Nvidia to bundle free h.264 decoder with 7600gt

[Geo]

http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=29852

Yay, NV! Woot, woot. C'mere and give pappa a big green smoochie. :lol:

Tho why 7900 is not included?

So, ATI. . .AHEM (said the fellow who coughed up his $14.95 for the Cyberlink decoder, muttering all the while).

[Chalnoth]

I believe you can decode h.264 just fine through the Windows Media Player once you have the hardware acceleration update installed.

[Geo]

I believe you can decode h.264 just fine through the Windows Media Player once you have the hardware acceleration update installed.

What "hardware acceleration update" are you referring to?

[Chalnoth]

Hmmm, it may take me some time to find it :( It's on these forums, though. See if you can't find anything about wmv acceleration (I think that once this is enabled, you get h.264 "for free" if the drivers support it....could be wrong, though).

[Geo]

Ah, we may be talking past each other. I'm gathering that what Inq is pointing at is a gpu-accelerated NV h.264 decoder. It sounds like you are talking about a cpu decoder.

[Chalnoth]

No, not at all. You can get hardware-accelerated WMV's after installing the proper update for Windows Media Player 10. This I know for sure. The only question is whether or not this also support h.264. I think it does, but I'm not absolutely certain.

Edit:
Oh, by the way, here's how you enable it:
http://forums.nvidia.com/index.php?showtopic=2105&st=20

Looks like I was mistaken, though, this is only for wmv's. But, if you do have up to date DVD decoder software, that should automatically support h.264.

[Zaphod]

But, if you do have up to date DVD decoder software, that should automatically support h.264.Intervideo makes no mention of GPU acceleration for H.264 and Cyberlink charge $24.95 for the plugin.

Anyone have any good benchmarks of the performance of GPU accelerated H.264? I saw some nVidia slides somewhere with a comparison to QuickTime, but that decoder is so slow it's not even funny. x264 based decoders (http://developers.videolan.org/x264.html) give me about 4 times the framerate.

[Chalnoth]

Intervideo makes no mention of GPU acceleration for H.264 and Cyberlink charge $24.95 for the plugin.
A quick Google dug this up:
http://peripherals.consumerelectronicsnet.com/articles/viewarticle.jsp?id=36966

[Zaphod]

Thanks! Doesn't say anything about their consumer products though. Guess I'll have to shoot off an email and ask if the GPU assisted decode is included in the decoder shipping with WinDVD 7 Platinum yet.

[breez]

Anyone have any good benchmarks of the performance of GPU accelerated H.264? I saw some nVidia slides somewhere with a comparison to QuickTime, but that decoder is so slow it's not even funny. x264 based decoders (http://developers.videolan.org/x264.html) give me about 4 times the framerate.

Except x264 is an encoder :wink: You may be referring to libavcodec (VLC and ffdshow use it) or perhaps CoreAVC decoder test version which is further 75% faster than libavcodec :) CoreAVC is sweet, no need for monster CPU power to decode 720P video. 1080P was almost doable on my 1900MHz AXP.

[Zaphod]

Except x264 is an encoder :wink:I was under the impression that the codebase had a decoder as well; much the same as Xvid is an encoder, but there is, of course, a decoding component included. The sources indicate so, and at least some of the free media player jungle seemed to be derived from it. It's been quite a while and video stuff is a bit above my abilities though, so if it (the most common open source H.264 decoder) have originated from another project and/or should be know by some other name then I'm sorry for any confusion.

Edit: Right. Was thinking about libavcodec for the decode. Thought they derived from some common codebase, but apparently I'm wrong as usual. Thanks for the correction. Anyway: QuickTime is still slow as muck... ;)

[Chalnoth]

Well, the term "codec" is a shortened form of "coder/decoder," so one would think that the two would usually go together. They don't have to, of course, but it seems that is historically what has been done.