Hardware Decoding w/ .MKV file

[taltamir]

nvidia actually sells software themselves so that you can enjoy their regular DVD decode...
20 to 50 dollars for a windows media player plugin to allow it to hardware decode REGULAR DVDs (not HD).
The price varies based on its capabilities (stero vs surround sound...).

Bought that video card with hardware acceleration? good, now buy our software to make it run!
http://www.nvidia.com/object/dvd_decoder.html

Nvidia+AMD/Ati are indeed totally at fault, its downright false advertising.

 

[BassBomb]

Well if there was a way to reencode the file, I could definatley do it on my main rig with ease. This stuff is so confusing

 

[Auric]

It's not popular to say but software the likes of Matroska, x264, and Haali are problematic precisely because they are hobbyist in nature and often fail to conform to commercial standards which assure reliability and interoperability.

Given a random MKV file from the last five years, it is lucky to have it play on the first try. Sometimes one splitter allows it and sometimes another. The problems are compounded when the audio is AAC rather than MP3, video is OGG rather than quasi-ASP and exponentially more so when quasi-AVC. Then add Haali splitter with its own frame rate issues and Haali renderer which does not even support DxVA and it is no wonder that users who are lured by the promise of free and so-called open software go koo koo trying to get it all working.

Worse is when misguided enthusiasts erroneously blame said issues (particularly failure of DxVA) on the commercial side -that is, ATI/AMD, Nvidia, CyberLink, Ahead, &c. It would be funny if it was not so ridiculous.

As for graphics companies touting hardware capabilities which rely upon third-party software, I do not see the issue. Along with motion video they also tout 3D (you don't say?) which likewise relies upon third-party software which is generally commercial and not free. The development and licensing costs are not insignificant so if decoders/players were to be included then it would raise the price for all consumers and if only one company did so then it may be uncompetitive. That said, ATI (unlike Nvidia) has long provided an MPEG-2 decoder and has subsidized an AVC decoder. Many AIBs and ODDs have long included DVD players (if limited versions) and the latter likewise include HD disc players with related drives.

Indeed, it is even less of an issue now that useful free hobbyist software is becoming available in the form of these ffmpeg decoders with DxVA capability. In fact, it is arguably a better situation than in the salad days of DVD since it took longer for free decoders to appear then and they never were capable of hardware acceleration. All the pieces are not in place for free playback of HD disc formats (realistically that seems unlikely to be both free and legal), but the significance of the media is on the wane (hence the insignificance of the so-called format war from the consumer POV) and the important development has been the advanced codecs.

Well, someone's a chatty Cathy aren't they? lulz

 

[taltamir]

It's not popular to say but software the likes of Matroska, x264, and Haali are problematic precisely because they are hobbyist in nature and often fail to conform to commercial standards which assure reliability and interoperability.

HAHAHAHAHAHA...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mkv - reading is your friend
Haali has nothing to do with standards, its a splitter, its something you install on a computer to play formats like MKV and OGM. If it is outdated then use a different splitter, I recomded lazy man's splitter. x264 is a codec, and an open one at that. Based on the h264 specification. It should play seamlessly on any supporting devices, just like I play xvid movies on my dads divx deck.

Those ARE FREE commercial standards that ensure reliablity. Ogg is audio, Matroska is container, flak is audio.. those are excellent and royalty free. They are solid real standards. Their lack of acceptance in hardware stems solely from their lack of DRM.
There are many devices which incorporate ALL of them.

The only reason devices still allow mp3 files is ebcause they are ICONIC of music, almost everyone has an mp3 music library. But they would like nothing more then for your music library to be in a proprietary format.

That 5 years example is bull. An up to date splitter plays any of them (heck I bet an older one would too, I never saw an MKV I couldn't open, I only even needed codecs), sure there are different revisions with improvements made. your point? there are different revisions of all standards. people are having problems sticking a PCIe v2 card into some PCIe v1 boards. There are issues with earlier wireless formats, there are issues with varied implementation of CD image formats. Any format that is changing and improve will have that. Oh and look at that... a 650MB CD!

