How to get better performance when playing HD H.264

[penguincentral]

This works fantastic. My 1080i video performance is heaps better. Thanks

[enkidu]

My graphics card has on board video decoding, does VideoLan support, or will it support this?
This post suggests it doesn't and isn't likely to in the foreseeable future viewtopic.php?f=14&t=44499&p=140451&hilit=Avivo#p140451

I found that VLC 0.8.6* does achieve hardware acceleration of x264-encoded streams on my Nvidia GeForce Go7300, in WindowsXP SP2.

Nvidia users will recall that series 6- and 7- GPUs provide partial H.264 acceleration, while series 8- and over provide acceleration of all H.264 functions (notice I explicitly avoid the highly confusing "PureVideo" term).

Well, I encode my SD videos with x264 and VLC plays it back with hardware acceleration.
How do I know ? I get near-zero CPU usage, as opposed to 10-30% CPU usage when not accelerated.
My statement needs some qualification however :

• 1. VLC accelerates playback if the "Output Module" is explicitly set to "DirectX", not to "Default"
  2. I have found no acceleration if it is set to "Direct3D" (or any other module)
  3. hardware acceleration is sporadic :
  • 3.1 boot my laptom, play a video with VLC -- GPU-acceleration is ON (near-zero CPU)
    3.2 play it with another player (MPC-HC for instance) -- no GPU acceleration (CPU > 20%)
    3.3 close other player and play again with VLC -- no GPU acceleration (CPU > 20%)
    3.4 reboot or go to standby & back -- -- GPU-acceleration is ON

I have only tried this with SD (720x576/PAL) content because that's all I have.
I would like the community to confirm my findings :

• 1. with 720p content or higher
  2. with NVidia 8-series CPUs

always using WinXP SP2 of course.
My guess is that when VLC is forced to use DirectX, then it accesses the DXVA function (v1 under XP does provide hardware acceleration).

To conclude, I think the PureVideo label (if not the technology) has contributed so much fudge to this topic that people have been thrown off-track. I've been trying to achieve x264 hardware acceleration ever since I got my laptop last year, have tested dozens of players, and VLC would systematically yield the best playback results.
I figure this is why.

Any & all comments are welcome.
enkidu

[heffeque]

I found that VLC 0.8.6* does achieve hardware acceleration of x264-encoded streams on my Nvidia GeForce Go7300, in WindowsXP SP2. [...]

Is there anything similar for Linux and/or MacOS X?

[baileyrays]

This is new to me i would like to try it tonight.

[Ux64]

Any real news to this problem? I'm (as many others) looking for multithreaded version. Any news about schedules or time tables when that kind of release would be out? - Thank you!

I won't buy new full hd tv, before this problem is fixed. Because I can't view Full HD stuff with Q6600 CPU, not enough punch.

[stenc55]

Weird

I have e4300 (overclocked to 2,7GHz) with Vista64, 8800GT and 2GB RAM.
When I tried to play Transformers.2007.1080p.HDDVD.x264-hV.mkv on beginning scene (with cube spinning from space) movie transformed to slideshow and sound was 10 sec behind picture.
I tried warious codecs, players, nothing worked. From sidebar I saw movie always used only one core.

Then I reinstalled Vista and installed ONLY VLC from 0.86. series. No tweaks, no default changes and movie played perfectly. CPU load was 30-50%, both cores used. I don't know if GPU kicked in, but movie was perfect.

Now I'm using Dell Inspirion 1520 with XP SP3 (fresh instalation). Just for test I played this movie again from USB drive and again I have absolutely no problem. Both cores used, CPU load form 20-70%, even in beginning scene. I'm using 0.9.0 on laptop.

I tried one another laptop (HP with around 14" monitor) and celeron 1,7GHz processor. Fresh installed XP SP2. I tried several 720p movies (from 4,5 to 8 GB in size) and they all played ok, CPU load from 60-90%, picture almost never freezed. I used portable VLC from 0.86 series, I don,t remember version.

