1080p AVC/H.264 videos playing slow on my system, video/audio out of sync!

[cd2xtac]

Anyway I'm considering to buy a new graphic card, aiming at Nvidia GT 610 which is VP5 and it's around 50 USD, I'll appreciate if you recommend me a trusty manufacturer (eg: ZOTAC, EVGA, etc.)

[newpball]

You are better off buying a new computer, even if it is a core i3, it has a built-in GPU which should handle 1080p just fine.

Spending more money on an already old computer is a waste of money.

[hello_hello]

Assuming that DXVA Checker shows true information my card supports three different types of MPEG2 acceleration, following instructions given by Detmek in this Youtube video, I tested acceleration for H.264 videos and didn't work neither with LAV Video nor with ffdshow, same happened with standard MPEG2 videos, ''Decoder Device'' always showed ''not in use'', I'm beginning to think is a driver issue taking into consideration my card supports at least VP1.

I wouldn't trust DXVA Checker. At least not with XP. I couldn't get DXVA working with it but DXVA definitely works.
Have you tried MPC-HC/VMR9 and ffdshow's DXVA decoder yet?
Or what about MPC-BE as was suggested earlier? It supports DXVA using it's internal decoders and it seems to work regardless of the renderer. It displays "GPU" on the right side of the navigation bar when it's using hardware decoding.

You are better off buying a new computer, even if it is a core i3, it has a built-in GPU which should handle 1080p just fine.
Spending more money on an already old computer is a waste of money.

Wow, seriously? You're not allowed to upgrade computers anymore?
Whether spending more money on an old computer is a waste depends a lot on what it'll be used for. If it's only ever going to be used as a media player, why is it a waste to spend a little money on a better video card rather than replace the whole thing? Those cards are pretty cheap where I am. A "night out" would cost more.

[cd2xtac]

@ newpball

Definitely your ''workaround'' it's the fastest!, I give up with you as your ears are still full of sand! , how can I make you understand that I can't waste that much money in a PC in which the only thing that I'm missing it's FHD playback?

@ hello_hello

When I select VMR9 (Renderless) in MPC-HC under Windows 8.1 Pro, DXVA support then appears with a red cross indicating that it won't work, I don't find an option for totally disabling internal decoders and give priority to external decoders that it's the only way for using ffdshow DXVA decoder. I didn't try MPC-BE as I thought it might interfere with MPC-HC, can it be installed without uninstall the other?

[cd2xtac]

@ hello_hello

I found this:

http://www.nvidia.com/object/winxp_2k_93.71.html

See ''Release Highlights'' and ''Supported Products'', don't you think it could be a driver issue?, it's strange I coudn't get to work H/W acceleration with MPEG2 videos that seem to be fully supported

[newpball]

Definitely your ''workaround'' it's the fastest!, I give up with you as your ears are still full of sand!

I suppose everybody wants to help in their own way and to the best of their ability.

My way is to be honest when people find out something does not work because of outdated hardware, and I hate to see you spend any more money on that outdated computer.

Others perhaps want to look nice and tell you that your computer is just fine and advice you to spend more money on this computer to make it even better.

When this thread has run its course you will be still at square one.

[cd2xtac]

The only thing I want it's to see this in a decent way!

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Writing library : libebml v1.2.3 + libmatroska v1.3.0

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Format settings, ReFrames : 4 frames
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Default : Yes
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Audio #2
ID : 3
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Duration : 1h 0mn
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Codec ID/Info : The same subtitle format used on DVDs
Language : Spanish
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Text #4
ID : 7
Format : VobSub
Codec ID : S_VOBSUB
Codec ID/Info : The same subtitle format used on DVDs
Language : German
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Forced : No

[cd2xtac]

@ newpball

I think if my graphic card could help with a little H/W decoding maybe my CPU wouldn't be pushed to its limit and could handle the 18 Mbps parts at say 70% of usage, this could help video/audio stay synched and I could enjoy this and other videos don't you think?

[hello_hello]

When I select VMR9 (Renderless) in MPC-HC under Windows 8.1 Pro, DXVA support then appears with a red cross indicating that it won't work, I don't find an option for totally disabling internal decoders and give priority to external decoders that it's the only way for using ffdshow DXVA decoder. I didn't try MPC-BE as I thought it might interfere with MPC-HC, can it be installed without uninstall the other?

