CoreCodec/H.264 Codec "CoreAVC"

[leeperry]

Not CUDA but DXVA.... [..]
Sorry it's a german site...
very nice, thanks! but they didn't try full software decoding to compare?

I see several other decoders fight to take CoreAVC's speed crown...but what matters to me is my electricity bill in the end. I'll try to find someone w/ a wattmeter to check, and I'll report back.

[turok]

I have problems playing a H.264 720p video on my comp like lagging and stuff: Would changing the deblock from standard to skip always fix the problem and allow me to play the 720p video without problems? My comp is old lol running an xp sp3 1.25gb ram pentiium 4 @ 2.4ghz and no its not dual core theres only one.

[Mixer73]

I see several other decoders fight to take CoreAVC's speed crown...but what matters to me is my electricity bill in the end. I'll try to find someone w/ a wattmeter to check, and I'll report back.

I concur, and where you will find electricity savings you'll also find lower heat and therefore less noise in a HTPC, which is a major criteria for me.

[AnonCrow]

Would changing the deblock from standard to skip always fix the problem and allow me to play the 720p video without problems?
It might, but it'd also introduce horrible artifacts, unless the video is very high quality - low quantizers.
I just skip B-frames alltogether.

Alternatives:
temporarily re-encode each video
either into x264 using ultrafast preset (or any other with --tune fastdecode if you don't mind it taking longer), with a relatively low CRF (14-20) to maintain some quality, or
into XVID or MPEG2 which should take even less power to decode; and might have better hardware decoding support on older videocards.

Overclock your P4 just a little; 10 to 15% overclock shouldn't need a voltage increase.

If spending some money isn't out of the question (double digit $/€) , an AGP ATI/AMD card should be able to decode lower resolution H.264 material , YMMV with 720P, not enough bandwidth for 1080P.

[turok]

Just tried it although it does bring artifacts I can do 720p just fine.i can decode anything not 720p just fine or more like as long as its not higher than 960x720 i can decode it just fine lol.

[dZeus]

-cut-
Overclock your P4 just a little; 10 to 15% overclock shouldn't need a voltage increase.

If spending some money isn't out of the question (double digit $/€) , an AGP ATI/AMD card should be able to decode lower resolution H.264 material , YMMV with 720P, not enough bandwidth for 1080P.

What do you mean, not enough bandwidth for 1080p? I haven't seen a sample that failed to play without framedrops on my HD3650 AGP in DXVA.

[puffpio]

I'm having a problem with CoreAVC 2 64 bit on my Core 2 Duo (T7300) laptop with Windows 7 64 bit decoding HD sized videos.
CPU usage will shoot up to 100% and the video will slow down for a minute or two..it will play so slowly that the audio will stutter so it doesn't get too far ahead of the video, then the video will play very fast to catch up to the audio..it will play at normal speed for a minute or two during which the CPU usage is not maxed out, and then it will repeat. This makes videos unwatchable.

I switched back to ffdshow and ffmpeg-mt and it plays my 720p content just fine...I bought CoreAVC because I thought I would be able to play back 1080p through my laptop..but this really sucks.

For a sample clip, please PM me and I'll provide a link.
..the first 2 minutes of this show, when the jungle scenes first come on.my cpu shoots to 100% and the playback slows to a crawl and audio stutters..whereas with ffmpeg-mt it plays fine

-----

well..i switched from using the haali renderer in media player classic home cinema to EVR custom and it appears to have fixed everything. curious why haali's renderer would cause those problems

[JohnnyFu]

I know you will strike me Betaboy but you have to take critisism in order to make a better product, right? No negative feelings!

I was recently asked for a good reason to buy CoreAVC when I was promoting the the 2.0 release on a german forum. To my own surprise I didn't know any.

Wait.... I just remembered the initial reason for me to buy CoreAVC three years ago. It was

GPU support (to be added**) ** GPU scheduled to be added at a later date

I guess it is just bad luck that I had just bought myself an ATi card when CUDA was implemented two years later.

However, I spend the last two weeks with my new Philips Flat, an HTPC and 7MC. My conclusion is that I have to uninstall both CoreAVC and Haali Renderer for now.

MPCVideoDec.ax is way faster on my ATI card then CoreAVC 2.0 thanks to DXVA. And Haali's Renderer caused a bit of pain to me. It registers itself for almost eveything by default even though it can't even handle VC-1/M2TS at all. So I figured MPC splitters are the better solution for now. Hopefully Haali fixes VC-1 soon.

