NVidia PureVideo decoder

Laurence wrote on 1/21/2006, 11:45 PM

I just installed the NVideo PureVideo decoder and must say that I can recommend it highly. I have a P4 3.06 with a ATI Radio graphics card and m2t video was horrible in Windows media player and used all my CPU. With this decoder installed, m2t playback in media player looks wonderful and the cpu usage drops to less than half. The image is nicely deinterlaced as well. For anyone with a Sony HDV camera who has problems looking at their footage, this is pretty cool.

http://www.nvidia.com/object/dvd_decoder_1.02-185-trial.html

Comments

p@mast3rs wrote on 1/21/2006, 11:55 PM

I really dont see how thats possible maybe other than software decoding because PureVideo is for NVidia graphic cards only. ATI has their own flavor the x1000 cards.

Directly from the page:

System Requirements

* Windows XP Media Center Edition 2004/2005/2005 Update Rollup2, Windows XP Professional, or Windows XP Home Edition
* DirectX 9.0 or higher
* Windows Media Center or Windows Media® Player 9.0 or higher for DVD Playback
* DirectShow compatible software for MPEG-2 file playback
* A DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA) compatible graphics processor, such as GeForce 7800 GTX.
* DVD-ROM drive required for DVD viewing
* TV Tuner is required for TV viewing under Windows Media Center and must meet the Designed for Windows XP Media Center Edition logo requirements

Graphics Chips Supported

* NVIDIA GeForce 7 Series
* NVIDIA GeForce 6 series
* NVIDIA GeForce FX series

But if it enables you to view HD material, then thats good to know.

Laurence wrote on 1/21/2006, 11:59 PM

My card was listed as compatible here:

http://www.softpedia.com/get/Multimedia/Video/Video-Players/NVIDIA-DVD-Decoder.shtml

I tried it under the free trial in the previous link and it worked really well.

apit34356 wrote on 1/22/2006, 1:34 AM

the Nvidia decoder is good, one of many. Lets hope soon Vegas will use a similiar approach to handle HDV and HD formats without proxies. Since Vegas does not demand many resources from most graphics cards, there is a lot of extra gcpu being wasted. Since most high-end graphics cards are a lot cheaper that high-end cpus, affordable editing of m2t files should be here 2006 for the masses.

p@mast3rs wrote on 1/22/2006, 7:22 AM

Sweet. I didnt realize it would work for both of my cards. Laurence you are definitely THE MAN! I can flawlessly decode 1080p AVC now.

Laurence wrote on 1/22/2006, 7:52 AM

If it's "one of many", I'd love to be pointed at some others. This is new to me and m2t files now look wonderful, but it would be even cooler if I could use the same acceleration on wmv and Cineform files.

I totally agree about Vegas incorporating this available technology to previewing m2t video. There is no reason aside from licensing agreements why this can't be an integral part of Vegas. It wouldn't be too expensive either. If NVideo can give me this technology for less than $20, how much could it possibly add to the price of Vegas? It seems like such a no brainer: license a decent mpeg payback engine that makes use of the graphics cards we all ready have and include it in Vegas. That or just provide access to other software that is making use of this. I love Gearshift dearly, but there is really no reason we should need to use it!

Laurence wrote on 1/22/2006, 7:54 AM

Did you check your CPU usage when you were playing back the 1080 video? Mine drops to less than 50%! Not only can I play back HDV flawlessly, but I can browse the web and use my computer for almost anything while I'm doing it!

fldave wrote on 1/22/2006, 8:25 AM

I think the problem that Vegas has with this, and I have read that maybe Adobe Premiere, is that they are based on Video For Windows technology. I may be wrong here, just what I have deduced from this board. VFW is what, 10-12 years old? I noticed that this new decoder is DirectX 8 based, so maybe that is the key.

The one think that I would like to see out of the new version of Vegas, is pure DirectX, if possible. Breaking out of the VFW bottlenecks should open up a whole lot of new possibilities, as you can see with this new decoder..

Laurence wrote on 1/22/2006, 9:13 AM

I believe you are right about the VFW issue. Hopefully this will change in Vegas 7.

