Alternative Clarkdale (i3, i5) DirectShow Drivers

[dburckh]

I just got a H55 i3-540 and I was really disappointed to find out that there is no easy way to get DXVA acceleration of VC-1 for this chipset.  After a lot of digging, I found vc1_dec_filter.dll which comes as part of the Intel Media SDK.  I had never even heard of this before.  It looks like babgvant had compiled to support VC-1 with version 1.5.  I did the same with 2.0beta5.  Anyway, I built the H264, MPEG-2, and VC-1 DirectShow filters as well.  This is useful to anyone that needs VC-1 acceleration on W7 and extremely useful to anyone running Vista or XP.

I have a ton of HD DVD rips and the lack of VC-1 acceleration was a deal breaker for Clarkdale for me.  This resolved this issue.  I tweaked the VC-1 filter, the others are just here for convienience.  Here is how to install it.

Disable the MS VC-1 DMO Filter (Vista? and W7).  This may have side effects for MS WMV DRM files, but it is reversable by just renaming it back.
1.  Go to C:\Windows\System32
2.  Take ownership of WMVDECOD.DLL (Properties->Security, Advanced Button, Owner Tab->Edit Button, …)
3.  Give yourself full control (Properties->Security, Edit Button)
4.  Rename it to  WMVDECOD.DLL.bak (or whatever)

Installing the filters.
For W7, you only really need the VC-1 filter, the rest should work fine with the native filters.  For Vista, you probably want VC-1 and H264.  XP, you probably want all 3.

1.  Unzip Clarkdale_DXVA
2.  Start a cmd.exe prompt as Administrator
3.  regsvr32

Enjoy!

I know these work for Clarkdale, but they should probably work for 4500HD chipsets as well.

http://www.mediafire.com/download.php?b1hl4hwfhj38wx3

Download from Intel (broken VC-1 Acceleration)

http://software.intel.com/en-us/articles/media/

[Andrew Van Til]

What did you change?  I had to disable pure HWA to get it to work with WVC1.

[dburckh]

Anyway, 2.0b5 was not auto binding in GraphStudio (or WMP/C), but I noticed I could manually bind it.  I then noticed that MEDIASUBTYPE_WVC1 was not exposed as a supported type.

I justed added MEDIASUBTYPE_WVC1 as FORMAT2.  I can send you the exact change once I’m home.  It was pretty small.  I get a slight jitter once every 2-3 mins, but it’s not bad (most people would probably not notice).

I was getting jitter with 1.5, so I downloaded the new SDK to see if it would resolve it.  The jitter could have been related to another issues I was having.  Now that the other issue is resolved, I may try your version again to see if I can get it 100% jitter free.

What did you do to disable HWA?  It might be worth trying to see if I can get it 100% Jitter free.

[Andrew Van Til]

I had to make that change too.  If that was the only change, they must have fixed something in the SDK.

[dburckh]

What did you do to disable HWA?  It might be worth trying to see if I can get it 100% Jitter free.

[Andrew Van Til]

in basedecoder.h

mfxStatus  QueryIMPL(mfxIMPL *impl)
    {
        m_mfxVideoSession.QueryIMPL(impl);

#ifdef MFX_EMULATE_HW
        *impl = MFX_IMPL_HARDWARE;
#endif
if(m_bLie)
*impl = MFX_IMPL_SOFTWARE;

        return MFX_ERR_NONE;
    };

where m_bLie is a variable I created and set in the constructor for the VC1 decoder filter

[dburckh]

I’m not a C++ guy, but I looked at adding it to base_decoder.h, but since CBaseDecoder is reused by composition in CVC1DecVideoFilter the only way to make it accessible was to make m_bLie public or make them friends.  

Well, after a little time looking a C++, I decided that the little bit of Jitter I get wasn’t too bad.  I’ll keep “testing”, but I only saw it once in the last movie.

Either way, it is working really well and the jitter isn’t really worse than PowerDVD, so I think it’s good as is.  We have company all weekend, so I suspect we watch a bunch of movies.  Also, I am watching on a 120″ screen and I’m extremely picky about video.  I doubt most people would notice the jitter.

[dburckh]

Well, paint my face red.  This thing doesn’t do DXVA acceleration at all.  It’s actually worse than ffdshow tryouts from a CPU standpoint.

[Andrew Van Til]

What kind of CPU usage are you seeing? 

[dburckh]

On my i3-540 25-35%  (ffdshow tryouts 15-25%)

FYI:  H264 (DXVA is around 7%)

[Andrew Van Til]

What do you see with the version I compiled?  I was seeing 7-10% for VC-1.

[xjboonie]

Is it wrong that i don’t understand 90% of what’s being said in this thread?  Do I need to know it (I’m using a i3-530)…

[Andrew Van Til]

No, not really 🙂

[dburckh]

The only thing is that is useful is how to disable the MS VC-1 DMO filter manually (there are tools for this).  Or what it takes to build the Intel WMV3 decoder to play VC-1.

I was getting major stuttering with the MS decoder and Intel 1.5, but  I’m having weird issues with AC3 passthrough.  Sometimes it’s fine, some times it stutters and dies.  I’ve even consider SP1 beta.  I have a work-around and I’ll give 1.5 another go. 

I’m a somewhat amazed that you are getting such low utilization with software rendering.  Do you have something bigger than a i3-5[3-4]0 or do you think you are getting HW acceleration? 

The only decent VC-1 decoder I have found is the MPCHC decoder (DXVA), which doesn’t seem to work on Clarkdale.  The MS one stutters even on my i7.  I was going to play with the ArcSoft one, but the ffdshow one is working pretty well.

[Andrew Van Til]

The MediaSDK VC-1 decoder is DXVA2 only on Intel GPUs (tested with an i5 and i3), on other GPUs it’s SW only (~15% on my Q6600 + ATI3650). 

Now that Sage has there own MKV splitter I’ve been using the ArcSoft TMT2 Video Decoder instead, so I haven’t messed w/ the Intel one for a while.

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