[avivahl]

And Haali's Renderer caused a bit of pain to me. It registers itself for almost eveything by default even though it can't even handle VC-1/M2TS at all. So I figured MPC splitters are the better solution for now. Hopefully Haali fixes VC-1 soon.Couldn't you simply uncheck everything (but "MKV") in the installation? or is there a bug?

[ForceX]

If I recall correctly, if you choose to install the embedded Haali splitter in CoreAVC installation, it does a silent installation without showing the dialogue box, so no way to modify it. One way to fix this after installation is to regsvr32 /u the individual DLLs for the problematic file types.

[avivahl]

Well, then one could probably install Haali manually (unchecking the boxes he doesn't want), and then install CoreAVC w/o Haali. Isn't that possible?

[squid_80]

MPCVideoDec.ax is way faster on my ATI card then CoreAVC 2.0 thanks to DXVA.
I'd like to see some benchmarks to back that up... or what you really meant to say is that it's just lighter on the cpu when playing in realtime.

[STaRGaZeR]

I'd like to see some benchmarks to back that up... or what you really meant to say is that it's just lighter on the cpu when playing in realtime.

It means that you can actually play stuff without perfomance issues. And you know that. A benchmark like TimeCodec is useless, it doesn't show when the decoder can't work in realtime at some points.

[wOxxOm]

biXPelsPerMeter, biYPelsPerMeter confusion...

CoreAVC decoder (as well as ffmpeg's libav/h264) seems to mistreat haali splitter's OUT-pin properties biXPelsPerMeter/biYPelsPerMeter (used for SAR correction numerator/denominator in mp4/mkv header)

e.g. I have a 1440x800 mkv with 16:9 AR set in mkv header. It should play at 1440x810, but when haali splitter is used in MPCHC (which sets biX/YPelsPerMeter unlike the standard Gabest's splitter), the video stream is decoded to a strange resolution (1536x800) with strange AR (4551:2560) then gets rescaled by renderer (any of them) to the correct AR & size. And though the result video size is correct but I'm afraid that 1) the quality degrades due to intermediate resizing 2) performance-wise it's not optimal.

These picture properties in haali splitter's output video pin entangle the CoreAVC h264 decoder:
biXPelsPerMeter: 81 (Haali - AR correction numerator, 81 in my case)
biYPelsPerMeter: 80 (Haali - AR correction denominator, 80 in my case)

* since 1440x800 @ 16:9 = 1440x810, so AR correction is 800/810 = 80/81
** biXPelsPerMeter, biYPelsPerMeter = 0 in the [standard] Gabest's mkv splitter.

[squid_80]

It means that you can actually play stuff without perfomance issues. And you know that.
That's not what he said at all, and I don't know it because it's not true - CoreAVC running on any average pc bought within the past 3 years (excluding atom, which are far below average) will give much better performance than a hardware decoder running on the same machine.

[STaRGaZeR]

Why the 3 year limit? Core2 launch? What about the huge number of slow P4s and the like out there? :rolleyes:

If better perfomance means higher TimeCodec numbers, then probably yes depending on the case, but if better perfomance means playing 1080i60 Blu-ray streams with high quality deinterlacing on insert-whatever-old-CPU-name-here (way older than 3 years), most likely not, because your "average" 3 year-old CPU running CoreAVC won't be able to do it.

[squid_80]

Why the 3 year limit? Core2 launch? What about the huge number of slow P4s and the like out there? :rolleyes:

If better perfomance means higher TimeCodec numbers, then probably yes depending on the case, but if better perfomance means playing 1080i60 Blu-ray streams with high quality deinterlacing on insert-whatever-old-CPU-name-here (way older than 3 years), most likely not, because your "average" 3 year-old CPU running CoreAVC won't be able to do it.
Are you the original poster that I was talking to? Or did you even bother to read his post before you jumped in and started derailing the conversation?

Wait.... I just remembered the initial reason for me to buy CoreAVC three years ago.
[..]
However, I spend the last two weeks with my new Philips Flat, an HTPC and 7MC.

[JohnnyFu]

I'd like to see some benchmarks to back that up... or what you really meant to say is that it's just lighter on the cpu when playing in realtime.

Yes, what I really meant is that it doesn't need much CPU at all.

