1080p video not being accelerated

[Brendy]

Hey everybody.

So recently I've been trying to watch some videos in 1080p. I only have two at the moment. When I first tried to watch it, my cpu usage shot up to 80% or so and audio/video were out of sync and jittery. So, I found this site http://nunnally.ahmygoddess.net/watching-h264-videos-using-dxva/ and followed all of it's instructions to setup media player classic home cinema to play the video. It worked and I saw the lovely words "Now playing [DXVA]" meaning that my video played perfectly.

I tried playing a different video, also an mkv file, and it didn't display those nice words. Same symptoms as described above in VLC, MPC-HC and WMP11. I've got CoreAVC Professional installed but that doesn't make much difference. I also have CCCP (a codec pack). Here are my system specs followed by the video details:

CPU: Pentium 4 3.2GHz
RAM: 2GB DDR2
Windows XP SP3 32-Bit
ATI Radeon HD4670 512mb (Sapphire) PCI-E
Catalyst 2009.1214.1801.32312 (it was the hotfix version)
All drivers up-to-date

Video details:

General
Format : Matroska
File size : 4.77 GiB
Duration : 2h 6mn
Overall bit rate : 5 400 Kbps
Encoded date : UTC 2009-04-19 03:42:12
Writing application : mkvmerge v2.7.0 ('Do It Again') built on Apr 15 2009 00:27:10
Writing library : libebml v0.7.7 + libmatroska v0.8.1

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L5.0
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 5 frames
Muxing mode : Container profile=Unknown@5.0
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 2h 6mn
Bit rate : 4 013 Kbps
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 1 080 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 16:9
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Resolution : 8 bits
Colorimetry : 4:2:0
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.081
Stream size : 3.54 GiB (74%)
Writing library : x264 core 67 r1140 37424f8
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=5 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x133 / me=umh / subme=7 / psy_rd=1.0:0.0 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=18 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=2 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=6 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / mbaff=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=1 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=1 / wpredb=1 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=70 / rc=cqp / qp=24 / ip_ratio=1.40 / pb_ratio=1.30 / aq=0

Audio #2
ID : 3
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Codec ID : A_AC3
Duration : 2h 6mn
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 640 Kbps
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel positions : Front: L C R, Surround: L R, LFE
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Stream size : 579 MiB (12%)
Title : English Audio 5.1ch
Language : English

I've done a lot of reading but don't know much about decoders and all of this so most of it went over my head. The site that described how to set up MPC-HC had a video (the James bond one) that apparently couldn't be accelerated by ATI cards. Is that true for all cards or is there some hope for mine? Any help would be greatly appreciated and I'll provide any extra information needed if you could tell me how to obtain it

 

[jaguarskx]

My guess your single core P4 is the bottleneck. The typical recommendation for x.264 playback is a dual core CPU.

In MPC-HC's internal filter options did you:

1. Uncheck Matroska source filter
2. Check off H264 / AVC (DXVA) and H264 / AVC (FFmpeg)

 

[Brendy]

My guess your single core P4 is the bottleneck. The typical recommendation for x.264 playback is a dual core CPU.

In MPC-HC's internal filter options did you:

1. Uncheck Matroska source filter
2. Check off H264 / AVC (DXVA) and H264 / AVC (FFmpeg)

Thanks for the quick reply.
Matroska is unchecked but if I uncheck the other two then I can't play Ironman at all because MPC claims it doesn't have the codecs to play it. I also think my CPU is at fault but that's why I'm trying to get my graphics card to do the work. Ironman plays fine and it's 1080p. My CPU only shows about 5% usage during playback since the graphics card is doing the work. (I'll paste the details for Ironman below). For the other video my CPU goes to 80% and the video plays terribly.

General
Format : Matroska
File size : 7.95 GiB
Duration : 2h 6mn
Overall bit rate : 9 027 Kbps
Encoded date : UTC 2008-09-13 17:44:51
Writing application : mkvmerge v2.0.2 ('You're My Flame') built on Feb 21 2007 23:40:55
Writing library : libebml v0.7.7 + libmatroska v0.8.1

Video
ID : 1
Format : AVC
Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile : High@L4.0
Format settings, CABAC : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames : 5 frames
Muxing mode : Container profile=Unknown@4.0
Codec ID : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration : 2h 5mn
Bit rate : 8 207 Kbps
Nominal bit rate : 8 385 Kbps
Width : 1 920 pixels
Height : 800 pixels
Display aspect ratio : 2.40:1
Frame rate : 23.976 fps
Resolution : 8 bits
Colorimetry : 4:2:0
Scan type : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.223
Stream size : 7.22 GiB (91%)
Writing library : x264 core 61 r957 7ce0f2c
Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=5 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x133 / me=umh / subme=6 / brdo=1 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / chroma_qp_offset=0 / threads=6 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / mbaff=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=1 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=1 / wpredb=1 / bime=1 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40(pre) / rc=2pass / bitrate=8385 / ratetol=1.0 / qcomp=1.00 / qpmin=10 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / ip_ratio=1.40 / pb_ratio=1.30 / aq=2:1.00
Language : English

