ATI HD2400 Pro and H.264

[5058]

Ok , just replaced my noisy old X850XT with a HD2400Pro this evening. So far other than a few missing resolutions , the new card appears to look much better /brighter than the old card. The one problem I am have is it will not play any of my h.264 movies anymore. It ran fine on the old card and this card is suppose to do h.264 better but all I get is green blotches on the screen. I uninstalled and reinstalled the h.264 codec but that didn't help any. Anyone that has upgraded to this style card had any luck getting h.264 to work?

Thanks

[whurlston]

i haven't tried any H.264 content since installing mine. I will try tomorrow and let you know.

As for the missing resolutions, under "Monitor Properties" -> "Attributes", try unchecking the "Use Extended Display..." and set the max res and refresh rate manually.

[5058]

I guess I accidentally installed an older version of the catalyst drivers , with 7.11 I now have 1360x768 res , but h.264 does not work still with the same codec I was using on the X850XT?

[bogyver]

I believe the newer cards with built in h264 decoding need a for pay only decoder to do hardware accelerated h264. I believe that cyberlink and windvd make them. Not sure why your old decoder doesn't work properly maybe a good idea to try a different one all together

[5058]

I have tried x264.711 and x264vfw so far. Both worked flawlessly with the
x850. I'll have to look into the pay for codecs

[sub]

You only get hardware H.264 acceleration in Vista + EVR renderer + Cyberlink H.264 decoder, or XP + VMR9 Custom/FSE + Cyberlink H.264 decoder.

Also, this videocard's H.264 support is designed with BluRay and HD DVD in mind, and specifically targets the encodings used in these standards. The x264 encodes made are often outside of these targets, which causes the hardware acceleration to suffer a "brown trousers error".

For x264 encodes to work with this videocard you need:

1080p - Number of Reference frames must be equal to or less than 4
720p - Number of Reference frames must be be equal to or less than 8
Mixed Reference Frames must be false.
B Frames must equal 2
Adaptive B frames must be false

Hopefully ATI will be able to tweak something in their decoder in future to improve this, but I somehow doubt it...

[5058]

OUCH.
Should I not be able to get h/x.264 to be able to show up without accel as my "5 year old" X850XT did though?

I have the Cyberlink H.264 decoder as well and that was working with the last video card aswell.

3 steps ahead , 2 steps back ........ lol

[sub]

Should I not be able to get h/x.264 to be able to show up without accel as my "5 year old" X850XT did though?

Yes, you should be able, though you may need to make sure it isnt using the Cyberlink H.264 decoder since this will most likely try to use the hardware acceleration and cause problems with these non-compliant files.

[5058]

off hand , do you know where I would look to enable/disable hardware accel for just that codec?

[sub]

I've never specifically tried to disable hardware acceleration for it, but you might be able to load the filter in GraphEdit and view it's properties.