TheHappyFriar wrote on 1/22/2006, 9:25 AM

ATI cards from the 8xxx series on up support video acceleration I belive. I've ran HDV 1080i on my ATI with my ATI video player flawlessly. That's available for download if you own an ATI card on ati.com.

it is pretty cool, isn't it? :)

richard-courtney wrote on 1/22/2006, 9:39 AM

I am also looking into cards that accelerate renders for 3D graphics
such as the new Caligari Truespace 7 just released.

p@mast3rs wrote on 1/22/2006, 9:41 AM

What cards improved Magic Bullets render times? I cant seem to find that anywhere.

Coursedesign wrote on 1/22/2006, 10:05 AM

Almost any nVidia.

How could you miss their hidden link?

:O)

Yes, it would have been helpful to put this on the System Requirements page, wouldn't it?

I have to admit I had a hard time finding this also when I bought MBE2.

p@mast3rs wrote on 1/22/2006, 10:20 AM

Course, much thanks for the link. I remembered seeing it once then I lost my bookmark. Much thanks again.

mark-woollard wrote on 1/22/2006, 12:33 PM

Thanks for the tip Laurence. Before installing it, m2t files were playing with stuttering audio (unusable) and the CPU (dual Xeon) ran at 35%.

After installing, smooth as silk and only 15-18% CPU. nVidia 5700 card.

Really hoping Vegas 7 will be able to use the GPU.
Mark

Laurence wrote on 1/22/2006, 4:00 PM

The Nvideo PureVideo decoder is supposed to work on WMV HD files as well, but isn't on my system. You can tell when the decoder is working because, in addition to the smoother playback, it adds a little NVidea icon to the taskbar while it's in use. If you click on the icon, you can tweak the playback options. Anyway, it works beautifully on HDV mpeg, but isn't being utilized in WMV HD playback even though it is supposed to be. Is anyone else running into this.

Laurence wrote on 1/23/2006, 6:36 PM

I just noticed that DVD playback from WMP also uses Purevideo. Also, playback of regular mpeg2 files from media player is much improved, not just in efficiency but in quality. Mpeg2 and DVD playback (the same thing, yeah I know) are now deinterlaced and resized better in WMP.

Laurence wrote on 1/25/2006, 10:10 PM

This is kind of cool:

http://creativecalf.creativecow.net/cgi-bin/new_read_post.cgi?forumid=105&postid=870500

Intervideo is soon to be releasing an H.264 codec that will take advantage of NVidea's PureVideo decoding!

Laurence wrote on 1/25/2006, 10:14 PM

Am I mis-reading this article or does it imply that Adobe programs like Premier Pro are going to be taking advantage of NVidea's PureVideo decoder? That's exactly what I've been wanting Vegas to do!

http://www.nvidia.com/object/IO_25705.html

Here is an excerpt:

“NVIDIA continues to provide Adobe users with ever increasing graphics performance, powering a real-time editing and compositing workflow within Adobe Premiere Pro and Adobe After Effects,” said Steve Saylor, vice president of digital video and audio for Adobe. “NVIDIA professional solutions are the standard for all of our partners’ OpenHD configurations that deliver a line of open, scalable, certified desktop HDV and HD solutions, optimized to meet the needs of video, film, and broadcast professionals, at a fraction of the cost of expensive proprietary systems.

Coursedesign wrote on 1/26/2006, 8:23 AM

That could be true also, as Premiere Pro 2.0 uses OpenGL acceleration for both preview and final render speedup. On the current demo tour, they're saying 2-4x speedup, but I suspect that may be a rare case of marketing understatement.

The demo artist said this was on his more than 1 year old Opteron system, so it probably didn't have PCI Express, but AGP 8x instead, which would really hamper the rendering performance.

p@mast3rs wrote on 1/26/2006, 8:36 AM

PP2 will utilize the GPU for assisted rendering. However, I dont believe PureVideo decoder will make a bit of difference since PP2 doesnt even support H.264 AVC content itself so you still get the same performance either way on GPU assisted rendering with or without the use of the PureVideo Decoder.

Laurence wrote on 1/26/2006, 1:34 PM

I was thinking about the ability to preview M2T video. This could potentially be sped up to the point that it would be practical work directly with M2T video with an average system. I wouldn't expect rendering times to change, only previewing smoothness.