Evaluation of HEVC decoders (SW, Hybrid and HW)

[yingming]

Hi, a new version(2.0.3.2) of Strongene Lentoid HEVC decoder was released.

http://strongene.com/en/downloads/downloadCenter.jsp

[NikosD]

Originally Posted by D2MAC

Hi,

WIth this UHD 4K samples 10 bits :

https://www.transfernow.net/fr/330394i14jkx

DXVA2 COPY BACK work randomly.

I can't see where the problem is.

I can play it with all decoders fine.

[Aleksoid1978]

Originally Posted by D2MAC

Hi,

WIth this UHD 4K samples 10 bits :

https://www.transfernow.net/fr/330394i14jkx

DXVA2 COPY BACK work randomly.

Work perfect.

[NikosD]

Originally Posted by yingming

Hi, a new version(2.0.3.2) of Strongene Lentoid HEVC decoder was released.

http://strongene.com/en/downloads/downloadCenter.jsp

Hello.

I see that you are from Beijing and you are developer, so my mind thinks that you are involved in a way with the development of Lentoid HEVC decoder.

I did some preliminary tests with the new decoder and saw that they fixed the two crashes - no crashes any more which is very good.

I'm about to run again the tests with the new decoder v.2.0.3.2 against the new LAV 0.65.

One question:

How can I change the number of threads from "Auto" to a specific figure ?

Whenever I do that from the properties of the decoder it reverts back to "Auto"

thanks

[NikosD]

Originally Posted by P.J

[CPU: i3 4330, Astra HEVC 4K 10-bit, Decode performance]
PDVD15: 30.692 [20-57]
LAV x64: 39.375 [29-68]

This is not a very good comparison.

Can you test clips in DXVA native mode clips 2,4,6 where PDVD DXVA for Intel is faster than LAV DXVA ?

[nussman]

DXVA for 10bit clips on Intel Haswell?
This is not possible or did I miss something?

[yingming]

Originally Posted by NikosD

How can I change the number of threads from "Auto" to a specific figure ?

Whenever I do that from the properties of the decoder it reverts back to "Auto"

Do you mean that after you close the graphstudionext(we use this app to test performance), and open it again the Lentoid decoder filter threads was set to auto again?

Or only if you set threads to a specific number, it become auto immediately？

First situation is normal. But we never meet second situation before.

Thank you for your feedback.

[NikosD]

Originally Posted by yingming

First situation is normal. But we never meet second situation before.

Yes, I meant the first situation, the second would be completely abnormal!

If the first situation is normal, then how could someone set the number of threads before using the decoder ?

Because even if you set it to 2 threads or 32 threads the actual performance is exactly the same.

The decoder doesn't seem to hold the value in the registry or a file.

And since you are here, I would like you to comment this:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.ph...02#post1718202

It seems that in playback mode with any GPU (iGPU or dGPU) the playback in benchmark mode doesn't follow the decode in benchmark mode regarding performance.

Is there somewhere a bottleneck ?

Also I saw that v2.0.3.2 dropped a little the performance of x64 decoder for clips 4 and 5 (2160p), but not for the x86 decoder or the other clips.

Final request:
Add 10 bit HEVC support for the decoder x64/x86, in order to be perfect!

[filler56789]

Originally Posted by NikosD

Final request:
Add 10 bit HEVC support for the decoder x64/x86, in order to be perfect!

+1

For the notes, I sent them that feature request on 2013-December-02. This is the reply they wrote me:

Dear sir,
the Lentoid filter will not support 10-bit HEVC decoding in the near future, thanks for your kind reminder.

The problem of course, is to know what they meant by "near future"

[huhn]

sooner or later they have to.

broadcast is going to be 10 bit same for UHD BD.

even the windows 10 decoder can decode 10 bit HEVC and is pretty fast on top. sadly MF only...

[madshi]

Originally Posted by NikosD

Final request:
Add 10 bit HEVC support for the decoder x64/x86, in order to be perfect!

