Do i need DirectX (February 2006)?

[xMax]

Clearly these DirectX updates from Microsoft have to serve a purpose, but i cant seem to be able to find information on what exactly they do and how that would benefit me.

I just got my eVGA 7900 GTX (and completely loving its performance and clean operation), and for this reason i was wondering if i need this latest directX update.

I could tell you guys that i will be using my system to play full screen 1600x1200x32 AVI animations in Windows Media Player 10. The AVIs will either be uncompressed and running off a ramdisk or RLE compressed and running off hardisk.

Im guessing there is absolutely no benefit whatsoever with these DirectX updates for me, but i just have to ask.

PS1: What should i choose in the performance options in In windows media player 10? There is the 'use hardware overlay' or 'high quality mode' in the video mixing renderer options, as i have no clue as to which one would be better. I know microsoft says that the 'high quality mode' is for newer cards, which i guess may imply that its the better of the two. But maybe there is something i dont know. Any ideas?

PS2: eVGA rules! :sun:

 

[EuR Fr3nCh T3rRoR]

Normally if the game or application needs a updated DirectX 9.0c version, it will prompt you and make you install it before installing the game or application.

The Windows media player, I cant help you with...Sorry mate.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: EuR Fr3nCh T3rRoR
Normally if the game or application needs a updated DirectX 9.0c version, it will prompt you and make you install it before installing the game or application.

The Windows media player, I cant help you with...Sorry mate.

Exactly. But you might as well install it just for the hell of it. It cant hurt.

As for Media Player, you will want to check the "Enable High Quality Mode". That offloads the video processing onto the onboard PVP (Programmable Video Processor), which then, in turn, supports Hardware deinterlacing, Hardware accelerated Decoding (etc...).

Also, if you dont have it already, you will want to purchase the Nvidia Purevideo Decoder, or you wont be able to really use your PVP at all. Go to Nvidia and drop the extra $30 or something.

-Kevin

 

[xMax]

Sounds good guys. I guess it cant hurt to install the latest DirectX update.

But i dont think the Nvidia PureVideo Decoder would help me in any way for my AVI animations since its designed for high definition, Mpeg, H.264 and stuff like that, and not AVI.

But maybe im wrong, so are you sure gamingfreak? Are you sure that the pure video decoder would actually improve performance for playing AVIs?

 

[Gamingphreek]

I cannot remember if it affect performance in AVI's or not. Ill do some searches and get back to you.

-Kevin

 

[xMax]

Well thats very kind of you.

I'll do the same. Perhaps merely typing 'nvidia purevideo decoder avi' will work.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Hmm, i cant find anything on it.

I would venture to say that it IS supported, but not to the extent that MPEG-2 or WMV is supported. Conversely i would also say "No", because when i play a .avi file on my computer, the Nvidia PureVideo Decoder does not appear to be running. So while it is probably offloading the processing to some extent it probably isn't doing some of the advanced deinterlacing, and it is probably not offloading the entire task like it would for MPEG or WMV. But once again, i am not sure; but i will look into it.

Ill try to E-Mail an Nvidia Customer Service person and let you know when i get an E-Mail (Just have to find my product key).

-Kevin

 

[xtknight]

Neither NVIDIA's PureVideo nor ATI's VideoShader HD accelerate uncompressed AVI video. The limiting factor for that is system memory bandwidth. However, they can potentially accelerate MPEG 2/MPEG 4 (including H.264) video encapsulated in an AVI.

 

[Gamingphreek]

Originally posted by: xtknight
Neither NVIDIA's PureVideo nor ATI's VideoShader HD accelerate uncompressed AVI video. The limiting factor for that is system memory bandwidth. However, they can potentially accelerate MPEG 2/MPEG 4 (including H.264) video encapsulated in an AVI.

There ya go . I was waiting for xtknight to come and clear everything up.

That is what i was trying to remember too. Isn't .avi simply a "container" for a MPEG/WMV Video. In otherwords, avi isn't an actual video file, rather it is the compressed file containing the video and audio, correct?

-Kevin

 

[xMax]

Hmm...Im a little confused.

I just cant imagine rendering to H.264 and then somehow encapsulating it into an AVI file. For whatever encapsulating means. And whats the point of making the conversion as opposed to leaving the files in H.264 format.

Besides, i dont think H.264 is lossless. Or is it?

This also goes without saying that i will very likely be using RLE compressed AVIs, which are probably faster than any other format i can think of.

Of course, i did notice that uncompressed AVIs playing off a ramdisk ran faster than RLEs off a hardisk. And strangely, the uncompressed AVIs running off a ramdisk were even faster than the RLE running off a ramdisk. Thats something i cant fully undrstand.

