Re: K-lite Codec Pack Hardware Acceleration
Melva Simons
All the h264 clips I have tried stutter when playing in various players under default and different settings including enabling hardware acceleration. I have tested clips encoded in low bitrate (3Mbps) and high bitrate (up to 100Mbps) and all of them stutter when being played. It's specially noticeable when the camera is panning in a smooth movement because I get distracted by the chunky and jumpy footage or when there are moving objects in the screen and they move suddenly and abruptly across the screen. I notice an abrupt transition in moving scenes instead of experiencing what should be a fluent and smooth scene and I do not understand why because my system is powerful enough to do every single task I have put it to do. The problem is persistent throughout the playback of all my clips or movies encoded in h264.
I couldn't get a proper recording because I used my phone but it's very noticeable when seeing any movie or clip and very distracting at the same time. The clips are from MPC-HC using Intel Quicksync hardware acceleration.
Note: the problem occurs in any h264 clip that I have tested, not only on the one I took a video of and it's also far more noticeable and distracting than in the video because I couldn't capture it properly with my phone.
I've installed k-lite codec pack MEGA which includes both LAV and FFDSHOW video decoders and I have tested both of them inside MPC-HC and the problem still persists (in both 32 and 64 bit versions of the player). I have also tried CoreAVC decoder as an external filter and I am getting the same result.
I've tested Intel Quicksync, DXVA2 (copy-back) and DXVA2 (native) hardware acceleration for the h264 codec in LAV decoder and all of them produce the same result. The clips were all recorded when using the Intel Quicksync hardware acceleration but they still produce a sluggish performance.
1. Surprisingly, all the clips played perfectly and smoothly on the external monitor (connected using HDMI cable). I payed thorough attention to them and I couldn't see any trace of the problem. Not so lucky after unplugging the HDMI cable and using the internal monitor again.
2. I also tried something other than a video, a moving screensaver, and it gets affected by the same stuttering. It seems to me that the problem is not related to video but to any movement on the screen.
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what video card do you have? at the time it was common for the video card to accelerate DVD decoding,
but you will want to use proprietary software (like powerdvd) from the time for that and not VLC
also dvd is mpeg2 afaik.
there are lots of benchmarks that can test l2 speed, or even by the super pi time or any other basic cpu benchmark you can easily notice if l2 is on or not...
sisoft sanda, or the much newer aida64 have l2 cache speed tests that are easy to run on windows
CSS, on top of decoding MPEG your CPU has to unscramble encrypted data stream from the drive? no idea how legit players handle that, I always played ripped files from hdd (DeCSS, file sharing)
you can also try another player, like is agui for mplayer and mpv
You need MPEG2 acceleration support. It's going to come from either Video Card + Software Player Support, or MPEG2 Accelerator Card + Software Player Support. A cheap cool way to get support is with something like a Creative DXR2.
I don't think VLC is a particularly good choice.
Using a DirectShow-compatible player would give you a better chance to use as much hardware acceleration as possible.
Something like PowerDVD would be a good bet.
It's a cross-platform solution, which especially in the early years didn't do much to leverage hardware acceleration, because that requires platform-specific APIs.
So on early hardware, VLC is mostly a software solution, and will require a fast CPU.
PowerDVD is based on the DirectShow API, which was the first common API to offer video acceleration via so-called overlays.
So for old hardware, a player like PowerDVD is much better. It can query for specific DirectShow filters that your IHV has included in the video driver package.
On current hardware the difference is smaller. Firstly, modern VLC also supports hardware acceleration reasonably well under Windows. Secondly, CPUs and GPUs are much faster these days, so video playback isn't as critical. Playing DVDs entirely in software is no issue anymore.
PowerDVD also includes some of its own optimized DirectShow filters (which can also be used by Windows Media Player or other DirectShow-applications if configured correctly).
DirectShow itself is no guarantee that things will be optimized and accelerated, but with the right codecs, filters and such, it can be. And PowerDVD does that.
I guess any computer that can do more than 500 MHz should play any DVD without acceleration, and slower computers should work provided they had the right software (PowerDVD) coupled with a supported video card.
Does anything from the P3 era NOT have overlay/scaling/YUV support? Even my old Gateway Pentium MMX laptop with C&T 65554 could play low-res video full-screen if I set the right option in VLC. My Dell Lattitude L400 laptop at 500MHz could play 640x480 XVID files scaled to fit the 1024x768 LCD and that only had the mobile version of Rage Pro.
The only problems I can see with playing a DVD on a coppermine CPU is if the DVD drive were connected at USB 1.1 speed then it wouldn't be able to keep up, or if the video player was trying to do proper deinterlacing and output 60hz (but that's usually not the default, much to my dismay)
You also need to use a video renderer that supports HDR. The K-Lite Codec Pack contains two renderers that are compatible with HDR: MPC Video Renderer and madVR. You can choose the renderer that MPC-HC uses during installation of the codec pack, or here after install:
MPC-HC options > Playback > Output > Video Renderer
If you are using madVR on Windows 11 and HDR fails to turn on properly, then that could be due to a bug in madVR. You should see devices getting duplicated in its settings when this is the cause. You can fix this by downloading the latest madVR test build (v205 or newer). Overwrite the madVR files installed by the codec pack. Besides this bug fix, the only difference in the test builds are extra HDR tonemapping settings (all experimental). The test build also expires after a few months. It shows a warning when you need to update it.
You need to disable Enhanced Sync and Freesync in the AMD driver settings. Proper video playback requires a constant refresh rate. You can either disable these features globally in the driver settings, or you can create an application profile for MPC-HC and disable them there.
It is really important that you reports any problems that you may have. The developers of the various codecs can only fix problems if they know they exist. Don't expect others to have the same problems as you. Bugs often only occur with specific combinations of player/settings/hardware/drivers, or only with specific files.
You can report bugs on our forum. The experts there will help diagnose your problem and can often provide you with a direct solution or forward the information to the developers if something needs to be fixed.
If you got a suggestion then please submit it on our forum so we can give proper feedback. It often happens that the requested functionality is already available. We can teach you where to find those options.
Submit the details on our forum. We might be able to add support for that format in a future version. For example, if VLC is capable of playing the file, then we can usually make it work rather easily.
I've recently built a brand new system and am using the built in graphics while waiting for the next generation graphics cards to come out. The only trouble I've had so far is with video playback. The majority of the time I try to play a video, whether it's something I've shot myself and am trying to play back with Windows media player, VLC, etc, or am watching in a web browser on YouTube, etc, it will be really choppy and eventually turn into a green screen of death. My motherboard is a ROG Strix X670E-E and I'm running the AMD Graphics Driver 31.0.12024.0. Has anyone else had this problem?
I've had similar choppiness and slow downs while watching youtube with my 7700x (same boat as you with waiting for next gen radeon). I have a 4K display and wonder if the IGPU is just not powerful enough to support the video playback. I have not had any green screen of death, the video just stops playing and resorts to shifting from 4k to 1080p or sits there with a spinning icon.
This worked! I've been going through various programs and disabling hardware acceleration and it's solved the problem. The one program that I can't seem to do this in is Windows Media Player, but it's worked in my various browsers as well as VLC. Thanks for the suggestion!
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