The development of players IS insignificant in cost, in fact the best ones are FREE and OPENSOURCE. IF they were willing to let down the DRM wall then those would have had hardware decode much earlier.

The failure of haali probably stems from it being so old, Last version I saw was an alpha, and it hasn't been updated in a while. There are other, more advanced, and fully working, splitters.

Let me put it this way, I have NEVER come across an MKV file I could not play... Oh, and there is something called the AUTHOR... when you make a file you make it using working standards and software, I have seen plenty of crap mpeg4 encodes for example. And I have seen some that are ancient and still perfect. The only ones I would have problems playing today were encoded with divx 3.11 ALPHA, and even then not much trouble.


Saying that a video card toutes 3D capabilities yet needs games... thats just misleading misinterpretation...
A 3D card is a TOOL for running games. Its not that 3D needs games. its that games need a video card. A video card that claims to do MORE then games is trying to sell you on extra features. And those extra features just don't happen to work unless you buy extra software not mentioned in the time of purchase. That is downright swindling.

 

[Auric]

They are not commercial standards as in ITU, ISO, and IEC and their relegation to hobbyist use is not due to lack of anti-copy schemes but rather because they serve a queer niche rather than industry needs; however open software which does prove reliable can be industry adopted even where there are no licensing incentives.

x264 alone is a variant of a commercial standard but as said it is most often used incorrectly. So its flaws have partly been the developer's fault and partly the users. But when it comes to the containers and splitters such as MKV and Haali the fault lies solely with the developers and the dodgy nature of the format being, essentially, in perpetually beta and never finalized.

How else to explain that one file may only work with Gabest splitter and one only with Haali or worse an older version versus a newer version? It's neither backwards compatible nor forward compatible! Another prime example is the frame rate defect which can be caused by either MKV or x264 (Haali itself also suffers timing issues).

So the point about unreliability stands. The same frequency of problems is simply not encountered with MPEG nor MOV nor AVI.

FYI, so-called DivX 3 is a pre-ASP-standard codec developed by Microsoft. It is surprisingly reliable but never claimed compliance.

 

[Auric]

Originally posted by: taltamir

Saying that a video card toutes 3D capabilities yet needs games... thats just misleading misinterpretation...
A 3D card is a TOOL for running games. Its not that 3D needs games. its that games need a video card. A video card that claims to do MORE then games is trying to sell you on extra features. And those extra features just don't happen to work unless you buy extra software not mentioned in the time of purchase. That is downright swindling.

The hardware and software are mutually dependent components. Games are applications and GPUs are not universally touted for their use. The real requirement is the underlying standards-based software, whatever the use.

 

[BassBomb]

Ok, so is there any way for me to convert the .mkv from its x264 and DTS 5.1 to mpeg which should get accelerated?
If there is a way to do it I'd do it on my main rig.

All this aside, I know for sure that 1080p trailers in WMV form that I use definatley work fine and get accelerated by PureVideo.
If I cannot find a solution tonight I will just take my rig to the tv to watch it

 

[xtknight]

Originally posted by: taltamir
I think there is a plugin for nero to demux mkv somewhere... not having any luck googling for it, too much other junk comes up instead. But thats for reencoding only...
Demuxing is for reencoding. You are just looking for a way to make it play it. All you need is a splitter, once there any video player that uses splitters (practically all) will play MKV files for you.

Demuxing is demultiplexing, or splitting a file into its various tracks and streams (video + audio). However, I'm not talking about remuxing into another container or dumping streams to files as a muxing tool typically does.

Players need to put the file through the demuxer (splitter) before they can send the video/audio off to separate decoders. I was hoping Nero would have the splitter necessary to open MKVs (and from what I read, ShowTime can open MKVs).

I could be wrong but I thought I had H.264 acceleration working w/ my 7800GT in ShowTime with Quicktime videos. This was a while ago and I can't really remember.

I sure do see lots of problems and confusion on the net about H.264 accel w/ certain cards, reportedly not working, etc... Nero may not support accel on GeForce 8+ although I thought it worked for the 7 series.