Audio
ID : 2
Format : AC-3
Format/Info : Audio Coding 3
Codec ID : A_AC3
Duration : 2h 6mn
Bit rate mode : Constant
Bit rate : 640 Kbps
Channel(s) : 6 channels
Channel positions : Front: L C R, Surround: L R, LFE
Sampling rate : 48.0 KHz
Stream size : 577 MiB (7%)
Title : AC3 640 Kbps
Language : English

Text #1
ID : 3
Format : UTF-8
Codec ID : S_TEXT/UTF8
Codec ID/Info : UTF-8 Plain Text
Language : English

Text #2
ID : 4
Format : UTF-8
Codec ID : S_TEXT/UTF8
Codec ID/Info : UTF-8 Plain Text
Language : English

I noticed that the format profiles are different and I came across a few places that mentioned format profiles but didn't quite understand why some allowed hardware acceleration and others didn't.

 

[steadfast1984]

when i installed COREAVC it wouldn't work properly with the CCCP codec still installed, so i got rid of that and got a AC3 audio codec to work along side coreavc then everything worked beuty. mind you i was just looking for something with cuda support. i dont have problems running raw blueray files or mkv on my rig.

 

[Brendy]

It seems that it's a driver issue on ATI's side. The hardware is capapble of accelerating the video but the drivers don't support anything higher than blu-ray specifications I guess I have to wait.

 

[Kewlx25]

My i7(stock 920) uses only 10% cpu with no HW accel for 1080p with official Quicktime 1080p movie tailors.

Time for an upgrade.

 

[Anbesol]

This is ridiculous, I'm looking everywhere for hte same answer and nobody has it. I've got 2 HTPC's in my home, one of them is a P4 3.4 OC with an All-in-wonder (cant remember model, its the one with the 750mhz core). My others an AMD X2 @ 2.0 with an ATI X700, though both overall comparable, the AMD has the edge for CPU power.

I must have configured something differently in K-Lite, or, its an issue with the drivers. But on the P4 machine (with the newer ATI card and drivers), GPU handles all of the media load - I can play 1080p media files and it doesn't even barely nick the CPU. On my other one, it syncs terribly at 1080p and floods the CPU @ 100%. Obviously, the card isn't handling the media, but why, what the heck can I do!?!? ITs driving me nuts, is it a matter of ATI's legacy driver thats just terrible? AAARGH!

 

[Brendy]

From what I could gather, some 1080p videos will be accelerated by the ATI cards no problems and others won't. It's only the 1080p videos that are encoded above blu-ray specifications that can't be decoded by the graphics cards because the ATI drivers don't support it. If you play the same video file do you still get one HTPC doing fine while the other one is overloaded?

I really hope ATI support this in their drivers eventually but I'm trying not to get my hopes up since people have been complaining about this for at least a year. I wish I bough an Nvidia card now :/

 

[Anbesol]

Yeah I found out the problem is DXVA support for H264, which I can't get to work on my X700 and it probably just doesn't support it. Its a bummer because the X700 has enough power to do it, it just doesn't support it in driver (or, hardware GPU string). I'm hoping thats not the case but its looking to be the case, thanks for your help.

Playing above blu-ray specs, you mean, video files larger than 1080p?

 

[Brendy]

Playing above blu-ray specs, you mean, video files larger than 1080p?

Normally the videos that are above blu-ray specs have more reference frames or a higher number of frames per second. I've never seen one with a resolution higher than 1080p though

 

[Guest]

My hardware:
Pentium 4 3.4 GHz
Ati 4670 HD 500 Mb
2 GB ram
Onboard audio
My software:
WinXP pro sp2
MPC-HomeCinema
(in options check "Playback Output: VMR9 renderless" and "Internal Filters:all checked")
It plays all 720p AND 1080p movies (mkv, avi, divx, xvid, mpeg4, mts) with internal or external subtitles no problem.

 

[Brendy]

It plays all 720p AND 1080p movies (mkv, avi, divx, xvid, mpeg4, mts) with internal or external subtitles no problem.

I've got pretty much identical specs and can also play all 720p videos. What kind of 1080p videos are you playing? Do you know what the specs are? Reference frames, fps, format profile etc? I can play any 1080p video that is a direct blu-ray rip. So that would be 4 reference frames with 29.something fps. Anything with more reference frames and the vid is no longer hardware accelerated and stutters.

 

[karma831]

when i installed COREAVC it wouldn't work properly with the CCCP codec still installed, so i got rid of that and got a AC3 audio codec to work along side coreavc then everything worked beuty. mind you i was just looking for something with cuda support. i dont have problems running raw blueray files or mkv on my rig.

To use both CCCP and COREAVC you have to

Go in your cccp folder
>filters
>video
disable the h.264 decoder
its standard are libavc on