x264 playback and acceleration

[jeffmd]

Well I got my new rig, and so i went and grabbed some 1080p vids (The videos in question, BBCs Planet Earth). Unfortunately a minute into eps 1, its already unplayable..and I am actually confused as to WHY. You see, my usual method of x264 playback is CCCP with zoom player (Though for vista, I am using MPC cause the included zoom player dosnt work in vista. I'll grab the latest one eventualy, but if it wont work in MPC, then it wont work in zoom ^^). This plays 780p content just fine.

However I am looking at my cpu(s) utilization while planet earth is playing, and its pretty clear the codec is utilizing all 4 cores and they are all averaging the same amount of usage (No one core dominating the other), but, total CPU utilization rarly exceeds 30% and often hangs around %20-%25.

So why am I stuttering on complex scenes? The renderer used is VR7 windowed (I tried vr9 and kali with no improvements, vr9 was worse) and color space yv12.

I also tried VLC with no luck, it actually started corrupting the image when it came under severe load (but again, only %30 cpu utilization across all cores).

[Eliminator]

you need haali media splitter and ffdshow... also piracy talk is not allowed on these forums

[jbras]

http://www.coreavc.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=category&sectionid=4&id=21&Itemid=59

free older version built in here:

http://www.free-codecs.com/download/Codec.htm

[jeffmd]

eliminiator, planet earth was shown on public tv (in HD I might add ^^)

Haali splitter comes with cccp, so it was one of the methods used and it didnt preform and better or worse then vm7.

Jbras, if it was an issue with not having enough cpu to decode it, then I might consider the coreavc, but it is not as I clearly have plenty of cpu free.

[Eliminator]

yes it was shown on public tv but recording it and then converting it to x264 and putting it up on torrents/usenet is not legal

[glObalist]

All I ever use for my HD playback is Media Player Classic along with K-lite codec Pack.

[Riptide]

MPC FTW. Best player.. ever. :)

[crainger]

I like GOM, although I don't think it's built in encoders allow for any hardware acceleration. :( I use it on my gaming rig and work lappy just to get things as simple as possible.

On my HTPC I use MPC and the k-lite mega pack.

[jeffmd]

just as a bit of closure, I managed to solve my issues today. In desperation I grabbed a package with the powerdvd7 and purevideo (which is now a year old) and installed them. Not sure if purevideo helps much, but with my players using the cyber video decoder, 1080p playback is mostly smooth (every 10 minutes or so, a small hitch is noticeable). I'm not totaly sure what the problem is, but a forum post suggested that HD video is only playable in Vista by players that use the dxva2 output method, and apparently ffdshow does not have that, nore did I see it as an output method in zoom or mpc. It was detected however in power dvd's info panel so I am guessing its decoder is using that output method. Btw I did try both GOM and VLNs internal decoders with the same results, low cpu usage and tons of frame skip. I tried all the dx7 and dx9 output methods and even overlay, nadda worked.

I was pretty close to creating an XP install just for playing back my hd videos. ^^

[walterman]

If you've 30% in your quad, then hw accel isn't working for you. (30% in a quad means, 1 core full, & 20% in another).

I've some BBC HD streams, among other 40mbit H264 streams, and they play on my system with 20-30% of cpu use. (40-60% with 1 core).

If you've transport stream files from dvb rips, then you can use powerdvd 7.3, cause it uses purevideo HD api, and works with the G80.

Of course you can use software decoders like coreavc or ffdshow, but you lose the IQ enhancements that hw decoding brings you. A lot of people doesn't seem to care about this, but when you've a h264 stream from a live show, usually you need to deinterlace it, and this is what hw decoding does much better than software (among other iq enhancements). Hw decoding is a must if you want to rip & watch at same time too.

If you've MKV + h264, forget about hw acceleration. There's a problem atm with haali, that causes a frame rate drop with cyberlink h264 decoder (that uses purevideo hd). You need to remux mkv to other format to avoid this problem.

Also, usually all software decoders, are single threaded, and unless you've a +3GHz c2d machine, you'll have frame drop with high bitrate streams.

[Riptide]

CoreAVC makes use of multiple cores.

[jeffmd]

walter, no, none of the cores reached above 30%. And my quad should make easy work of 1080p in software. I was actually trying to get pure software decoding so I could weed out any hardware faults. Both ffdshow and core use multiple threads, as does vln and gom. The reason I was baffled in my original post is BECAUSE my cpu was clearly not the factor, I was puzzled at what was.

Btw IMO ffdshow beats out any hardware solution quality wise. I have very little control over the video with power dvd (purevideo seems to have no control panel I can find), but in ffdshow I have an assortment of plugins I can use to increase video quality.