 

[taltamir]

well, i was trying to keep it simple, but yes demuxing can be used for other things as well. I didn't list them all cause that wasn't the point, the point was that what he asked for sounded like a splitter...

@Auric: Gabest and Haali having bugs has as much to do with the standard as me buying a plextor or pioneer or whatever deck that has issues with certain DVD's or with specific divx files.
I went and explained about various codecs and the like but then I realised I falled into your inappropriate corrolation of codecs and containers.
MKV is a CONTAINER. It is similar to: AVI, OGM, ASF, RM, WMV (the container not the video codec of the same name) etc... And those definitely had their own share of issues.

I did recommend lazy man's splitter over gabest and haali did I not? bug again, those are generic splitters to allow you to use any video player to decode said files. Most players have their own built in splitters, based on dlls made by the core project. Those that don't can use some generic splitter installed on your machine. Yea, haali and gabest have their issues, they are also not affiliated with matroska.
Heck haali is a splitter pack for the following:
* Matroska
* MP4
* AVI
* OGG/OGM
* MPEG TS

So bugs in haali don't make matrsoka bad, just as it doesn't mnake MP4, AVI, OGG/OGM, and MPEG TS bad. (notice that some of these are closed commercial standards that you seem to like so much).

I like matroska because of two things:
1. It is open and free and thus can be easily implemented everywhere (so, a wide variety of compatible components, those that aren't DRM infested at least).
2. It is far more advanced then the other containers, with the lowest overhead by far, and the ability to have unlimited video, audio, and subtitle streams, and load them on demand.

 

[TheOtherRizzo]

Originally posted by: Auric
They are not commercial standards as in ITU, ISO, and IEC and their relegation to hobbyist use is not due to lack of anti-copy schemes but rather because they serve a queer niche rather than industry needs; however open software which does prove reliable can be industry adopted even where there are no licensing incentives.

x264 alone is a variant of a commercial standard but as said it is most often used incorrectly. So its flaws have partly been the developer's fault and partly the users. But when it comes to the containers and splitters such as MKV and Haali the fault lies solely with the developers and the dodgy nature of the format being, essentially, in perpetually beta and never finalized.

How else to explain that one file may only work with Gabest splitter and one only with Haali or worse an older version versus a newer version? It's neither backwards compatible nor forward compatible! Another prime example is the frame rate defect which can be caused by either MKV or x264 (Haali itself also suffers timing issues).

So the point about unreliability stands. The same frequency of problems is simply not encountered with MPEG nor MOV nor AVI.

FYI, so-called DivX 3 is a pre-ASP-standard codec developed by Microsoft. It is surprisingly reliable but never claimed compliance.

In general I agree. But if you look at real industry standards and see how they're going then you can't really say they're doing much better. Avsforums is still full of endless threads about problems with Blu-Ray playback. Nvidia and ATI are still bringing out drivers with broken dxva capabilities (and are still lying about these features on their websites). AVC HDTV PC based hard- and software is still buggy as hell, causing problems from constant stutters to BSODs.

All in in all I think the whole video format world is broken and I suspect that drm is at least partly to blame. I'm hoping for it all to fail so that there can be a fresh start with non-broken, non über drmed standards.

Not that I care much for Matroska, it's just that everything else (except MPEG-2 and DVD) seems to be just as crap.

 

[BassBomb]

Well,

I am still having no luck .. I've basically given up, until in 5 days when Ill be able to post on doom9 to ask people over there.

I got PowerDVD, Haali ??. Had NO clue how to use Haali to split the video, and how to get MPC-HC to use the PowerDVD Decoder.

I found another utility called mkvtoolnix .... using the MKVextract I got the mkv down into a .h264 file, with a .dts for the audio.

Now if possible I would like to convert this to an applicable container w/format for use in WMP so I can finally accelerate this. Nero 8 didn't seem to like the files

 

[taltamir]

just reencode it and be done with it.

take the original file (not the demuxed ones because there might have been an adjustment and now you will have audio and video not matching up!)
Put it into a program that can reencode it for you. And that would be it. several such programs were mentioned here. You said you know something that acceelrates a WMP file (you mean WMV maybe? WMP = windows media player, WMV = windows media video). Well just use microsofts encoder and convert the file to an HD quality WMV then.

