Boxee Beta has its own DXVA hardware acceleration implementation for Windows?
#1
Question 
The popular xbmc fork with a social networking twist, has just had its impressive beta unveiled at an event at the Music Hall of Williamsburg. The Boxee team will open up this Beta to the public on Jan 7th (at CES) and over the next 4 weeks will gradually release invitations to early access users.

What is interesting about this release is this statement on the Boxee Beta update page:

Quote:As part of the Beta we also changed the underlying graphic library on Windows from OpenGL to DirectX, and we’re now taking advantage of DXVA, which means Boxee for Windows just got faster and can play 1080p without your CPU breaking a sweat. There is now a long list of affordable Windows-based devices that can turn into a kick-ass media center (e.g. Acer Revo, Dell Zino, HP Mini)

I know Tiben is making great progress getting DXVA working with xbmc for the Windows platform so isn't this a conflict of development time? Or will Boxee be separate from xbmc from now on?
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#2
We're well aware of what Boxee is doing and are in regular contact with at least one of their developers.

After all, it was us working with Boxee that got the port to DirectX done in the first place. We were always intending to also take the DXVA stuff once they were done, and then tiben20 came along and did it anyway.

I believe the two implementations are quite different, and ofcourse XBMC is in the nice position of being able to pick and choose Smile

Cheers,
Jonathan
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#3
jmarshall Wrote:I believe the two implementations are quite different, and ofcourse XBMC is in the nice position of being able to pick and choose Smile
Could you provide some more info on the two implementations? Tiben's seem to enable the user to pick and choose filters while providing built-in ones, coming from MPC-HC. What does Boxee differently?
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#4
Boxee DXVA main features are:

- It integrates directly inside the application. No need for extarnal player.
- It will detect whether your system supports DXVA and will use it. If DXVA is not available, then it will fall back to software.
- All the sound/subtitles/osd/SMB etc, works exactly the same.
- Works on all NVIDIA, ATI and Intel cards supporting DXVA.
- Currently only supports H.264, we will add VC1 later.

Eli.
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#5
Does it switch refresh rate automatically? Does it use bobo1on1 smoothvideo routines or support reclock?
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#6
Elis Wrote:Boxee DXVA main features are:

- It integrates directly inside the application. No need for extarnal player.
- It will detect whether your system supports DXVA and will use it. If DXVA is not available, then it will fall back to software.
- All the sound/subtitles/osd/SMB etc, works exactly the same.
- Works on all NVIDIA, ATI and Intel cards supporting DXVA.
- Currently only supports H.264, we will add VC1 later.

Eli.

To me it looks like the same as Tiben's plus more format support via codecs. Am I missing something ?
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#7
I know Tiben's done some good work but if this can make it into XBMC, that would be so sweet, especially the subtitles!

Elis Wrote:Boxee DXVA main features are:

- It integrates directly inside the application. No need for extarnal player.
- It will detect whether your system supports DXVA and will use it. If DXVA is not available, then it will fall back to software.
- All the sound/subtitles/osd/SMB etc, works exactly the same.
- Works on all NVIDIA, ATI and Intel cards supporting DXVA.
- Currently only supports H.264, we will add VC1 later.

Eli.
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#8
ashlar Wrote:Does it switch refresh rate automatically? Does it use bobo1on1 smoothvideo routines or support reclock?

It supports all the application features. So if refresh rate/smoothvideo works, it will work as well with DXVA.
One important thing to remember here: DXVA stores all the decoding buffers in the GPU, so whenever you reset the card (change size, refresh rate etc) you must delete all those buffers. So it's best to minimize resets as much as possible.
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#9
CrashX Wrote:To me it looks like the same as Tiben's plus more format support via codecs. Am I missing something ?

I haven't tested Tiben's branch so I cant comment on that. Boxee DXVA is not based on DShow so it doesn't use/require any external codecs.
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#10
I believe Boxee's stuff works for Vista and Win7 only, is that correct Eli? Essentially it's similar to how VDPAU is done under Linux?

Cheers,
Jonathan
Always read the XBMC online-manual, FAQ and search the forum before posting.
Do not e-mail XBMC-Team members directly asking for support. Read/follow the forum rules.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting please make sure you read this first.


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#11
jmarshall Wrote:I believe Boxee's stuff works for Vista and Win7 only, is that correct Eli? Essentially it's similar to how VDPAU is done under Linux?

Cheers,
Jonathan

Yes you're right, only Vista and Win7. DXVA for Win XP is only through DShow so we're not using it.

It's quite similiar to VDPAU:

FFmpeg to demux, hardware decoding to GPU memory and then using DXVA to create a texture and render.

Eli.
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#12
That's actually really interesting. I understand that Tiben has got DXVA going pretty well for XP through DShow, but is having trouble developing for Vista and 7, due to a lack of software. Assuming the Boxee method gets ported back to XBMC, the two methods might compliment one another nicely.
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#13
Elis Wrote:Yes you're right, only Vista and Win7. DXVA for Win XP is only through DShow so we're not using it.

It's quite similiar to VDPAU:

FFmpeg to demux, hardware decoding to GPU memory and then using DXVA to create a texture and render.

Eli.

Are you mean the method use by boxee to enable dxva only works under win7 and vista, Can't work with xp?
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#14
taxigps Wrote:Are you mean the method use by boxee to enable dxva only works under win7 and vista, Can't work with xp?

I'm guessing that it uses the DXVA2 interface (hence why it can operate outside of a DirectShow filter chain) so, no, it won't work with XP.
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#15
jmarshall Wrote:We're well aware of what Boxee is doing and are in regular contact with at least one of their developers.

After all, it was us working with Boxee that got the port to DirectX done in the first place. We were always intending to also take the DXVA stuff once they were done, and then tiben20 came along and did it anyway.

I believe the two implementations are quite different, and ofcourse XBMC is in the nice position of being able to pick and choose Smile

Cheers,
Jonathan

when will DXVA gone official in XBMC?
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