Problems with PureVideo and video hardware decoding

[achele]

Hi all
I have two PC systems, the one equipped with a GeForce 7950GT, the other with a Quadro FX1500. OS is XP SP2 in both cases. Purevideo (trial version) installed on both machines, also Forceware 93.71. I use Windows Mediaplayer 9 on the one and WMP 10 on the other machine. I am wondering about the hardware decoding feature. When playing a DVD from the local drive then the Nvidie Decoders icon appears in the system tray, so I can open the control panel. The same is true when playing a locally stored h264 encoded video. Also the CPU load is reduced when the hardware acceleration option is checked in the control panel, as expected. But the icon does not appear when playing a local wmv file, though wmv should be supported. Also, when processing wmv streaming video content from a Mediaserver, the icon is not available.
So I cannot get hardware decoding enabled for wmv videos. Has this to be explicitely enabled somehow or is there something else to consider? Do the graphic cards support hardware decoding only in case of local playback, but not for video streams received from the network? Anyone an idea? Thanks

 

[cleeve]

Purevideo no longer requires it's own special decoder.

Hardware acceleration can be anabled in the drivers, it's in a weird spot though. Check here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/01/09/avivo-vs-purevideo/page4.html

You also should make sure hardware acceleration is enabled in your player... nero showtime or Cyberlink's PowerDVD or what have you.

 

[achele]

Thanks for your response. But my problem is not that hardware acceleration is not available at all, but is only activated when reading local files of certain format (h264 encoded or DVD from the drive) - at least that is my assumption, as only then the icon for the Purevideo decoder configuration dialog is displayed in the system tray, also only in these cases I can observe a decrease in CPU load.
So what I want to know:
I am able to play wmv videos using Windows Media Player 9, but I cannot observe that hardware acceleration is activated here, though NVidia states that this feature is supported for wmv. So what is going wrong? Eventually this requires WMP 11?
Is hardware acceleration available for local videos only (filesystem, DVD drive) or also for video streams received from some remote Mediaserver over Inter/Intranet?

Best Regards

 

[cleeve]

Installing the purevideo decoder does not enable all of the hardware acceleration.

You also have to enable it in the driver as listed above.

Did you read the link?

 

[achele]

Hello
Yes I have read that article, at least the page that is linked, thx. I have tried out the proposed settings:

In NVIDIA Control Panel
- Inverse telecine option is checked
- Noise reduction slider is set to 100%
- Edge enhancement is set to 100% (no 'Detail enhancement' found, using german localization)

In NVIDIA Decoder properties
-Video tab: Hardware acceleration option is checked

BUT: WMP 9 offers a "preferred decoder" option (hidden at Options -> Performance Tab -> Advanced -> Video acceleration settings). In my case this is set to value "software" and not to "hardware". The issue is that this is not enabled, so I cannot change this setting, even when logged on having administrative rights. Will have to check how this can be enabled.

Regards