Hardware Decoding of BDs [ PowerDVD12 on Win8 with ATI HD4350 gpu ]

Foil

Newbie Location: Denver, CO, US Joined: Jul 03, 2012 13:59 Messages: 4 Offline

Solved by

Nov 27, 2012 14:38

Hi,

I've been using PowerDVD 12 with Win7 for a while, and have had zero issues with gpu-decoding (using an ATI HD4350 PCIe card, CCC drivers) for Blu-ray playback.

However, now that I upgraded to Win8 (PowerDVD 12 v2118a), I am getting a noticeable number of dropped frames because my cpu (an older AMD Athlon II x4) can't keep up during decoding, and I can't seem to find a way to get hardware-decoding working.

I am using the Win8 drivers for HD4xxx (v12.6). From what I'm reading here and elsewhere, this apparently does not include the video-acceleration drivers (AVIVO?) PowerDVD is looking for. I've tried other things, like installing AVIVO separately using the ATI Win7 v11.12 drivers, but no dice.

From the "Information" dialog, PowerDVD is only seeing the DirectX VA. How can I get it to see (and use) the ATI gpu-decoding?

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at Nov 27. 2012 14:41

Foil

Newbie Location: Denver, CO, US Joined: Jul 03, 2012 13:59 Messages: 4 Offline

Nov 28, 2012 13:31

...Anyone?

Foil

Newbie Location: Denver, CO, US Joined: Jul 03, 2012 13:59 Messages: 4 Offline

Nov 29, 2012 23:59

...Hello??

M8R

Member Joined: Dec 31, 2010 18:41 Messages: 89 Offline

Nov 30, 2012 02:41

I'm not sure about this but as far as i know AVIVO is needed only for gpu encoding, not decoding. DXVA should work fine without it. AMD switched to legacy support for HD4xxx cards with the introduction of Windows 8. So having bugs fixed could take a long time, if ever. Updating to newest OS/software with old hardware isn't such a good idea. So PDVD shows the message DXVA not in use, right? Maybe you unticked the hw acceleration in the PDVD video settings by accident? Check your device manager for missing motherboard drivers. That could stop your gpu from beeing fully utilised. Could also be a bug in PDVD, though. Most companies try to support new hardware first with a new OS and then maybe add older stuff later. If you're in luck just waiting for updates maybe solves your problem to. Try reporting this problem at AMD forums, too. Does someone know if PDVD supports WDDM 1.2 only for Windows 8, since the legacy AMD drivers don't?

Foil

Newbie Location: Denver, CO, US Joined: Jul 03, 2012 13:59 Messages: 4 Offline

Nov 30, 2012 10:57

Thank you for the reply, M8R.

I do have hw-decoding selected in the PowerDVD settings, and you are correct that it shows DXVA "Not in use". I tend to agree that Win8 going to legacy drivers for the HD4xxx series might be the root cause.

So in the absence of a solution (unless someone has one?), rather than wait for drivers or updates, I may try upgrading to an HD5xxx or HD6xxx series card. Can someone confirm whether hardware-decoding works for those cards in Win8 / PDVDv2118a?

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Nov 30. 2012 10:57

Korrigan

Senior Member Joined: Oct 06, 2010 04:57 Messages: 221 Offline

Dec 01, 2012 06:17

A bit too late for that, but best solution would have been to NOT upgrade to Windows 8 on legacy hardware. Not to mention Windows 8 really doesn't bring much on the table compared to Windows 7, except a bloated UI eating more memory are resources.

You could just revert to Windows 7 and live happy though

My collection: http://www.blu-ray.com/community/collection.php?u=194008&action=showcategory&category=1&categoryid=7

CMB

Newbie Joined: Apr 30, 2011 21:12 Messages: 6 Offline

Dec 03, 2012 01:19

have you loaded these ?
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/windows/Pages/eyespeed_downloads.aspx