I don't know what the deal is with Win8.1. I do know that for whatever reason MPC-HC will use hardware decoding for mpeg2 video with Nvidia CUVID selected, but MPC-BE won't use hardware decoding for mpeg2 using it's internal decoder.

MPC-HC and MPC-BE both have portable versions you can download, unzip and run. No installing required.

To use ffdshow's DXVA decoder you need to disable the h264/AVC transform filter under Internal Filters in MPC-HC's options. When it's disabled, MPC-HC will look for a DirectShow filter to use for h264 instead, and hopefully that'll be ffdshow. The same applies to all the other audio and video types in the list. Disabling them will get MPC-HC to use a DirectShow decoder instead if it can.

You're not using the GeForce divers?
http://www.nvidia.com/download/driverResults.aspx/57493/en-us
I'm still using version 295.73. They're a few years old but they work so I've not bothered upgrading them (I did try once and had problems so went back to the older drivers).

[hello_hello]

Others perhaps want to look nice and tell you that your computer is just fine and advice you to spend more money on this computer to make it even better.

When this thread has run its course you will be still at square one.

Please share your insight with us. Why won't upgrading the video card to one capable of hardware decoding (if need be) enable the video to be decoded? Is it because the PC's old and you've just made up your mind or is there some rational thought behind your opinion you've so far managed to hide?

[Detmek]

@ all

Assuming that DXVA Checker shows true information my card supports three different types of MPEG2 acceleration, following instructions given by Detmek in this Youtube video, I tested acceleration for H.264 videos and didn't work neither with LAV Video nor with ffdshow, same happened with standard MPEG2 videos, ''Decoder Device'' always showed ''not in use'', I'm beginning to think is a driver issue taking into consideration my card supports at least VP1.

It might be DXVA Checker issue. Although, LAV Video decoder only works with DXVA2 and I think it does not have partial decoding support.

Your best bet is to disable internal filters in MPC-HC and use FFDShow DXVA (if it works) or try MPC-BE with its internal filters. You can install MPC-HC and MPC-BE at the same time, it is not a problem. Or, you can use portable versions.

Upgrading GPU can help you to reduce CPU usage. With my Pentium G3220 (integrated GPU) I can use QuickSync, DXVA Copy-back or DXVA Native in LAV Video decoder. In benchmark QS uses a lot of CPU resources, over 70%, DXVA Copy-back (direct) is a bit better, less then 50% and DXVA Native is the fastest and uses the least amonunt of CPU resources, less then 20%.

VP5 is very fast hardware decoder and it will help you a lot with H.264/AVC video and it will work fine for you as long as you use H.264 video format.

Note that H.265/HEVC is around the corner as new official codec for UHD Blu-Ray. It is more complex then H.264 and you will have a problem decoding that video in future. Same with VP9 codec that Youtube uses more and more that can not be decoded in hardware with current GPUs.

New GPUs and Intel CPUs will have hardware accelerated HEVC decoding. Today only Nvidia GTX 960 has full HEVC support.

[cd2xtac]

@ all

Finally I managed to get H/W acceleration working for my card, the thing is current builds of MPC-HC and MPC-BE support DXVA as DXVA2 indeed, not as DXVA1, my GPU (Nvidia 7100 GS) was launched in August 2006 and Nvidia implemented DXVA2 in 2008, as the MPC-HC's changelog indicates they dropped DXVA1 support since version 1.7.0, so to be safe I downloaded version 1.6.6 that has DXVA1 support through its internal codecs, CPU usage playing the 1080p video that I mentioned before, even during the most aggressives scenes with frames at 18 Mbps is now 70%, but I keep getting video/audio out of sync and slow playback. Is there an utility or procedure to find out which tasks are being handled by the CPU and which by the GPU?, I think decoding of the video was incorrect from the start, I thought it was CPU overload but this tests now tell a different tale.

Thanks a lot again to all the members of this forum willing to help me, specially to Detmek and hello_hello who are being so patient.

[hello_hello]

It depends what OS you're using. If it's XP there is no DXVA2 and MPC-BE works with DXVA. The version I have (1.4.3) only refers to DXVA and it definitely works for me on XP, although I think it's disabled by default. As far as I know DXVA2 is an OS thing, not a card specific thing (in relation to DXVA).

