A/V Looking for 1080p playback advice? Follow this thread

OK, here it is...

8800GT + Athlon X2 4200+ rest of my system unimportant, except to say Vista Ultimate x64

I have been watching mkv blu ray rips for a while now (~4.4GB 720p) using H.264 and that was working fine, however, im pretty sure there is no hardware acceleration being done.

so i download something that i know will tax my CPU if it is being done in software, and voila, a problem.

i have a 8GB 1080p .mkv file that uses the h.264 codec, and would like to know how the hell i get my rather expensive graphics card to use the features that i bought it for, and do some goddamn hardware acceleration.

I found a copy of PowerDVD6, installed it, as i read somewhere that contains video decoder (doesnt the nvidia driver have this>???) and still no luck. Powerdvd doesn't open mkv files and Zoomplayer (which is my weapon of choice btw) doesnt show up Cyberlink AVC or any other HD decoder for me to use.

So... before anyone says "install and use this, etc etc" i am not going to be using any other playr except zoomplayer, i just need to know how to get my goddamn graphics card to accelerate the HD content.

please help. I am not a Noob when it comes to hardware, software (mcp qualified in XP, Server 2003 and exchange) so i'm not an idiot, but tbh, don't reall care how i get it working as long as when i open these files in zoomplayer, i can watch my videos without stutter.

anyone?

 

as you can probably guess, this has annoyed me quite a lot

 

i have found this... http://forums.gbpvr.com/showthread.php?t=35398

but there has to be a normal "easy to explain to my brother" way of doing this?/???

 

Weirdly, the 8800 cards can't decode Blu-ray in hardware!

(link)

Sounds like they ran out of space on the chip to me...

 

That only applies to G80. G92 Got Purevideo HD.

 

Oh, ok.

Maybe it's because you're using pirated stuff?

 

PowerDVD and I believe WinDVD are the only apps that will use hardware decoding natively. They're also expensive.
The Thread you linked to, djDEATH, has the steps laid out quite straightforwardly - what is it exactly that you don't understand?

 

Ha what you need is KMplayer, Coreavc and then install them and you will be fine. Make sure there is no over dvd codecs or codec packs installed.

Read my troubles

http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=153450

 

Yup, and their support is limited when it comes to more "elaborate" wrappers like mkv. PureVideo and UVD are designed for DVD and Blu ray (and HD DVD) playback. Very few "free" software's have the hardware DirectShow (iirc) overlay option, it's all CPU and your little 4200 just can't cut that, sorry

 

Alright, i know you said you only use zoomplayer, but if you want to use your cards hardware acceleration, that's too bad.

This is what i do, and what i strongly suggest.
-Get MPC with built in decoders here: http://www.xvidvideo.ru/content/view/40/1/ - two links at the bottom.
-In the options, set your output renderer to EVR.
-In the external filters options, make sure you don't have any H264 filters set to preferred.

Now when you play a H264 file, even MKVs. When you right click and go filters, you should see "MPC video decoder" click on that and theres a hardware acceleration checkbox, it will also tell you if the hardware acceleration is working.

Important note. For the acceleration to work. Your video decoder has to be directly connected to the renderer, no ffdshow filtering in there or anything like that. Also the video must be Level 4.1 compliant, not unrestricted, or Level 5. And your card obviously has to support it. For nvidia this means in the 8 and 9 series, and the GTX 2xx series, but not the G80 chips (the 8800gtx G80, gts G80).

Here's a tease: 1080p film playing in MPC.

 

Can't get hardware to work here either, followed your instructions above busterboo, but it doesn't want to accelerate. I'm assuming that means it's not a 4.1 compliant file. (Rip of the Top Gear Polar ep btw, awesome watching.)

[edit]I just end up with this dialogue box:

 

What do your filters look like while playing the video?
Here's mine:

If you have Enhanced video renderer in there, i would bet the video is not 4.1 compliant. Try playing various things, most 720p videos are 4.1 compliant.

Level 4.1 is the highest quality H264 standard that bluray and the now dead hddvd support. Which is why that's the highest standard graphics cards can accelerate.

Most encoders use the unrestricted profile, which is believed to only give you a compression benefit on resolutions higher then 1080p. This is partly because before the days of being able to use hardware acceleration this was common practice.

 

What did you blank out

 

Some irrelevant information. The names of folders... That's just the media splitter. I'm using Haali's media splitter.

The media splitter is also irrelevant for hardware acceleration.

 

unfoprtunately i have 64bit windows vista, and two of the filters he mentions are not avialble for 64 bit systems.

on a side note, does regsvr32.exe work for 64 bit .ax files? the instructions seem to include support for 64 bit, but i assume as the downloadable files are different then they go into the SysWOW64 folder NOT the system32 folder, and as such is the regsvr32.exe (which in its own name implies is for registering 32 bit services) used or is there a different command for 64 bit services?

I don't mind using another program, just wanted to avoid the one liners like "use linux" or "buy powerdvd" cos those aren't answers they're workarounds.

