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View Full Version : Windows decoders - what's good these days

benwaggoner
1st May 2016, 23:32
We are getting GPUs with built-in HEVC decode in the wild. But a lot of existing systems don't have it.

What are folks using for software/CUDA/OpenCL HEVC decoder implementations? What's giving good perf these days?

I've yet to find anything that'll play back 3840x2160 on my mobile workstation, which has a i7-4810MQ (2.8 GHz) and a K2100 GPU.

VLC, ffplay, and MPC-HC all drop tons of frames.

It is frustrating that the professional GPUs capable of 10-bit OpenGL playout (required for the Adobe video products to preview in 10-bit), tend to have a lot less raw power than much cheaper consumer GPUs.

It's kind of pain to have to do my testing on a workstation or by plugging a USB stick into a TV...
vivan
2nd May 2016, 02:14
LAV x64, check this thread http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=171219
But it seems that even a slightly faster desktop-class CPU can barely handle 2160p @ 60fps
mandarinka
2nd May 2016, 13:45
The ffmpeg (and libav) decoder is in a bit of a weird state. It seems to still have considerable opportunities for performance gains, but the developers aren't much interested. Or in some cases, it seems they hope to annoy some company into paying for more work.

I think in recent months there was some new assembly developed in libav... but it was a parallel and IIRC not compatible effort to what ffmpeg already has (sigh...), so users of say VLC, MPC or LAV Video will see no benefit from such work.

Actually, even the H.264 decoder wasn't making any progress in the last few years, IIRC. I think it has actually gotten slower, because the guys (in this case, it's mostly libav I think) kept reformatting and rewriting the code repeatedly for cosmetics/readability/maintainability/etc purposes (no idea if it really needed that so critically) and sometimes there were costs to that that in the end accumulate into measurable performance regression.
Blue_MiSfit
8th May 2016, 22:10
Hey Ben,

Have you tried MulticoreWare's decoder? I believe it has a hybrid OpenCL mode.

Talk to Tom Vaughn, I'm sure he can help you out!
x265_Project
9th May 2016, 16:40
Hey Ben,

Have you tried MulticoreWare's decoder? I believe it has a hybrid OpenCL mode.

Talk to Tom Vaughn, I'm sure he can help you out!
I'm sure I can.

Tom