Poor performance with HEVC on fast computer.

[bizzybody]

System specs 2+ Ghz Athlon 64 single core, XP Pro, 2 gig RAM, GeForce 8800 GT PCIe x16 with 512 meg - currently using S-Video out at 800x600. Will soon be trying component out at 1080i if the board will do that. TV only supports 480p and 1080i, have never been able to get the RGB in to display a proper picture, does not seem to be VGA compliant. (No DVI or HDMI in, TV predates both!)

MKV with HEVC encoded video at 1080x720 plays back jerky and the audio sync is all over the place. Other videos at the same resolution with AVC play perfectly. Both have AAC audio. Both play fine on a PC with an Athlon Phenom II x2 555 @ 3.2 Ghz.

The best (or least bad) results with HEVC on this system are with Windows Media Player. The latest VLC displays bad colors and is a blocky slideshow. The latest Media Player Classic Home Cinema doesn't go blocky and its colors are good but is very jerky.

The CPU speed ought to be able to handle this. I just upgraded it from its ATi onboard video to the 8800 GT, which made it able to play the high resolution AVC encoded files but made ZERO difference in HEVC playback, as though it's relying 100% on the CPU for decoding.

Is there a player program that will use the GPU to assist HEVC playback, as seems to be done with AVC and others?

[poisondeathray]

That sounds about right. HEVC is much more difficult do decode.

There is GPU support but not your GPU. GTX 960 or 950 have HEVC support

[El Heggunte]

The computer you've described IS NOT *fast enough* for HEVC playback above SD-video.

My oldest machine is even slower than yours, and regarding HEVC playback
(by using the Strongene Lentoid DirectShow decoder),
it cannot go above 1280x720 @ 24fps without losing sync with the audio.

[AllisOne]

As El Heggunte said 'The computer you've described IS NOT *fast enough* for HEVC playback above SD-video.' I agree as well that (at least for me - but Win7 Pro x64, i7 3740QM 2.7GHz) Strongene Lentoid HEVC decoder: http://xhevc.com/en/downloads/downloadCenter.jsp is the best option. Tested on 'Sintel_4k_27qp_24fps_1aud_9subs.mkv' from here: http://www.divx.com/en/hevc-showcase . You need to register the decoder, add it to External Filters in MPC-HC ans set to 'Prefer'. You might try to fiddle with different renderers too. In MPC-HC - Playback - Output - DirectShow Video. In WinXP the "highest" one is Video Mixing Renderer 9 (renderless), but I suppose you can try Haali or madVR. I was surprised that VMR9 (renderless) gives me the lowest CPU usage with Lentoid decoder and LAV splitter on my Win7 Pro x64 comparing to native EVR (CP) or madVR. Personally I use PotPlayer, but checked on MPC-HC too.

PS. If you're going to download that Sintel HEVC video and play it on your computer, please do it from external drive. I remember playing some AVC HD video on my old 1-core processor laptop a few years ago and it choked my WinXP to death - I had to reinstall it . I think that simply unplugging the drive from the laptop would save my OS.

[bizzybody]

So the "efficiency" refers to file size, not performance. Probably easier to re-encode 7+ hours of video to AVC, or see if the motherboard supports a dual core, higher speed Socket 930 CPU I have.

Looks like the OpenCL HEVC decoder might be a possibility since the 8800 GT can do OpenCL.
http://www.nvidia.com/object/io_1252000156987.html

[jagabo]

So the "efficiency" refers to file size, not performance.

Yes. Just like AVC was more efficient than ASP but required more horsepower to encode and decode. And just like ASP was more "efficient" than MPEG 2. And MPEG 2 was more efficient than MPEG 1.

Looks like the OpenCL HEVC decoder might be a possibility since the 8800 GT can do OpenCL.

No. It can't decode HEVC. It's way too old. It only has h.264 decoding. You need something made in the last year or so to get GPU HEVC decoding.

[johns0]

Best to buy a new computer system if you want to play hevc,your computer is like 10 years old or even older.

[vhelp]

I thought I would give HEVC encoding (and playback) a go on my old dell inspiron win7 64bit laptop.

Does the 64bit version work on anyone elses ? because its not, on mine. I just downloaded the latest version "Strongene_Lentoid_HEVC_Decoder_v2.0.3.3_2015_06_0 5_r4109" but can't get it to install the codecs.

The Module \...\hevcdecfltr_x64.dll was loaded but the call to DllRegisterServer failed with error code 0x80070005.

I've been using ffmpeg to test plaback quickly, but would like to use the windows media play (the one on my bottom taskbar) as an alternative on the laptop.

[bizzybody]

Reporting 99% success. I installed the Strongene HEVC OpenCL decoder and LAV, the executable installer version. Then in the LAV video settings I enabled Nvidia CUVID hardware acceleration and checked the HEVC box.

The video played back in WMP without any judder or audio synch issues, except during a fast fight scene it dropped some frames and the audio sync slipped a bit but soon as the fast motion ended the audio was perfectly synchronized again. Ah, the box to do that automatically is checked by default. Very nice. (It's even smoother with the 9800 GT in the system I'm on right now.)

I didn't try VideoLAN or MPC-HC.

Looks like an old 8800 GT can be forced to do acceleration of H.265 video.

Now I just need to wait for the analog component out cable and see if the card will run at 1080i so it won't have to scale 720p down to 640x480 for this olde rear projection TV. I assume the downsizing is putting a bit of load on it.

Not so bad for a HP Pavilion a1129n from 2005 with a video card from 2007, running XP Pro SP3 with only 2 gigs RAM.

I may have to see if it will accept the slightly faster Athlon 64x2 CPU I have kicking around. Lots of people asked about dual cores in that model but apparently nobody ever actually tried one.

[bizzybody]

Swapped in an Athlon 64 x2 3800+ and now 1280x720 HEVC works 100%. In scenes that were lagging with the single core it now peaks CPU use at 45%.

Next will be to test a 1080p video. That will likely choke it up again.

And for anyone who may still be searching for this info, yes a Hewlett Packard Pavilion a1129n will work with a dual core socket 939 CPU. Somewhere, somehow, someone had already installed the Multiprocessor HAL on XP on this box. All I had to do was swap CPUs, boot and reboot and it had full function with both cores.