Best Hardware acceleration with Snady / Ivy Bridge Intel CPUs

[esperado]

After many tests, i finally get the best set-up for HD TNT streams decoding quality for the ones witch own one of the last Intel CPUs with a graphic card included.

The goal is to use Intel Quick Sync decoder and the hardware dedicated decoding circuit included in the Sandy bridge and Ivy bridge CPUs.

 

There is two codecs packs witch include the Quick Sync decoder. FFDSHOW and LAV filters.

http://sourceforge.net/projects/qsdecoder/ or http://ffdshow-tryout.sourceforge.net/download.php

and, for LAV: http://code.google.com/p/lavfilters/

 

Install both of them. The ffdshow version had presented some issue on my computer, not perfectly fluent, but the LAV version is working marvelously. The best de-interlacing i ever had. Very fluent and stable, and i can see on my Sandy bridge I5-2500K 4 HD streams simultaneously with 50% cpu usage.

Well, you would prefer some FFDshow enhancements, like nice sharpen ? Use "plugins" -> "Video processor" -> "FFdshow raw video filter" with the lav video decoder.

 

You will need to reserve 500Mo of ram in BIOS for your Intel graphic card, in order this codec get activated and works fluently, and to activate your Intel graphics in your OS.

You can use QS even if you use an other graphic card. Just activate Virtu, or add a fake supplementary monitor supposed to use the Intel display Connectors of your mother board in your Intel graphic display. No screen plugged in, very simple.

 

I have to add that this hardware decoding will not save too much CPU, comparing to good software decoder, as the decoded images need to be copied in the ram before the graphic card can bring-it to screen.

Not an issue as those CPU are powerful enough and it will use less than 20% for HD streams. It is more a matter of best quality and stability. Hardware de-interlacing is as good as TV sets, only limited by your monitor latency.

low price (no graphic card), with a perfect quality, even with two monitors. Just take in consideration it can be limited in frequency with high screen resolutions.

 

Hoping it helps.

[romeo]

Hi. I have Intel SB i3 with HD2000, guess yours is HD3000(inside i5).

I was playing with egur version of ffdshow with quicksync, and I must say that Microsoft Windows 7 codec is best suitable for live TV.

My proc usage in HD channels are 5-10%, and for me quality is a way better than ffdshow.

But for LAV I cant tell because I didnt try yet. How do you compare LAV with microsoft internal codec in W7?

[esperado]

But for LAV I cant tell because I didnt try yet. How do you compare LAV with microsoft internal codec in W7?

LAV use the same QSync Dll from Egur. But according to Egur itself, memory implementation in LAV is better and faster than in FFDSHOW: just try-it.

The Microsoft DVT-DVB software Codec is very bad, OMHO: Skin of personages looks like softened and painted. On the positive side, it deinterlace nicely and use little CPU.

With QSYNC, a little sharpening in Intel Graphics configuration (CTRL+ALT+F12) and Xsharpen set in plugin-> FFDSHOW raw video plugin, the definition with HD H.264 ( and even good MPEG2 ) is just amazing. And gives an impressive 3D (relief) feeling using WMR9 renderer that i prefer to EVR.

 

BTW: I noticed that Intel Graphics is able to use the needed RAM dynamically. So, my assertions for tuning the reserved memory in bios was wrong as not necessary.

Using the Intel graphics menus (CTRL+ALT+F12) -> "Option and help" -> "information center", you can see the reserved memory, the used memory, and the max available memory. You can use-it to reserve in BIOS a little more than the minimum memory used when windows just loaded with your config. Or the value with a DVBViewer full frame with a HD channel if you run a HTTP.

Just never lower-it more than the value set in your bios by default (64MB in mine).

Edited March 7, 2012 by esperado

[esperado]

You can verify that Qsync is activated in DVBViewer "View" -> "Filters" -> "LAV video decoder" -> "hardware decoder to use" -> "Intel@QuickSync" -> "Active".

 

With FFDshow, right click on the icon in the window tray will show the used codec.

 

Both of them fall back silent to software decoding if they encounter problems. And you can be not aware from it.

Edited March 7, 2012 by esperado

[romeo]

Improvements are noticable with LAV over ffdshow, and to my non trained eye it looks even better than the microsoft codec.

Downsides are higher proc usage (5% more) than microsoft on HD channels, and 3% more on SD channels. But im ok with that because it never exceeds 15% overall.

And I must say that this results are with EVR custom renderer, not WMR9.

May I ask why you prefer WMR9 over newer (and by many better) EVR?