CoreAVC or PowerDVD (1 Viewer)

[Djang]

I have my Media Portal setup and tested out almost every possible codec.

Now it's a showdown between CoreAVC and PowerDVD for mkv files. both work very well.
Only PowerDVD doesn't work with the the Vista improvement thingy (lost the name) and CoreAVC does.
In the early days I heard allot people praising PowerDVD.

Untill now I've seen that CoreAVC uses 20% less recources then PowerDVD on my system.
When I try to compare the quality I can't find any difference. The problem is that I've never used CoreAVC before, so I don't know if it's any good or that there are common problems with it compared to PowerDVD.

Like I said before: both work like a charm but I can't decide which one would be better

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

Untill now I've seen that CoreAVC uses 20% less recources then PowerDVD on my system

If that does not swing it for you, what does.

Vista thingy, do you mean EVR (enhanced video renderer).

 

[Djang]

EVR... yeah thats what I meant, I don't know what it exacly does :sorry:
I'm just looking for suggestions and reasons too prefer one codec above the other.
But I'm also carefull because maby there are some dark evil secret on one codec that I don't know of.

 

[pnyberg]

The main difference between them is that with PowerDVD you get HW support of your GFX. Both for h.264 decoding and also post-processing, such as AVIVO and Purevideo (given that you have any of the newer ATI/Nvidia cards HD2xxx/GF8xxx).

If you don't own any of these cards you are probably better off with CoreAVC since it is more efficent when only using CPU.

Regards

 

[Djang]

I have a Geforce 8500 GT.
But when I check my CPU I see that CoreAVC uses less recources then PowerDVD, while I have turned HW on in Media Portal trough the Directshow filter setup. It should actualy be PowerDVD to run on lower recources with HW on right? our doesn't that go up for .mkv files?

 

[pnyberg]

In my case it is clearly using my GFX (HD2600) and my CPU usage is barely noticeable... But with CoreAVC I get way much more CPU usage.

I have never tested .mkv files though - perhaps the file is not following "standard" HD specs - so that PDVD does not use GFX offloading??

I have it running prefectly good with live HDTV h.264 720P DVB-T broadcast. Also if you are running Vista - make sure you enable "EVR" in MP config - ortherwise you don't get any h.264 offloading in MP/Vista.

Regards

 

[JackTramiel]

As far as i know hw acc of powerdvd if not working correctly with mkv files.
Tried it myself and even it plays the movie it is unwatchable.
Without hw acc it works fine. I am using CoreAVC and i am happy with it.
As the hw acc is not usuable with MKV Files and you want to play such files i´d
recommend CoreAVC;it is way cheaper then PowerDVD Ultra
and has more options to tweak picture quality.
And maybe one day the really add hw acc as mentioned.

On the other hand PowerDVD comes with a good, hw acc MPEG2 codec.

Only if you are want to play BR/HDDVDs you probably have no choice.

 

[Djang]

Thanks for the comments people.
I decided to use CoreAVC. PowerDVD doesn't work with EVR and HW and thats the only downside, if those worked I would defenitely choose PowerDVD.
I did get HW too work in, but the frame rate was under the 24. Ohwell it was cool to see my CPU idle while Transformers was playing huge explosions.

Now I have my mkv's working but I still need a good codec for Mpeg2 and DivX.

- can I use ffdhow for both Divx and Mpeg2 our should I shoose Nvidia's Purevideo for that ?
- Do I actually still need Pure Video and is it better than Ffdshow?
- What would be the best Codec for DVD?