It's not about being perfect, it's about supporting UHD Blu-Ray, upcoming broadcasts, custom user encodes etc. I'm not sure if there will be a lot of 8bit HEVC sources. I think most HEVC sources will probably be 10bit. So I believe supporting 10bit is crucial.

[NikosD]

Exactly.

I said that in the context that it's a very fast and efficient decoder and lacks only 10 bit support in order to be perfect, meaning a complete ultra fast decoder in all cases.

Because if it was a slow decoder, nobody would really care if it has or not 10 bit support.

[huhn]

windows 10061 i3 4130 r9 270

decode mode

beauty

x86
microsoft MF
50 FPS 86% CPU
lav
22 FPS 92% CPU
lentoid
46 FPS 74%CPU
lentoid openCL
49 FPS 94% CPU 25% GPU

x64
microsoft MF
60 FPS 89% CPU
lav
49 FPS 72 % CPU
lentoid
48 FPS 78 % CPU

unexpected that MF wins so clearly.
but one thing is clear lentoid openCL is worthless on my setup.
about the important of x86 HEVC...
i think it's not important. a systme that can handle HEVC broadcast will be able to use x64. like newer computer games i guess it's time to drop x86 focus in the next years.

[nevcairiel]

FWIW, wrapping a MF decoder into a DS filter isn't very hard. The wmv9 mft decoder in LAV does exactly that - wrap the WMV9 MF decoder, and use it through LAV.
If that should be worth doing for the Microsoft HEVC decoder, I might do it. But not before Win10 is final.

[NikosD]

I haven't tested yet MS MFT HEVC decoder on newer CPU architectures - but only SSSE3 and SSE4.1

I'll test it with the final product.

The truth is that LAV x86 needs any help it can gets on all CPU architectures.

[nevcairiel]

Once content is actually available for HEVC, people might actually be interested in working on it. Its not like there is a company behind FFmpeg that pays developers to improve the HEVC decoder.
If it had just one paid full-time developer for the HEVC decoder, it would probably be running circles around all the competition, since all the basics are already in place, just a lot of optimizations missing - but alas, its open-source, and not a paid product.

In the long run, it'll probably end up the same as the H264 decoder. When H264 was new, a bunch of companies released decoders that performed well (at that time), to make a bit of quick money.
Over time, all these decoders died, since they were no longer maintained, and FFmpeg got faster and faster, and today its the fastest and most feature complete software decoder available to us.

[NikosD]

It seems to me that Lentoid x64/x86 decoders are free for the end user.

Also, competition is good for all, because if FFMpeg didn't have to catch the other decoders, probably the developers would get bored building something faster.

Anyway, LAV x86 is so slow, that is slower than anything else out there (PDVD x86, Microsoft x86, Lentoid x86), so the "easy" and free way to get a boost is the use of Microsoft's HEVC decoder built-in Win 10.

[nevcairiel]

People should really stop using 32-bit though, its always going to be slower, and be much harder to optimize for, and there is no good reason not to go 64-bit these days, not if you already use free players like MPC-HC which come in 64-bit anyway.

[NikosD]

Maybe, but you 're not the one who is going to tell people when and how are they going to upgrade their hardware and software.

Do you volunteer to upgrade their OS ?

Are you going to pay the new HW ?

And if you are talking about people, the truth is that people really don't care if the decoder or the SW product they use, is being built by paid or non-paid developers.

The main issue is if it's free for them, what is going to cost them and if it's fast - if it covers their needs.

[huhn]

the default linked version of mpc hc/be are both 64 bit.
so if you are not into this stuff you will get the 64 bit version this way.

the last thing that needs to change is codec packs people use these and they are usually not 64 bit . and there is no good reason for this anymore the last missing but still pretty special piece of software is reclock that it.

and people that can't use the 64 bit version have PCs that can't deal with HEVC in the first place.

the next thing is future hardware. where DXVA will dominate in the next couple of years making software decoder less important.

let's make this clear my current HTPC can't deal with a 100 Mbit UHD BD even if they increase the performance of software decoder by a factor of 2.