NVIDIA CUDA Potplayer

[jo2dan]

hi, i just had a question. i recently switched from the recommended decoder option in potplayer to nvidia cuda. when i play videos it shows it is using software decoding but if i right click and go to playback info it shows nvidia cuda. is it supposed to show s/w or h/w when using cuda?


screenshots:

https://i.imgsafe.org/5dbcd250dd.png
https://i.imgsafe.org/5dc7c02669.png

[sophisticles]

I assume you're on Windows, the sure fire way to determine is to use task manager and gpu-z to monitor both cpu and gpu usage before and after the video starts playing.

Having said that, technically any CUDA program is "sw", i.e. software based, "hw" or "hardware" refers to dedicated hardware, something that is fixed function with limited programmability, such as an ASIC decoder chip, which is how decoding is usually handled when they talk about "gpu powered decode". "Software", in this context, refers to anything that is executed on a programmable chip, most people take it to mean a cpu but Nvidia's gpu's are also fully programmable.

In a nutshell, even if the decoder is running on the gpu, there is no contradiction in calling it "software".