[How To] Do GPU accelerated x264/MKV 1080p playback

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doesn't seem to work for me... still around 70ish% cpu usage...

Could be that the crappy ATI X1550 isn't up to the job though...
 
Too bad VLC can't do that yet, amazing stuff.
 
Could have used this before I just upgraded my computer. Just bought a Core 2 Quad Q9550 to finish my system. So fast!
 
Thanks for the heads up on the article. Works a treat.
 
Holy crap is all I can say. Works scads better on the desktop, and just for kicks I tried it on the laptop. Before on the laptop it would struggle to get a more than a handfull of frames up a minute. It may have something to do with the Windows 7 and DirectX 11 as well, but the video plays flawlessly now on my laptop. That in combination with the HDMI out means I'll be watching the new season of TG on a proper HD television.
 
For all having LinuxBOX and nVidia 8xxx+ card - you need binary, propertiary, closed source nVidia drivers and either selfcompilled Mplayer with VDPAU support or newest XBMC you will have full GPU H264/VC1/MPEG2/WMV3 decode.
I have Atom 330 1.6GHz and I have 5% CPU utilisation (mostly disk I/O activity) when playing 1080p H264-MKV file (like Top Gear Polar special).

For those who have Ubuntu Karmic specifically add these to you your "System/Administration/Software Sources/Other sources":
Code:
ppa:nvidia-vdpau/ppa
ppa:team-xbmc/ppa
after that do
Code:
sudo apt-get upgrade
and then in "System/Administration/Drivers" mark to use 190.xx drivers.

Now you are ready to install MPlayer or/and XBMC from Synaptic (open, search, mark to install, install).

There is also VDPAU support in MythTV but it have no working PAA's and I don't know if package from Ubuntu repository have VDPAU support or not.

And for those who want HDMI sound for its HTPC box add this to "Software sources":
Code:
ppa:ricotz/unstable
and do system update
Code:
sudo apt-get upgrade
 
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I'm running Win7 on an Atom 330 ION box and HD is nice and smooth with DXVA on Media Player Classic Home Cinema.
 
My laptop seems to play the video just fine without these changes, but the audio is out of sync. It's not consistently out of sync, so I can't just adjust the audio sync compensation. Maybe the video is slightly slower and not really noticeable.

Code:
Intel Core 2 1.83Ghz (between 50% and 60% while playing)
2GB RAM
ATi x1600 with 256MB

I'm playing the 1080p video directly off of a 7200rpm eSATA drive.
 
If that is a dual core processor 50% usage means that one core is maxed out. And since it's only 1,83GHz I don't think it's enough for 1080p. So the audio is out of sync because your CPU does not have enough power to play the video smoothly.
 
To find out if you're GPU can use hardware acceleration for videos use the DXVA checker.

http://bluesky23.hp.infoseek.co.jp/en/index.html#DXVAChecker

This is just an example of mine, your's may be different.
http://img14.imageshack.**/img14/5007/dxva.png

Look for ModeH264 and/or ModeVC1. If this is present then you're good to go.
Windows 2000 and XP users will see the DXVA1 API, Vista and later users will see DXVA2 API. If nothing appears, sadly your GPU has no hardware acceleration capabilities. :(

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc307941(VS.85).aspx

Note: Some GPUs might only do partial acceleration. Example, the 8800GT can not fully decode VC1 streams by itself, it still needs to offload a bit of data to the CPU.


My laptop seems to play the video just fine without these changes, but the audio is out of sync. It's not consistently out of sync, so I can't just adjust the audio sync compensation. Maybe the video is slightly slower and not really noticeable.

Code:
Intel Core 2 1.83Ghz (between 50% and 60% while playing)
2GB RAM
ATi x1600 with 256MB

I'm playing the 1080p video directly off of a 7200rpm eSATA drive.

What media player are you using btw. For certain MPCHC and VLC should have multi-core/thread support. Also is there a 720p version of the 1080p video? That would make it easier on your CPU.
 
I have VLC and MPCHC (I was using mostly the latter).

Eh, screw it, the 720p version still looks pretty dang good (even though my monitor is full 1080p resolution).
 
I stated in a post made previously: x3000 or better only, in other words, x1600 doesn't have DXVA support.
 
It doesn't work for me. I followed the guide exactly, however I still have 90-100% usage. Sure my Athlon 64 3700+ is a bit outdated, but it shouldn't be losing to an Atom now should it? :( My graphics card is a 4870. I'll try a slight overclock, but I don't see how ~200MHz will help. That's about all I can do without messing with the HT multiplier.

EDIT: I used the link above and it works perfectly now. The Guru3D article said to check the Matroska box, while the link above said to make sure it was NOT checked. Also, the Guru3D article doesn't tell you that you need to disable other filters such as ffdshow and CoreAVC. I think that was my main problem as I have CCCP which uses ffdshow.
 
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Doesn't seem to work for me.

I'm running E6600 with 8800GTX 768, after setting all up following the guide, including sharpen stuff, a regular 720p 7gb rip with DTS audio still uses ~25% of CPU, a 15GB 1080p rip uses ~40% of CPU, exactly the same as playback with Kmplayer - my default for MKVs.

I've no idea why it doesn't work properly, cause the badaboom - nvidia cuda GPU video converter works just fine with 0% cpu load.

DXVA test results: (However, the Video Acceleration Settings option (Ctrl + V) is unavailable)

http://img504.imageshack.**/img504/2817/dxva.jpg
 
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I've no idea why it doesn't work properly, cause the badaboom - nvidia cuda GPU video converter works just fine with 0% cpu load.

Purevideo is not the same as Cuda. The former is just a name given to Nvidia video cards that can handle hardware accelerated videos. The latter is Nvidia's own programming language that takes advantage of their GPUs shader cores. Therefore any Nvidia GPU with unified shaders are Cuda enabled.

One way to use your 8800 GTX to playback your videos is to get CoreAVC. The latest version uses Cuda to accelerate the video.
 
Just an update:

Current (Revision 3251 dated 2010-01-31) SVN builds of ffdshow tryouts has DXVA acceleration in it. You can get it here.
 
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