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Post by Fewdy » Sat, 22. Dec 07, 08:38

*deleted & solved*

I don't know how the hell it can be but I can't get the speech if my headphone connector is pushed all the way down to the connector on my Audigy...

I pulled it up couple mm and got speech. :roll:

For the record, I haven't had "any" problems like that with "anything" else. Only X3, heh.

Dexstar
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Post by Dexstar » Tue, 29. Jan 08, 09:25

carelesshx wrote:Sorry if this question has been posted before but unfortunately this thread is massive and I haven't read it all...

Here's my problem:

[ external image ]

Originally there were 3 codecs in addition to "Default DirectSound Device", all of which were wrong. I had to manually install wmspdmod.dll and add it to the list using DSFM. With this done, it appears correctly in DShow Viewer as shown above. However, DSFM does not recognise the Merit, Company, filename (module) or CLSID of this filter, so I cannot change its merit. Lowering the merit of wmpasf.dll to "Do not use" or lower causes DShow Viewer to report an error and means that no dialogue is present in the game at all. Changing the merit to anything other than this has no effect at all. I'm reluctant to remove the filters from the list as this causes the same problem and it is impossible to re-add it afterwards (I tried, and had to do a system restore to get it back).

Since DShow Viewer states that everything should be fine with the filters listed on the cheat sheet, and I have all those filters, it seems that it is the extra filters that are causing the problem. Unfortunately, attempting to remove them fails to solve the problem and instead causes more problems, so I hope you can understand why I'm confused and annoyed. Any help gratefully appreciated.
Do you have deacent speach or is it mainly when you enter a random sector, (crash after a few hours of play)

Cluey
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Post by Cluey » Tue, 29. Jan 08, 15:32

Sorry if I haven't read through the whole 31 page thread, so this problem may have been asked before.

Im getting the lack of voice problem in the game. I've patched up to 2.5.

I've tried this DSHOW viewer and the subsequent manager program, but with still no luck. No matter what I do to the merit settings of the 3 red codecs listed they're still there. The only one that's not red is the default DirectSound device.

Now you say that the latest versions of X3 automatically choose the right codecs. I notice in the "What I should see" button there is a speech decoder which I don't seem to have, WMSpeech Decoder DMO, I have one called WMA Voice Decoder DMO but I assume this is a different thing as in the Manager app it was greyed out and I couldn't do anything with it.

Shall I try to find the WMSpeech Decoder? Or is there something I'm missing?

I don't want to tweak with this PC too much as it's my brothers and he paid alot of money for it and would get mad if I did anything majorly technical to it.

If it helps I have the Game of the Year 2007 edition. X3 2.0.

Any help is appreciated.[/b]

CBJ
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Post by CBJ » Tue, 29. Jan 08, 15:57

Cluey wrote:I notice in the "What I should see" button there is a speech decoder which I don't seem to have, WMSpeech Decoder DMO, I have one called WMA Voice Decoder DMO but I assume this is a different thing as in the Manager app it was greyed out and I couldn't do anything with it.
This particular difference is normal and you can safely ignore it. The DShow tool doesn't know about WMP 11 which changes that particular codec's name. Any other errors still need to be sorted out.

Cluey
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Post by Cluey » Tue, 29. Jan 08, 16:02

CBJ wrote:
Cluey wrote:I notice in the "What I should see" button there is a speech decoder which I don't seem to have, WMSpeech Decoder DMO, I have one called WMA Voice Decoder DMO but I assume this is a different thing as in the Manager app it was greyed out and I couldn't do anything with it.
This particular difference is normal and you can safely ignore it. The DShow tool doesn't know about WMP 11 which changes that particular codec's name. Any other errors still need to be sorted out.
But that's the problem, no matter what I do in the Manager the red things don't disappear at all. And when I do the Attach to X3 thing, the list of things is massive and I don't want to mess around with this PC too much.

If it was my own I'd go for it, rename DLLs and everything, but as it's not I can't really do that without my brothers permission, and I won't get that.

I guess my problem is all this seems to be way over my head, and I can't safely say that I know what I'm doing.

All I wanna do is grapple some Ka'ak :(

CBJ
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Post by CBJ » Tue, 29. Jan 08, 16:13

If you can't change the codecs by adding, removing or renaming some of them then the chances of being able to solve your problem are slim. Normally reinstalling WMP 11 is sufficient with recent versions of the game, and that shouldn't change anything significant on the PC so perhaps you could do that without permission.

Cluey
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Post by Cluey » Tue, 29. Jan 08, 18:20

Hurray!

Re-installed WMP 11 and it all works great now. But damn everything feels so big in the game! Taken me a good 2 hours just to get to that bit where you're chasing the pirate who stole the shard.

Dexstar
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Post by Dexstar » Wed, 30. Jan 08, 02:10

like cluey i ran into a brick wall trying to fix this codec issue,
below is are the erros that i find, problem is i dont know what i should do.

http://img165.imageshack.us/img165/7061/problem4gi3.png


http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/4259/problem1re3.png

http://img165.imageshack.us/img165/1085/problem2hu4.png

http://img299.imageshack.us/img299/4605/problem3cv9.png




which ones can anyone tell me are the main problematic causes, took me all night to read all of the the thread ,(lotsacofee) and have tried some to no avail.
tips guys?

Hubasan
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x3tc

This thread is still valid, confirmation

Post by Hubasan » Sun, 23. Mar 08, 18:59

Just today I wanted to start X3-Reunion over again, and I ran into SOUND issues, and after reading this thread and downloading DirectShow filter I have discovered that Windows Media Player 11 was causing choppy sound, in stations, with ships computer and so on.
After uninstalling Windows Media Player 11 and it's components (separate uninstall from Add-Remove Programs) everything is now working correctly.

Thanks to the author of this thread for providing all useful information about Codec issues and X3-Reunion.

MrGenesis2005
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Joined: Fri, 28. Oct 05, 18:40
x3tc

Post by MrGenesis2005 » Sat, 5. Apr 08, 01:00

I'm getting the same indicated problems as Carelesshx and I'm gonna try installing Windows Media Player 11 to see if it solves my speech problem. All other sounds are fine except for speech (station announements, ships computer..) cutting in after missing the first words.

X3 patched to 2.5 also.

Gen

UPDATE: Just installed WMP 11 and speech is functioning correctly now.

Psychoham
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Post by Psychoham » Sun, 6. Apr 08, 04:33

I had the same speech problem, so I uninstalled Media Player 11, reinstalled it and the speech now works fine.

My only problem is that in DShow Viewer it shows the WMA Voice Decoder as empty with no file associated to it. I've tried registering wmspdmod.dll but it doesnt show up in the list.

Do you have any ideas as to how to solve this? Thanks for your help!

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