4K HEVC Playback

MavericK

MavericK

Zero Cool
Joined
Sep 2, 2004
Messages
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So, I recently purchased a 4K TV and tried playing some 4K video on my HTPC with disappointing results. The video is either completely choppy/unwatchable or still exhibits stutter, depending on the video sample.

Specs:
Phenom II X4 965 Black
8 GB DDR3
GTX 970

It appears my HTPC will not play back 10-bit, or even 8-bit 4K video smoothly. 10-bit is choppy (I believe) because the GTX 970 does not support 10-bit HEVC hardware acceleration. I also tried an 8-bit sample, and while that did run much better and appears to have HW acceleration working, still is noticeably choppy.

I am wondering if it would make more sense to get some sort of Kaby Lake i3 mobo/CPU/RAM setup and use the Intel iGPU, or spend the money on a GTX 1050 Ti or something. Not sure which would perform better for 4K playback.

Anyone have any experience playing back 4K HEVC video on an HTPC?

Programs I have tried for playback:

VLC
MPC-HC
PowerDVD 15
Kodi

All about the same in terms of smoothness. I also installed the CCCP and configured the LAV filters. Tried several HW acceleration settings but no real change in performance.
 
that should be able to handle 4k/60 8bit. a Celeron with igpu can do 4k/30 or with a 750ti can do 4k/60. are all your drivers up to date, specifically gpu? maybe the cpu is a bit under powered but if the Celeron can do it... what does you cpu/gpu usage look like during playback?
 
pendragon1 said:
that should be able to handle 4k/60 8bit. a Celeron with igpu can do 4k/30 or with a 750ti can do 4k/60. are all your drivers up to date, specifically gpu? maybe the cpu is a bit under powered but if the Celeron can do it... what does you cpu/gpu usage look like during playback?
Click to expand...

New Celestine can because they have hw acceleration.

His CPU does not, nor his gpu. Time for kaby lake, or just watch 1080p. Lots of the 4K stuff is fake anyway.
 
I'm pretty sure with the 9xx Geforce GTX line, you can only get 10-bit color in DirectX 11/12 full screen mode, or 8 + 2 dithered in certain windowed applications that are on their approved list. (unless the drivers have changed since mid 2016 to enable it globally) There was discussion of this on EVGA forums, and even if you select 10-bit, the driver blocks the output and downsamples to 8-bit.

For 10xx pascal, it supports 10/12 bit in DirectX applications, but not OpenGL applications -- which requires a Quadro card.

As a note, most video renderers use Direct3D 9, or more rarely OpenGL and other independent or open source. For HEVC 10-bit, you need to use the new HEVC video renderer that supports 8-bit and 10-bit playback, which I haven't seen anywhere mentioned that Nvidia is supporting it. (yet)

edit: found the Nvidia video decoder matrix for what's supported. It seems to be updated.
Note: SDK v8.0 is not out yet, so it isn't supported yet for any 3rd parties to put it in their applications.

nvidia-10bit.png

Source: https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-video-codec-sdk
 
Last edited:
pendragon1 said:
that should be able to handle 4k/60 8bit. a Celeron with igpu can do 4k/30 or with a 750ti can do 4k/60. are all your drivers up to date, specifically gpu? maybe the cpu is a bit under powered but if the Celeron can do it... what does you cpu/gpu usage look like during playback?
Click to expand...

Drivers are up to date. CPU usage is around 30% in MPC-HC, for a 4K 8-bit HEVC. Still noticeable stutter though, and it seems like it must be using HW acceleration on the GPU, but it doesn't seem to be doing well enough.
 
Verge said:
New Celestine can because they have hw acceleration.

His CPU does not, nor his gpu. Time for kaby lake, or just watch 1080p. Lots of the 4K stuff is fake anyway.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. Does it make more sense to go Kaby Lake or to get a 1050 Ti, in your opinion?
 
is your gpu clocking up correctly? it should be running at full speed when in full screen exclusive mode. the cpu looks fine if its only 30%. so if the gpu is the issue go with the 1050ti or kaby(board, chip+ram) if you want 4k Netflix I guess...
 
I can do 4K Netflix on my TV directly, I am talking HEVC encoded media from my HTPC.

I guess I will just wait until 4K media is more prevalent and then look at upgrading. So far there is not much even out there.
 
Whelp, apparently the latest nVidia drivers added 10-bit HEVC hardware acceleration...but not for the 970 or 980/Ti. LOL.
 
MavericK said:
Whelp, apparently the latest nVidia drivers added 10-bit HEVC hardware acceleration...but not for the 970 or 980/Ti. LOL.
Click to expand...
Because the hardware support isn't there in the 980 or 970, they've only got partial HEVC support.
 
MavericK said:
So, I recently purchased a 4K TV and tried playing some 4K video on my HTPC with disappointing results. The video is either completely choppy/unwatchable or still exhibits stutter, depending on the video sample.

Specs:
Phenom II X4 965 Black
8 GB DDR3
GTX 970

It appears my HTPC will not play back 10-bit, or even 8-bit 4K video smoothly. 10-bit is choppy (I believe) because the GTX 970 does not support 10-bit HEVC hardware acceleration. I also tried an 8-bit sample, and while that did run much better and appears to have HW acceleration working, still is noticeably choppy.