I think in the end the Nvidia PureVideo decoder will not do anything for me, but that it may not hurt to get it anyways. I mean, with my computer costing me 9000$, whats another 30$?

 

[Gamingphreek]

Why are you going through so much trouble to helping me out. The effort your putting is rather odd.

These are Hardware Forums. Look at the number of posts and the time i have been here. I like to help people out. If you search, until i got busy, i had HUGE driver thread compiled that held most of the latest drivers and a short analysis of each). Its not uncommon or isolated with me. Look at xtknights LCD Faq. Do a search for MechBgon or Schadenfroh (Mech helps out A LOT in the Trouble Shooting forum, and Schadenfroh took "hijack-this" logs, analyzed them and then gave a report back to the poster.

We like to do it

As for the PureVideo decoder, if you aren't going to deal with WMV Decode, or MPEG-2/4, or H.264, or WMV-HD then you really dont need it. It isn't really going to do anything for you. But if you feel so compelled get it, but keep in mind once you do you cannot return it, and you cannot sell it (You could if you feel safe giving away the last for digits of your credit card number).

-Kevin

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: Gamingphreek

Originally posted by: xtknight
Neither NVIDIA's PureVideo nor ATI's VideoShader HD accelerate uncompressed AVI video. The limiting factor for that is system memory bandwidth. However, they can potentially accelerate MPEG 2/MPEG 4 (including H.264) video encapsulated in an AVI.

There ya go . I was waiting for xtknight to come and clear everything up.

That is what i was trying to remember too. Isn't .avi simply a "container" for a MPEG/WMV Video. In otherwords, avi isn't an actual video file, rather it is the compressed file containing the video and audio, correct?

-Kevin

Yeah, AVI is simply a container, which contains video and audio stream(s). It can contain any constant bitrate (CBR) data. IIRC it has troubles with variable bitrate (VBR) content because of the way it has to be muxed, therefore MP4 or OGM containers are best for VBR. (MP4 is a container, MPEG-4 is a video codec standard. OGG/OGM are containers, Vorbis is the audio codec.)

There are a lot of misnomers regarding AVI files. Some day you may find one that is just a raw video stream. Media players have tried to accomodate all these possible (albeit incorrect) combinations of 'AVI' files.

The container has no bearing on how or whether the data is compressed. The video and audio streams are taken from their compressed state and stuffed directly into the container.

In the header of AVI files is a FourCC per each stream which, as you may have guessed, is four characters long and identifies that stream's particular codec (and thus the decoder needed to decode said data). It is a fairly straightforward process, but the many container names so similar to video codec names are what make it so confusing. Windows Media Files are typically contained in Advanced Streaming Format (ASF) files. ASF files can also contain any type of video/audio (again, IIRC). A .WMV file is an ASF version 2 file, and despite the few WMVs that only contain video, they always have the whole header infrastructure in there, at least when they conform to specification.

Why do I help people? I'm too young to have anything better to do, really, and I like explaining things.

 

[xMax]

Well...I mean...Thats pretty amazing that there are people who are that friendly to the point where they go out of their way to help someone out. The majority of people in forums will only provide support if it doesn't require any engagements that are out of their way, like myself. I really do occasionally help people out, but i cant see myself spending even 30 minutes of research to help someone. Of course, thats because im in a seriously screwed up situation with a dead line.

Also, i dont know much about all the technicalities.

In fact, my situation is so screwed that my 10 000$ credit limit on my card is just about frapped out as i have no income and thus no way of really being able to pay it out. I have to hope that my work completes really soon so that i can make a presentation to a company and get hired, and then have them pay off my card.

Anyhow...back to this Nvidia purevideo decoder; i guess it wont really help me in any way, assuming you guys are correct, as you probably are.

And personally, i dont think the DirectX updates will make a slightest twinge of a difference either.

So with all said and done, i can just get both of them for the sake of having them, or i could just depend on reasonably accurate facts and stay away from them.

 

[Gamingphreek]

In fact, my situation is so screwed that my 10 000$ credit limit on my card is just about frapped out as i have no income and thus no way of really being able to pay it out. I have to hope that my work completes really soon so that i can make a presentation to a company and get hired, and then have them pay off my card.

Ahh, that is really the epitome of Computing as an Addicting hobby. But it isn't my place to judge your decision, but MAYBE you should just hold off on the Purevideo Decorder now.

Best of luck with the money, job, and computer!

-Kevin

 

[xMax]

Xknight...You seem to know your stuff, and you seem to have lost me as well. I'm not going to try to understand all that you just asserted. It's too difficult and will not help me out.

