Let Sage know you want EVR support

[redondo_se]

Originally Posted by babgvant

I see that checkbox too, the problem is that checking it doesn't reduce CPU utilization; where replacing VMR with EVR does.

Agreed. That checkbox has no affect with VMR9. Try playing back the clip below with VMR9 and EVR in GraphEdit. Note that you need a newer version of GraphEdit to use EVR. I found it here:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/ie1zfl

You will see a difference in cpu usage. But more importantly, with VMR9 the news ticker at the bottom will be jumpy and blurry. With EVR it is rock solid and looks great.

http://cid-bc845d43f8b3e65f.skydrive...ge|_sample.mpg

[GollyJer]

Originally Posted by mkanet

I've had hardware acceleration with Cyberlink H.264 video decoders for over a year now (version 7, and now 8); both in SageTV and WMP using under Vista32. (using TS containers).

We'll believe it when you post a screenshot of an hd-pvr recording run through graphedit and a screenshot of your cpu usage.

[mkanet]

okay I'll try it when I get home. I didnt notice CPU utilization being an issue even during 1080p H.264/AVC on my machine. Native format for my HD-PVR recordings are mpeg2. But, I have blu-ray clips.

I'll show the examples when I get home, but when I playback Apple 1080p H.264 mov containers, my machine can BARELY play these files back; sometimes skipping frames; same result if I play these H.264 files via other decoders like Nero. When playing 1080p TS hardware accelerated files in sageTV, I can do other CPU intensive tasks comfortably at the same time. I guess there's a chance that my cyberlink decoder takes advantage of 4 cores in my CPU; but that doesnt explain why I have so much idle CPU power during playback.

Originally Posted by GollyJer

We'll believe it when you post a screenshot of an hd-pvr recording run through graphedit and a screenshot of your cpu usage.

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by mkanet

okay I'll try it when I get home. I didnt notice CPU utilization being an issue even during 1080p H.264/AVC on my machine. Native format for my HD-PVR recordings are mpeg2. But, I have blu-ray clips.

I'll show the examples when I get home, but when I playback Apple 1080p H.264 mov containers, my machine can BARELY play these files back; sometimes skipping frames; same result if I play these H.264 files via other decoders like Nero. When playing 1080p TS hardware accelerated files in sageTV, I can do other CPU intensive tasks comfortably at the same time. I guess there's a chance that my cyberlink decoder takes advantage of 4 cores in my CPU; but that doesnt explain why I have so much idle CPU power during playback.

The HD-PVR records video using h.264 (it doesn't have the hw to do mpeg2).

A modern CPU should be able to playback h.264 using only the CPU w/o killing the box. In the screenprints I posted earlier, you can see it's using 22% (approximately 1 core's available time).

I was using a 4200 X2 (dual core) before, and everything rendered fine; the problem is that the cycles spent rendering video are cycles that aren't doing other things (like scanning for commercials).

[mkanet]

Oh I realize he was talking about the Hauppauge product "HD-PVR". Yeah, I have an "1800"

Originally Posted by babgvant

The HD-PVR records video using h.264 (it doesn't have the hw to do mpeg2).

A modern CPU should be able to playback h.264 using only the CPU w/o killing the box. In the screenprints I posted earlier, you can see it's using 22% (approximately 1 core's available time).

I was using a 4200 X2 (dual core) before, and everything rendered fine; the problem is that the cycles spent rendering video are cycles that aren't doing other things (like scanning for commercials).

[GollyJer]

Originally Posted by mkanet

Oh I realize he was talking about the Hauppauge product "HD-PVR". Yeah, I have an "1800"

Yeah. It's all good with the MPEG2 recordings the 1800 produces. If you read the first post this thread is about using hardware acceleration for hd-pvr recordings.

Here's an excerpt from one of my other posts that has a bunch of good links on the subject of h.264 acceleration in Vista (all versions). These are the reasons I don't believe h.264 hardware acceleration is possible.