Right... i tried the MPC player, which i don't mind using, (its a bit gay, but so is using cloak in crysis, but we all do it) and i had DIFFERENT problems with that, in as much as the video plays, but audio is just white-ish noise (mad stuttering and feedback) so i need to play around a bit i reckon. so i'll post up some more progress when i get home from work tomorrow and can test it out.

Cheers all for your help, much appreciated, i'll let you know my results when i get a chance to sort it all out

Bindi - my poor little 4200 is my baby i'll have you know, and i wont hear a bad word said against him (now now child, don't worry, the nice people at bit-tech weren't having a go at you lol) he's a hardworker and a good long term friend. Until i can afford something SIGNIFICANTLY better, then him running at 3.0ghz is plenty for me.



EDIT: i can see from your taskmgr above bubsterboo that you're also running 64 bit windows, so i guess your instructions shoudl work.

i'm gonna remove zoomplayer, all codec packs (don't think i have any since all this started) and also remove the manually installed ffdshow and other filters that zoomplayer install centre puts there. Once that is done, i'll try the MPC, and from there try and work up to getting this done in Zoomplayer. I'm absolutely certain i can do this, even if i end up throwing several cups of tea t the wall and strangling my housemate for asking stupid questions along the way....

 

I just wanted to add to this thread. I've been looking forward to getting hardware accerlerated MKVs to work for a long time and finally it now works. I brought a 2400 pro to use with a 3000+ before it blew up and since then its only ever worked with power dvd 6. For those with under powered AMD dual cores, the only other way before would have been the coreavc codec which ran over more than one core.

I've tested bubsterboo's method on both my pc (Q6600 ATI 2400 VISTA) and my bro's (AMD 3500+ ATI 3870 XP). Both of which run with almost 0% CPU which is amazing and opens up the possiblity of building a nice cheap Media center pc. A couple of points I'd like to add:

- The 2400 is a tad underpowered and this shows mainly with a constant choppiness on some high bit-rate 1080p and when seeking through some files playback with my CPU is obviously fine.
- Krikket I had to untick the enable Ffmpeg box in order to get hardware playback on my bros pc.
- The built in audio filter with the media player classic you link to is terrible. The best way I've found to disable codecs is with this program: Installed codec which also seems to work on Vista x64. With this I disabled the MPA filter and installed AC3 filter to get DTS working correctly over SPDIF on my pc and on my bro's I installed it to decode first and send over analog cables.

 

works like a charm...

bubsterboo, you're a legend, i could easily talk my mum through this, job done

although as you can see, this is only 720p, the same video in zoomplayer uses between 10-40% CPU. Works fine, but its nice to know i'm now putting my graphics card to good use when not gaming. 1080p is handled fine too, with the CPU bustling between 0 and 5% and all audio remains fully locked in sync. Amazing.

thanks for all your help.

 

Thanks for posting your success.

@spazmochad
Regarding the integrated filters with this MPC build:
The only one i would recommend using is the video filter for the hardware acceleration. The latest FFDShow build is good for audio, or even better use AC3Filter which has great passthrough support if your using a receiver. [EDIT: sorry, tend to skim through reads, you're way ahead of me. ]
And yeah, the hd2400 is a weak card for hardware acceleration. I have one and tried it my media pc, but had to replace it because it struggles on 1080p.

@djDEATH
You can use either the 64bit or the 32bit build. But if you chose to use the 64bit build you can't use 32bit external filters. This means no coreavc (might want to use it if your 1080p video isn't Level 4.1 Compliant), no external audio filters either. I haven't seen a performance difference between the two, so i use the 32bit build for compatibility.

I can see in your screenshot that your video levels are not correct (your blacks can be blacker, whites can be whiter). Most video's have a color range of 16 - 235 (YUV), PC displays have a color range of 0 - 255 (RGB). The renderer is suppose to correct this for you, but i believe it's a vista bug with EVR. I was experiencing this problem, but I updated to SP1 and it fixed my problems. You will get much better contrast if you fix this issue.

Also, you can use powerdvd on vista64. It will use 32bit filters without a problem. But powerdvd is only use full for playing raw blurays, hddvds, or .ts mpeg files because of the limited container support. Powerdvd's H264 filter will also work with hardware acceleration in MPC (32bit build) with mkv files, but the same rules apply with the video's compatibility. I would recommend using the internal codec instead, ive had better results.

 

Stuck and renamed because the guide in this thread is excellent!

Good job all

 

Aaah, no not in this case. COlour reproduction is soemthing i'm quite up to speed on, and although it may look funny here, this is being sent out via a digitalprojector onto a wall (1360x768), and i have played around with the colour settings quite a bit, and have three presets i use, one for general computing, one for gaming, and one for TV/movies. The one above uses the standard SRGB colour palette, and although is rubbish for movies as you quite rightly point out, is perfect for general PC use.

so yeah, i'm aware fo that, and all over it like a rash mate

check it out....

http://www.youtube.com/v/45lHkllq9NU

now i have this i reallly can't stand gaming or watching movies on my monitor, it just sits there running my desktop until it gets dark enough to fire up the projector!!!