Looks like using other players with load of codecs spammed into system corrupts VLC.

I'm not using ANY other player, not even PowerDVD, since 0.9.0 handles even DVD well. If anyone have issue with playing HD movies in VLC, try to clean system first, throw all other codec packs to garbage with good uninstaller and try to get rid of all codec settings left from other players.

[Ux64]

I'm very curious if 0.9.2 version fixes these performance problems. It would be so great.

[dionoea]

ffmpeg doesn't implement multithreaded video decoding yet. So you might get some slight performance changes due to optimizations but nothing fancy.

They're currently experimenting a multithreaded implementation of their H264 decoder ... so it should be merged in the official SVN in the near/middle future.

[colt45]

ffmpeg doesn't implement multithreaded video decoding yet. So you might get some slight performance changes due to optimizations but nothing fancy.

They're currently experimenting a multithreaded implementation of their H264 decoder ... so it should be merged in the official SVN in the near/middle future.

I haven't seen an announcement at http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/

However, the SoC 2008 project was completed and has been available since September 4, 2008.

Alexander_Strange.tar.gz Frame-based multithreading patch Sep 04 27.0 KB 118

http://code.google.com/p/google-summer- ... loads/list

[prune]

VLC lag out on H.264 quite often myself. It's decent.

Unfortunately it isn't. In case there is some heavy h.264 stuff coming in. Like direct Blu-ray / HD-DVD rip. -> 45 gigabytes of data for 1.5 hour of stuff. It got pretty hefty bitrate so it totally kills my Q6600 CPU. And everything turns to very slow slide show.

Those settings are barely adequate for ~4 Gbytes / 1.5 hour rips.

Maybe you will run into harddrive bandwidth problems too...

[Ux64]

Those settings are barely adequate for ~4 Gbytes / 1.5 hour rips.

Maybe you will run into harddrive bandwidth problems too...

Most probably not. Harddrives easily transfer 80-100 megabytes / second.

4 Gigabytes / 1.5 hours means only 740 kilobytes / second. Which is even streamable over internet connection, nothing to do with hard drive speeds.

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

ffmpeg doesn't implement multithreaded video decoding yet. So you might get some slight performance changes due to optimizations but nothing fancy.

They're currently experimenting a multithreaded implementation of their H264 decoder ... so it should be merged in the official SVN in the near/middle future.

I haven't seen an announcement at http://ffmpeg.mplayerhq.hu/

However, the SoC 2008 project was completed and has been available since September 4, 2008.

Alexander_Strange.tar.gz Frame-based multithreading patch Sep 04 27.0 KB 118

http://code.google.com/p/google-summer- ... loads/list

It is not finished yet, so not officially in FFmpeg, we try to avoid that.

[Ohajiki]

I've done as said but stilll having issues with an mp4 h.264 file

[fixeon]

H.264 codecs are pretty CPU intensive and VLC can't use multi-cores to decode it yet.

So if your computer is dying when decoding 1080p samples from H264, do the following.

• Open the preferences
• Tick advanced in the lower right corner
• Go to "Input/Codec"
• Go to "other codecs" subcategory
• Go to "FFmpeg"
• Put the "skip-filter for H264" to all
• Restart VLC

DON'T ASK help about this on IRC or I may kill you

Edited on public intrest by MetalheadGautham:

to the guys complaining that C2Q Q6600 and AMD Phenom can't run HD H.264:

Only ONE CORE among their 4 cores is used. Their indivudual core power is quite average. You would have a better performance with a high power per core CPU like C2D E8400.

...Thats UNLTIL multicore support appears on H264 decoder

Thx you saved my life!

this should be a sticky

[traktion]

H.264 codecs are pretty CPU intensive and VLC can't use multi-cores to decode it yet.

So if your computer is dying when decoding 1080p samples from H264, do the following.