I found this, and if it's correct, you might be out of luck, because for your card it says it doesn't support "H.264 Decode Acceleration with IDCT and CAVLC/CABAC", so are you sure it's actually working? I'd have thought DCT would mostly be enabled, but I could be wrong. If this is the setting for x264, then I'm pretty sure it's enabled by default. http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/MeGUI/x264_Settings#8x8dct

This is what MeGUI adds to the commandline when the Adaptive DTC is unchecked:
--partitions p8x8,b8x8,i4x4 --no-8x8dct
I'm not sure if the partition part is required but if you're motivated maybe you could encode a couple of 1080p samples to see what happens in respect to CPU usage. Assuming I've got it all correct.

For some reason it only just occurred to me to consider thinking about remembering GPU-Z, but as I did, I gave it a spin. "Video Engine Load" seems to be the relevant one. When I played a random 1080p video, it jumped to 50%, otherwise it seems to just sit on 0%.



Edit: Odd...... I would have bet a large sum of money my video card has 256MB of RAM, but according to GPU-Z it has 512MB. I guess my memory isn't all that wonderful.

[Detmek]

@cd2xtac
No problem. Try MPC-BE with its internal decoders. MPC-HC 1.6.6 is a bit old and may have some problems with A/V synchronization. For monithoring CPU use Task Manager and for GPU see hello_hello's pictures (GPU-Z). Video engine load will show you if hardware acceleration is used (load > 0%) as that is ASIC that decodes video and GPU load will tell you if GPU processor (used for games and everything else done by GPU) is too slow for the rendering task if your render uses GPU. For example, madVR is pure GPU render but requires more GPU power compared to every other render.

@hello_hello
7100GS does not support CABAC/CAVLC or 8x8DCT decoding, only motion compensation. It has partial hardware accelerated decoding. Most of the decoding process is still done on CPU.

[DarrellS]

The Intel D915PGN chipset does not support 1080p/VC-1 playback. The 935 chipset was touted as supporting it but there were lawsuits when that chipset was found to not support 1080p/VC-1 playback.

I had the Intel DG965WH with a 945 Pentium D (3.4 Ghz) CPU that still had trouble with 1080p. I built a better machine and gave the Intel machine to my brother who was able to play 1080p after buying a new GPU. I doubt that a new GPU will help on your old motherboard though since it was never advertised to support 1080p/VC-1.

The 3.2 Ghz P4 that you have was a good CPU but not quite up to snuff for playing 1080p/VC-1. I built the Q6600 machine to be able to play 1080p that my Pentium D would not play and I bought the Pentium D chip to replace a 3.2 Ghz P4.

I just put the Pentium D on a Gigabyte G41MT-S2PT a few months back to replace my brother's Dell that burnt up and he hasn't complained about not being able to watch HD movies. You can get that board at newegg for $70. It has GMA X4500 onboard graphics with 800 Mhz core clock. I don't know if that's any better than your 8400GS GPU or not. It supports your CPU but takes DDR3 1333 memory ($65 for 8GB of G.SKILL at newegg).

[sophisticles]

I forgot to mention that playback is perfect for the first 30/40 seconds of the video.

You should have said that before, it's a hardware issue, specifically you are running out of vram, basically what happens is that the video is buffered from the hard drive to the graphics card's ram in chunks, it loads up the first 30 seconds fine and displays it but then the card had to flush the buffer and load a new chunk and display that.

It's a hardware limitation pure and simple, it has nothing to do with instruction set supported by the cpu, it has to do with has much data the video ram can cache and how quickly new data can be buffered from the hard drive to the video card.

As you were told, time for a newer computer, no one is saying spend a bundle and get a high end computer and I don't know the price of hardware where you live but if you shop around you should be able to pick up a previous generation Intel based system, like a Sandy Bridge or Ivy Bridge fairly cheaply and with those processors you would need a discrete video card, I had an i7 3770 that was able to play back 4k just fine with the igpu, though 4k60 stuttered badly.

[sophisticles]

Please share your insight with us. Why won't upgrading the video card to one capable of hardware decoding (if need be) enable the video to be decoded? Is it because the PC's old and you've just made up your mind or is there some rational thought behind your opinion you've so far managed to hide?

It might be because a video card is only one part of a pc, and before it can start decoding anything the cpu must send the data to it over the PCI, AGP or PCI-E bus.

Hard drive speed, ram speed, cpu architecture, number of cores and gpu design all play a role in watching a video.

