PowerCinema DVB-T Hardware acceleration

Forums › Freeview (DVB-T/DVB-S) › PowerCinema DVB-T Hardware acceleration - GOT IT WORKING AT LAST

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30 posts

Geek

#133224 26-May-2008 03:44

Hi again - might be worth amending that note to say that most of the suggestions DO help Ati owners get much better results - the quality is much higher after those other ini file edits were made than were obtained with patching alone, even though hw aceleration setting not activated

Cheers

DS248

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#133264 26-May-2008 10:53

Might let things settle & see if others have experiences to report. Cheers.

ArchPrime

30 posts

Geek

#136391 8-Jun-2008 11:32

Update - after reinstalling Vista, I can now follow the last step & enable EVR as default Vista Renderer without crashes - but sadly no improvement in CPU usage (still averages 22% on TV3 - pretty much the same as the other channels) The annoying thing is Ati suposesdly beats Nvidia in H264 hardware decompression according to the reviews!

Is the H264 codec supplied with PowerCinema known to be optimised for Nvidia?

sbiddle

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#136394 8-Jun-2008 11:37

ArchPrime: Update - after reinstalling Vista, I can now follow the last step & enable EVR as default Vista Renderer without crashes - but sadly no improvement in CPU usage (still averages 22% on TV3 - pretty much the same as the other channels) The annoying thing is Ati suposesdly beats Nvidia in H264 hardware decompression according to the reviews!

Is the H264 codec supplied with PowerCinema known to be optimised for Nvidia?

There are well known issues with ATI video cards and viewing H.264 interlaced content under Vista. It doesn't work very well at all and in it's probably bugs in the ATI Catalyst drivers that are at fault.

15% - 20% CPU usage on TV3's 1080i feed is OK. Some people are reporting in the 5%-10% range but on quite a few systems I've played with 15% - 20% is fairly typical.

ArchPrime

30 posts

Geek

#136494 8-Jun-2008 18:39

Thanks for that

I read also that dual monitors are or were an issue with more recent drivers for 2000 series Ati cards & H264 (not sure which cards or driver versions)

All becomes academic sadly - my PowerCinema now crashes again when attempting EVR. This started after installing Avast Antivirus.

Rendering with VMR9 uses no more CPU time, so I guess the answer is to do nothing until the next driver version :(

Cheers

aucklander

478 posts

Ultimate Geek
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#137813 13-Jun-2008 13:27

do you need to reboot after playing with the settings for harware acc in order to get it working, or they kick in instantly and CPU usage should drop even without reboot?

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DS248

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#137816 13-Jun-2008 13:48

aucklander: do you need to reboot after playing with the settings for harware acc in order to get it working, or they kick in instantly and CPU usage should drop even without reboot?

Changes to the ini files did not require a re-boot to kick in.

Nirodha

80 posts

Master Geek

#138657 17-Jun-2008 11:09

sbiddle:
ArchPrime: Update - after reinstalling Vista, I can now follow the last step & enable EVR as default Vista Renderer without crashes - but sadly no improvement in CPU usage (still averages 22% on TV3 - pretty much the same as the other channels) The annoying thing is Ati suposesdly beats Nvidia in H264 hardware decompression according to the reviews!

Is the H264 codec supplied with PowerCinema known to be optimised for Nvidia?

There are well known issues with ATI video cards and viewing H.264 interlaced content under Vista. It doesn't work very well at all and in it's probably bugs in the ATI Catalyst drivers that are at fault.

15% - 20% CPU usage on TV3's 1080i feed is OK. Some people are reporting in the 5%-10% range but on quite a few systems I've played with 15% - 20% is fairly typical.

Hi,

Just a bit of information that may be useful: For ATI cards that have a Unified Video Decoder onboard, the Catalyst 8.42 drivers work very well with NZ's DVB-T, and enable full hardware acceleration of H.264 streams. I have an ATI HD 2600 XT card in my PC and typically have a CPU load of ~5% when playing back HD content.

However, ArchPrime, I've got a bit of bad news for you regarding the HD 2900 XT; it doesn't have an onboard UVD.