The only thing that i dont grasp is this container thing. If AVI is just a container, then what are my AVI animations? That is, whats in this AVI container? Because i simply rendered with 3D Studio Max 8 to uncompressed AVI and RLE AVI. Plain and simple. Of course, i had to get the RLE codec from the net since it doesn't come with 3DSMAX V8. Apparently RLE codecs aren't very common these days.

But maybe it would be better if you didn't attempt to explain this container thing with AVIs. After all, i cant see myself taking any other format. Especially when its the windows standard.

Hmm... Just realized something though. AVI stands for Audio Video Interleaved. So i guess its like a folder containg two files, one audio and one video. As for interleaved...i have no idea what that means. But the idea here is that if it is like a container or folder that has an audio file and video file, then what is the real format of that video file?

Now that is something i would like to know.

Of course, it still may not change my work, but it would be nice to know.

 

[xtknight]

xMax: The key there is 'uncompressed'. In this case, the AVI contains its header along with one video stream of data that is not compressed in any way by any codec. Run Length Encoding (RLE) is a type of lossless encoding that does require a decoder though. Lossless means that the quality of the video doesn't degrade whatsoever like it does if you were to compress it with a lossy codec such as WMV.

AVI is indeed just like a directory that contains video and audio. That's a good way of simply explaining it. You could say the header is its table of contents as well. The real format of the file is the container. You still need a decoder for each type of codec inside the AVI too. The 'decoder' for the AVI container itself (the directory) is actually called a demultiplexer, or demuxer. That feeds uninterleaved data to the video and audio decoders. Interleaved simply means that the video is interleaved in with the audio so that the demuxer has quick access to both when it needs them, and so that the video and audio are synchronized with each other.

 

[xMax]

I will probably be needing that luck. But i also think i will succeed. And this will most likely be done without DirectX february 2006 and the Nvidia PureVideo Decoder.

 

[xMax]

Thats pretty fascinating stuff Xknight. Now that i think about it, it actually makes so much sense. Audio Video Interleaved! The name practically says it all.

But im just curious abou two little things. You dont have to answer them if you don't feel like it.

First, why isn't there a uncompressed video only format. Kind of like taking the 'V' out of the 'AVI'. Because with all the formats i have ever seen, at least the uncompressed or lossless ones, AVI was the only standard that i could find. But im guessing that if the rendered animation does not contain audio, then the 'AVI' actually becomes like a 'V'. That would make sense.

But the strange thing that i noticed is that my RLE AVIs were faster on hard disk then they were off a ramdisk, while the uncompressed AVIs were extremely slow on hard disk and the fastest in a ramdisk, even faster than the RLE versions on hard disk and in ramdisk. One would assume that an RLE AVI in ramdisk would be the fastest. But that wasn't so.

Of course, i could be wrong, but i dont think that i am, for i used my old CRT to play some test animations at blazing fast speeds to see which format, uncompressed or RLE, played fastest, wether on hard disk or in ramdisk.

But anyhow...You dont have to answer these questions. Uncompressed AVI using ramdisk or RLE using hard disk are both really fast and just about the same.

 

[Gamingphreek]

First, why isn't there a uncompressed video only format.

That would take incredible power to playback. More than HD i would think. Not only that, the file sizes would be enormous.

Im not familiar with Content Creation that specific, but the situation seems strange. Does it feel faster, or do you have hard evidence the the RAMDISK was indeed slower. The RAMDISK should be faster in pretty much everything (Operates in ns as opposed to ms). Someone else may be able to clarify it better though.

-Kevin

 

[xMax]

I would probably have to rerun the tests for the RAMDISK on my CRT.

Im really not sure if the uncompressed AVI was faster in RAMDISK than the RLE in RAMDISK, but i think it was.

Although its an interesting question. At least for me, since i seem to be one of the very few people still dealing with uncompressed and RLE AVIs.

 

[rbV5]

At least for me, since i seem to be one of the very few people still dealing with uncompressed and RLE AVIs.

Hardly, uncompressed AVI is commonly used to edit analog captures. It seems you could get REAL help for your situation by defining exactly what you are trying to do. I guarantee, you are not doing anything that someone hasn't done before and could help you with.

Sadly, it appears you have wasted alot of money that you apparently don't have trying to tackle your problem from the wrong direction.

 

[xMax]

Google quote of the day:
"The thing I hate about an argument is that it always interrupts a discussion."
- GK Chesterton.

 

[Luckyboy1]

Direct X 9.0c also has security features, so yes, go grab it.

 

[xMax]

My new system will not be online at any point in time. Only the computer im working on now, my old system, will be used online. For this reason, i will not be upgrading security service packs or anything relating to security.

But thanks for the input regardless.