Here's what I know:

1. DXVA = GPU "Hardware" Accelerated video decoding.
2. Windows XP uses DXVA1. Windows Vista uses DXVA2.
3. DXVA2 is part of the Microsoft Media Foundation (MF); the multimedia framework/structure built into Windows Vista.
4. DXVA2 provides superior hardware decoding (among other improvements) but can only be used with Enhanced Video Renderer (EVR) and a compatible decoder.
5. Modern decoders (Arcsoft, Cyberlink, etc.) are DXVA2 compatible.
6. DXVA2 is not supported by the Overlay or VMR9 renderers.
7. Most video software applications now support EVR. This is why playback looks great in Arcsoft Total Media Extreme, Media Player Classic HC, WMP 11, etc, when using Vista.
8. Sage does not yet have EVR support. It is difficult to implement with the complexity of SageTV. They are working on it.
9. DXVA1 is supported in Vista through a realtime translator when using Overlay or VMR9 renderers (which is why there are no problems with MPEG2 recordings in Sage).
10. For a reason I can't determine, Vista does not execute the DXVA1 translation for h.264 video (which is why we're hitting this hd-pvr playback roadblock with Sage).

It may be that using a .ts container somehow initiates the Vista's realtime DXVA2 -> DXVA1 translator. It seems unlikely though.

Originally Posted by babgvant

...the problem is that the cycles spent rendering video are cycles that aren't doing other things (like scanning for commercials).

Exactly! And, with hardware acceleration, video looks better.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by GollyJer

Here's an excerpt from one of my other posts that has a bunch of good links on the subject of h.264 acceleration in Vista (all versions). These are the reasons I don't believe h.264 hardware acceleration is possible.

At least on ATI hardware that supports it like my Radeon 3870 H.264 hardware acceleration is possible in Vista with EVR output. The DXVA Checker clearly shows that H.264 acceleration is ONLY available for DXVA2. Other forms of compression are only supported under DXVA1 or both as with VC1. So it's just a matter of how the video is being displayed as to the level of acceleration.

[GollyJer]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

At least on ATI hardware that supports it like my Radeon 3870 H.264 hardware acceleration is possible in Vista with EVR output. The DXVA Checker clearly shows that H.264 acceleration is ONLY available for DXVA2. Other forms of compression are only supported under DXVA1 or both as with VC1. So it's just a matter of how the video is being displayed as to the level of acceleration.

You're right. I should have said, "These are the reasons I don't believe h.264 hardware acceleration is possible without using the EVR".

[mkanet]

Okay, I stand corrected I guess hardware acceleration isn't working with VMR using H.264. I was convinced I had hardware acceleration on because of how comfortably the video played with no glitches; even with other processes active (ie web server/FTP utilization, audio/video encoding, etc)..sageTV shows max ~22%. Quad cores kept things running smooth enough for me not ever suspect low enough CPU resources to check task manager. I could have sworn I checked task manager before for this, but may not have noticed anything suspicious.

Now, I know we need EVR for sageTV!

Originally Posted by babgvant

The HD-PVR records video using h.264 (it doesn't have the hw to do mpeg2).

A modern CPU should be able to playback h.264 using only the CPU w/o killing the box. In the screenprints I posted earlier, you can see it's using 22% (approximately 1 core's available time).

I was using a 4200 X2 (dual core) before, and everything rendered fine; the problem is that the cycles spent rendering video are cycles that aren't doing other things (like scanning for commercials).

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by mkanet

Okay, I stand corrected I guess hardware acceleration isn't working with VMR using H.264. I was convinced I had hardware acceleration on because of how comfortably the video played with no glitches; even with other processes active (ie web server/FTP utilization, audio/video encoding, etc)..sageTV shows max ~22%. Quad cores kept things running smooth enough for me not ever suspect low enough CPU resources to check task manager. I could have sworn I checked task manager before for this, but may not have noticed anything suspicious.

Now, I know we need EVR for sageTV!

Interesting side note. When using GraphEdit if the file does not conform to specifically 1920x1080 (or probably 1280x720) it doesn't get fully accelerated using EVR. I have one BD rip that is actually full frame 1080p rather than being cropped and the CPU usage shows that it is being fully accelerated.

However, EVRPlay doesn't seem to do this. Every file I've thrown at it no matter the actual height gets accelerated. I could be wrong but this leads me to believe that either EVRPlay or the way it is using the Cyberlink H.264 Decoder is mapping the video to a full 1080p pixel space before rendering so that it becomes fully accelerated. IMHO, kind of interesting.