"The Radeon HD 2000 series video cards implements the UVD, for hardware decoding of 1080p high definition contents.[4] However, the Radeon HD 2900 series video cards do not include the UVD (though it is able to provide similar functionality through the use of its shaders), which was incorrectly stated to be present on the product pages and package boxes of the add-in partners' products before the launch of the Radeon HD 2900 XT, either stating the card as featuring AVIVO HD or explicitly UVD, which only the former statement of AVIVO HD is correct. The exclusion of UVD was also confirmed by AMD officials.[5]"

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UVD

This may explain why your CPU load is higher than what you may be expecting. Also, there's the issue of TV Tuner card driver overhead. For example, when I'm running DVBViewer, and it's accessing the TV Tuner to display a broadcast, my CPU usage will spike as high as ~25%. However, if I'm playing back some recorded HD content from my harddrive, my CPU usage averages about 5%.

Also, I suspect that 64 bit Vista, and/or the lack of a proper 64 bit drivers, may have something to do with your problems.

Best

Dell Vostro 200 - CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo E6550 RAM: 4GB HD: Seagate Barracuda 500 GB, USB 2.0 External 40 GB GFX: ATI HD 2600XT 256MB Audio: Realtek HD 7.1 LCD: Dell E228WFP DTV: InnoDV TVideo-650

Media softs: DVBViewer Pro 3.9.4, Cyberlink PowerDVD 8 Ultra, Media Player Classic - Home Cinema 1.1, Winamp Pro 5.531, iZotope Ozone and AC3 Filter 1.11 on Windows Vista Business (32 bit) SP1.

rahul2022

5 posts

Wannabe Geek

#139076 18-Jun-2008 22:18

where can i find the Catalyst 8.42 drivers?
i can only see 8.4 and 8.5. where is 8.42 avilable from?
can a link be posted please

ArchPrime

30 posts

Geek

#139135 19-Jun-2008 10:41

Thank you Nirodha for that detailed explaination!
I also get reduced CPU load with pre recorded H264, so presumably the shaders are sucsessfully being used to do the decoding.

What is intersting re DVB-T driver overhead is that Nvidia cards appear to achieve 5% even with live streams if I have understood correctly

I will try to locate that earlier driver to see if it helps in my case

Cheers

Nirodha

80 posts

Master Geek

#139192 19-Jun-2008 15:01

ArchPrime: Thank you Nirodha for that detailed explaination!
I also get reduced CPU load with pre recorded H264, so presumably the shaders are sucsessfully being used to do the decoding.

What is intersting re DVB-T driver overhead is that Nvidia cards appear to achieve 5% even with live streams if I have understood correctly

I will try to locate that earlier driver to see if it helps in my case

Cheers

Sure, ArchPrime, you're welcome.

As for the DVB-T driver overhead: In my case, I'm using an external USB 2.0 Hybird Analog/DVB-T Tuner box. So, this might have something to do with the additional ~10% CPU usage I'm seeing. However, as I wrote eariler, the additional load only occurs in spikes - it happens in ~3 second intervals. Perhaps the drivers for my particular Tuner are poorly optimized. I don't know, and don't really care in all honesty, as it does the job I want it to. And, I got it cheap - ~$80.

There are any number of other factors that may be contributing to the spiking also: OS overhead, sound decoding, sound card driver access, usb driver access, video card ram access and so forth and so on. So, I'm not going to speculate about how my PC would perform with a Nivdia card in it, as there are too many variables for me to even want to ponder.

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aucklander

478 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 11

#139206 19-Jun-2008 16:00

rahul2022,

I found the older version here: http://albertomilone.com/wordpress/?p=132, which send you here for download : http://www2.ati.com/drivers/linux/ati-driver-installer-8.42.3-x86.x86_64.run

Hope this helps...

I will try it as well. Maybe it provides some sort of hardware acc for the 3200HD chip built in the 780G northbridge on my mobo...

aucklander

478 posts

Ultimate Geek
+1 received by user: 11

#139207 19-Jun-2008 16:00

rahul202

Nirodha

80 posts

Master Geek

#139241 19-Jun-2008 19:57

rahul2022: where can i find the Catalyst 8.42 drivers?
i can only see 8.4 and 8.5. where is 8.42 avilable from?
can a link be posted please

The 8.42.1 Vista 32 bit drivers are actually in the Catalyst 7.10 package - go figure!

Here's the URL: http://ati.amd.com/support/drivers/vista32/previous/common/common-cat710-vista32.html

Best

ArchPrime

30 posts

Geek

#139264 19-Jun-2008 21:45

Hi - using Catalyst 8.6 (including Avivo update) I am getting lower CPU utilization than before (now 13-17%) using vista EVR render mode under GB-PVR (which is much better than PowerCinema once you get past the huge number of configuration permutations)

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