CoreAVC running on any average pc bought within the past 3 years (excluding atom, which are far below average) will give much better performance than a hardware decoder running on the same machine.

People will not take you seriuos if you post things like that.

I remember three years ago, november 2006, I did some very extensive benchmarks here on doom9 between CoreAVC and Cyberlink, unfortunately the screenshot results are lost. Even back then Cyberlink was way faster (lighter on the cpu) then CoreAVC and was the only way for me to actually watch some BBC (Planet Earth) videos on my Athlon CPU. I bought back then CoreAVC because they announced hardware support for their decoder as well. Well, we all know how that ended up...

Today, three years later, there at least two more decoders with hardware support out there. And they are all WAY much faster then CoreAVC. Yes you know what I mean squid_80, they don't break my system during video playback. Even today I can't watch all my h264 videos using CoreAVC on my HTPC (AMD X2 235e). Ok, I have to admit CoreAVC performs well on my workstation (Intel Quad Core) though.... :mad:

[Blue_MiSfit]

If you're having issues with your CPU not being quite fast enough (even with CoreAVC), then you should experiment with different renderers. My Quadro NVS130 (basically a GeForce 8400M) is pretty slow, so I can't use EVR or haali for 1080p stuff, even with CoreAVC decoding. So, I often use VMR7, which is quite fast, though not quite as pretty (running Windows 7 x64 btw).

On XP, you could also try overlay mixer.

EVR CP is awesome, but is verrry sloooww on older systems :)

Also, you should be running 32 bit builds of everything. 64 bit MPC-HC / ffdshow is actually slower and more buggy than the 32 bit versions, due to lots of missing ASM.

~MiSfit

[STaRGaZeR]

Are you the original poster that I was talking to? Or did you even bother to read his post before you jumped in and started derailing the conversation?

No and yes. Now you start with derailments instead of admiting things, just like BetaBoy. The main point of CoreAVC is being able to play stuff you can't play with free decoders on slow systems. Surprise, most of the time it won't be fast enough either, and will eat your CPU alive. When it's not fast enough, you "complain" and what you get for your money is forum vitriol and excuses. Just read this thread. You guys at CoreCodec should read a book or two about how to run a business.

[clsid]

Use case 1: real-time playback

The "fastest" decoder is the one with the best playback performance, being the lowest CPU usage. Both the average and the peak usage is relevant.

Use case 2: non real-time decoding (e.g. generating input for an encoder)

Here the highest fps decoding rate is what matters.

Just my $0.02

[hydra3333]

The main point of CoreAVC is being able to play stuff you can't play with free decoders on slow systems. Why only "on slow systems" ? Are there free decoders which do the job as reasonably as coreavc/haali ?

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Why only "on slow systems" ? Are there free decoders which do the job as reasonably as coreavc/haali ?

There are free H.264 decoders available, such as ffmpeg/libavcodec (e.g. ffdshow) and the DivX H.264 Decoder.

If those are fast enough for smooth "real time" playback on your system, there's not much reason to invest your money into a payware H.264 decoder ;)


So if at all, you would buy a "fast" H.264 decoder for a "slow" system. And even that only if the payware decoder enables smooth playback, while the freeware decoder doesn't.

But in case you have a decent CPU, the free decoders will allow smooth playback, even for high-bitrate 1080p content. Why would you buy another decoder then?


Being 5% faster or slower doesn't matter for a decoder, at least not for "real time" playback. There are only two possibilities: It's fast enough for smooth playback or it isn't!

For the purpose of encoding (that is: non-realtime decoding) it may matter, but even then it only matters if your encoder is bottlenecked by the input/decoder.

[STaRGaZeR]

Why only "on slow systems" ? Are there free decoders which do the job as reasonably as coreavc/haali ?

As stated by LM, when watching videos, there are two situations: the decoder is fast enough for realtime playback or it isn't. You should only consider a payware decoder when the available free decoders aren't fast enough. CoreAVC is barely faster than other free decoders, so even if your system is slow CoreAVC will probably only help in cases where you're in the limit of being playable/unplayable with the free decoders, of course not in cases where it's completely unplayable.

This is the logical way, people can spend their money in whatever they want.

[Mixer73]

I bought back then CoreAVC because they announced hardware support for their decoder as well. Well, we all know how that ended up... Today, three years later, there at least two more decoders with hardware support out there.

It is NOT CoreAVC's fault that ATI chose not to implement UVD controls in their SDK.

