Full support for h.264 in MP and WMP for Nvidia cards (1 Viewer)

[Jorgen_CAB]

I you follow this link...
http://forums.nvidia.com/lofiversion/index.php?t12150.html
...you will find instructions for this.

I have a Nvidia 6600 256MB card, 2.0GHz AMD Sempron and 2GB RAM.

I have managed to run several 1080p trailers and clipps with a CPU load of between 30-80%.


I don't know if anyone else have tested this in MediaPortal?

 

[NLS]

can you point DIRECTLY to the instructions? (or copy them here)

the thread is long and confuzing)

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

Sure, here you go... by the way it is the third post in that thread.

Okay I’ll try and explain roberthooker, H.264 is another name for what is called MPEG 4 AVC a form of video compression that is very CPU intensive to decode. While WMV HD uses a MPEG 4 class format called VC-1 it is not the same thing which is what the poster above seems to be hung up on.

Purevideo up till now was for image quality enhancements with MPEG 2 DVD's nothing else (it did lower CPU usage of WMV HD's but did not alter picture quality) and it does a fine job with MPEG 2 content.

The latest version of Purevideo offers GPU assisted decoding you still require a third party H.264 decoder but with Purevideo it will offload some of the decoding stages to the GPU and lower CPU usage.

In order to make use of the H.264 assisted decoding you must
1) Have Forceware 84.12 installed
2) Latest version of Purevideo
3) A H.264 decoder that supports GPU assisted decoding through Purevideo

Currently NVIDIA have three codec partners Cyberlink, Intervideo & Nero all who charge for their decoder as far as I'm aware Cyberlinks is the only one which is directshow based which means it will playback MPEG 4 AVC in any directshow player like Windows Media Player or Media Player Classic.

I'm not sure about Intervideos offering and Nero limit playback to their own player plus Nero do not from what I hear have a Purevideo compatible version actually available yet. So as an example if you went with Nero (whenever they release the new version) you would have to use their own Nero Showtime player to play back the file in order to benefit from the GPU assisted decoding it wont work in WMP.

However with the Cyberlink decoder installed you can play MPEG 4 AVC content in WMP (just make sure it has the .mp4 file extension) as it is a directshow complient decoder and doesnt try to limit you to its bundled player.


As for a demo if you download one of Apples HD trailers just rename it .mp4 as Apple go against the MPEG 4 standard by using their own .mov container so like I said just rename it .mp4 and thats all you need to do.

If you want to download one of Apples trailers just look at the webpage source for the clip in question and look for the link were it says 720p or 1080p and add a h to it so in your download manager it looks like *****h720.mov then the clip will download without having to use Quicktime.



Of course you don’t even need GPU assisted decoding with a decent H.264 decoder like CoreAVC download the CoreAVC alpha - extract to a folder and run the bat file

Download CoreAAC and dump into a folder and run the .bat

Install Haali Media splitter

Now you can playback MPEG 4 AVC in any directshow player* like WMP or MPC with better performance than the GPU assisted ones above (same goes for ATI’s effort) and that’s just the alpha version the final version is due out later this month at Core Codec. Though CoreAVC will be getting GPU assisted decoding as well from what I hear though not with the first official release I think but its just that all other H.264 decoders are just not as well optimized as they could be and some are downright awful like Apples Quicktime decoder.

* Just make sure the file is actually encoded with H.264 and has the file type .mp4 or .mkv otherwise you wont hear any audio.

 

[Jorgen_CAB]

I actually just noticed that the Core AVC don't even use the GPU to decode the h.264 and I even managed to run the trailers I downloaded without problem on a Athlon XP 2000+ with a Nvidia 440MX card with absolutely no problem.

Next version of the Core AVC will even utilize GPU support... we will se about that.