HW acceleration for AVC, VC1

[thuan]

I plan to buy an ATI HD2600 or HD2400 for my HTPC and has been wondering whether the HW acceleration will work in cases like playing mkv AVC with or without softsubs in VMR9 renderless mode (using MPC with its sub filter) or it will only work in Cyberlink PowerDVD. This is the first time I'm going to buy a card that supports HW decoding so I'm pretty noob at this.

This is also my first time creating a thread here since I joined, sorry if this went in the wrong forum section.

[Inventive Software]

From what I understand, only PowerDVD has the hardware acceleration for AVC and VC-1. That's all I could determine. ATI also has issues with drivers at the moment.

[thuan]

But less than nvidia from what I've heard and it works better than nvidia with vc1 stream. I wont ever buy an nvidia card till it's the only one company that make video card. Intel are better at making video driver than nvidia at least from my experience.

Any one with real experience about HW acceleration with MPC as in my first post?

[cyberloner]

i've tested a lot player that do admit them support dxva to play with hd dvd/ blue ray / h264
both nvidia and ati doesn't works with powerdvd ultra or elecard or nero showtime to decode the video in dxva mode or hardware mode...
only working in dxva mode is DVD =)

no software / hardware really support them at the moment..
do guide me if i am wrong... read read read a lot from the forum and test test test... all fail...

[thuan]

You can read this review http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/440/ and this review http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/443/

Those tests all used PowerDVD though. But I'm interested in other DirectShow players, can I use Cyberlink decoder with them and can they use the HW?

[cyberloner]

they test using this
To do this, we will utilize the popular HQV-HD test (www.hqv.com) developed by Silicon Optix.
not using powerdvd hardware decoding anyway....

[thuan]

Yeah, I know but that suit doesn't include player, software decoder, or whatever it's just a bunch of short clips and guidelines for you to give points to certain tests yourself. The thing that actually does the decoding is a decoding filter that support DXVA in this case is the filter that comes with Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra.

As I'm going to buy it anyway, I have bought the PowerDVD suit and run it on my current card (945G) and it does support HW decoding for DVD in MPC with VMR9 renderless output. I will post the result with AVC and VC1 when I have the card.

[lucassp]

You can read this review http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/440/ and this review http://www.guru3d.com/article/Videocards/443/

Those tests all used PowerDVD though. But I'm interested in other DirectShow players, can I use Cyberlink decoder with them and can they use the HW?

There are versions of PowerDVD (I believe 7.3 Ultra) that let you use their DirectShow filters in other applications like BSPlayer. nVidia's VP2 works only under Windows Vista for the moment, but I don't know for sure if ATi's UVD has the same issues.

they test using this
To do this, we will utilize the popular HQV-HD test (www.hqv.com) developed by Silicon Optix.
not using powerdvd hardware decoding anyway....

Silicon Optix HQV is in fact a collection of small video sequences that have some properties: PAFF/MBAFF interlacing, noise, etc. The test is somehow subjective because they play the video sequences using different hardware and software combinations, and compare the resulting images with the reference images provided by Silicon Optix.

[cyberloner]

guess what... latest powerdvd ultra 3104a.1 patch do support h264 hardware decoding in purevideo and ati...
i am ati 2600 pro user and i am playing my h264 files in dxva mode after searching a lot... =) hope this help

weird... work a while.. now it fail.... sorry