Take the i7 4790k for instance, we can all agree that it's the fastest quad core currently available and just a fast cpu all around.

There's a YouTube video of a side by side comparison of the i7 4790k and the i7 5960x trying to play 4k HEVC 60p video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=_q_vFKXHiio

My current system has trouble playing 4k 60p AVC content, it's almost a slideshow and that's with the 8320 and Geforce 610 and it definitely can't play uncompressed 4k content. I doubt upgrading the video card would help with the AVC content because the card does have 2gb of ram, and I know upgrading the video card won't help with the uncompressed content, the limitation is the hard drive speed and amount of system ram.

People seem to have this belief that "upgrade the video card and that will take of all your video playback issues", it won't no single pc component operates in a vacuum, they all work together.

The video card should be the last thing upgraded in a system, not the first.

[newpball]

People seem to have this belief that "upgrade the video card and that will take of all your video playback issues", it won't no single pc component operates in a vacuum, they all work together.

The video card should be the last thing upgraded in a system, not the first.

Not only that, but some people seriously advice to upgrade a 9 year old PC. As I wrote before even a core i3 will have no problem with 1080 video, and as a bonus you do not even need a separate GPU because there is one built-in.

It seems common sense is sometimes hard to find.

[sophisticles]

Not only that, but some people seriously advice to upgrade a 9 year old PC. As I wrote before even a core i3 will have no problem with 1080 video, and as a bonus you do not even need a separate GPU because there is one built-in.

I may not always agree with you but I agree 100% on this one, I don't know where the OP lives but if you go to microcenter you can get a core i3 plus motherboard for $140:

http://www.microcenter.com/site/brands/intel-processor-bundles.aspx

With taxes and some ram he will be at the $200 mark and he will have a modern cpu that support the whole Intel SIMD stack from AVX2 down, fast DDR3 ram, a fast integrated gpu, fast storage interface and it will be able to encode 1080p avc easily, about the only thing he won't be able to do is play back 4k 60p content but in 9 years he can come back here again and post the exact same question he just posted only with regards to 6k content instead of 1080p.

[hello_hello]

Please share your insight with us. Why won't upgrading the video card to one capable of hardware decoding (if need be) enable the video to be decoded? Is it because the PC's old and you've just made up your mind or is there some rational thought behind your opinion you've so far managed to hide?

It might be because a video card is only one part of a pc, and before it can start decoding anything the cpu must send the data to it over the PCI, AGP or PCI-E bus.

Hard drive speed, ram speed, cpu architecture, number of cores and gpu design all play a role in watching a video.

Yeah, that makes sense. You could copy a 10GB video from one location to another, and even using a single hard drive, what'd that take? Five minutes would be slower than average wouldn't it? Yet try to play that same movie, which takes 2 hours instead of five minutes, and suddenly the whole system is struggling to keep up with the flow of data.

Take the i7 4790k for instance, we can all agree that it's the fastest quad core currently available and just a fast cpu all around.

There's a YouTube video of a side by side comparison of the i7 4790k and the i7 5960x trying to play 4k HEVC 60p video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=_q_vFKXHiio

That's all very nice but we're trying to get AVC hardware decoding working. Nothing to do with 4K HEVC CPU decoding.

My current system has trouble playing 4k 60p AVC content, it's almost a slideshow and that's with the 8320 and Geforce 610 and it definitely can't play uncompressed 4k content. I doubt upgrading the video card would help with the AVC content because the card does have 2gb of ram, and I know upgrading the video card won't help with the uncompressed content, the limitation is the hard drive speed and amount of system ram.

4K AVC or HEVC? I don't know what the deal is there. I haven't played around enough with 4K. I can tell you my 8 year old CPU will decode HEVC at 25fps but when I remux it at 60fps it's also like a slideshow. Fortunately though, nobody here's trying to play 4k at 60fps so it's pretty irrelevant. I can tell you what this 8 year old PC can do when it comes to 1080p @ 25fps (bitrate around 6000kbps). It'll play four simultaneously. Three using CPU decoding and one using hardware decoding. I can resize all four to fit a quarter of the screen and watch each video play perfectly smoothly with 20% CPU usage to spare.
My old Q9450 will almost play uncompressed 4K. I don't know why it's "almost". The one I tested was 11.9Gbps so maybe the data rate is too high. I'd have to think about it, but the data rate of a 1080p video wouldn't be remotely close to that.

