Hardware acceleration Vista x64

[Toss3]

My friend with a very similar setup to mine just discovered this problem and came to me hoping for a solution.

I thought this problem was ridiculous as I assumed it would work by itself, but after various tries and efforts I still haven't been able to get hardware acceleration to work in vista 64.

Test method:

Many x264 files, with mpc home cinema edition and powerdvd Ultra.

Codecs: I didn't use the powerdvd codecs with mpc, since it already comes with an internal codec which supports dxva.

Note: You only get hardware acceleration in Vista by using the EVR renderer, so this is the output I chose from the options menu in mpc. I also used haali media player and nvidia's audio decoder.

Result: No picture.

Result without dxva box ticked: Movie files play just fine.

So what the hell is up? How can I get trailers and stuff like that to work with hardware acceleration?

[Revs]

As far as I'm aware it works fine for me. I opened a h.264 vid the other day in VLC Player and the CPU usage was quite high. I opened the same video in PowerDVD Ultra and the CPU usage was about 5%, so I assume it's working for me. I've not changed any settings in PowerDVD exept sound config settings.

[Toss3]

As far as I'm aware it works fine for me. I opened a h.264 vid the other day in VLC Player and the CPU usage was quite high. I opened the same video in PowerDVD Ultra and the CPU usage was about 5%, so I assume it's working for me. I've not changed any settings in PowerDVD exept sound config settings.
But could you try playing it in mpc home cinema? I can't get any picture even though playing them in powerdvd.

And could you check if the "purevideo" box is ticked in your settings(powerdvd)?

[Revs]

I can do. I'm at work ATM. I'll be home in about two hrs.

[Toss3]

I can do. I'm at work ATM. I'll be home in about two hrs.
Thank you! :)

I guess that most people aren't even aware of this issue due to the fact that many software codecs are almost as fast as hardware accelerated ones. I still could not get a picture when using EVR and cyberlink h264 codec(dxva enabled).

EDIT: Found this thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1061409) from 2007 on the same issue.

Seems like it only affects mkv containers.

Edit2: Yep, mkv only. Mp4 files play just fine while mkv show no picture. :)

[Revs]

Sorry bud, my mistake. I can't get .mkv's to play at all in PowerDVD. I right click on the vid and select open in PowerDVD, it opens but nothing loads at all.

I can't see this DXVA option you spoke of either. Mine looks like this;

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/attachment.php?attachmentid=31093&d=1208367857

[Toss3]

Sorry bud, my mistake. I can't get .mkv's to play at all in PowerDVD. I right click on the vid and select open in PowerDVD, it opens but nothing loads at all.

I can't see this DXVA option you spoke of either. Mine looks like this;

http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/attachment.php?attachmentid=31093&d=1208367857
Purevideo is the same as dxva, so this only confirmes my results. Thanks for the help! :)

[mikeyakame]

for dxva to work in mpc hc, x264 must be encoded with --level 4.1, in normal terms L4.1, this is what complies to DXVA standard.
also you should use internal h264 decoder with evr/evr custom, and dxva enabled, and no filters between decoder and renderer, as output stream is NV12, not YV12.

and PDVD doesnt support matroska container, nor does Nero Showtime.

:>

[Toss3]

for dxva to work in mpc hc, x264 must be encoded with --level 4.1, in normal terms L4.1, this is what complies to DXVA standard.
also you should use internal h264 decoder with evr/evr custom, and dxva enabled, and no filters between decoder and renderer, as output stream is NV12, not YV12.

and PDVD doesnt support matroska container, nor does Nero Showtime.

:>
Yep, I already found this out, but don't care since mkvs are usually used for pirated movies. So it doesn't really matter as long as hardware acceleration works for Blu-Ray and HD DVD. And in order to get mkvs to play in powerdvd you have to rename the file to .avi.

[mikeyakame]

yep yep, it does work with actual movies, while its not anywhere near as low cpu use as the g9x chips, its does make a small difference. i actually find CoreAVC uses less cpu than the equivalent of Cyberlinks H264 Decoder + gpu acceleration, check that out.

For the record before you flame matroska, you might want to get your facts straight. It's used for a lot of things, thats pretty narrow minded saying its usually used for piracy. It's an open source container, with excellent support and functionality, there fore no royalties, and no need inconveniece with multiple audio/sub streams, i use it for next to everything, even recoding my own audio cds for archive, the chapter support is top notch. 1 file plays back the same as say 16 individual ones would, food for thought.

Edit: one last thing? why would bother using gpu acceleration for x264 on a quadcore, CoreAVC plays back 13mbit/sec 1080p x264 streams ive encoded for myself, with ~ 40% cpu use. Just seems illogical to me is all. Bluray / HDDVD actually use less cpu slices and time, than the x264 encoded equivalent, only ever have i seen one Blu Ray flick that went above 50% cpu, and that was Apocalypto, which had peak bitrates of ~ 40mbit/sec, avg about 28-29mbit/sec, I'm talking about the original Blu Ray disc.

[Toss3]

yep yep, it does work with actual movies, while its not anywhere near as low cpu use as the g9x chips, its does make a small difference. i actually find CoreAVC uses less cpu than the equivalent of Cyberlinks H264 Decoder + gpu acceleration, check that out.

Then you don't have gpu acceleration working at all. I have 0%-2% processor usage when using hardware acceleration and 7-10% with CoreAVC.

