How to turn on WMV hardware acceleration

[Shining Arcanine]

My comment on the news page keeps getting truncated so I figured I'd post this on Neowin's message board and link to it.

I now have WMV Hardware Accleration enabled on my ATI AIW 9700 Pro. :D

Here is what I did. I installed hotfix 891122:

http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details...&displaylang=en

Then I installed:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/f/9...-global-enu.exe

Then I changed the following registry keys to 1:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{*}\0000\DXVA_WMV

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Video\{*}\0000\DXVA_WMV_DEF

{*} signifies a class id that varies from installation to installation. If you have installed ATI's drivers a few times, you'll have fun finding the correct value. I recommend uninstalling your drivers, running Driver Cleaner Pro and then reinstalling them. You can find driver cleaner pro at DriverCleaner.net:

http://www.drivercleaner.net/

After I did this, I opened WMP 10 and played the 1080p Dive Into Liquid video. My CPU utilization was previously 50-65% with frame drops without hardware acceleration. With hardware acceleration, it dropped to 25-35% without frame drops. This is with an Intel 2.4GHz P4 Revision C processor and an Intel D875PBZLK motherboard.

The Dive Into Liquid video is an extremely resource intensive WMV HD. You can get it from wmvhd.com:

http://www.wmvhd.com/

Now if you would excuse me, I think I'll go have fun with hardware accelerated WMV.

Edited May 30, 2005 by Shining Arcanine

[Vice]

I searched my whole registry and found nothing called DXVA_WMV :( I have installed both fixes.. and nothing not a sausage.....

[Evolution]

Can't you just install the two patches, and check WMV Acceleration under Display Properties>Advanced>Options of the Catalyst Control Panel?

[Shining Arcanine]

I searched my whole registry and found nothing called DXVA_WMV :( I have installed both fixes.. and nothing not a sausage.....

585991889[/snapback]

What version of the Catalyst drivers are you running? I'm running Catalyst 5.4.

Can't you just install the two patches, and check WMV Acceleration under Display Properties>Advanced>Options of the Catalyst Control Panel?

585991904[/snapback]

That would probably work too but I can't find that checkbox in the CCC. I'm running Catalyst 5.4 right now since I haven't had time to update to Catalyst 5.5 so things might have changed.

[OldeCrow]

is it a dword value ?

Edited May 31, 2005 by OldeCrow

[Shining Arcanine]

is it a dword value ?

585992088[/snapback]

It is a string.

[Vice]

What version of the Catalyst drivers are you running? I'm running Catalyst 5.4.

That would probably work too but I can't find that checkbox in the CCC. I'm running Catalyst 5.4 right now since I haven't had time to update to Catalyst 5.5 so things might have changed.

585992038[/snapback]

Well I'm running an nVidia card a 6800GT but I thought maybe this would work for everyone I used the search within the regedit to look for DXVA_WMV but only found one string which was called EnabledDXVA_WMV which was set to 1.

Very annoying I must admit.

[ev0|]

String values set to 1 ? weird.

[ev0|]

I should point out that 6800 class cards will not get any acceleration as the function is broken within the core of that card. Everyone should be well aware of this by now.

[Meshuggah]

how much of a performance boost should we got on a 9700 pro?

[b0m8er]

I should point out that 6800 class cards will not get any acceleration as the function is broken within the core of that card. Everyone should be well aware of this by now.

585994681[/snapback]

I didn't know that, thank you :(

[BigCheese]

Does anyone know if this works on geforce fx5900xt?

[Shining Arcanine]

Well I'm running an nVidia card a 6800GT but I thought maybe this would work for everyone I used the search within the regedit to look for DXVA_WMV but only found one string which was called EnabledDXVA_WMV which was set to 1.

Very annoying I must admit.

585993784[/snapback]

If you read the topic description, you would know that this is for ATI cards only. Nvidia cards have had software to turn on WMV hardware acceleration for months. It is called PureVideo. Go to Nvidia.com for it:

http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo.html

You'll probably want to install the patches.

By the way, if that is a Geforce 6800GT AGP card, you can't get WMV acceleration. Its video processor is defective.

I should point out that 6800 class cards will not get any acceleration as the function is broken within the core of that card. Everyone should be well aware of this by now.

585994681[/snapback]

It will get MPEG acceleration but that is all that it will get.

how much of a performance boost should we got on a 9700 pro?

585994809[/snapback]

It depends on the video and your CPU. You should get some kind of a noticeable CPU utilization decrease through.

Does anyone know if this works on geforce fx5900xt?

585994990[/snapback]

Probably not. The video processor was introduced in the GeForce 6 series and I doubt Nvidia designed the GeForce FX with video acceleration in mind (I read that ATI did with the R300; hence why I have video acceleration).

By the way, don't bother trying the registry modification I posted. It involves a key installed by ATI's catalyst drivers and wouldn't have any effect on an Nvidia card.