Using hardware acceleration (1 Viewer)

[hoborg]

Last 100% working DXVA ATI drivers for XP is 8.5. 8.6-8.9 NOT WORKING CORRECTLY! (VC-1 broken).

 

[thebalance]

Interesting results.

Catalyst 8.5 largely works. BUT. I'm just going to restress that the problem must be mediaportal / mediaportal config given that WMP 11, PowerDVD 8 (ultra), GB PVR and IMedian all work perfectly (with and without hardware acceleration on) with 8.9 and 8.5.

I have tried 8.5 and most of my files now play, however, in mediaportal the performance is unusable - frame by frame display rather than smooth & audio jumps, processor use in mediaportal is 20%+ higher than in other products (not that I care about that, it is just noticeable but the processor still only running at 70% so probably not that causing the blockage).

I'm going to flag this as done because in principle things work, I've probably got a problem on my config so I just need to perservere until sorted.

Thanks for the pointers.

 

[jo16v]

Just a little follow up to this - I have installed the leaked 8.10 Ati Catalyst drivers (see thread here- faster download here) and it hasn't changed anything for me with this problem i.e. if I enable hardware acceleration tick boxes for the Cyberlink codecs in config I still just get a black screen with sound. Note if you do install the 8.10 Catalyst drivers you should select custom rather than express install or it will install a load of stuff you likely don't want or already have.

I did find this interesting thread on the gb-pvr forums which seems to indicate that this problem might be fixed by a registry hack- I am not an expert on that kind of stuff so could anyone take a look at that thread and see if they can work out what might need to be done to get Mediaportal acceleration working? It seems there must be a way of doing it as PowerDVD and DVBViewer can all use hardware acceleration with the Cyberlink codecs in XP.

 

[thebalance]

It would be worth having a closer look at using non Mediaportal products - they all seems to work perfectly & it is not hardware acceleration that is the problem with mediaportal - I went through the codec guide that's somewhere in here and that made no difference to mediaportal. I also spotted another, unrelated issue, with mediaportal - I decided to show someone some photos and the processor runs at 100% on mediaportal showing photos, highest any of the other products I have get to is 38%.

I've still to go through the "standalone codecs" guide someone mentioned - if it works I'll let you know.

 

[jandar]

I have Vista64bit Ultimate Edition as my HTPC OS. (had too many copies from all the microsoft road shows....)

I have an ECS A780GM-A with a Phenom CPU (triple core 8450) and 4GB RAM.

I was averaging 60% CPU usage with all h.264 video.
I installed MPC-HC (Media Player Classic Home Cinema) and registered the proper filter one time, then selected MPC as the filter, my 1080p playback barely hit 10% on a bad encoding.

from this thread:
MKV h.264 Hardware Acceleration DXVA - Page 5 - Australian Media Center Community

If you have Vista64bit (this should help 32bit as well)
1. I installed the x64 Components from Vista Codecs (as well as the 32 bit components)
2. Manually copy the MPCVideoDec.ax filter into your system folder (32bit = System32, 64bit = SysWOW64), also do not forget to use the appropriate regsvr32 and on Vista it has to be registered with the administrative rights if UAC is enabled.
3. Make sure MPEG4 AVC is disabled in ffdshow.
4. Use the MediaControl for MCE to set the MPCVideoDec.ax as the decoder for H264
5. You should have a DXVA fully functional

Download Vista Codec Pack 32bit and 64 bit.
Download the MPCVideoDec.ax from SourceForge.net: Downloading ... (copy to either c:\windows\system32 or c:\windows\syswow64 depending upon OS version and then run from a cmd prompt: regsvr32 c:\windows\system32\MPCVideoDec.ax)



bluray vc-1
codec.: x264
video.: 1920x816 @ 10955
audio.: ac3 @ 640

Never higher than 5% CPU usage.

Once you install this, choose MPC as your h.264 decoder for movie player.
I also have Catalyst 8.5 drivers as well.

 

[jo16v]

Thanks for the tip Jandar- this solution i.e. bypassing Cyberlink codecs and using MPC-HC codec looks like it might be the answer- the MPC-HC codec is part of the filter pack for MP made by Hoborg so I think I will try and install that. I have also installed the MPC-HC full program (from here) and the DXVA does seem to be working in that with usage below 10% for 1080p .mov files and 1080i .mkv files.

 

[thebalance]

I'm interested in knowing how that goes - am having an enforced break from tinkering as have house guests for the next couple of weeks.

 

[jo16v]

I'm interested in knowing how that goes - am having an enforced break from tinkering as have house guests for the next couple of weeks.

Unfortunately it didn't go too well for me- see here). It could be that I have entries left in the registry from the Cyberlink h.264 codec that are somehow preventing it working- I don't know, but it seems weird that it works in the standalone MPC-HC player. Also there are issues with 1080i .ts files (even if renamed to .mp4), and I presume TV streams - I don't know for sure as I couldn't test TV on the standalone MPC-HC and the decoder doesn't work in DVBViewer either....

 

[thebalance]

I've just spent another 4 hours trying to make MP do what I want - getting really frustrated as all video now fails on MP & have uninstalled & reinstall k-lite codec pack several times and fiddled with every setting I can lay my hands on.

However, MP works best without k-lite installed & I don't seem to be able to make any of the other products (imedian, WMP11, GBPVR, PowerDVD) fail under any circumstances.

Just on an off chance ended my efforts by checking for new ati catalyst drivers - and there are some. Now shown as version 8.10 and one resolution is to stop the black screen issue and hey presto, Media Portal is now working fine as well. No idea why Media Portal was offended by the catalyst drivers when nothing else was and I'm not entirely convinced hardware accelaration is alive anymore but I don't care as I seem to be able to play all of my videos, even the HD samples.

Phew.

Just got to upgrade to the latest version of media portal.......

 

[jo16v]

I've just spent another 4 hours trying to make MP do what I want - getting really frustrated as all video now fails on MP & have uninstalled & reinstall k-lite codec pack several times and fiddled with every setting I can lay my hands on.

However, MP works best without k-lite installed & I don't seem to be able to make any of the other products (imedian, WMP11, GBPVR, PowerDVD) fail under any circumstances.

Just on an off chance ended my efforts by checking for new ati catalyst drivers - and there are some. Now shown as version 8.10 and one resolution is to stop the black screen issue and hey presto, Media Portal is now working fine as well. No idea why Media Portal was offended by the catalyst drivers when nothing else was and I'm not entirely convinced hardware accelaration is alive anymore but I don't care as I seem to be able to play all of my videos, even the HD samples.

Phew.

Just got to upgrade to the latest version of media portal.......

Glad you had some success! I am still struggling away to try and get MPC-HC codecs working as I was impressed by the recent builds of their standalone player (from here) - links on top left for x86(32 bit) and x64 versions) as the previous problems with the 1080i TV recordings seem to have gone away as long as the right renderer settings are used and it also plays ALL HD files with hardware acceleration which I wasn't even able to do with PDVD (8 refused to accelerate all 1080p files, 7.3 would only accelerate h.264/AVC 1080p but not VC-1).