Intel QuickSync Decoder - HW accelerated FFDShow decoder with video processing - Page 4

The image quality is usually determined by the renderer.
Some decoders have some video processing capabilites that can affect the quality.
Microsoft's DTV DVD decoder uses DXVA to connect to the renderer. Unfortunately it's far from perfect. So give my decoder a try.

If you can force the player to use EVR you'll probably get the best quality for this setup.
My ffdshow-quicksync will be of use if you want to add subtitles or use ffdshow's internal image processing.
EVR should take care of the rest (should connect using NV12 for bext performance).
If the player doesn't allow specifying the renderer, you can consider using a different player (do it anyway for quality check). Many players exist that allow selecting decoders and renderers (ZoomPlayer, MPC-HC).

Clips types that don't work with DTV-DVD Video Decoder:
All MPEG2 with 4:2:2 profile. Crashes player
A large collection of H264 (AVC1 fourcc):
* Correuption during seeks on some.
* Clips with bad subs might not play at all (black screen).
* Clips with resolution of 720x1280 (transpose 720p).
* One or more clips freeze after a seek, then crash player
* some TS do not play and crash player (black screen).
* 10 bit profiles do not play.

VC1 - not supported by decoder.

My decoder either plays them well or gracefully reverts to another decoder within ffdshow if HW acceleration is not supported. I plan to add support for having ffdshow fail altogether (refuse connection) so another filter can pick up the decoding. Several users requested that 10 bit profiles will be handled by LAV decoder (outputs 10/16 bit).

As for the clips themselves, they are shared on my doom9 forum dev thread by several users. BTW, they were tested on an Intel GPU. I have no idea whether they work or don't on AMD/Nvidia GPUs.
Doom9 thread:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=162442

Like people said, EVR is the Enhanced Video Renderer (Microsoft), it ships with Windows vista and Windows 7. This is the most advanced video renderer by Microsoft (that comes with Windows - 3rd party renderers may eclipse it) and uses the DXVA2 interface among others. EVR utilizes advanced HW video processing and usually works OK with most HW configurations.
In order to utilize it well, you should install the latest graphics drivers.
FFDshow (now called ffdshow-tryouts) can be found here:
http://ffdshow-tryout.sourceforge.net/download.php.
I recommend using the latest SVN builds (alpha versions) and not the latest beta as the SVN builds are quite stable and correct a few issues found in the beta.
An alternative to FFDShow is LAV video decoder. Both are based on an open source audio/video decode/encode library called libavcodec http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=156191.

This thread is about my own version of ffdshow which utilizes Intel's HW acceleration (QuickSync). It uses the latest ffdshow code base so it's the same as the latest ffdshow + QuickSync. Download links for the latest version are on the first page of this thread.

Regarding 32/64 bit versions. Windwos 7 64 bit supports both 32 and 64 bit playback. You'll need to install both versions. If a player is 64 bit it will use the 64 bit DirectShow filters only (you can see in task manager if an app is 64 or 32 bit). Generally speaking, 32 bit versions are usually more stable and sometimes there's a performance difference (in both directions for various reasons).
Hope this helps.

If you want to enjoy HW acceleration on current generation Intel GPU my version is probably the best option. Using SW decoding my version and the one from SourceForge are very similar. My version fixed at least two open issues (crashes) in ffdshow, so I would use that anyway. You can select which internal decoder to use via the codec's tab in ffdshow's configuration (can be accessed from either the start menu entry or from the player itself in many cases).

Also, if you encounter issues, you can help me produce a better product by submitting a report.

There's no built in instructions exposed, only DXVA (1,2,HD) interfaces as well as DDI (device driver interface).
Regarding supported file formats, these are usually container formats that hold zero or more video streams, zero or more audio streams and zero or more subtitle streams. Parsing/demuxing the container format is simple and done in SW. HW acceleration is done for CPU intensive operations like decoding compressed video in order to save power and gain speed at the expense of a larger chip die area.
Since each video format (h264, mpeg2, etc.) uses different algorithms to decode the video stream, adding more supported video formats requires more HW. This means more architects, HW designers, validation and enabling efforts as well as increased die area which translates to a more expensive to manufacture chip.
So HW manufacturers decide which video formats are most important (useful) and implements those in HW.

A strong GPU may implement some or all of the decoding in a programmable implementation (CUDA, OpenCL, etc.) but this solution has a major drawback - it will use a lot of power.
Implementing in fixed function/ASIC means more effort to produce a decoder and increased die area but the speed and power are fully optimized. There's a very big difference between the two approaches.

Many older video formats are limited by resolution and bitrate. Enabling them in HW will only increase the GPU size/cost and not reduce power significantly as the CPU will decode them easily.

hi10p is not supported by the HW decoder. ffdshow supports it in 32 bit mode only (ATM) not sure why.
wmc is either 32 or 64 bit - same as the OS - must install 32 and/or 64 bit of ffdshow to match.
If ffdshow is enabled, an red icon appears in the system tray (blue is audio decoder).

For those who don't know - you must use a tweak tool to enable non default decoders to work (e.g. Win7DSFilterTweaker).

Like I wrote in a similar post, I have a hard time debugging the WMC fullscreen issue as it uses exclusive full screen which makes debugging a nightmare. It's even harder as WMC loads the ffdshow filter multiple times - probably in order to get thumbnails.
Anyway it's on my short term todo list.

SourceForge homepage:
http://sourceforge.net/p/qsdecoder
Currently only useful for source control (SVN).

FFDshow code changes where merged to FFDshow's code trunk. Will be part of next official FFDshow release (very similar to 0.18 alpha).

Next on my task list (v0.19):
* Create configuration to enable/disable certain features as asked by several developers for easy integration.
* Fix fullscreen problem in WMC (not loading ffdshow for some reason).
* Export D3D surfaces (DXVA2 samples) instead of system memory buffers. Will provide DXVA speed without actually dealing with DXVA...

If all goes well, version 0.20 will add video postprocessing (deinterlacing, film cadence correction, noise reduction, sharpness, etc.)

I've built using the standard environment (w/o building ffmpeg - it hasn't changed).

Get the builds from:http://sourceforge.net/projects/qsde...ffdshow_builds

Just returned from a business trip, so sorry for the late response.
I'll need a short clip and some more info (player, splitter, OS).
Thanks!

Here's the PM text for clearness.

I've tested the clip and couldn't get it to fail. I tested with NV12 and RGB32 outputs using both high quality and standard versions.

What driver version was used? Latest is 2509, usually safe to install even if OEM doesn't release it yet.
Can you try outputting only NV12 from ffdshow?

I'll test this clip tomorrow on an older driver.

The first official build of ffdshow with Intel QuickSync decoder can be downloaded from the ffdshow's download page at:
http://ffdshow-tryout.sourceforge.net/download.php

Same QuickSync decoder as v0.18, ffdshow itself contains changes mostly for subtitles.

This thread will continue to supply ffdshow builds for continuous testing of my decoder's versions.

Can you try using the Microsoft DTV-DVD decoder (DXVA2) with EVR?
Look at the CPU usage for the player - should be ~1%. If it's higher than no HW acceleration is available. In any case please report if it works and how well.