There are free H.264 decoders available, such as ffmpeg/libavcodec (e.g. ffdshow) and the DivX H.264 Decoder.

My opinion & experience only:
CoreAVC is the best solution for pre-Windows 7 to get DXVA playback for Media Centre, I found it much more reliable. Trying to get Cyberlink codecs priority right just didn't deliver a result for me. CoreAVC on the other hand seemed to work instantly, and when CUDA was bought out the system performed even better. Haali has its issues (I had the crashing on thumbnail creation) but they are solvable.

My MCE box is Win7 so the jury is out for me on whether I will install CoreAVC on that or not. I'm not sure I see the benefit atm. Plus for stability I like having less stuff installed. Personally I found just FFDShow is the #1 cause of crashes/memory leaks/lack of responsiveness on my MCE rig.

Now on my other system, 64bit Vista/Q6600 CPU, primarily using MPC-HC and recently had to go back to a 7950GTX with no DXVA support, I found libavcodec/ffmpeg codecs woefully inadequate, very soft picture and stuttery playback. CoreAVC 1.9.5 played OK but with some artefacting; so I upgraded to 2.0 and playback is perfect on my system now.

I never tested the DIVX decoder, perhaps I should have; but CoreAVC for me was a known quantity and it was only a fiver ;)

[leeperry]

The main point of CoreAVC is being able to play stuff you can't play with free decoders on slow systems.I think the main point of CoreAVC *nowadays* is to use CUDA and save on your electricity bill, as a VP2 GPU is far more efficient than a CPU for decoding h264.

[IgorC]

I think the main point of CoreAVC *nowadays* is to use CUDA and save on your electricity bill, as a VP2 GPU is far more efficient than a CPU for decoding h264.
Can you provide tested results?

[lych_necross]

I think leeperry already posted some links about power consumption in CPUs vs GPUs a while back. I'm too lazy atm to post any, but a quick google search will point to articles from Anandtech, HardOCP, and Tomshardware showing that GPUs are often more energy efficient.

[roozhou]

I think leeperry already posted some links about power consumption in CPUs vs GPUs a while back. I'm too lazy atm to post any, but a quick google search will point to articles from Anandtech, HardOCP, and Tomshardware showing that GPUs are often more energy efficient.

Modern dual-core CPU consumes ~40W more at fully loaded compared to idle. Suppose your CPU are nearly fully loaded when decoding by software and you watch HD movies on your PC for 2 hours each day, so that's 365x2x0.04 = 29.2 kWh more power each year.

I know that price of electricity varies in different countries. In my country it's ~$0.1 during daytime and ~$0.05 during night. I don't care about saving $1.5~$3 each year.

[IgorC]

I think leeperry already posted some links about power consumption in CPUs vs GPUs a while back. I'm too lazy atm to post any, but a quick google search will point to articles from Anandtech, HardOCP, and Tomshardware showing that GPUs are often more energy efficient.
GPU aceleration can be more power efficient but the question if it's far more efficient like leeperry said.

I found this http://www.anandtech.com/printarticle.aspx?i=2977.
The difference is ~9-10 watts? That's all?
It's an old article but CPU( with software decoders) and GPU increased its efficiencies at the same time.

All GPU's power efficiency will vanish if take into account that CPU+GPU consume more than CPU+integrated graphics.

Main advantage of GPU acceleration isn't efficiency but almost complete offload of CPU during video playback.

[Mixer73]

Main advantage of GPU acceleration isn't efficiency but almost complete offload of CPU during video playback.

I can't tell you power usage wise but my MCE rig has a passively cooled 8400GS card and with CUDA running I noticed significantly lower fan noise from the rig, and that was enough for me to spend the $20!

I suspect with less heat comes less electricity usage but I can't quantify it.

[leeperry]

Can you provide tested results?
I will! a friend of mine has a wattmeter, I will visit him anytime soon. and I'm surprised CoreCodec didn't boast about it, as this is the major selling point for CoreAVC at this point IMHO.

Well the CPU load falls to 4% on my Q9450 w/ 1080p AVC, and my GF9600 temperature/load hardly moves as well...CoreAVC connects to VP2, and from what I'm seeing it doesn't need much power at all, but I'll come back w/ hard proofs ;)

[BetaBoy]

I will! a friend of mine has a wattmeter, I will visit him anytime soon. and I'm surprised CoreCodec didn't boast about it, as this is the major selling point for CoreAVC at this point IMHO.

