Sage player support for H.264 with purevideo acceleration

[mikesm]

Does the V6 beta have a h.264 video decoder built-in that calls the purevideo decoder in a way that takes advantage of hardware acceleration in the video card, or do we have to buy another decoder that does?

Thanks,
mike

[gplasky]

Originally Posted by mikesm

Does the V6 beta have a h.264 video decoder built-in that calls the purevideo decoder in a way that takes advantage of hardware acceleration in the video card, or do we have to buy another decoder that does?

Thanks,
mike

The purevideo decoder is a decoder that would use its hardware acceleration on it's own. You wouldn't have a decoder call a decoder unless you're referring to pre- or post- processing. If you are then it is all done in software.


Gerry

[stanger89]

No the built in decoder (mplayer for H.264) is not accellerated at all.

The only decoders that offer "PureVideo" accelleration for H.264 at the moment are Cyberlink's I think (maybe Intervideo). And I don't know how you would specify them. Perhaps filter merit will be enough.

[corykim]

Originally Posted by stanger89

No the built in decoder (mplayer for H.264) is not accellerated at all.

The only decoders that offer "PureVideo" accelleration for H.264 at the moment are Cyberlink's I think (maybe Intervideo). And I don't know how you would specify them. Perhaps filter merit will be enough.

The situation is worse than that. The SageTV 6 beta is completely broken for playing h.264 content using DirectShow filters. My HTPC is configured such that WMP and GraphEdit play back h.264 smoothly with 5.1 channel PCM audio using ffmpeg. If I play an h.264-encoded file in Sage, I get whatever crappy decoder is built-in. If I choose the "always_use_directshow" (something like that) option, I instead get a bunch of screeching, a black screen, and usually a locked system. It's a good thing I currently don't have a need to play back h.264 content, or I'd be off Sage by now.

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by gplasky

The purevideo decoder is a decoder that would use its hardware acceleration on it's own. You wouldn't have a decoder call a decoder unless you're referring to pre- or post- processing. If you are then it is all done in software.


Gerry

Sorry, I know that. Cyberlink and other applications seem to be able to use hardware acceleration in purevideo for H.264 support. I don't know if it's their decoder, or app that does this, but it sure would be nice for Sage to be able to support using a nero or cyberlink decoder for h.264 that gets the hardware assist.

I am somewhat confused about how all this works. You still need purevideo I believe to get this boost, even though purevideo is a mpeg-2 only decoder.

H.264 support is going to be very important, and not just for archiving. Pretty much everyone is going in that direction, and hardware assist for it would be nice.


thanks,
mike

[stanger89]

Originally Posted by mikesm

I am somewhat confused about how all this works. You still need purevideo I believe to get this boost, even though purevideo is a mpeg-2 only decoder.

Only part of PureVideo is the MPEG-2 decoder, the rest consists of the drivers and hardware. The PureVideo decoders only work for MPEG-2. Unfortunately nVidia hasn't released an H.264 decoder, choosing instead to rely on third parties.

H.264 support is going to be very important, and not just for archiving. Pretty much everyone is going in that direction, and hardware assist for it would be nice.

Unfortunately, in general H.264 sources are exceedingly locked down, and I have my concerns about if Sage will be able to even access them.

[otakucode]

Has anyone tried CoreAVC? I don't know too much about it, but I was reading some stuff about it a week or so ago. It is a software H.264 decoder that uses 70% less CPU than other decoders... or at least thats what their marketing department claims, although I did see a lot of advantages in a few reviews I saw. I'm still wrestling with Sage just trying to get it to play MPEG-4 competently, I'll get into the H.264 extensions later...

[morfinx]

Mike, H.264 acceleration is currently broken, see my thread:

http://forums.sagetv.com/forums/showthread.php?t=22379

According to my tests (by setting always_use_dshow_player=true in Sage/SageClient.properties and try to force Sage to use DirectShow filters), SageTV's dshow player cannot correctly separate the H.264 video stream contained in a Quicktime (.MOV) container or a MPEG (.MP4) container, as it tries to use its own video splitter. It does however correctly play a H.264 video stream in a Matroska (.MKV) container by calling Haali Splitter, and uses my preferred DirectShow filter for H.264/AVC (Cyberlink), which provides hardware acceleration.

If always_use_dshow_player=false, then SageTV always uses mplayer to play H.264 contents. This version of mplayer is pretty old, and is not very efficient. It stutters on 1080p H.264 videos despite low CPU utilization. Here's a comparison between the version of mplayer SageTV uses, and the newest version, playing a 1080p H.264 movie trailer:


Note all tests (including the graph in the original thread) are done on a Athlon 64 3800+ single core. Now I have a faster dual core, hardware accelerated H.264 playback is less of a concern, but I'd still like to have it.


otaku, H.264 is MPEG4. It's just a different part of the MPEG4 standard (MPEG4, part 10), where as Divx/Xvid is based on MPEG4, Part 2.

[lobosrul]

I had problems playing back seemingly random h.264 encoded files with Sage. I then noticed (by looking at the client log) that sometimes sage was trying to use a filter other than Haali for some reason. So i just unistalled that filter. Everything works fine now.

Question for future reference: How do I turn logging back on (it was on by default in the beta)?

[Opus4]

Originally Posted by lobosrul

Question for future reference: How do I turn logging back on (it was on by default in the beta)?

See the FAQ thread -- link is in my sig lines, below.

- Andy

[Patilan]

Originally Posted by morfinx

Here's a comparison between the version of mplayer SageTV uses, and the newest version, playing a 1080p H.264 movie trailer:
<graph>

Something's not right with that graph there... The legend to the right says that the newest version of MPlayer has higher average CPU usage? This can't be true.

[morfinx]

Originally Posted by Patilan

Something's not right with that graph there... The legend to the right says that the newest version of MPlayer has higher average CPU usage? This can't be true.

Can't check it for sure right now as my host appears to be down. But it might have been switched, the newest mplayer should have a lower average CPU utilization by about 10%.

EDIT: fixed