Hardware acceleration of HD movies using DXVA

[Dr.Jones]

This guide will help you to use your graphics to decode HD movies (X.264 - 720p, 1080p). The advantage of this approach is that the CPU is not being used for decoding, and therefore could do other things while. The wizard will play media

Requirements:

A graphics card that supports DXVA - These cards should be helpful:

ATI card:
Desktop Card: HD 38xx, 36xx HD, HD 34xx, HD 26xx and HD 24xx.
Mobility cards: HD 36xx, 34xx HD, HD 26xx, 24xx HD, HD 23xx,
Chip Sets: 780G - Only phenom, Radeon HD 4xxx HD

nVidia cards:
- All GeForce 9xxx cards - mobile and desktop.
- All GeForce 8xxx cards - mobile and desktop (8800GTX and GTS with the G80 Core are excluded.)
- All GeForce 2xx cards.

Intel card:
Intel G45 IGP - (Only on Windows Vista.)

Media Player Classic - Home Cinema

You will also require Haali Media Splitter: You can download it from the official site.

[Dr.Jones]

Guide:

Step 1:
First, install Haali Media Splitter, if not already reserved.

I would also recommend that you upgrade the graphics card drivers to the latest available:

• nVidia - http://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx?lang=en-us
• ATI - http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/Pages/index.aspx

Step 2:

• Install Media Player Classic - Home Cinema - from the link further up.
• The program opens here later.

Step 3:

• Inside In MPCHC press O to enter options.
• You should now be greeted by a window that looks like this:

Inside In playback category, we must ensure that "Auto-load subtitles" is enabled.



This prevent DirectVobSub to autoload as this can have a bad effect on performance.

Step 5:
Next class we will look at the "Output".
What we have to choose here depends on what OS is being used:

Windows XP:
Select "VMR7 (windowed) or WMR9 (windowed).

Windows Vista/Win7

• Select "EVR Custom Press."
• EVR buffers set to lowest possible value.

[Dr.Jones]

Step 6:
The next step is to select "Internal Filters".

• In the "Source Filters", ensure that "Matroska", "Ogg" and "MP4/MOV" is turned off.
• In the "Transform Filters" make sure that "H264/AVC (DXVA)" and "H264/AVC (ffmpeg)" is on.

Step 7:
Finally we must ensure that there are some filters that prevent DXVA, in charge of decoding of the material.
The most important make sure to turn off the "ffdshow Video Decoder".

• To do this inside the "External Filters".
• Here, press the "Add Filter".

• In the new window is selected - "ffdshow Video Decoder" and press OK.
• Back at the first window, select "Block".

Step 8:
Now would seem DXVA - test therefore an HD file.
Note that not all HD movie clips can be played with DXVA decoding. However, I have had no problems with releases Scene.

You should now playback of HD movies, could see a drastic reduction of CPU consumption.

To make sure that DXVA is enabled, you can do this:

• Open an HD video.
• Right click on the video.
• Select "Filter" and then "MPC Video Decoder".

If it looks like the picture, you are running now with DXVA acceleration.

[Dr.Jones]

Image Improvement (Optional):

Now we have our graphics card to play HD material, we can also get it to improve picture quality.

This is done by adding a few pixel shaders.

Step 1:
Open a video, right click on the image.
Here are selected "Shader" -> "Combine Shader".

Step 2:
In the new window is selected:

• 16-235 -> 0-255
• Sharpen complex
• deinterlace (blend)

Step 3:
You should now see the difference right away.
This will require a little tweak on your graphics card , its easy to deal with this.