DxVA Graphics card confusion (1 Viewer)

[northernmonkey]

In reference to hardware encoding cards and dvb-t cards

From what i have gathered so far a video codec with DXVA will off load some the mpeg decoding to the GPU, and Media Portal needs a card with Directx 9 card to run well.

An fx5200 is what people keep saying is the lowest supported card for dx9, but it doesnt support dxva, (ironically an mx440 card will support dxva but its only a directx 7 card) so which codec are people using with this card to get a smooth playback

also could someone with more knowledge possibly do a sort explanation or comparison for the wiki about all the different video codecs for media portal, on my install after i installed the tv cards i had about 8 video filter thingys, waht a mine field

 

[gxtracker]

Any card that supports DirectX9 will support DXVA - the 5200 falls into that catagory.

I was using the Nvidia Decoder with my 5200, even though the 5200 doesnt support Purevideo at all, the de-interlacing of the videostream is done very well.

I just reciently tried the Hauppauge Decoder, since I have a PVR-150, and I must say that im impressed with it too. The de-interlacing is just as good as the Nvidia decoder, maybe slightly worse, (albeit that concensus would be subjective to my eyes only ) and CPU usage is down for me compared to using the nvidia decoder.

I agree that codecs in general are a mess, especially with 4 already installed with MP. Hopefully its something that can be addressed in the near future.

 

[northernmonkey]

so any card that suports directx 9 has dxva, i was searching around for this and came across this thread here with people argueing over the whole issue with one guy listing the fx5200 as not supporting dxva.

Am i right in thinking that there are 2 types of decoder one which uses hardware acceleration (dxva) and one that does it all in software, with the purevideo decoder just using an additional "chip" on graphics cards that support it.

also is there a list that puts the decoders in to one of the 2 groups hardware (dxva) or software, do any of the default ones taht come with media portal support dxva, and how can i tell if its been used

 

[gxtracker]

The forum link to that thread you provided was actually an interesting read! :lol: Unfortunatly there was a lot of misinformation being spread around.

Post number 13 in that thread has the poster listing a bunch of links that don't say the FX5200 supports VPE - which basically means hes concluding that it doesnt support VPE simply because it doesnt say it does support it - thats a pretty weak argument.

Even so, VPE is not DXVA. VPE is Nvidia's Video Processing Engine, which later evolved into what they call PureVideo. DxVA is simple a small portion of what the VPE in the FX line can do.

Here's a glossary of terms; you'll find DXVA in the middle of the first post. http://htpcnews.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=2117

And here's Wikipedia for the FX series card. Right in the overview it states the support of DXVA through Nvidia's VPE: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GeForce_FX

As for your question about codecs, im sorry I can't answer that for you as im just not knowledgable enough on that subject. What I can answer is how you test if DXVA is being used - play a HD H.264 video file. On my lowly XP 1900+ with a FX5200 I can play 1080 content with CPU usage never hitting 50%. If DXVA wasn't used... The video would probably look like a slide show.

 

[northernmonkey]

Should have check wikipedia first I thought that some thing stanage was going on as most people think of pure video as the only method of video acceleration, i blame nvidia's marketing team for the confusion,

now all ive got to do is find which codec is best to use.