Well the CPU load falls to 4% on my Q9450 w/ 1080p AVC, and my GF9600 temperature/load hardly moves as well...CoreAVC connects to VP2, and from what I'm seeing it doesn't need much power at all, but I'll come back w/ hard proofs ;)

We just started to push power savings with 2.0 with the help of NVIDIA, especially with Netbooks. In fact now that we have added ARM NEON Cortex A8 support to the CoreAVC SDK it helps there as well (for the platforms that support it).

STaRGaZeR..... while we thank you for your opinion. Please add value to this thread, jumping in like you have is more like a flame to most of us. Squid is very passionate and proud of our work here. True he also represents CC, but he has nothing to do with business, of which we are doing quite well, thank you very much.

Lets keep the discussion focused on the product.

[CruNcher]

BetaBoy still no go for CorePlayer for Android ? ;) though i guess with all the Hardware functions on most mobiles it makes less sense but for those ones that havent any it seems a option currently i only see the Korean company of Mobilesoft doing work here with their Yxflash it's not that bad for ASP but they seem to lack H.264 experience ;) Porting mplayer to it with neon support for sure will come sooner then later also same for Maemo.
Also i did power consumption tests between CoreAVC (on AMD Athlon 64 Toledo Dualcore @ 3 Ghz) efficiency and the 8800 GT and it's VP2 Core Decoder the result wasn't that mayor difference i mean sure the Decoder Core alone is very efficient it was around 1 Watt and CoreAVC around 3 Watt for the same result and that on this old CPU, but if you add the overall power from the card itself to this then the difference becomes less in overall consumption of the system as the GFX board itself eats major amounts in idle. :) ( if i dont remember wrong i even posted the results on doom9 search for it)

[BetaBoy]

BetaBoy still no go for CorePlayer for Android ? ;) though i guess with all the Hardware functions on most mobiles it makes less sense but for those ones that havent any it seems a option currently i only see the Korean company of Mobilesoft doing work here with their Yxflash it's not that bad for ASP but they seem to lack H.264 experience ;) Porting mplayer to it with neon support for sure will come sooner then later also same for Maemo.

The Android SDK and NDK still need a lot of work to be able to run an app in 'true' native space. The advantage we have now with CorePlayer is that everything is API driven. So once they get the *DK's up to speed, we are ready to go.

FYI.. there are other issues as well (renderering, audio input, etc.), but if they fix the native space issues we can at least move forward.

We are on ASP, AAC and MP3 for ARM NEON next.

[leeperry]

We just started to push power savings with 2.0 with the help of NVIDIA, especially with Netbooks.
got any benchmarks made w/ a wattmeter on say a Q6600/GF9600? software Vs CUDA...every watt counts, and electricity bill saving might be on your best thing to boast about...as the other decoders start climbing up your leg software decoding speed-wise :devil:

[Cyber-Mav]

i have to say that for nvidia users with a cuda capable vpu2+ card coreavc is a must have piece of software. on my older machines with cuda cards i can watch full 1080p videos and surf the net etc with plenty power left for multi-tasking. these days i encode everything into h.264 just so that i can use hardware accelerated playback thanks to coreavc's cuda implementation,

i know i can use media player classic home cinema do get free dxva decoding done but coreavc's cuda playback is far more robust and so far only 1 video refused to playback with cuda because it had like 17 reference frames.

for me the money has been well worth it for coreavc, sure there are couple of other hardware based video decoders out there now but none do as good a job as coreavc;s cuda implementation does.


also let me add to this, i replaced the graphics card in a DJ's video server, the card he used as a x1900xt and i replaced it with a nvidia GT240, with coreavc he now had cuda acceleration available even inside his Video Jockey software, i believe he uses something arkaos grand vj. multiple h264 files bring up multible coreavc gree icons in the system tray and this frees up cpu power for additional effects and processing. the DJ is elite-syndicate http://www.elite-s.co.uk/

we are highly impressed with coreavc's cuda support and i recommend it to everyone who uses a cuda capable card and wants to free up cpu cycles for other stuff.

[pankov]

I too support Cyber-Mav's opinion.
For non-english native speakers subtitles are very important and the only way to get them in DirectShow player and still have hardware acceleration is through Cuda. It's also the case with non DX capable renderer like madVR, which is still in beta/alpha stages but still gives the best picture quality out there.
On one of my PCs I use NVidia and really like the way that everything plays. Sadly on my main HTPC I'm with ATI and I really miss Cuda.
I hope ATI will do something in the near future so the Core team and many users can benefit from their hardware too.