[babgvant]

Originally Posted by Taddeusz

Interesting side note. When using GraphEdit if the file does not conform to specifically 1920x1080 (or probably 1280x720) it doesn't get fully accelerated using EVR. I have one BD rip that is actually full frame 1080p rather than being cropped and the CPU usage shows that it is being fully accelerated.

However, EVRPlay doesn't seem to do this. Every file I've thrown at it no matter the actual height gets accelerated. I could be wrong but this leads me to believe that either EVRPlay or the way it is using the Cyberlink H.264 Decoder is mapping the video to a full 1080p pixel space before rendering so that it becomes fully accelerated. IMHO, kind of interesting.

EVRPlay cycles through the available video processing modes that your video card supports and automatically selects the best one.

When you render in graphedit it doesn't do that; in some cases I've seen it select a mode (but not the best one) and others times not select a mode at all. If you register evrprop.dll the EVR gets a property page you can use to examine what it's current settings are.

[GollyJer]

Originally Posted by babgvant

EVRPlay cycles through the available video processing modes that your video card supports and automatically selects the best one.

When you render in graphedit it doesn't do that; in some cases I've seen it select a mode (but not the best one) and others times not select a mode at all. If you register evrprop.dll the EVR gets a property page you can use to examine what it's current settings are.

Hey guys. I've been using GraphStudio for a while as a GraphEdit replacement. It's an open source project:

I would like to keep as much of the original GraphEdit look & feel as possible so the people who were/are using GraphEdit could switch to GraphStudio without any problems and include several new features like:

* Detailed System, Filter, Pin, MediaType information
* Reports
* Registry modification (add/remove types for filters manually)
* Information on registered filters (CLSID, name, file, version, location …)
* Detection of broken registry entries
* Easier graph construction
* Support for DVB, DVD, Capture graphs
* Inspection of media type formats including header parsing for existing codecs such as H.264, MPEG-2 …
* Dumping of media type formats for later analysis
* and many more …

I'm not sure if it cycles through the available video processing modes, but it might.

[earl42]

+1 I bought a nice video card, I would like to use it to its potential.

[teesee150]

Originally Posted by earl42

+1 I bought a nice video card, I would like to use it to its potential.

Same here

[dstanley]

+1 for me too! I have a powerful machine but it gets brought to its knees with some HD files ...

[KenFab]

+1

Any update from the devs on the status of the implementation?

[mscrivo]

Originally Posted by KenFab

+1

Any update from the devs on the status of the implementation?

This look promising!
http://babgvant.com/blogs/andyvt/arc...r-support.aspx

[LehighBri]

Originally Posted by mscrivo

This look promising!
http://babgvant.com/blogs/andyvt/arc...r-support.aspx

This is indeed amazing news... especially if it happens this week!

For those wishing to read the text verbatim... here it is from babgvant:

SageTV getting EVR support
Good news for Vista* SageTV users, I got an email last week** letting me know that Sage should be starting a beta with EVR support (6.5.x?) this week.

I can't wait to get the visual quality, and CPU offload that the EVR brings in an easy to use 10' interface (EVRPlay works, but its 10' interface didn't do so well my last SAF poll). If only I could get my HD PVR working, I'd be in HD heaven.

* It seems that XP users can also get the EVR by installing .NET 3.5; I haven't tested it, but a recent change to EVRPlay seems to indicate that it works.

** Reflexively, I assumed that it was something that carried an implicit NDA; occurred to me today that it might not be the case, so I asked. Real transparency takes some getting used to

[redondo_se]

Originally Posted by mscrivo

This look promising!
http://babgvant.com/blogs/andyvt/arc...r-support.aspx

Oh man I hope that's true.

[skyeclad]

>* It seems that XP users can also get the EVR by installing .NET 3.5

Is this true? Does it work well and accelerated?

I've never thought much about this as I use XP and VMR9 seems ok but then redondo_se mentioned that scrolling tickers will stutter and wouldn't you know that I have been annoyed at seeing a slight stutter in my news tickers every 15 sec or so. Who knew this was VMR9 related.