• Open the preferences
• Tick advanced in the lower right corner
• Go to "Input/Codec"
• Go to "other codecs" subcategory
• Go to "FFmpeg"
• Put the "skip-filter for H264" to all
• Restart VLC

Thanks this has given some improvement in non-1080p sources, but still any 1080p MKV file with x264/h.264 thats over 8 gigs for a movie chops constantly.

Ultimately after reading this whole thread I've learned the reasons for skipping are:

1. VLC doesnt support multithreading yet.
2. 3D video card accleration for h.264/x.264 is only partial on older video cards.
3. 3D accleration may not be enabled sometimes (reasons unknown? Using directx selection under output modules ensures acceleration?)

This should definetely be a sticky, I may have to upgrade my video card and use media player in the mean time.

I'm curious to know why my CPU is not running more than 50% capacity. Is it a CPU or GPU type of scenario where one or the other but not both working together?

[traktion]

I found a list of geforce cards with the purevideo acceleration, shows a chart of different features with hidef vs standard h264/x264 support.
http://www.nvidia.com/docs/CP/11036/Pur ... arison.pdf


Checkout this amazing h264 article over at anandtech, basically they are saying unless you get atleast a 8600 GT (strangely 8800 doesnt do full h264 support) you may still have chop on high bitrate files.

http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2977

[gionnico]

I found higher bitrate H.264 videos which still won't run on with Q6600 CPU.

Hey you Q6600 guys, why don't you overclock it?

I also have Q6600 .. (stepping G0 is better) and I did 2.4 -> 3.2 GHz ..

I'll try x264 high-ratio video, but performances should be really better.

at-traktion: well do vlc need to worry about how gpu compute a video stream? isn't it a low-level operation? or PureVideo needs specific vlc support to exploit the full capabilities of our video cards?


PS: and what about 8800GT? It isn't "full-hd" accelerated?

[Shakama]

Weird

I have e4300 (overclocked to 2,7GHz) with Vista64, 8800GT and 2GB RAM.
When I tried to play Transformers.2007.1080p.HDDVD.x264-hV.mkv on beginning scene (with cube spinning from space) movie transformed to slideshow and sound was 10 sec behind picture.
I tried warious codecs, players, nothing worked. From sidebar I saw movie always used only one core.

Then I reinstalled Vista and installed ONLY VLC from 0.86. series. No tweaks, no default changes and movie played perfectly. CPU load was 30-50%, both cores used. I don't know if GPU kicked in, but movie was perfect...

Looks like using other players with load of codecs spammed into system corrupts VLC.

I'm not using ANY other player, not even PowerDVD, since 0.9.0 handles even DVD well. If anyone have issue with playing HD movies in VLC, try to clean system first, throw all other codec packs to garbage with good uninstaller and try to get rid of all codec settings left from other players.

does this mean I shouldnt install K-lite codec pack because it causes problems in VLC?

[bdforbes]

I got a HQ video off Youtube, it's h264 and according to ffmpeg is 2129 kb/s. It plays fine in mplayer but it's choppy in VLC, even with this fix. Aren't the two players both using ffmpeg though? Why should there be a difference?

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Give us the samples, please.

[Username2324]

Doesn't this lower the quality of your video?

[AOD_WMD]

This fixed my problem. Thank you so much for providing a quick fix.







q9500w/8gb/2.5TB0+1-6hdd/9800gx2

[jeroensky]

Just a question.
VLC uses as much gpu power as possible with default configuratiuon right?
So if you got a say nvidia graphics card, with hardware h.264 decoder in it, then i suppose vlc is using that instead by doing it the software/cpu way right?

[Jean-Baptiste Kempf]

Just a question.
VLC uses as much gpu power as possible with default configuratiuon right?
So if you got a say nvidia graphics card, with hardware h.264 decoder in it, then i suppose vlc is using that instead by doing it the software/cpu way right?

No, it cannot (yet)

[Darren32]

the sound codec is mp4a.
I can play it with sound using Dvix player but cannot play it using VLC player