[roozhou]

Ithe only way to get them in DirectShow player and still have hardware acceleration is through Cuda.

Try KMPlayer and PotPlayer.

[pankov]

roozhou,
I'm using ZoomPlayer and all the family is familiar with it - that's the reason I'd prefer not to change player.

[88keyz]

The biggest downfall of the CUDA support for an HTPC is nVidia's appalling Sleep/Hibernate/Hybrid Sleep support. I love my nVidia GPU's but I had to switch to ATI on my HTPC to solve my sleep resume problems. Went from a 8600 GT to a ATI 2600 PRO and all problems with sleep were solved.

Thankfully due to CoreAVC also being the best and fastest software h.264 decoder I have noticed almost no performance difference when playing back either 720p or 1080p MKV files on my HTPC with a Q6700.

Here's hoping that someday ATI allows access to the core in the same way nVidia does so that we can have ATI Stream accelerated content the same as we do CUDA accelerated content now.

[Shakey_Jake33]

Daft question - for someone who only intends to use GPU acceleration, what are the advantages of CoreAVC 2.0 over 1.9.5? It's essentially just accessing capabilities that exist on the GPU anyway right?

[weasel_]

in 2.0 NO more bug with 16 ref frame ...

[an3k]

If you don't have GPU support (no CUDA), CyberLink PowerDVD 7 codec is much faster than CoreAVC 2.0 Professional.
If you have GPU support, CoreAVC is a bit faster, a bit.

[Blue_MiSfit]

I doubt very much that Cyberlink's PowerDVD 7 H.264 decoder is faster than CoreAVC. This would be big news to everyone here...

AFAIK, the fastest software only decoders are CoreAVC, DiAVC, and DivX H.264, followed by ffmpeg-mt (and not necessarily in that order).

~MiSfit

[LoRd_MuldeR]

AFAIK, the fastest software only decoders are CoreAVC, DiAVC, and DivX H.264, followed by ffmpeg-mt (and not necessarily in that order).

This agrees with my personal tests and all I have read. However an specific CPU's the results may be different...

[roozhou]

I doubt very much that Cyberlink's PowerDVD 7 H.264 decoder is faster than CoreAVC. This would be big news to everyone here...

PDVD 7 decoder supports DXVA, including partial acceleration. It will give you hardware acceleration on ATI cards and NV 6/7 series, while CoreAVC does that only on NV 8+ series.

[Blue_MiSfit]

Partial acceleration is interesting for some folks indeed. I wonder if my Quadro NVS 110M (basically a Go 7300) would get any benefit from this? As it is, I have to use VMR7 and CoreAVC on Windows 7 (not sure why this is actually faster than native EVR) to get reasonable performance on <10mbps 1080p content, and even so there are some dropped frames. A 1.8 GHz Core 2 Duo is pretty slow when it comes down to it - at least, compared to my overclocked 3.4 GHz Q6600 in my desktop!

Do any other decoders offer partial decode acceleration? Maybe the Microsoft decoders in Windows 7?

Is it possible to use the PowerDVD filters if you have only the trial installed?

~MiSfit

[an3k]

PDVD 7 decoder supports DXVA, including partial acceleration. It will give you hardware acceleration on ATI cards and NV 6/7 series, while CoreAVC does that only on NV 8+ series.

I tested CoreAVC 2.0 Pro and CyberLink PDVD7.3 H.264 codec on a P4 3,73GHz Extreme Edition with GeForce 7800GTX (VP1).

I cannot watch a 1080p with CoreAVC (slideshow). I can watch the same file with CyberLink codec (not 100% smooth but nbot a slideshow anymore).

On my GTX295 CoreAVC is faster, a bit.

As i said :)

Is it possible to use the PowerDVD filters if you have only the trial installed?They blocked other applications from using the codec since PDVD7.3 but PDVD7.0 codec is usable.

[Blue_MiSfit]

Interesting.

Your setup is quite unusual among BluRay watchers, AFAIK. A high clock but still slow by modern standards (and single core, at that) P4, and a VP1 7800GTX! You had one mean machine back in '05 huh? ;)

I'll have to try Cyberlink on my laptop! Partial DXVA may very well be a lifesaver!