DXVA & MPC Video Quality on 1410/Intel 4500

Hey everyone, I've been encoding a lot of my DVDs to h264 using Handbrake for traveling, and I have my 1410 set up to do DXVA h264 decoding with Media Player Classic HC (on Windows 7 Pro RTM x64). I used this guide to set up DXVA:
http://nunnally.ahmygoddess.net/watching-h264-videos-using-dxva/

The DXVA offloading works well, and I get around 5-10% CPU usage on Task Manager. My issue is that the video quality looks poor compared with using Windows Media Player 12. H264 MKVs look great on WMP, but sometimes they stutter a little, CPU usage is around 10-20%, so I know it's doing some kind of DXVA of its own.

After reading this thread, I figured out my problem somewhat: http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=408933

What I wanted to know is this: has there been any development in fixing the h264 deblocking bug with MPC-HC and DXVA? I'd like to use MPC-HC for my MKV viewing, because that plays video the smoothest, and it handles the audio and subtitles of several anime series that I have.

Just some background on my setup: I'm using a 1410 with the dual-core SU2300, Windows 7 Pro x64, latest version of MPC-HC, latest version of Haali Splitter, latest Intel 4 Series drivers (version 1986), and the ffdshow x64 audio-only filters. I'm also using the Divx 7 Tech Preview for thumbnails and improved performance on WMP.

Thanks in advance for any help!

 

Assuming the video was properly encoded, deblocking issues seem to usually appear when using hardware video acceleration. I've seen deblocking errors in MPC-HC's H.264 DXVA decoder, CoreAVC with CUDA and Windows 7's H.264 decoder. When hardware acceleration is disabled the deblocking problems disappear. This problem could be due to drivers, decoder and/or player bugs.

Hopefully, you didn't use the PowerDVD approach since newer versions of PowerDVD 8 and all versions of PowerDVD 9 have disabled the use of it's H.264 decoder in external players. So the latest PowerDVD decoder you could use is fairly old.

With your current setup, MPC-HC x64 1.3.1249.0 and Haali Media Splitter 19/12/2009 (64 bit support), you could either disable MPC-HC's H.264 DXVA decoder and use MPC-HC's H.264 FFmpeg decoder or disable both of MPC-HC's H.264 decoders and use Windows 7's built-in one. The FFmpeg based decoder only uses the CPU for decoding so if your video has a very high bitrate then you could run into performance problems.

Since you mentioned that under WMP12 the video looks better then you should first try using the second option above. The Windows 7 decoder makes use of hardware acceleration. To do this in MPC-HC, click View > Options > Internal Filters. Under the "Transform Filters" list uncheck "H264/AVC (DXVA)" and "H264/AVC (FFmpeg)" and click the OK button. Now open your video file. Right click on the video screen and place your mouse over "Filters" and you should see "Microsoft DTV-DVD Video Decoder" in the list that pops up. While the video is playing, on the bottom of the window it should say "Playing [DXVA]" which means DXVA is being used.

If the video still doesn't look good then you could try using the FFmpeg based decoder and hopefully your CPU can handle it. Pretty much I'm just telling you try using different video decoders in the hope that one of them works.

 

I took some screen shots when I was testing out an old rip of my Iron Man Blu-ray. As you can see, I was using the Windows 7 built-in decoder. So as a side note my 1810t can play direct rips of Blu-ray movies (well at least one Blu-ray movie so far).

 

k8t, thanks for the screenshots and the advice. I tried using just the Windows 7 decoder, and I'm getting lots of dropped frames, even with DXVA (as it says at the bottom of the player screen). The ffmpeg decoder looks great with standard-def h264 stuff, but anything high-def shoots my processor usage up to 100% :-/.

I'm going to try some encoding experiements in Handbrake and play with some settings, see if I can get it like your screenshots. I'll post another reply with my findings. Thanks!

 

Are you only having problems with the DVD rips you encoded or all H.264 videos? If you're getting dropped frames with just the DVD rips then there's a good chance there's something wrong with your encodes like setting the bit rate too high or using too many reference frames. Your CPU should be able to decode DVD rips easily without using hardware video acceleration.

I have used Handbrake about a year ago on both Windows and Mac OS X. I seemed to have better success using it under Mac OS X. After changing some encode settings, my videos played great. I haven't used Handbrake since then because I lost interest in ripping and encoding my DVDs. Now, I just create disc images of them and with Blu-ray, I just take out the .m2ts files. Sorry, I can't help you with Handbrake settings. Hope you get it resolved.

 

Ok, I made some progress. I tried a combination of things, and I found that WMP12 with the Divx7 MKV package works great, much better than the built in one. I get smooth playback with encoded MKVs. I also have Haali Splitter installed for use with MPC-HC, for anime episodes that contain dual-audio and subtitles. For animation, there is no apparent loss of quality. Again, I used the guide from my first post for MPC-HC/DXVA.

That led me to my next fix: Handbrake settings. I searched for the settings to properly do DXVA with x264, and came across this: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=972503 . If you search the thread, you'll find the proper Handbrake settings, which are copied below. I re-encoded my test movies using these proper Level 4.1 settings (I also tested with the Level 3.1 settings, and found that 4.1 looks good for both HD and SD content). These movies play in MPC-HC with full DXVA and significantly better video quality. No more blocking, no more tearing, no more crappy video!

So, tl:dr, bottom line is my encode settings were crap, and it really takes time to get good settings that work for your setup. My encodes using the 4.1 profile look great with MPC/DXVA on my 1410 and on VLC/QT/Perian on my MacBook.

Here are my Handbrake settings. Paste this line into the box under the Advanced tab:

level=4.1:ref=4:mixed-refs=1:bframes=3:b-rdo=1:bime=1:weightb=1:direct=auto:deblock=-1,-1:subq=6:trellis=2:analyse=p8x8,b8x8,i4x4,i8x8:8x8dct=1:me =umh

Other settings: x264 Encoder, 2-pass, no turbo first pass, 2000 kbps avg. bitrate, filetype is MKV.