People seem to have this belief that "upgrade the video card and that will take of all your video playback issues", it won't no single pc component operates in a vacuum, they all work together.

The video card should be the last thing upgraded in a system, not the first.

Nonsense.
You might operate in a vacuum in relation to your PC, but I've said it once, then I said it again, and now I'll repeat it once more. I have an 8 year old PC with a dual core CPU. The GPU and CPU are really only a single year, one generation younger than the OP's. It'll decode 1080p video using the CPU without a problem. It'll only decode two 1080p videos at a time though (one hardware decoding an another CPU decoding) because it's only got two cores. The video card will decode 1080p easily, and when there's nothing else happening that'll leave CPU usage sitting at something like 10%. When I started writing this post I opened a 1080p video and let it run. As I finish explaining why I think you've posted a load of nonsense, Task Manager tells me MPC-HC is only using 80MB of RAM.

Unless my PCI-e frequency or BUS speed is somehow dramatically different to the OP's, then if my PC can decode two 1080p videos at a time and this quadcore can manage four simultaneously, there's no reason I can see why the OP's PC wouldn't have the bandwidth for one, and if his CPU isn't up to the decoding, a GPU should be. I had an old Athlon 3200 PC happily playing 1080p video years ago.

Granted it's possible there's something wrong. All sorts of oddness can effect video decoding for reasons I don't understand. Look at the link in the first post I made here and the trouble I had a while back that was solved by fiddling with the BIOS. Maybe a BIOS reset wouldn't hurt in this case, but while there may be something wrong and we're yet to discover what it is, or maybe it is an issue with a particular MB or chipset, or maybe it's drivers, in theory the PC should be able to play 1080p video if it has a video card capable of decoding it, no matter how badly newpball misinterprets his own close mindedness as common sense, or how many times he claims it'd be better to replace the whole PC instead of picking up an second hand video card on eBay for $5 plus postage to see if that fixes the problem first.

[cd2xtac]

I found this, and if it's correct, you might be out of luck, because for your card it says it doesn't support "H.264 Decode Acceleration with IDCT and CAVLC/CABAC", so are you sure it's actually working?

At the moment I said I got H/W acceleration working I didn't know about GPU-Z, I played again the video and GPU-Z showed 0% under GPU Load and Video Engine Load, now I'm guessing that the 70% of CPU usage has something to do with the older DXVA decoder from MPC-HC v1.6.6.

@ all

I know that I might end up buying a new graphic card but it's strange that not even MPEG2 acceleration works for my system, my D915PGN features latest BIOS and the only thing I modified was the Boot options, other configurations are with default values, should I change something else to get H/W acceleration working for my card?

[newpball]

I know that I might end up buying a new graphic card ......

That's like spending money repairing a 10 year old SD resolution TV, a total waste.

But it's your money!

[cd2xtac]

@ newpball

Would you believe that most workers in my country have an income of no more than 15 USD a month?, it's not exactly my case 'cause I am a self-employed worker but my average is around 100 USD a month. I'm trying to get my ''dinosaur'' playing 1080p with the less money I could spend 'cause I have other priorities such as giving food to my kids to name one. I had no previous plan to get to this private subjet but I thought it was time to let you know why I'll upgrade if possible my old PC.

[newpball]

@ newpball

Would you believe that most workers in my country have an income of no more than 15 USD a month?, it's not exactly my case 'cause I am a self-employed worker but my average is around 100 USD a month. I'm trying to get my ''dinosaur'' playing 1080p with the less money I could spend 'cause I have other priorities such as giving food to my kids to name one. I had no previous plan to get to this private subjet but I thought it was time to let you know why I'll upgrade if possible my old PC.

It's your money, do whatever you want with it. If getting an upgraded GPU is what you want so that you can watch a 1080p video then that is your business. I am saying it does not make any sense.

And besides, if you go out and spend a half months salary on upgrading an old computer and it still does not work do you think your friends here who recommended you do this will respond? I fear they go out in hiding and 'explain' they never really said you should go and buy a GPU for this old machine.

[sophisticles]

Yeah, that makes sense. You could copy a 10GB video from one location to another, and even using a single hard drive, what'd that take? Five minutes would be slower than average wouldn't it? Yet try to play that same movie, which takes 2 hours instead of five minutes, and suddenly the whole system is struggling to keep up with the flow of data.

