FR: Add support for Broadcom's Crystal HD Media Accelerator

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

OK, use VLC 1.2.0.
Check that you have your Broadcom plugin in.
Force crystalhd decoder in preferences...

[Cellular-Decay]

Okay, I've downloaded the latest build vlc-1.20-rc1-20120113-203-win32.exe, installed it, but under preferences, video output I see no crystalhd option. Also, under Input & Codecs I can't find any settings for the crystalhd. I even tried advanced settings, and searching for crystalhd, but found nothing.

Forgive my ignorance, but where do I "Force crystalhd decoder in preferences"

[DGMurdockIII]

Broadcom CrystalHD Decoder support for FFmpeg and MPlayer - http://intr.overt.org/blog/?p=117

CrystalHD code for ffmpeg and mplayer - https://github.com/philipl/ffmpeg-crystalhd https://github.com/philipl/mplayer-crystalhd

http://git.wilsonet.com/crystalhd.git/

[Cellular-Decay]

Thank you for your response, DGM3, but I was asking about the Windows version of VLC. I have the CrystalHD in my Netbook, which runs Windows-7 Home Premium (32 bit).

OK, use VLC 1.2.0.
Check that you have your Broadcom plugin in.
Force crystalhd decoder in preferences...

So does anyone have a more instructive response? I have the CrystalHD installed with the latest drivers. Windows device manager shows the device and says it's working properly. I have tried both Windows Media Player and Media Player Classic Home Cinema, which are "supported" players, and even though the little tray app shows the device is being used, my video playback is choppy and CPU utilization is high.

In fact, it's WORSE with the decoder than it is with plain software decoding. With the CrystalHD disabled I can play up to 720p, but with it active I can't even play 480p. I beat on it for weeks, then just gave up. Tried lots of "solutions" I found on google, but nothing worked for me.

When I read here that VLC has support now I got excited to try it again, but I need more specific instructions than the quoted post provided. I do not see any option in preferences to force CrystalHD decoding in VLC 1.2, and the tray applet does not show it in use with any combination of settings that I have tried.

Thanks, Tim

[jockyw2001]

I am actually interested in hw accelerated *encoding* support. Is this possible or feasible ?

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Not yet.

[jockyw2001]

You may want to look at this 35US$ board, the raspberry-pi:
http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/news/201 ... 4s-gpu.ars

" The board is built around the Broadcom BCM2835 chipset, which is designed to handle intensive multimedia."
http://www.broadcom.com/products/BCM2835

" 1080p30 Full HD HP H.264 Video Encode/Decode"
ENCODE !

Broadcom probably has a API for that chipset.

EDIT: I am wrong about availability of docs for the GPU
See post 5 here:
http://www.raspberrypi.org/forum/featur ... -datasheet

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Do not believe in Santa Claus

[jockyw2001]

You mean don't believe the vendor spec for the encoding? Well we will see about that. It should be sold by the end of this month then we'll start hacking that GPU

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Does it have a proper API is the actual question...

[jockyw2001]

That I answered in the post above: the answer is no. So it means reverse-engineering and h*cking.
But that is a lot of fun and for 35 bucks it is a nobrainer.

[Cellular-Decay]

So once again... can someone please tell me how to get the Crystal HD working in VLC (Win7-32bit)?

Acer AO532h netbook (Atom N450 1.66GHz, 2GB RAM)
Windows-7, 32-bit (clean install)
Broadcom Crystal HD 700012 hardware decoder (installed)
Broadcom Crystal HD driver version 3.6.9 (installed)
VLC 1.2.0-pre2-20111130-0206-win32.exe (installed)

Updated to the latest 1.20 build, and now I see the plugin (Crystal HD hardware video decoder). However, I still don't see anything in preferences to enable the decoder. What, exactly am I supposed to set?

I would really appreciate an answer.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

--codec crystalhd should do it.

[Cellular-Decay]

I tried appending that to the VLC shortcut target ("C:\Program Files\VideoLAN\VLC\vlc.exe" --codec crystalhd), but it crashed.



So what's wrong, and what's with all these vague answers? Your signature says "If you want an answer to your question, just be specific and precise" so why can't you be equally specific and precise with your answers?

You say "OK, use VLC 1.2.0." but you don't say where to find it (post a link, or at least give a hint). I had to do considerable digging to find it.

