Playing x264 with hardware rendering

[oshmosh]

Hello,

Just a quick newbie question. I'm trying to play a x264 (1080) file on my E6850 (3GHz) machine with Nvidia 8800 GTS graphics board. I want to know if the media player uses hardware rendering.

I tried VLC (default settings), which IMHO can't use hardware rendering and I got 15%-20% CPU usage.
I tried MPC (default setting), which I was told can use the hardware renderer, but I got the same CPU usage.

How can I tell whether hardware rendering is used and how can I turn it on?

[redwudz]

You can use a program like DXVA checker and it will tell you if GPU hardware rendering is working: http://bluesky23.hp.infoseek.co.jp/en/index.html

VLC does have a setting for hardware rendering. It's in 'Tools>Preferences>Video>Accelerated video output (Overlay)'

Instead of MPC, try MPC-HC as it is optimized for formats like H.264.

And welcome to our forums.

[oshmosh]

Thanks for the quick reply.

- I didn't know that VLC supported hardware acceleration. But when I turn the overlay option on/off it does not change the performance.
- I tried DVXA checker and indeed the trace log reports the use of hardware acceleration while using MPC-HC but not when using VLC. So I change my question now - How come the CPU usage is similar with or without hardware acceleration?

Thanks.

[Soopafresh]

Thanks for the quick reply.

- I didn't know that VLC supported hardware acceleration. But when I turn the overlay option on/off it does not change the performance.
- I tried DVXA checker and indeed the trace log reports the use of hardware acceleration while using MPC-HC but not when using VLC. So I change my question now - How come the CPU usage is similar with or without hardware acceleration?

Thanks.

[oshmosh]

I'm at lost

I changed the settings as you recommended and the CPU usage was still the same. I then tried every renderer in the list and I get the same results. I can only conclude that MPC does not use hardware acceleration on my Nvidia 8800. Any ideas how to turn it on?

[Soopafresh]

You might need to update your Nvidia video driver and DirectX. You'll know it's working when you see this:

[oshmosh]

My drivers are updated through windows 7 update, so I think that's not the problem. Any other ideas?

[poisondeathray]

Try MPCHC

In the options => internal filters => transform filters => look under h264/avc (dxva) , checkmark it to enable it and double click it to set the options. Set the decoding thread number to the number of cores (2 for dual core), and look at the video card to see if it regards your video card as dxva compliant

Not all material is dxva compliant. If the source has too many reference frames, or b-frames for example, it can break dxva compliance. If this was x264 encoded, it need proper settings including vbv buffer values to be completely compliant

[oshmosh]

Thanks for the reply. In the DVXA settings box it says:
Video card (and in grey font) NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS (4318)
Which I took for a supported graphics card.
Do you happen to have a compliant x264 media file? Any idea where can I get a small one for testing purpose?

[poisondeathray]

Use mediainfo on your file , view=>text and post the results back here

When playing and you see dxva as in the screenshot by soopa above, you know it's working

IIRC, there are 2 versions of your card, an older one (not 512Mb version, I think 640MB) and a newer one (i think 512MB version). The newer one has the VP2 engine and should work

Here is a compliant file

720p60%20rec709.m2ts

[oshmosh]

That was quick. Anyway, even the file you sent me does not give the DXVA prompt in MPC-HC. Maybe my card is too old (It's the 320 version). I tried to dig Nvidia's (impossible) site and if the feature we're looking for is PureVideo HD, then for some reason only the 8500 and the 8600 support it. Weird no? I thought higher the number, better the card.

http://www.nvidia.com/page/geforce8.html

I found the full list:
http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo_support.html

I understand that my 8800 GTS does not support 264 decoding. Bummer.

Thanks again for all those who helped.

[poisondeathray]

IIRC, it was because your older 8800GTS version only had the VP1 engine, the 8500 and 8600 came out later (as did the revised 8800GTS which is 512MB) and had the newer VP2 engine which does support h.264 decoding though Purevideo HD