It's mostly psychology, when you're copying the 10gb file you're not watching to see how "smoothly" it gets copied and you aren't using it at the same time, when you're playing it back you notice the lack because you are actively trying to use it.

I can tell you what this 8 year old PC can do when it comes to 1080p @ 25fps (bitrate around 6000kbps). It'll play four simultaneously. Three using CPU decoding and one using hardware decoding. I can resize all four to fit a quarter of the screen and watch each video play perfectly smoothly with 20% CPU usage to spare.
My old Q9450 will almost play uncompressed 4K. I don't know why it's "almost". The one I tested was 11.9Gbps so maybe the data rate is too high. I'd have to think about it, but the data rate of a 1080p video wouldn't be remotely close to that.

And I can tell you that you are most certainly are not watching 4 1080p25 videos at the same time. You are watching 4 960x540p25 movies at the same time, by your own admission you are resizing them to all fit on the screen simultaneously. In order to watch 4 1080p movies simultaneously you either need a 4k monitor or 4 1080p monitors.

As for uncompressed 4k, with uncompressed video the limiting factor is not the cpu or the video card but the hard drive speed and to a lesser extent the ram. I work with uncompressed, losslessly compressed and near lossless compressed (ProRes) files all the time and hard drive speed is the name of the game when it comes to this type of content. That's why pro caliber workstations always feature super fast I/O, Raid, SCSI, SSD or the new PCI-E SSD's, which I have used and are worth their weight in gold for uncompressed content.

But you and the other posters are wrong to advice the OP to upgrade his video card, decoding is not handled by the gpu but by the ASIC built into the card, the "problem" is that ASIC's come with a fixed feature set, so it may support hardware decode of Mpeg-4 ASP, Mpeg-2, VC-1, AVC and some newer cards HEVC but a lot won't support some advanced AVC or HEVC features nor will they support any new technologies such as VP9 or VP10, if Google is serious about coming out with an updated codec or Daala, about which there used to be a lot of buzz.

Furthermore, due to differences in the ASIC's used and driver issues, hardware decoding doesn't always result in the best possible quality, in my experience Intel's hardware decoding results in a more "washed out" look for the videos, while ATI's results in a picture with richer colors but Nvidia results in the closest to what the software rasterizer outputs.

There's a reason that pros spend big bucks on workstation class cards, gaming cards are not the best solution for video, the fastest cpu one can afford is, lots of ram, fast hard drives and then a workstation class card designed with a pro caliber ASIC, like the Nvidia Quadros.

You guys are free to believe whatever you want but I think you're doing the OP a disservice to advice him to keep that old cpu and spend money on a new video card.

While I'm at it, I'm not even sure that his motherboard has a PCI--E slot, which means he can't get a modern video card, he will have to look for an AGP card or a PCI card.

9 years is an eternity in computer hardware circles.

[sophisticles]

@ newpball

Would you believe that most workers in my country have an income of no more than 15 USD a month?, it's not exactly my case 'cause I am a self-employed worker but my average is around 100 USD a month. I'm trying to get my ''dinosaur'' playing 1080p with the less money I could spend 'cause I have other priorities such as giving food to my kids to name one. I had no previous plan to get to this private subjet but I thought it was time to let you know why I'll upgrade if possible my old PC.

Then it's time for a rather snide remark, if your current economic situation is one where you make 100 USD a month and you have to worry about giving your kids food then I think your priorities may be a bit screwed up if you're concerned about being able to watch 1080p videos on your computer.

Perhaps you should look into moving to a better locale where the standard of living is sufficient so feeding the kids is not an issue.

Seriously, am I the only one that finds this post and consequently the OP's original question bizarre? He makes $100 a month, is worried about feeding his kids yet somehow can afford a computer, internet access and 1080p content and is worried about being able to watch the movies on his computer.

There's something very wrong with this picture.

[cd2xtac]

@ newpball

Would you believe that most workers in my country have an income of no more than 15 USD a month?, it's not exactly my case 'cause I am a self-employed worker but my average is around 100 USD a month. I'm trying to get my ''dinosaur'' playing 1080p with the less money I could spend 'cause I have other priorities such as giving food to my kids to name one. I had no previous plan to get to this private subjet but I thought it was time to let you know why I'll upgrade if possible my old PC.

