No more Hulu stuttering! (GPU accelerated Flash)

[cal_guy]

Here's another question...if linux and os x have hardware acceleration for video in their drivers (they do for both ATI and nV) and programs like vlc support it (they do), then why is this so difficult for Adobe? What am I missing?

[Edit: looks like VLC doesn't but ffmpeg, movieplayer, etc. have hardware accelerated h.264]

The hardware acceleration were talking about is where the gpu takes anywhere from a small part of the decoding (the ATI X1XXX series and the nVidia 6XXX and 7XXX) to the complete decoding of certain video files (which pretty much every gpu does now). Only Windows has a complete API called DXVA which allows DXVA aware codecs to access the specialized decoding hardware on the GPU.

What is sometimes refer to as hardware acceleration is when the video player uses the graphics card to resize and scale the video which pretty much every player can use.

 

[Mize]

The hardware acceleration were talking about is where the gpu takes anywhere from a small part of the decoding (the ATI X1XXX series and the nVidia 6XXX and 7XXX) to the complete decoding of certain video files (which pretty much every gpu does now). Only Windows has a complete API called DXVA which allows DXVA aware codecs to access the specialized decoding hardware on the GPU.

What is sometimes refer to as hardware acceleration is when the video player uses the graphics card to resize and scale the video which pretty much every player can use.

I figured it had to be something like that once read about DXVA. Thanks for the clarification.

 

[hoom]

Hmm, it seems that I'm still just getting CPU flash, have been watching some other flash videos & CPU is still high, GPU idling
Will try rebooting.

 

[CarstenS]

I'm on Flash-Beta, Catalyst 9.11 (although CCC elected to not be available after driver install any more - again!) and an HD 5870 under Win XP.

The Toy-Story Trailer () dropped from about 50% CPU Utilization to about 10is percent. Nice work! Now, only Intel needs to get their asses up to provide acceleration where it really matters: Netbooks.

 

[trinibwoy]

Working fine on 9400m though I wish there was some easy way to verify when GPU acceleration has kicked in. In any case, the Dell 14z is a beautiful thing especially with a shiny Intel SSD under the hood

 

[Dave Baumann]

I'm on Flash-Beta, Catalyst 9.11 (although CCC elected to not be available after driver install any more - again!) and an HD 5870 under Win XP.

With Cat 9.11 You can also enable post processing on Flash based videos as well. Try going into the "Avivo Video" control panel tab and playing around with some of the settings - also enable demo mode (split screen is the best IMO) to see what each one is doing; the demo mode works in the browser viewing window as well.

 

[vazel]

Hulu Desktop CPU usage is low(still not as low as when playing 1080p MKV files). But Hulu Desktop scaling to my 1080p display is pixellated now. Happens when fullscreening Hulu from IE and Firefox too. Going back to Flash 10.0 and keeping the install program saved in case the final 10.1 has this scaling issue too.

 

[eastmen]

With my dm3z its helped a bit , but i can only install the 9.11s on the hd 3200 and not the 4330 as it gives errors .


I think i made a mistake going with amd after their recent mobile driver bullshit.

 

[hoom]

OK, so you need to have your browsers closed when installing the Flash 10.1 beta...

Downside to this is anytime you have a youtube tab open the GPU spins up to full speed regardless of if its playing or paused/finished

Would be good to have some sort of idle trigger or something at the end of playback.

 

[CarstenS]

With Cat 9.11 You can also enable post processing on Flash based videos as well. Try going into the "Avivo Video" control panel tab and playing around with some of the settings - also enable demo mode (split screen is the best IMO) to see what each one is doing; the demo mode works in the browser viewing window as well.

Thanks for the hint - I'd love to try, but i can't due to CCC not being avaiable after the install.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Working fine here. Perhaps a reinstall would be in order?

 

[vazel]

I recently had trouble with the ati driver too. Couldn't install/uninstall it. I finally had to resort to installing 9.11 by command line. I love ati tech but the drivers could be better. I don't even go into CCC anymore because of how awfully designed it is, I'd rather do all that through ati tray tools. Also the ati dongle doesn't work for my 4850 card, it makes videos in media center too bright no matter the pixel format setting.

 

[Sinistar]

OK, so you need to have your browsers closed when installing the Flash 10.1 beta...

Downside to this is anytime you have a youtube tab open the GPU spins up to full speed regardless of if its playing or paused/finished

Would be good to have some sort of idle trigger or something at the end of playback.

Thats odd, my HD 5870 goes to 400 Mhz, not even close to full speed.

 

[hoom]

Hmm, I think they cut out the middle clock on the 4xxx generation because the 3xxxs were doing too much switching within games.
Seem to recall reading that it is back for 5xxx with better monitoring.
But a 4870 idles at 500 so it shouldn't really need to kick up to 750.
GPUZ showed about 10% utilisation max in the tests I've done

 

[swaaye]

Indeed, I don't think G80 (PureVideo HD, sometimes called VP1) really can do much in terms of h.264 acceleration...

It can do H.264 motion compensation in hardware just like the 6600GT-7950 cards. Apparently it is a bit of a mess to implement though and it doesn't help all that much. PowerDVD will use it however.

 

[smw]

Hmm, I think they cut out the middle clock on the 4xxx generation because the 3xxxs were doing too much switching within games.
Seem to recall reading that it is back for 5xxx with better monitoring.
But a 4870 idles at 500 so it shouldn't really need to kick up to 750.
GPUZ showed about 10% utilisation max in the tests I've done

I just ran MPC-HC with a h.264 so the stream got accelerated through DXVA and the GPU clock went up from 250MHz to 500MHz so I believe you are wrong here (at least regarding the whole 4xxx series I don't know what the situation is with rv770)

 

[Sinistar]

I am going to agree with vazel, went back to 10.0, the scaling sucks.

 

[Dave Baumann]

Hmm, I think they cut out the middle clock on the 4xxx generation because the 3xxxs were doing too much switching within games.

Couple of things - no "middle clocks" weren't dropped on 4xxx, we changed the historisis for dropping back to middle clocks from the high clocks, though, so it would change less frequently. However, thats completely irrelevant for UVD as UVD has its own state entirely.

 

[hoom]

Well, maybe GPUZ is misreporting but I've never seen my 4870 at anything but 500Mhz or top clock.

My 3870 used to spend some time at the intermediate clock.

 

[CarstenS]

Working fine here. Perhaps a reinstall would be in order?

I'm sure you didn't deliver a WHQL Catalyst without working CCC. I've got it working now, too, but it was a lengthy process of deinstalling everything, trying to reinstall it (not working), deinstalling it again, re-installing 9.10, de-installing that one again and then re-installing 9.11.

From an end-user perspective, I don't think using .NET, which seems to be causing the problems, was such a wise move - sorry, but I've never experienced any UI-issues of this kind in drivers unless it was using .NET. No matter if it was from you guys, Matrox or someone else.

Maybe, when the next round of major overhauling is due, you could re-evaluate the UI-thingy?