Hardware Acceleration

[Guest]

Hi HD Wizards!

I have been evaluating VLC on Intel P4, Mac G4, G5, and AMD CPU architectures to see which handles the massive job of decoding HD streams off UDP and RTSP. I use mainly 720p and both 1080i and 1080p. I have noticed that the only CPU architecture that handles all HD modes is the G5. I notice no slowdowns or refresh wipes. Second, comes the AMD XP (I have 1.7 GHz). Next comes the G4 on a PB 17" 1.5 GHz with slight refresh wipes. Surprisingly, the P4 2.8GHz 1GB with SuperMicro server boards came the slowest. The video frames render just fine - just plain sllooow.

My question is can VLC use the rendering power in those high-end ATI or NVdia graphic cards to offload the CPU from decompression/rendering chores? I think VLC uses too much CPU cycles (over 90% in most cases) to be efficient on anything but a dual-core G5.

I only notice in the advance section of the Settings that you can en/disable Altivec, SSI, MMx, ... but those are CPU features only. You are still using the CPU solely for decompression and rendering work. It would be nice to use those quad-rendering pipes of those expensive video cards.

Any plans to at least offer those features in the future?

Thanks!

[Guest]

There aren't any universal GPU algorithms available so only option is to use DXVA (DirectX Video Acceleration, which is naturally for Windows only). NVIDIA Purevideo and ATI AVIVO are mostly vapor, they do exist but DXVA isn't really supported by any player. And encoded video lacks on quality against CPU algorithms.
DXVA support was discussed earlier this year, and if I recall right it didn't get much support.
Until generic GPU algos appear there aren't any hope for faster decoder/encoder.

[winmac96]

Sounds like a possible open-source project to me. Is there one being worked on right now. I guess I can search sourgeforge.org.

I think a generic GPU HAL of some sort would be ideal. Now that I am thinking about it, VLC 0.8.4 introduced hardware abstraction. Can HAL in VLC tweaked in future version to support GPU acceleration in future release.

Thanks!

[Guest]

Hi HD Wizards!

I have been evaluating VLC on Intel P4, Mac G4, G5, and AMD CPU architectures to see which handles the massive job of decoding HD streams off UDP and RTSP. I use mainly 720p and both 1080i and 1080p. I have noticed that the only CPU architecture that handles all HD modes is the G5. I notice no slowdowns or refresh wipes. Second, comes the AMD XP (I have 1.7 GHz). Next comes the G4 on a PB 17" 1.5 GHz with slight refresh wipes. Surprisingly, the P4 2.8GHz 1GB with SuperMicro server boards came the slowest. The video frames render just fine - just plain sllooow.

My question is can VLC use the rendering power in those high-end ATI or NVdia graphic cards to offload the CPU from decompression/rendering chores? I think VLC uses too much CPU cycles (over 90% in most cases) to be efficient on anything but a dual-core G5.

I only notice in the advance section of the Settings that you can en/disable Altivec, SSI, MMx, ... but those are CPU features only. You are still using the CPU solely for decompression and rendering work. It would be nice to use those quad-rendering pipes of those expensive video cards.

Any plans to at least offer those features in the future?

Thanks!

I can only speak for a windows xp system, but I have found that the problems you speak of are common in this environment. Microsoft advertised Hipper Threading through DirectX and was to be made fully functional with DirectX 9c. After spending countless hours on Windows web sites and in various forums, it seems this is not true and has never been finished. Microsoft has a demo site for WMP 10 that will allow you to test your system, Mine fails all the tests yet played the 720p format with no skipped frames but 80 to 90% CPU usage. Microsoft claims that my video card drivers can be updated to allow even higher resolutions. As I have the latest drivers for my card I have continued to pursue this problem. I'm not sure which of the two solutions I tried solved the issue, but I now have 720p running a 4 to 6% CPU usage. I found that the SDKs for developers seemed to help. I believe DirectX runtime must also be installed (directx_9c_oct05sdk_redist). I also have a helper file (proppage.dll) installed for Graph Edit that seemed to make everything gel. The biggest problem I have now is some non standard resolutions in Mpeg ATSC TS files (1920x1080) But even this can be overcome with the use of yet another plug-in (DVBPortal's HDTV Pump) for WMP 10. I have noticed that the higher the resolution the more CPU power it requires. I think 1080p now takes about 40 or 50% on a 2.8 Pentium running an embedded ATI Radon chip set.

I can only guess that all the lawsuits over Windows Media Players has caused Microsoft to drag there feet. VISTA anyone??

[wiak]

MPEG-2 Hardware Decoding has been around for a decade! (10 years!)

H.264/AVC Hardware Decoding this is brand new and has to be supported as it will GREATly reduse load on the CPU! ( ATI and NVIDIA has released drivers that support decoding in hardware!) ( ATI's Catalyst 5.13 released with support for H.264!)

[akala]

Hello,

My server has quad CPUs (each one is intel Xeon E5504 2Gz). I have compiled VLC sources and required packages as described http://wiki.videolan.org/VLC_VAAPI page. Graphic Card is Nvidia FX1800. The command vainfo returns without error. My libva setting is LD_LIBVA_DRIVERS_PATH=/usr/lib/dri and LD_LIBVA_DRIVER_NAME=nvidia.
When i open a mk file with h264 coded then it goes around %40 CPU usage which is i think too much. What do you think?
Best Regards
Aydemir

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

What does vainfo says?