What's the fastest software decoder for VC-1 videos?

kick · Post by **kick** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 6:53 pm

I'm looking for a VC-1 / WMV9 decoder that's extremely CPU-efficient in software mode (when not using DXVA). Something like a VC-1 version of CoreAVC (a great H.264 software decoder).

The default Windows Media codecs are extremely slow.
I've also tried ffdshow - it's noticeably faster but still not efficient to play 60fps 720p VC-1 videos without frame drops / skips. This is on a relatively weak single-core PC with a videocard that doesn't support any kind of HD video acceleration.

Post by **grinvader** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 10:20 pm

Sorry to nitpick, but "software acceleration" is a pretty dumb buzzword

it's either hardware acceleration (i.e. the hardware has dedicated opcodes to pull a huge chunk of repetitive stuff in one go) or plain software.

Did you mean: software optimisation

Deathlike2 · Post by **Deathlike2** » Sat Sep 05, 2009 11:55 pm

You can't make miracles out of crap.

kode54 · Post by **kode54** » Sun Sep 06, 2009 12:04 am

You can try the decoders in Media Player Classic - Home Cinema, one's DVXA accelerated, the other is based on FFmpeg. If you don't have sufficient DVXA support, the software decoder will kick in. I'm not sure if it's any faster than Microsoft's, though.

kick · Post by **kick** » Sun Sep 06, 2009 9:57 am

grinvader wrote:Sorry to nitpick, but "software acceleration" is a pretty dumb buzzword
Did you mean: software optimisation

Fixed

kick · Post by **kick** » Sun Sep 06, 2009 10:17 am

Deathlike2 wrote:You can't make miracles out of crap.

CoreAVC is almost like a miracle for single-core clunkers.

With the highly optimized ffdshow decoder (ICL10 + SSE, all post-processing turned off) it's still not possible to play 720p/24fps videos without frame drops.

CoreAVC plays those 720p/24 videos using less than 50% CPU. 1080p/24fps H.264 videos also run like butter (almost no frame loss).

Post by **Agozer** » Sun Sep 06, 2009 11:41 am

kick wrote:
Deathlike2 wrote:You can't make miracles out of crap.
CoreAVC is almost like a miracle for single-core clunkers.

With the highly optimized ffdshow decoder (ICL10 + SSE, all post-processing turned off) it's still not possible to play 720p/24fps videos without frame drops.

CoreAVC plays those 720p/24 videos using less than 50% CPU. 1080p/24fps H.264 videos also run like butter (almost no frame loss).

I can vouch for this, especially when it comes to the most recent version of CoreAVC.

I've been a using a ffdshow + CoreAVC combo for a good while now, yet I've still had trouble playing 720p content (audio/video desync mostly - Matroska being the worst offerder, MP4 not so much). Then I happened to upgrade both CoreAVC and ffdshow like a few months ago, and now 720p stuff works like a dream.

creaothceann · Post by **creaothceann** » Sun Sep 06, 2009 11:53 am

Even CoreAVC isn't fast enough to play back newer anime MKVs on my PC.

I open the h.264 video stream with AviSynth, apply the subtitles and save it with ffdshow's HuffYUV codec. (http://i31.tinypic.com/mtwohx.jpg)
At the end the video is much larger (about half a GB per minute for 1280x720 @ 24 fps), but it can be loaded fast enough and requires almost no CPU time, leaving enough to decode the AAC audio. As a bonus there's absolutely no seek time.

kick · Post by **kick** » Sun Sep 06, 2009 7:16 pm

Agozer wrote:I can vouch for this, especially when it comes to the most recent version of CoreAVC.

v1.9.5 - that's the one I'm using.

Even CoreAVC isn't fast enough to play back newer anime MKVs on my PC.

It handles them just fine, even those MKV videos with CABAC

HINT: For best performance,use the Overlay Mixer in true fullscreen mode (pageflipped) and disable deblocking.
Use the stereo stream instead of the surround one for even less CPU usage.

kick · Post by **kick** » Sun Sep 06, 2009 7:35 pm

creaothceann wrote:Even CoreAVC isn't fast enough to play back newer anime MKVs on my PC

Is your machine fast enough to play these videos at full framerate:

VIDEO #1 <-- H.264 720p 24fps (doesn't stress the CPU too much)

VIDEO #2 <-- H.264 1080p 24fps L4.1 (needs more juice)

VIDEO #3 <-- VC-1 720p 60fps (CPU muncher)

VIDEO #4: http://showcase7.divx.com/ElephantsDream[DivX7].mkv <-- H.264 1080p 24fps MKV + subtitles (eats single cores for breakfast)

Minimum system requirements:

Video #1: Pentium IV 1.7 GHz (using CoreAVC with deblocking turned off)

Video #2: Athlon XP 2400+ (using CoreAVC with deblocking turned off)

Video #3: Athlon XP 2600+ (using the internal VC-1 [ffmpeg] decoder included in the latest version of MPC-HC)

Video #4: Athlon XP 2800+ (using CoreAVC with deblocking turned off, stereo stream)

Post by **Agozer** » Mon Sep 07, 2009 12:09 am

kick wrote:
Agozer wrote:I can vouch for this, especially when it comes to the most recent version of CoreAVC.
v1.9.5 - that's the one I'm using.

Yeah, me too.

creaothceann · Post by **creaothceann** » Mon Sep 07, 2009 1:48 am

kick wrote:creaothceann: Is your machine fast enough to play these videos at full framerate:

CLICK ME #1 <-- VC-1 720p

Nope, not really.

DirectShow gives me a "could not render graph" error, so I had to use MPlayer. With a video length of 30 seconds and a playback time of 135 seconds, this calculates to about 14 fps instead of 60.

Did I mention that this PC is old?

kick wrote:CLICK ME #2: http://showcase7.divx.com/BigBuckBunny[DivX7].mkv <-- H.264 1080p L4.0

CLICK ME #3 <-- H.264 1080p L4.1

CLICK ME #4 <-- H.264 720p (the least demanding video,relatively low CPU usage)

Uh, 500 MB... That'd take half a day to download.

I'll try the third one tomorrow.

kode54 · Post by **kode54** » Mon Sep 07, 2009 7:13 am

Crappy DSL, or ISDN?

Anyway, if you're into transcoding your videos for faster playback, I recommend using motion JPEG over Huffyuv, it compresses better and still decodes faster. Or at least, I think it does. I haven't performed any conclusive tests.

creaothceann · Post by **creaothceann** » Mon Sep 07, 2009 10:07 am

kode54 wrote:Crappy DSL, or ISDN?

DSL. (link)

kode54 wrote:Anyway, if you're into transcoding your videos for faster playback, I recommend using motion JPEG over Huffyuv, it compresses better and still decodes faster. Or at least, I think it does. I haven't performed any conclusive tests.

Mmmh... I'll look into it, and do some tests.

creaothceann · Post by **creaothceann** » Mon Sep 07, 2009 3:45 pm

Third video also lags, about half the nominal framerate or so.

kode54:
I've used ffdshow's MJPEG encoder (since it's free) at a 85% quality setting. Encoding time is about the same as with Huffyuv, but the resulting file is almost 1/6 in size (1.7 GB instead of 10). Playback is fast enough too - so I'll be using that for viewing videos.

kick · Post by **kick** » Wed Sep 09, 2009 8:58 pm

Added another video to the "CPU stress test suite"