Then it's time for a rather snide remark, if your current economic situation is one where you make 100 USD a month and you have to worry about giving your kids food then I think your priorities may be a bit screwed up if you're concerned about being able to watch 1080p videos on your computer.

Perhaps you should look into moving to a better locale where the standard of living is sufficient so feeding the kids is not an issue.

Seriously, am I the only one that finds this post and consequently the OP's original question bizarre? He makes $100 a month, is worried about feeding his kids yet somehow can afford a computer, internet access and 1080p content and is worried about being able to watch the movies on his computer.

There's something very wrong with this picture.

I'm not surprised, you got to live here to understand, my PC was bought 9 years ago part by part and assembled then by me, it were used but full functional parts and still are, I have 1080p content on my HDD 'cause they were copied from a friend's external HDD who used to live here and now lives in The States, my internet connection is so slow that it would took me days to download a single Blu-Ray movie, certainly you no nothing but I prefer not to talk about this subject anymore, this is a Video forum!

Thanks anyway for your advice and believe me, there's something wrong in our picture but not in the way you're thinking!

[hello_hello]

It's mostly psychology, when you're copying the 10gb file you're not watching to see how "smoothly" it gets copied and you aren't using it at the same time, when you're playing it back you notice the lack because you are actively trying to use it.

And I can tell you that you are most certainly are not watching 4 1080p25 videos at the same time. You are watching 4 960x540p25 movies at the same time, by your own admission you are resizing them to all fit on the screen simultaneously. In order to watch 4 1080p movies simultaneously you either need a 4k monitor or 4 1080p monitors.

I might reply to the rest of your nonsense later, but I've got things to do at the moment and I'm not all that interested anyway. I can watch four 1080p videos that have been re-sized down, but I'm still decoding four 1080p videos simultaneously.

I don't even know why you and newpball are posting here. You've both said you don't think upgrading the video card is a god idea. We get it. The OP seems keen to try it. Don't the two of you have anything better to do?
And newpball's latest is to claim the OP's going to spend half a months salary on a new card to give himself something new to argue about, when it's not necessary to spend that much. Basic cards that'll decode 1080p are very cheap new, although if it was me, I'd buy something second hand first to test it'll work before spending money on a new card. Mine card's 8 years old and it decodes 1080p and while I haven't looked, I'd be willing to bet they sell on eBay for next to nothing.

While I'm at it, I'm not even sure that his motherboard has a PCI--E slot, which means he can't get a modern video card, he will have to look for an AGP card or a PCI card.
9 years is an eternity in computer hardware circles.

Well rather than add further speculation to the thread, why don't you check? I'm pretty sure I did when the thread began and the MB has a 16x PCI-e slot for video, so that's not a problem.

You can talk about the age of the computer as much as you like but I'm still pretty sure it'll support a video card with hardware decoding. I've told you I have an 8 year old PC that decodes 1080p video without a problem thanks to hardware decoding, and I've told you I had an old Athlon 3200 PC that'd do the same, yet here's the pair of you once again ignoring what doesn't suit so you can repeat yourselves over and over.......

[cd2xtac]

@ all who are not giving me the advice of buying an all new PC

I'm still curious about why I've not been able to get H/W acceleration for my card for any type of format but I've got an update:
Last night I installed Cyberlink PowerDVD 14 and with default settings playback was worse than what I've been getting from MPC-HC but I changed the settings from ''using H/W decoding if possible'' to ''use software decoding'' and CPU usage was always around 90% but playback was perfect!, that's not still what I need 'cause sometimes reached 100% but maybe this means something to you, for me, being a newbie without the required knowledge to clearly understand what's happening my guess is that Cyberlink PowerDVD H.264 decoder is better but are your opinions what I want to hear!

[sophisticles]

I might reply to the rest of your nonsense later, but I've got things to do at the moment and I'm not all that interested anyway. I can watch four 1080p videos that have been re-sized down, but I'm still decoding four 1080p videos simultaneously.

Your system may be decoding 4 1080p videos simultaneously but you are not displaying 4 1080p videos simultaneously. Do you really know that little about how computers in general and video decoding in particular work?

This entire thread is full of nonsense, from the OP's original question, to his new question about why software rendering is working for him, to most of the responses he has received, it's all a bunch of guff, malarkey.

I just can't take it any more, yeah OP go buy yourself a new video card, that will solve all your problems, except for the obvious ones.