I am wondering if it would make more sense to get some sort of Kaby Lake i3 mobo/CPU/RAM setup and use the Intel iGPU, or spend the money on a GTX 1050 Ti or something. Not sure which would perform better for 4K playback.

Anyone have any experience playing back 4K HEVC video on an HTPC?

Programs I have tried for playback:

VLC
MPC-HC
PowerDVD 15
Kodi

All about the same in terms of smoothness. I also installed the CCCP and configured the LAV filters. Tried several HW acceleration settings but no real change in performance.
Click to expand...

Kaby lake should have support for 4k HEVC 10bit. I think getting a GTX 1050 or RX 460 will be the easiest option.
 
MavericK said:
Drivers are up to date. CPU usage is around 30% in MPC-HC, for a 4K 8-bit HEVC. Still noticeable stutter though, and it seems like it must be using HW acceleration on the GPU, but it doesn't seem to be doing well enough.
Click to expand...

Assuming you have MPC-HC configured correctly to use LAV Video Decoder for your media type, try checking your LAV filter settings and ensure DXVA2 (native) is selected. You might want to also check the checkboxes (below) for HEVC and UHD under 'Codecs for HW decoding'.

I'm never certain that MPC-HC defaults to what I consider proper settings for HW acceleration, which might be the case for you as well. DXVA2 (native) is by far the fastest and smoothest HW accel mode (at least for discrete gpu) in my experience.
 
Absalom said:
Assuming you have MPC-HC configured correctly to use LAV Video Decoder for your media type, try checking your LAV filter settings and ensure DXVA2 (native) is selected. You might want to also check the checkboxes (below) for HEVC and UHD under 'Codecs for HW decoding'.

I'm never certain that MPC-HC defaults to what I consider proper settings for HW acceleration, which might be the case for you as well. DXVA2 (native) is by far the fastest and smoothest HW accel mode in my experience.
Click to expand...

I've tried NVCUVID, DXVA2 (copy-back) and DXVA2 (native)...some minor differences between them but overall still not smooth performance.
 
MavericK said:
I've tried NVCUVID, DXVA2 (copy-back) and DXVA2 (native)...some minor differences between them but overall still not smooth performance.
Click to expand...

Then it's something else. Also try disabling shaders, block filters, use cheap resizers such as bilinear filtering instead of lanczos, etc. For example, I normally use madVR dshow filter for DX11 rendering, resizing, vsync, etc. But because my PC is rather old, it ends up being unnecessary overhead for 4k content (although arguably the performance hit is a small measure in terms of %). Pretty much go for barebones to try to get a baseline. You can even go so far as to changing your desktop resolution to closer match the video's and don't go fullscreen. Yeah, I know, sounds like a pita, but it dodges an otherwise expensive resize.

I've never tried 10-bit 4k on my media PC. I have lesser hardware than the OP, but I'm able to pull off most 8-bit 4k content. But as someone else mentioned, there is stuff out there that claims to be one thing but is quite possibly something else entirely. So clips or media you have might be the issue, not the hardware. Some of those 4k test clips/demos I've downloaded from LG's website do not play well for me despite my hardware being more than capable. The pirated content I've obtained, does play well, go figure. When it comes to playing random 4k content on a non-Kabby or GTX1080 hardware, I think it's a simple case of YMMV. Sounds like a cop-out, I know, but keep in mind we're still in first gen territory.
 
Another video card to consider is the RX 460. I believe it supports 10 bit x265 playback. Will have to double check. Feel 90% sure it does.
 
davidm71 said:
Another video card to consider is the RX 460. I believe it supports 10 bit x265 playback. Will have to double check. Feel 90% sure it does.
Click to expand...

it does. Unclear if it will work for 4k blurays however.
 
Was just reading your specs Maverick and I think your problem is the Phenom Cpu, but my 3 year old htpc is built on a 2 core pentium G3258 use to studder playing blurays off of the igpu until I put in a video card so maybe a new gpu may solve your problem. Personally I think you should go Kaby Lake. The two core multi threaded new cpus are getting good reviews. Maybe an I5 7600K if you want to splurge. Though a 1050 Ti might work too so you could encode either using the igpu or cuda. Also worth mentioning they have an app called DXVA Checker that will tell you what your graphic hardware is capable of and for example I was surprised that my notebook is 10 bit hevc capable thanks to that app. Worth trying.
 
Verge said:
it does. Unclear if it will work for 4k blurays however.
Click to expand...

RX 460 should be fine for 4k bluray, if it works on XB1s hardware wise the RX 460 will be fine. Problem is drives are expensive and don't think there is software support yet.
 
Thanks for the advice, guys. I will look into an upgrade at some point.

As for 4K Blu-ray...wasn't something I was planning on doing, at least not until it's way more common.
 
qbanb8582 said:
RX 460 should be fine for 4k bluray, if it works on XB1s hardware wise the RX 460 will be fine. Problem is drives are expensive and don't think there is software support yet.
Click to expand...

There is software support, and it requires kaby lake.
 
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