h.264 decoding question

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ajobbins

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#20311 20-Mar-2008 13:25

I have an Acer Laptop with has onboard Intel® GMA X3100 grpahics (GM965) which according to the Intel website will do hardware excelleration of H.264 up to 720p and 1080i

What is the best way to test how the laptop will perform decoding a HD signal without going out and buying a decoder? (In case it ends up not working)

sbiddle

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#117766 20-Mar-2008 14:04

What operating system are you running?

There are only three software packages (that I am aware of) that can take advantage of H.264 hardware acceleration. NVidia's PureVideo (which isn't supported under Vista), PowerDVD Ultra and Nero's Video Pack. The only way to really know if hardware acceleration is occuring is to run some CPU tests with a sample video withone of these packages. If you're getting something around 5%-20% then hardware acceleration is working. If you're getting somewhere around 50%+ then it's not.

If you are using Vista you can only use DXVA2 hardware acceleration and need software that is capable of this. DXVA acceleration that works under XP will not work under Vista.

ajobbins

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#117769 20-Mar-2008 14:16

Running Vista Business

ajobbins

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#117788 20-Mar-2008 16:22

OK so I have downloaded the software and some test loops today and thinks are looking posative.

Tried both on my and my girlfriends laptop. Mine is running Vista Business on an Intel Celeron 1.86Ghz CPU with Intel GM965 Express GPU and 1.5GB of ram.

GF's machine is a Core2 Duo, 1.8Ghz CPU, Same GPU (GM965 Express) and 2GB of ram on Vista Home Basic.

Both played the test loops in DVBviewer without any stuttering which was good. CPU on my machine was around 12% at idle (No idea why) and when playing the 720p loops jumped to around 80-100%.

The GF's was around 1-2% at idle and jumped to around 40-60% when playing the 720p loops.

One thing that I did notice (On both machines) is that in DVBViewer it seemed to cut off the start and end of the video, showing only a couple of seconds of it for each recording. However if I viewed the video in PowerDVD it showed the whole thing, allbeit minus the audio. Anyone know why this might be?