Transform Your Media Player with LAV Filters: Setup, Hardware Decoding and Bitstreaming

If your Windows player chokes on an MKV, stutters on 4K, or plays video with no sound, LAV Filters is usually the one install that fixes all three.

LAV Filters is a free, open-source set of DirectShow decoders that sits behind your player and opens almost any audio or video format.

This guide covers installing it, making your player actually use it, and switching on the two settings worth the effort: hardware decoding and audio bitstreaming.

What LAV Filters Actually Does

A DirectShow player such as MPC-HC does not decode video itself - it hands the job to whichever decoder is installed and registered.

LAV Filters is three of those decoders in one package: a splitter that opens the container, a video decoder and an audio decoder.

All three are built on the same libraries as FFmpeg, which is why the format list is so long. H.264, HEVC, VP9, AV1, AAC, AC3, E-AC3, DTS-HD and TrueHD all come out of the one install.

It only decodes. It does not draw the picture on screen - that is the renderer's job, and our guide to decoders and renderers explains the split if the distinction is new to you.

Install It

• If Haali Media Splitter is on your PC, uninstall it first - it quietly takes priority over LAV and makes the install look like it did nothing.
• Download LAV Filters and run the installer. Leave all three components ticked unless you know you only want one.
• Keep the default file associations unless you want LAV to handle a format that another filter already does well.
• Restart your media player. The installer registers the filters immediately, but a player that is already open will not see them until it relaunches.

Make Your Player Use It

This is the step most guides skip. MPC-HC and PotPlayer both ship with their own built-in copy of LAV and prefer it, so a freshly installed external LAV is ignored until you say otherwise.

In MPC-HC, open View, then Options, then External Filters. Click Add Filter, pick LAV Splitter Source, LAV Video Decoder and LAV Audio Decoder one at a time, and set each one to Prefer.

In PotPlayer, the same settings live under Preferences, then Filter Control, then Filter Priority. Players with no built-in decoders of their own, such as Windows Media Player, pick LAV up without any of this.

Why bother, if the player already has LAV inside it? The bundled copy is whatever version the player shipped with, and the external one is the current release - which matters the moment a new format such as AV1 or APV turns up.

Switch On Hardware Decoding

Open the LAV Video Decoder settings - in MPC-HC, double-click it on the External Filters page - and find the Hardware Decoder dropdown near the top.

Pick D3D11. It is the modern path, it works on any GPU from the last decade, and for AV1 it is the only hardware option LAV offers - DXVA2 cannot decode AV1 at all.

The dropdown beneath it, Hardware Device, is the part that catches people out. "Automatic (Native)" only works with a renderer that understands D3D11 textures, which means madVR or MPC Video Renderer.

If you are on the default renderer, pick your graphics card by name instead. LAV then runs in copy-back mode, which works with any renderer and still takes the decoding off the CPU.

Our DirectX and D3D11 guide explains what is actually happening under that dropdown, and MPC-HC has its own acceleration switch covered in enabling hardware acceleration in MPC-HC.

Bitstream Audio to a Receiver

If the PC is connected over HDMI or optical to an AV receiver or soundbar, you can send Dolby and DTS streams to it untouched and let it do the decoding. That keeps Dolby TrueHD, DTS-HD and Atmos intact instead of downmixing them to stereo on the PC.

Open the LAV Audio Decoder settings and tick the formats your receiver supports under Bitstreaming: AC3, E-AC3, TrueHD, DTS and DTS-HD. Tick DTS-HD only if the receiver shows a DTS-HD Master Audio logo; older ones accept plain DTS but not the HD layer.

E-AC3 is the format that most often needs this treatment, because streaming rips use it heavily - our EAC3 guide explains where it keeps turning up. If you only need Dolby and DTS and nothing else, the standalone DTS/AC3 Source Filter covers them without a full filter set.

Check It Is Working

Play a file, then open the LAV Video Decoder settings again and click the Status tab. The Active Decoder line should read D3D11 rather than avcodec, which is the software fallback.

If it says avcodec, the file's codec is not ticked in the hardware codecs list, or the GPU cannot decode that format. Ten-bit HEVC and AV1 are the usual culprits on older cards.

The audio side is easier: a receiver that is receiving a bitstream shows the format name on its front display, while the PC's own volume mixer stops showing any level for the player.

Who Should Look Elsewhere

LAV Filters only helps DirectShow players. If your player is VLC, mpv or Kodi, they carry their own FFmpeg decoders and ignore anything installed on the system - the tell is that nothing in their settings ever mentions "filters".

It is Windows only. There is no Mac or Linux build, and there never will be, because DirectShow does not exist there.

It does not encode. If your job is converting files rather than playing them, you want an encoder, and LAV will not appear in that workflow at all.

Quick questions

Ten minutes of setup, and the same player that failed on that MKV last week opens everything you have.

Download LAV Filters and see how it handles your files, or tell us how you got on if it is already on your PC.