NVIDIA Enables PureVideo on GeForce 6 GPUs
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 20, 2004 1:22 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
NVIDIA's PureVideo Driver and Encoder
There are two parts to the software side of PureVideo - the GPU driver and the PureVideo DVD decoder. The driver is simply a version of the ForceWare 67.01 driver, the PureVideo DVD decoder is the latest update to NVIDIA's NVDVD decoder - version 1.00.65. The GPU driver is obviously available free to the public, while the PureVideo DVD decoder sells for $19.99 due to associated royalties. The PureVideo DVD decoder is available as a 30-day free trial from NVIDIA's website.
The PureVideo DVD decoder installs just like any application would and has a control panel associated with it. You can only access the control panel while using the decoder (e.g. watching a DVD) or if you are using a media player that lets you access it directly (e.g. Zoom Player). The PureVideo decoder control panel has a few options to it, although the control panel is unnecessarily complicated.
The main options you'll want to adjust are the de-interlacing options, but unfortunately NVIDIA included two separate de-interlacing controls in the driver that will undoubtedly confuse users.
The first control is marked De-interlace Control and has the following options: Automatic, Film, Video and Smart. Automatic mode simply uses the DVD flags to determine what the source is and applies the appropriate algorithms based on the flags.
The Film and Video modes tell the DVD decoder to treat all content as 24 fps or 30 fps content respectively. Smart mode is the option you'll want to set and it uses both flags as well as NVIDIA's own algorithms to determine the best de-interlacing to apply.
Then we have the De-interlace Mode control which has the following options: Best available, Display fields separately and Combine fields.
Display fields separately and Combine fields force bob and weave, respectively, regardless of content.
Best available is the option you'll want to use for the best image quality as it uses NVIDIA's per pixel adapative de-interlacing algorithms. So the combination you'll want to use is Smart mode with the Best available setting. NVIDIA included the other options for the tweakers in all of us, however we'd much rather see a single control or something that is at least a bit more intuitive than what NVIDIA has put together right now.
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Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
gordon151I should have made this more clear, I used the NVIDIA codec for NVIDIA's tests and I used ATI's codec for ATI's tests. I used Zoom Player for both of them.
ViRGE
They never briefed me on anything like that but I can always ask :)
Take care,
Anand
ViRGE - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
Thanks Crimson, but I'm talking about the video features, not the elusive cards themselves. ;-)crimson117 - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
#29: http://anandtech.com/news/shownews.aspx?i=23531ViRGE - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
I know this is an Nvidia article Anand, but could you get on ATI's butt about their lack of features too, and find out what's going on? When the X800 was launched, ATI was talking about decode acceleration for MPEG4 along along with some sort of encode acceleration(i.e. all the features NV promissed but never delivered on). I'm curious to know what happened to that, and if we're going to get something new out of ATI besides WMV acceleration.gordon151 - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
I was wondering why AT's results were different than PCPers and just noticed they used MMC & 4.12 while AT used the nVidia codec and player for both cards tests.Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
YtterbiumI've asked numerous times, never gotten a response. I'll try again :)
For those of you who are wondering, I have asked NVIDIA what their official statement is to early 6800 adopters, but that has also been met with no response.
Take care,
Anand
Ytterbium - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
I'm dissapointed that the encode function never made it, that was a killer feature. Any idea if it will come?Spike - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
Thanks for that! I have the BFG 6800 GT and on the BFG cd there is the nvDVD software. It's nice to know I can actually use the VP that I paid for!-spike
Gatak - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
Here are some examples of interlacing artifacts when redering on a progressive screen:1) http://moment22.mine.nu/interlace_1.jpg
Most software DVDs either blend or remove one of the fields by some partial de-interlacing algorithm. nvidia's DVD decoder does it ok. The image is sharp but still leaves only half framerate.
2) http://moment22.mine.nu/interlace_2.jpg
But in reality, half temporal resolution is lost. What should have been done is to render each field as a separate frame.
3) http://moment22.mine.nu/interlace_3.jpg
Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, December 20, 2004 - link
SpikeI wasn't aware that the 6800s are coming with NVDVD, in that case you are good to go. Just download the updated version (1.00.67 is the official version) from the website.
Rand
The full system was configured as follows:
Intel Pentium 4 570J
Intel D915GUX Motherboard
2 x 512MB DDR2-533 DIMMs
Intel HD Audio Enabled
Windows XP SP2 w/ DX9c
Take care,
Anand