For the record before you flame matroska, you might want to get your facts straight. It's used for a lot of things, thats pretty narrow minded saying its usually used for piracy. It's an open source container, with excellent support and functionality, there fore no royalties, and no need inconveniece with multiple audio/sub streams, i use it for next to everything, even recoding my own audio cds for archive, the chapter support is top notch. 1 file plays back the same as say 16 individual ones would, food for thought.

I said mostly, and I never wanted to flame matroska - people on this site just tend to react to things concerning piracy quite fiercely, so I just chose not to post anything about it, since most people on this site don't care. Here in Finland it's actually legal to copy a rented movie, as long as you don't sell it or make copies of the copy(and mkv containers are a great way to do this when blu-ray discs cost almost as much as the movies themselves).

Edit: one last thing? why would bother using gpu acceleration for x264 on a quadcore, CoreAVC plays back 13mbit/sec 1080p x264 streams ive encoded for myself, with ~ 40% cpu use. Just seems illogical to me is all. Bluray / HDDVD actually use less cpu slices and time, than the x264 encoded equivalent, only ever have i seen one Blu Ray flick that went above 50% cpu, and that was Apocalypto, which had peak bitrates of ~ 40mbit/sec, avg about 28-29mbit/sec, I'm talking about the original Blu Ray disc.

I thought that hardware acceleration wasn't working at all with Vista, and just wanted to check if this in fact was true, but then later found out that hardware acceleration doesn't work on mkv containers only(with x264 movie files encoded in a specific way).

And even though I have a quad core and coreavc, movies just don't play as smoothly as they do in PowerDVD with hardware acceleration turned on.

Btw. you seem to know a bit about movie playback on the pc, so could you help me out with getting judder free playback on my setup? I'm using 72Hz for movies at 1366x768, yet motion judder is still there. Using inverse telecine in the nvidia control panel doesn't seem to do anything. So if you have any tips, I'm open for suggestions(50/75Hz seems smoother for some reason)!

[mikeyakame]

wow thats really good for HW accel, im pretty impressed with your cpu! I find i get best H264 playback with FFDShow's libavcodec based decoder, higher cpu use, but doesn't take the same decoding shortcuts as CoreAVC does.

Finland uses Pal yes? If so DVD playback will be smoother when the frame rate of the movie is able to be roughly divided in to the screen frequency. so in that case, 75 / 25 = 3, 72 / 25 > 2 and < 3, but when watching a movie with 23.976fps, most bluray/hddvd except for a few European release HDDVD's which actually use 25fps, all conform to this, then you will actually find 71-72hz will be smoother.

I actually use Nero Showtime for most DVD watching exercises, it supports HW accel also, and gives you pretty good Bluray/HDDVD playback. But ticks for tacks, I wouldn't go out and purchase Nero just for decoding DVD's, it offered great HD support when i purchased it and the extra HD plugin, at the time, a year or so back it was a great investment.

There is a piece of software you can use for the exact nature of your problem, it's called ReClock, it synchronizes the clock cycle of the monitor to the movie, its a DirectShow based plugin! It is no longer developed, but it's the best thing that comes to mind, spare a custom resolution via Nvidia CP and forcing 48hz for 23.976/24fps, and 50/75hz for 25fps. but before trying to use such a lower refresh rate, would just make sure the monitor supports going down that low!


http://www.free-codecs.com/ReClock_DirectShow_Filter_download.htm

Inverse Telecine, is only meant for Interlaced souces, it doesn't apply on progressive video, so that's why you don't notice it make much of a difference, there are almost no DVDs that are interlaced, spare a few TV dvd sets. But you may as well leave it enabled, since if you ever do come across an interlaced source, it enables HW ivtc.

[Toss3]

wow thats really good for HW accel, im pretty impressed with your cpu! I find i get best H264 playback with FFDShow's libavcodec based decoder, higher cpu use, but doesn't take the same decoding shortcuts as CoreAVC does.

Finland uses Pal yes? If so DVD playback will be smoother when the frame rate of the movie is able to be roughly divided in to the screen frequency. so in that case, 75 / 25 = 3, 72 / 25 > 2 and < 3, but when watching a movie with 23.976fps, most bluray/hddvd except for a few European release HDDVD's which actually use 25fps, all conform to this, then you will actually find 71-72hz will be smoother.

I actually use Nero Showtime for most DVD watching exercises, it supports HW accel also, and gives you pretty good Bluray/HDDVD playback. But ticks for tacks, I wouldn't go out and purchase Nero just for decoding DVD's, it offered great HD support when i purchased it and the extra HD plugin, at the time, a year or so back it was a great investment.

There is a piece of software you can use for the exact nature of your problem, it's called ReClock, it synchronizes the clock cycle of the monitor to the movie, its a DirectShow based plugin! It is no longer developed, but it's the best thing that comes to mind, spare a custom resolution via Nvidia CP and forcing 48hz for 23.976/24fps, and 50/75hz for 25fps. but before trying to use such a lower refresh rate, would just make sure the monitor supports going down that low!


http://www.free-codecs.com/ReClock_DirectShow_Filter_download.htm

Inverse Telecine, is only meant for Interlaced souces, it doesn't apply on progressive video, so that's why you don't notice it make much of a difference, there are almost no DVDs that are interlaced, spare a few TV dvd sets. But you may as well leave it enabled, since if you ever do come across an interlaced source, it enables HW ivtc.
Wow thanks for the help! :) Well, my display won't go that low so I'm stuck with 72/75Hz for the time being. 75Hz should work with nvidia purevideo, since it supports pulldown, but I think I'll still stick with 72Hz for movies and 75Hz for games.