Originally posted by: TheOtherRizzoAll in in all I think the whole video format world is broken and I suspect that drm is at least partly to blame. I'm hoping for it all to fail so that there can be a fresh start with non-broken, non über drmed standards.

That I can agree on. I am not touching it with a 10 foot pole, and telling other people not to buy an HD-DVD OR Blu-ray... (but I highly recommend a TV-Card with an HDTV... that thing is cheat and awesome).

There is more DRM then ever before and I will have none of it. And the stupid format war isn't helping... My mom actually bought an HD-DVD and tried to play it on her regular DVD player. I tried to explain to her the difference between blu-ray and HD-DVD and HD over cable and regular TV and she was just getting so confused it was a pain. I basically ended up lumping HD-DVD and blu-ray as the same stuff and told her to avoid it.

 

[BassBomb]

Well, officially..

I got it to work with much better results.

I used what TroubleM mentioned, finally figured out HOW to do it.

I had to use MPC-HC with PowerDVD installed to get the decoder h264

I had to also have Haali Media Splitter

I added these two as external filters within MPC-HC and got it to work. It is downto ~ 80% cpu usage on average. Audio remains in sync and I am happy

 

[taltamir]

congrats

 

[BassBomb]

TY to all the help and discussion,

This thread definatley shows there is ALOT of confusion around this sort of topic!

 

[tommo123]

Originally posted by: BassBomb
Well,

I am still having no luck .. I've basically given up, until in 5 days when Ill be able to post on doom9 to ask people over there.

I got PowerDVD, Haali ??. Had NO clue how to use Haali to split the video, and how to get MPC-HC to use the PowerDVD Decoder.

I found another utility called mkvtoolnix .... using the MKVextract I got the mkv down into a .h264 file, with a .dts for the audio.

Now if possible I would like to convert this to an applicable container w/format for use in WMP so I can finally accelerate this. Nero 8 didn't seem to like the files

WMP afaik, wont do this. you'd have to re-encode it to wmv/vc-1 for that to work

thanks to this thread - I just found out about mpc-hc and will give that a shot. i doubt it will work since these programs that claim to accelerate decoding via GPU dont do this. they accelerate specific profiles only - anything 'upto' 4.1 iirc

i encode with x264 and the 'insane' preset. basically every setting maxxed out. doubt i'll get anything other than CPU decoding working. will give it a shot though

 

[khat17]

Don't know if you got this sorted out or not.....

Basically you can get H264 acceleration done free as long as your GPU supports it by using the new MPC-HC. See some additional info below for getting it to work.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Video_Decoder#UVD_enabled_GPUs

For ATI - the cards must have UVD support (Unified Video Decoder). See link above and/or listing below. I you have one of those cards or later, please run the test and let me know. Also, please read the WIKIPEDIA link above.


RV770 Radeon HD 4800 Series UVD 2.2
RV730 Radeon HD 4600 Series UVD 2.2
RV710 Radeon HD 4300/4500 Series UVD 2.2
RV670 Radeon HD 3800 Series UVD+
RV635 Radeon HD 3600 Series UVD+
RV620 Radeon HD 3400 Series UVD+
RV630 Radeon HD 2600 Series UVD
RV610 Radeon HD 2400 Series UVD

RS780/RS780D Radeon HD 3200/AMD 780G Chipset
Radeon HD 3300 IGP/AMD 790GX Chipset UVD+

M88 Mobility Radeon HD 3800 Series UVD+
M86 Mobility Radeon HD 3600 Series UVD+
M82 Mobility Radeon HD 3400 Series UVD+
M76 Mobility Radeon HD 2600 Series UVD
M72 Mobility Radeon HD 2400 Series UVD
M71 Mobility Radeon HD 2300 Series UVD

Basically - any of the RADEON HD's will do.


And below is some info that was typed up by me on an external site.

