hardware acceleration in xp not working

[rubell]

I have CPU usage of 60-80% on my amd 4850e based htpc. Video card is an ati 3450 hd. I've tried lots of combinations of mpeg2 and 4 decoders, directshow, media player, fse mode, 3d acceleration. Nothing seems to work. I also tried coreavc with no luck.

Any ideas? I only play back h264 from hd pvr and whatever hdhr records in.

Thanks.

[Clift]

Here's my suggestion:

With that setup, i would use the AVIVO codecs to decode MPEG-2 if you don't have NVIDIA Purevideo. If you do, then try playing back an MPEG-2 stream and go into the settings and check the box marked "use hardware acceleration". More on that later...

For MPEG-4 (H.264/AVC), open up the ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre application that came with your HD-PVR and right click on the main window, select Settings and go to the tab that says Video and select Hardware Acceleration.

Now, try playing a .TS from the HD-PVR (should be in your Sage record directory) from within ArcSoft Total Media Theatre and see what your CPU usage is. If it hasn't gotten better than you may need to update your drivers. Although ArcSoft claims DxVa doesn't work for ATi cards under XP, my experience proves otherwise. It does work with the latest drivers (I don't know which version stared supporting it). Once you get that working then you're golden.

Okay so that part's done. The next thing you need to do is open up sage.properties in notepad (C:\Program Files\SageTV\SageTV or wherever you have sage installed) and change the following lines:
videoframe/h264_video_decoder_filter=ArcSoft Video Decoder
videoframe/aac_audio_decoder_filter=ArcSoft Audio Decoder
You may need to add the audio line if it isn't already in (search for "aac_audio"). Make sure Sage is closed when you do this and if it is running in service mode, stop the sage service.

Okay now go to liveTV and see what your processor usage is.


For MPEG-2 decoders I would use direct show filter manager to change the merits of which MPEG-2 decoder to use to force one that can take advantage of hardware acceleration. I would get the AVIVO codes from the ati.amd.com website. And i would go into Catalyst Control Center and go into the settings (I forget which) and set vertical sync to "force on" or "always on" or one of those, I forget the exact parameter name.

[rubell]

I played a file in TME. Same proc usage as in sagetv. It was a TS file. Tried updating CCC but I lose hdmi audio when I do. I'm currently on version 8.47 and anything later doesn't work. Any other ideas?

[Clift]

yes, one or two...
Did you check the box for hardware acceleration?

The other one is to d'load directshow filter manager and go to the ArcSoft Video Decoder, double click that, set the merit as high as it will go, then go to filter settings and make sure DxVA 1 is checked. DxVA 2 is for Vista...

If that doesn't work, you can use CyberLink PowerDVD 7.3 to get HA. Just download the demo version, install it and the codec will work. BUT don't ever run CyberLink PowerDVD or it will ask you for a serial. If that happens, the codec will break. I don't know why it does that. That's a little funny way to do it though and I would try getting the ArcSoft codec to work if I were you. If you end up going the CyberLink way, let me know and I can link a thread where I explained how I got Sage to use the CyberLink 7.x codec (not PowerDVD 8).