Hardware Acceleration and codec help

[mx5]

Hello,

I have purchased a Asus EAH3450 VGA card later. I have difficulty to run H.264 video (mkv files) with HA. I have tried a combination of AVIVO and media player classic. It works but when I added codec package like "Satsuki.Decoder.Pack.4.0.0.0.exe", "klcodec410s.exe" and "ffdshow_beta4a_rev1723_20071224_clsid.exe". HA is not longer available. I have just reinstall WinXP MCE 2005 SP3 with .net framework 3.5. Can someone tell how do I have the best of both world (H.264 HA and codec's for AVI and rmbv files), please?

Also, I have tried AVIVO and media player classic combo again in my last fresh XP install. The MPC doesn't show the video.

Thanks in advance.

[Baldrick]

Try media player classic home cinema, see http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/DXVASupport.html

[redwudz]

Usually, adding lots of codecs or codec packs will just get you lots of problems.

Have you tried VLC Media Player? It uses it's own internal codecs so nothing to add. It's also one way to tell you if you have problems with your installed codecs. If it works and other players don't, then you have a problem or missing codec. You can usually find out which codec is missing by using Gspot or MediaInfo, then just install that codec.

If you don't want to cause codec problems with your system, I would just install the latest ffdshow and forget about the codec packs. Then add the individual codecs as you need them. ffdshow has most of them included and it's not a codec pack.

And welcome to our forums.

[yoda313]

You might be using an underpowered processor for this application. Is it a high def video file? If so you might need a dual core processor or better for smoother playback. Or try converting it to a 720p file instead of a 1080 file. Your system could be choking on the video.

[mx5]

Thanks guys. I have already tried VLC and ffdshow with no luck.

What I want to achieve is to enable Hardware accelaration. I did it once but at the time my XP MCE has problem with my TV tuner card.

Does anyone got their ATI HD card working with HA? How do you do that?

[poisondeathray]

I don't use hardware acceleration, but I know that your x264 video has to be DXVA compliant (e.g. AVC High@4.1 or lower, no more than 3 B-frames, no more than 4 ref. frames). You can check the Doom9 forums for more info

[mx5]

I don't care about the X.264 video. I am in stage 1 of building a home threater (will be connecting to a HD projector). I am checking out the HTPC side of thing and see if it is capable for the task (as a DTV and bluray source) without too much trouble.

[minidv2dvd]

hardware acceleration is pretty much automatic these days. if you want to check that it's on, then right click on your desktop/properties/settings/advanced/troubleshoot/

[poisondeathray]

I don't care about the X.264 video. I am in stage 1 of building a home threater (will be connecting to a HD projector). I am checking out the HTPC side of thing and see if it is capable for the task (as a DTV and bluray source) without too much trouble.

Your initial post said .mkv files, so I assumed you might care.

x.264 is just the open source version of h.264. It's basically the same thing. Whether you do your own encoding or download "material", it will likely all be x.264. Put it this way, I don't see many retail .mkv's for sale...

[mx5]

Hmmm. Not too sure though but I think some of the mkv files I have are H.264 cos I used to have HA enable and the CPU usage was pretty low (only a few percent with my single core 3GHz CPU).

[jagabo]

hardware acceleration is pretty much automatic these days. if you want to check that it's on, then right click on your desktop/properties/settings/advanced/troubleshoot/

No, hardware h.264 and MPEG decoding are not automatic these days. You must be using a player that supports it, a graphics card that supports it, and the right drivers. Hardware overylay, YUV to RGB conversion, noise filtering, and deinterlacing/IVTC are mostly automatic.

[mx5]

Thanks guys. media player classic home cinema fixes the problem.