INTERACT FORUM
More => Old Versions => Media Center 16 (Development Ended) => Topic started by: GaryM on September 15, 2011, 05:15:35 am
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Should there be any difference in video quality playing DVDs between ROHQ with HW acceleration ticked vs without?
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Nope - at this stage exactly the same filters are used regardless of the RO settings (eg MS Splitter/Navigator, MS Video Decoder, MS EVR Renderer).....
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Doesn't LAV CUVID get thrown in if you check the HW Acceleration box? I'm not home at the moment to check.
SBR
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LAV CUVID does not support DVDs at this time.
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But there is some difference between ROHQ and RO standard on DVDs?
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No - it is the same set of filters and settings AFAIK...at this stage! There has been some talk and examples on other forums where users have managed to use other filters (like madVR) but nothing "official" at this stage.
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LAV CUVID does not support DVDs at this time.
FWIW... There is really no compelling reason to bother to accelerate Standard Def MPEG-2 decode. Any remotely modern CPU can handle that process in software without even breaking a sweat. My old Pentium 3 750MHz CPU could do it way back in the day, and even on an older 1.6GHz Atom netbook, I rarely see CPU utilization above 5% when decoding a DVD.
And, in most cases, it wouldn't even help power utilization either. Because the HW accelerated decode is going to be done on the GPU, if you enable it, you're going to have to power up the GPU to use it. On lots of modern laptops and ultra-portable machines (especially those with Nvidia discreet graphics) the GPU isn't even running or powered up until you need it. You'd be better off just doing decode on the CPU and keeping that discreet GPU asleep. (This is probably not true for a Sandy Bridge laptop with no discreet GPU, but even still, any Sandy Bridge CPU can decode SD MPEG-2 without even thinking about it, so what's the point?)
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I'm puzzled then. I'm pretty sure JimH recommended Red October HQ to me for my DVD playback requirements. When I switch between standard and HQ I seem to see a difference. HQ seems sharper, and to have more punch. I had a thread elsewhere here asking about using videoclock and reclock to get stutter free playback with Red October HQ on DVDs. On Red October HQ with Videoclock I get a 2-3 second long stutter every now and then... the video sort of strobes... On standard I don't get it, and on HQ with Reclock I don't get it. I now find that if I tick hardware accelerate and use Videoclock I don't get it on HQ either... and the picture looks good. And with Videoclock I get better sound than with Reclock. (I let JRiver decode, then later repackage as AC3 for my spdif connection to my Yamaha receiver.
My machine should be ample fast for any of this... its a Core2Duo, 2.66GHz, 4 GB RAM, Asus GT440 video card, Windows 7 home.
What I'll have to do is look at the filter graphs to see what they say, but something isn't stacking up...