You say "Check that you have your Broadcom plugin in" but you don't say how to do that. The first version of VLC 1.20 I tried apparently did not include said plugin (there was nothing in the plugins menu), which led to a lot of frustration and wasted time.

You say "Force crystalhd decoder in preferences" but don't say how to do that. Again, I wasted loads of time trying to find that setting, to no avail.

And then you said "--codec crystalhd should do it" but don't explain where that goes. I tried the obvious place, but got a crash as a result.

I'm sure this stuff is obvious to you, being a developer and all, but I'm not a developer and I'm ignorant to much of the knowledge you posses. So help me out here. How about a "specific and precise" answer this time.

What settings need to be changed in VLC preferences (step by step)?

What else needs to be installed (besides VLC 1.20 & Crystal HD drivers)?

Does VLC need the files in the "crystalhd_lgpl_includes_v1" download from Broadcom? And if so, where do I put them?

Where do I put that "--codec crystalhd" suggested above?

And anything else that is needed to make this work...

Sorry if I sound frustrated, but I really love VLC and I'd like to get this working.

I did finally get it partially working with Widows Media Player, so I know the Crystal HD card works (for a while I was wondering if I got a defective unit). Whatever the Windows 7 SP1 update did it fixed it for WMP, but only for MP4 files (nothing else, no wmv, mkv, mpg, ts, m2ts, etc.) which is why I want to use VLC. It's so much better than WMP! It just plays everything, without all the WMP nonsense.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

I will look at it soon, when I get access to the hardware.

[javacody]

Any update on this? I am also interested.

Thanks!

[ikarus76]

I would be interested too!

--codec=CrystalHD

doesn't do the trick...

[FaeRhan]

Does anyone work on this? The latest version I found which worked using "--codec crystalhd" was vlc-1.2.0-pre3-20111219-0202-win32. The latest version I got working with copying the libcrystalhd_plugin.dll from plugins/codec from the pre3 version to the newer version was vlc-1.2.0-pre4-20120109-0203-win32. In every 2.x version (from 2.0.0 to 2.0.5) I tried the player only crashed using CrystalHD. I'm using Windows 7 32 bit on an ExoPC Tablet (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ExoPC) and the latest CrystalHD 3.6.9 version from Broadcom.

For everbody searching for a right version: The version from http://nightlies.videolan.org/build/win ... 1219-0202/ works for me. Try it with the command line parameter "--codec crystalhd" and use DTS_Info.exe from the CrystalHD Codec installation directory to see quickly if it works.

[no_hands]

SOLVED!!!

But not with VLC!

I picked up one of these cards the other day and installed Broadcom drivers. I found the ONLY player that works for me is GOM Player!!!! All I had to do was go to Filters-->Advanced Settings-->Add Filter and chose Crystal HD Filter. Then still in advanced settings check "advanced customize filter priority and finally under Filters-->Disable Filters check "enable quick play mode"! That's it!

XMBC didn't work, VLC didn't work, MPC-HD didn't work, nor did PowerDVD 12, can't be assed trying them all since I found one that works fine!

Use DTS_info.exe tool in Broadcom folder to test as previous poster stated. (Icon sent to taskbar)

Thats it! Nice player and it works fine on my Compaq Mini 311c Netbook, 1080p vids in smooth stutter free playback on an Intel Atom netbook...Awesome!!!!

Sorry VLC you dropped the ball on this one...shame!

[JesusGod-Pope666]

Found a solution as well, Media Player Classic - even the new K-Lite version works without any setting out of the box it seems, which has a MPC version 2.0.0 in it.

And the last windows 2000 version is 1.5.0.28.27 Although yet to see the CrystalHD work on w2k, but turn on the app, View, Options, External Filters, Add Filter, Broadcom Video Decoder, OK, set to Prefer and Apply and it should work with the Broadcom's Crystal, like on Windows 7 where I have it working! VLC just sucks on this... So I think I might replace it with MPC overall for portable play. (Might need a restart after adding the Broadcom Video Decoder thing)

Also the K-Lite thing installs a lot of codecs so the Windows Media Player itself can play files like MP4 and have the CrystalHD activated. Although would have liked to see VLC work but used to much time already on it.