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Author Topic: What is the two "Hardware Accelerate" options for, under Video and General?  (Read 3298 times)

CountryBumkin

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1) At "General>Video Card> Hardware Accelerated Graphics" the choices are Automatic, Low Quality, Medium Quality, Highest Quality.

What is considered  "Consumer Grade hardware" - when one would use the "Medium Quality", and what is considered "High End hardware" to use the Highest Quality"? 

Along the same line of questioning, if "Auto" is selected what is the internal criteria or test MC uses to determine which one of the choices it uses?

Why are there choices (if you have the Auto) - is there some cases where "Auto" is not appropriate or doesn't work properly?

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2) At "Video>General Video Settings>Hardware Accelerate Video decoding when Possible" it is either yes or no (checkbox).

How would this setting be made for an internal graphics processor like an Intel HD4600, versus a graphics card like a NVidia 750Ti or 1050?

Thanks
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stewart_pk

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Happy for anyone to correct me but this is how I've understood.

Number 1: Does not affect video playback, not MadVR at least anyway.
Number 2: That setting will enable hardware decoding where applicable for both dedicated graphics cards and on-board graphics processing.
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glynor

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1) At "General>Video Card> Hardware Accelerated Graphics" the choices are Automatic, Low Quality, Medium Quality, Highest Quality.

I believe this primarily impacts UI anti-aliasing, transitions in Theater View, and other similar UI effects. If you don't have any performance issues you can set it to Highest Quality.

If you're on a machine with an Intel integrated GPU, you might need to turn it down, if you're seeing low framerate issues or other problems with UI "fluidity".

I believe stewart_pk is correct and it does not impact video playback quality at all, though perhaps they've added some optimizations there as well in more recent times.
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mwillems

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1) At "General>Video Card> Hardware Accelerated Graphics" the choices are Automatic, Low Quality, Medium Quality, Highest Quality.

What is considered  "Consumer Grade hardware" - when one would use the "Medium Quality", and what is considered "High End hardware" to use the Highest Quality"? 

Along the same line of questioning, if "Auto" is selected what is the internal criteria or test MC uses to determine which one of the choices it uses?

Why are there choices (if you have the Auto) - is there some cases where "Auto" is not appropriate or doesn't work properly?

_______________________________________________________________________________ _________________________________________

2) At "Video>General Video Settings>Hardware Accelerate Video decoding when Possible" it is either yes or no (checkbox).

How would this setting be made for an internal graphics processor like an Intel HD4600, versus a graphics card like a NVidia 750Ti or 1050?

Thanks

My understanding is that number 1) is for the interface (i.e. theater view), not for video playback.  If you look at the "custom" settings it's about the amount of anti-aliasing/ toggling v-sync etc.  The time to change it from "automatic" is if you're seeing tearing or frame lag in theater view, want to decrease graphics card utilization, etc.  An easy example:  my laptop has an intel graphics card in it, and automatic works fine in that the theater view experience looks great.  However, it also sets my fans to spinning and uses quite a bit of power.  So I set it to "low quality" and it doesn't look quite so nice, but my fans don't turn on anymore.  It's there so users have choices (which is nice).

Number two is about leveraging your video card's or cpu's built in hardware decoding if its available.  Hardware decoding (depending on the hardware and the decoding) can be good or less well behaved.  Well implemented, it can allow the CPU or GPU to offload quite a bit of the decoding burden, freeing up compute time and using less power.  Bad implementations are glitchy or can even perform worse.  I had an NVidia card a few years back that worked worse with the box checked; most of my hardware does better with it on.

EDIT: ninja'd by glynor  ;D
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CountryBumkin

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My understanding is that number 1) is for the interface (i.e. theater view), not for video playback.

Thanks for the info.
If "General>Video Card>Hardware..." is just for the Theater View interface, it's not really very important (at least to me). Perhaps JRiver could have provided a better name/description for this setting.

However, there sure are a lot of customization options for this setting (someone put a lot of programing time into this setting) so maybe it's more important than it sounds. Or maybe this was just more important back in the days before we had powerful graphic processors (on-board and discrete).
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mojave

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  • Requires "iTunes or better" so I installed JRiver

Please see this post for similar answers.  ;D

Video Card Acceleration - Good or Bad? by CountryBumpkin
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glynor

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Thanks for the info.
If "General>Video Card>Hardware..." is just for the Theater View interface

It isn't just Theater View. It impacts rendering in a few different places throughout MC. But it is all UI related, not Video Playback related, which is why it is under Options > General and not Options > Video.
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glynor

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Please see this post for similar answers.  ;D

Video Card Acceleration - Good or Bad? by CountryBumpkin

Haha! I hate it when I ask questions I've already asked before! Happens to me too, though.  ;D
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CountryBumkin

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Please see this post for similar answers.  ;D

Video Card Acceleration - Good or Bad? by CountryBumpkin

I had totally forgotten about asking this question before - and I "searched" the forum for this information before I posted yesterday.
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