Codecs Lav filters now support DXVA2 (3 Viewers)

[somy]

The wired thing is, there are a lot of dropped frames even for SD channels......
Anyway, I did some more tests tonight. I tried to play the same TS file using MPC-HC with LAV decoders. With the same configuration, MPC-HC plays the video file smoothly. The CPU did struggle a little bit, but in the end it stablized at around 50%.

 

[d3cadent]

Hi all,
I am using a GeForce 210 card in my HTPC. I am experiencing occasional stuttering with LAV(cuda) as well as ffdshow-dxva when watching 1080p content. I am a bit concerned that maybe the low-end GeForce 210 may not be powerful enough to decode HD video.
Is there a way to tell if I am close or over the processing power of the GPU? How can I tell if indeed that's my problem?
Thanks a lot.

 

[DragonQ]

Use a program like GPU-Z or nVidia Inspector to see what the GPU usage is like. IIRC, my GT 430's GPU usage is 70-80% when using 1080i/25 with hardware deinterlacing (harder to decode than 1080p/24 or 1080p/25), so it could well be that your GT 210 isn't fast enough.

Also, have you tried using LAV Video in DXVA2 Native mode (ensure you're using v0.49 or later)?

 

[d3cadent]

Thank you DragonQ, I'll use these to check utilization.
No, I haven't tried DXVA2 yet but certainly will.

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

d3cadent

Yes the 210 will struggle with some HD, thats why I opted for the Palit GT220 Sonic, it just got a lot better reviews using 128bit against the 210's 64bit interface, even some of the 220's only used 64, so they also struggle, ie Asus, this was not made clear to the average person when purchasing

 

[d3cadent]

Thanks. Do you know if 512M versus 1G onboard ram makes a difference here? My guess would be a no, but that's not an educated guess, so a more elaborate opinion would be really great here.

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

Never even come close to using half of all potential memory, gaming could be different, but none installed.

And mines 512mb dedicated video memory, with 2gb motherboard ram

 

[d3cadent]

Thank you, Paranoid Delusion. That's what I thought. My HTPC is for media only too, so I guess upgrading to a GT440/512M must be enough.
Ranpha on imouto recommends the GT440/1G, but I also had the impression that less RAM has to be equally sufficient for video processing.

 

[Paranoid Delusion]

Overkill with the 440, when a 430 does it all, you do need to think of going up a notch puts a strain on existing power supplies, plus imo the unnecessary extra cost.

http://www.amazon.com/Evga-GeForce-...7Y/ref=dp_cp_ob_e_title_2/177-5622162-5947349

 

[d3cadent]

Thank you for the suggestion. The 430, besides cheaper, has more variants with passive cooling (an important factor for me).

However, I have checked video playback on the Geforce 210 with GPU-Z. Interestingly, none of the metrics has reached 80%. GPU Load is about 50-75%, Memory Controller Load is ~50% and Video Engine Load is 30-35% in CUDA mode. When switching to DXVA2 Native mode, then Video Engine Load drops to 0% and CPU load increases considerably. That's normal I guess.

I was trying to correlate hiccups during playback with changes in the metrics. What I've seen (naked eye observation) is that after a stutter (they come in every 5-10 seconds) both GPU Load and Memory Controller Load drops a bit, then returns to normal. My speculation, considering the above, is that it's not raw decoding performance that causes stuttering but some sort of other bottleneck. Maybe video memory bandwidth or something similar.

The system itself is a Core2Duo 2GHz with 4GB RAM. This is definitely not a strong machine by today's standards, yet it still has quite a lot of headroom as a HTPC. Even the CPU seems to be no bottleneck since video decoding without GPU assistance is still good. Yet I have the feeling that optimally this task should not be carried out by the CPU but offloaded to the GPU instead. Altogether, I have the feeling that upgrading the video would give better results not because more CUDA cores or better raw decoding performance but because wider bandwidth, faster VRAM or something similar.