DXVA hardware acceleration w/ free open source howto

[carpeVideo]

Straight from the source - it looks like MPC Home Cinema specifically mentions it does not do MPEG2 Hardware decoding so I am surprised that works for anyone.

(http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/DXVASupport.html)

Unfortunately the MPC-HC decoder only supports the "bitstream mode" at this stage, which means that only the most recent graphic cards are supported :

* nVidia series 8(9)xxx for H.264 only
* ATI Radeon HD series for H.264 and VC-1 decoding

"Motion compensation" mode might be added in the future to increase compatibility with older graphic cards, but I cannot promise anything. Mpeg2 and WMV accelerations are not supported either.


DXVA is quite picky, so if you want to use it you have to respect thoses rules :

* Windows XP users, select Overlay Mixer, VMR7, VMR9 or VMR9 renderless
* Vista users, select EVR or EVR custom renderer

The MPC-HC Video decoder must be connected directly to the renderer. That means no intermediate filters such as DirectVobSub or ffdshow can be inserted between the decoder and the video renderer.
Internal subtitles can work with the MPC Video decoder in DXVA mode, but the rules are even more restrictive :

* Windows XP users, select VMR9 renderless
* Vista users, select EVR custom renderer
* In "Options / Playback", tick the checkbox "Auto-load subtitles"

Warning for ATI users : VC1 acceleration is broken in 8.6 release (green frames appears randomly during playback). If you experiments such trouble, please revert to 8.5 build.

Also for those with tearing issues
(http://mpc-hc.sourceforge.net/AntiTearing.html)

Anti tearing option

Tearing is one of the most frequent problems happening with home theater computers. Almost invisible on still pictures, this becomes very annoying on panning scenes.

The root reasons of this problem are not quite easy to identify, but this seems to happen more frequently with Windows XP than with Vista. MPC-HC has an option that uses the same graphic mode as video games in order to solve this tearing problem for good.
Unfortunately this option has some small disadvantages, such as :

* It works only if the output is set to "VMR9 Renderless" or "EVR Custom pres."
* In this mode Windows cannot display either context menus or dialog boxes. To open the options window or to load another video file, you first need to close the current video using the "Ctrl+C" system shortcut.

The Tearing test("Ctrl+T" shortcut) displays two red vertical bars on screen panning from left to right in loop. If those bars are not perfectly straight after several rounds, that means you have a tearing problem

[dirtyvu]

I saw this the other day and was wondering if you guys tried it.

http://iphonedaily.net/other-news/hardwa...usage.html

1-5% cpu usage for HD playback.

[BigMoose]

Did anyone ever get this working on Vista64 with GBPVR? The Mpeg2DecFileter.ax file doesn't seem to exist in the 64bit build but the 32 bit version of either ax filter wont register. I've tried the 32 and 64 bit MPC build on BBC HD recorded ts files and the 32 bit version is awful, sound/video dont play at the same rate at all. However the 64bit plays back perfectly and doesn't seem to suffer the minor stuttering I've had with all other HW Accel H264 decoders and it can skip about which I cant manage with CoreAVC. However I assume the 64 bit filters wont work with GBPVR anyway being a 32bit app?

[gazoo]

I never got mpeg2 working under DXVA Vista32..I gave up. However, H264 works rather nicely.

[crimsondr]

I installed MPC-HC and tried to play a 1080p mkv file. However, it seems to prefer the software decode over dxva. Is there anyway to change this?

[gazoo]

I installed MPC-HC and tried to play a 1080p mkv file. However, it seems to prefer the software decode over dxva. Is there anyway to change this?

You have to go into the gspot program, system->list codecs->find the mpc h264 codec, and raise the merit value higher (or highest if you wish.) Now it should prefer that one over the others.

[hasso]

Not sure if this decoder is supposed to work in GB-PVR with .ts H.264 files, but it does show in GB-PVR Config (filters have been registered), but when I select a file (NCIS for example), a black screen is displayed and then it goes back to the menu (logs attached). Do the h.264 standalone MPC-HC filters work in GB-PVR?

[sub]

Unfortunately the MPC-HC H.264 decoder is not compatible with the Microsoft MPEG2 Demultiplexer, which is what GB-PVR uses to feed the decoders, so in effect this decoder is not compatible with GB-PVR.

[whurlston]

Unfortunately the MPC-HC H.264 decoder is not compatible with the Microsoft MPEG2 Demultiplexer, which is what GB-PVR uses to feed the decoders, so in effect this decoder is not compatible with GB-PVR.

Is this a matter of the media type that the MPC decoder uses? If so, I can fix that real easy. It would just take a day or two for me to supply a patch and get it applied to the SVN.

[sub]

I just tried searching for previous comments I made on this, but I couldnt find the post I was thinking of. The exact details are a bit hazy in my memory, but I'm pretty sure it was to do with the decoder expecting complete ES packets, and the Microsoft Demux delivers partial ES packets.