Information here is taken from my friend N1 on IDW. Some of it has been modified to fit in here. Now on to the matter:

For some people, the playback and sending of H264 video streams to your graphics card may not work. If it does not, you need to check and see that MPC-HC is actually sending the stream to your hardware to be decoded. To do this, play an h.264 video in MPC, and while it is playing go to Play->Filters->MPC Video Decoder.

First, confirm that "Enable DXVA" is checked.

If it is, see if the greyed-out text says "Not Using DXVA" or "H.264 bitstream decoder, no FGT."

The former is obvious; the latter means that hardware acceleration is indeed working.

If "MPC Video Decoder" is not present, there's your problem - see below.

If acceleration is not working for you, one of the following is true:

-You have not blocked your other h.264 playback filters; therefore MPC's decoder is not running. Block all other h.264 decoders, and make sure that MPC's is checked.

-Your output settings are not correct. Make sure you're using EVR Custom in Vista or VMR9 Renderless in XP.

-You have not blocked VobSub and switched to MPC's internal subtitle filter. Block VobSub, and check "Auto-load Subtitles" in the Playback page of MPC's settings.

-Your video card does not support h.264 bitstream decoding.

-The video you are trying to decode does not comply with the BluRay standard for h.264. You can confirm this with MediaInfo; look for the number of reference frames. THORA releases, for instance, have a uselessly large amount of reference frames which do not comply with BluRay standards and therefore do not work with hardware acceleration.

Please remember that hardware acceleration was designed with DVDs and BluRay discs in mind, not files on your computer. Therefore, the files on your computer need to comply with either the DVD or BluRay standards for hardware decoding to work.

And also:

Here's some additional info with a quote from the CCCP IRC:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_Acceleration_API

<Dark_Shikari> You have three options for hardware acceleration:
<Dark_Shikari> 1) DXVA
<Dark_Shikari> 2) CoreAVC
<Dark_Shikari> 3) VAAPI/VDPAU with mplayer

And also from the CCCP IRC, I managed to get some help.

<edogawaconan> khat: yes it works
<edogawaconan> 1080p @ 10&#37; on pentium d 930
<edogawaconan> it was ~20% with coreavc
<edogawaconan> 20~50
<edogawaconan> vga is radeon hd 4650

So we know - the ATI HD cards work with H264 decoding WITHOUT the use of AVIVO.

So to recap. In Windows you don't need codecs for playback, just filter packs.

For Windows -> CCCP - SATSUKI - DEFILTER.
*!!!NEW!!!* For Linux -> MPLAYER

For standalone players, the choice is yours:
KMPLAYER
MPLAYER
VLC
etc......


For hardware decoding - specifically of H264 streams - the two major card manufacturers support this - nVidia/ATI - and can be done for FREE using MPC-HC which is bundled with CCCP. If your card does not support it, you can use the software decoding which is available in CCCP (FFDSHOW).

Tests have been done using both cards to show that CPU usage is significantly reduced when hardware decoding is used, and with ATI the AVIVO software is not needed.

For general playback, if you are using the standalone players or the filters - for the older formats, you may need to install QUICKTIME ALTERNATIVE and/or REAL ALTERNATIVE in order to enable playback of just about all video.

If you do video editing, you may need to install a codec, and with CCCP you will only need to install the codec for the format(s) you encode to, as CCCP will allow you to decode all other formats supported by your editor.

That's the meat of the matter, and the final statements. Paid solutions for hardware decoding such as CoreAVC - DivX - PowerDVD - are not included, and other paid solutions for software decoding are left out.

 

[Homerboy]

boot a USB install of XBMC Live. I'm pretty sure there is hardware decoding built in.

 

[Claudius-07]

I certainly don't wish to derail this thread but I was wondering if software/codecs etc are still not up to the task to facilitate hardware decoding of high def movies, just what are systems like my Acer Revo using XBMC doing right?

I not entirely sure what CPU you are rocking for your HTPC, but I am simply running an Acer Revo with XBMC on it as stated above that I spent next to nothing to get. Over my network I stream my whole movie collection, whether plain old DVD rips, encoded rips, all the way to pure BR rips some 20-30 GB all in MKV or Mt2s format. From the day I got this box and installed XBMC.... it has played everything without even a small hiccup. Coming from a guy who has tried everything, from a Seagate Freegant T+, WD HDTV, an HDX-1000 and another HTPC which had Windows 7 and just playing using windows media centre, that little REvo with the XBMC is simply stunning. The rest worked out in many cases but nothing that simply works flawlessly like the XBMC box.

I personally thought it would choke on my 1080p movies but it has not and this is all from a network not locally. At this point I understand that it's using some hardware encoding, but what exactly is it doing that your system and especially video cards and the software you are using is not? Did I understand your post.. in that you were not getting the performance you expected or were you simply looking for a way to ensure total hardware acceleration rather than software.

I a bit ignorant at even the hardware that comes with my current Revo... other than it has an ION chip but whatever it has it works and it does not give a crap what movies or container I have.

 

[Idontcare]

Don't know if you got this sorted out or not.....

Welcome to the forums khat17! :thumbsup:

That's a really great first post you contributed there

Just a friendly heads-up, for future reference, we generally discourage posting in really old threads like this.

It's called a "thread-necro" and we prefer you to start a new thread (appropriately titled) regarding the topic and make your informative post all the same.

That aside, I sure hope you stick around and we can look forward to more posts like yours in the future!

- Moderator Idontcare

 

[formulav8]

Welcome to the forums khat17! :thumbsup:

That's a really great first post you contributed there

Just a friendly heads-up, for future reference, we generally discourage posting in really old threads like this.

It's called a "thread-necro" and we prefer you to start a new thread (appropriately titled) regarding the topic and make your informative post all the same.

That aside, I sure hope you stick around and we can look forward to more posts like yours in the future!

- Moderator Idontcare

Why should you care :biggrin)

Just playing off your name


Jason

 

[VirtualLarry]

Ok

Visuals look MUCH better, it might be too slow though. The Audio comes out faster than the video, and it is well out of sync.

Im using an Audigy 2 w/ digital output to use its DTS... could that be the culprit, or the fact that as much as MPCHC helped it isnt enough?

What sort of things can I try out within MPC-HC?

MPC-HC has bad audio/video sync.
Recent builds are also stuttery for me. Older 1.00.xx builds are much better for my 780G-based HTPC.

 

[BassBomb]

Well, officially..

I got it to work with much better results.

I used what TroubleM mentioned, finally figured out HOW to do it.

I had to use MPC-HC with PowerDVD installed to get the decoder h264

I had to also have Haali Media Splitter

I added these two as external filters within MPC-HC and got it to work. It is downto ~ 80% cpu usage on average. Audio remains in sync and I am happy

Quoting myself since I did resolve the issue at the time..

 

[khat17]

Welcome to the forums khat17! :thumbsup:

Thanks for the heads up - reason I posted back in here is because I don't think he resolved the issue fully - will tackle that with him in a min.

I certainly don't wish to derail this thread but I was wondering............

Thanks for the info on the player, and yes free software decoders do facilitate sending the video stream to be decoded by your hardware that has said features. Dedicated hardware works better for this as your PC would have to do all the calculations for each frame basically.

MPC-HC has bad audio/video sync.
Recent builds are also stuttery for me. Older 1.00.xx builds are much better for my 780G-based HTPC.

Don't have an issue with the builds, and I think FFDSHOW has some hardware support through DXVA at the moment. CoreAVC also has hardware support but only for nVidia right now.

It is downto ~ 80&#37; cpu usage on average. Audio remains in sync and I am happy

I don't think 80% is good progress as playback should have minimal impact on your hardware. I play a 1080p video file with my CPU almost idle - between 5% and 10% - and I've had friends test this and confirm that even on slower or older hardware that their graph cards can do the decoding your CPU usage should be less. Please go over the post info and use DXVA then post what your CPU usage is plz.

 

[BassBomb]

Honestly, this is such an old topic
A. that machine isnt even running
B. I was able to watch that movie without any stuttering
C. I didnt give a shit that it was 80&#37; as long as I could watch the movie properly, and I got it to that point
D. the rig was a 3.0ghz P4 with 7900GS, good luck getting it less than 80% usage on a 1080p MKV