MP 1,1-5,1 5700xt + Catalina vp9 8k decoding?

[wickerstick]

No need to beat a dead horse. Since MacOs Catalina cannot take advantage of Navi's VP9 Hardware decode there really is no need to continue this thread. Although it is strange some of you can play 8k smoothly especially the Jacob + Katie Schwarz video's I've been attempting playback on for quite some time. despite having a pretty maxed out system I cannot play back Uzbekistan, Bulgaria, or Morocco. These vids are just an example or some of the ones I cant play from beginning to end without buffer. I am on a 1GB Fiber Network.

Not that 8k youtube playback is a requirement for anything I do, but it would be a "nice to have". Thank you everyone for the Information and feedback!

 

[CMMChris]

Old CPUs cannot handle it no matter how many cores.

 

[startergo]

Firefox Ellesmere GPU 8K video no stuttering:

Unplayable in Chrome.

 

[CMMChris]

Check Performance Statistics in the IORegistry and look at the UVD Decoder entries. If there is no activity it still is pure software decoding. Maybe using compute engine to get load off the CPU.

 

[startergo]

Check Performance Statistics

 

[CMMChris]

As expected, no decoder used. Would've been real Voodoo anyways since, as I said, macOS doesn't support VP9 acceleration.

 

[startergo]

As expected, no decoder used. Would've been real Voodoo anyways since, as I said, macOS doesn't support VP9 acceleration.

Well this same test should be done with 5700XT with HWA enabled for better conclusion as Navi supports VP9 HW decoding, whereas Ellesmere does not.

Unified Video Decoder - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[CMMChris]

It doesn't matter what the card supports. There has to be driver support for it. And as I said, macOS does not support hardware accelerated VP9 encoding and decoding. Current AMD GPUs supporting VP9 are Vega10, Vega20 and Navi. I own graphics cards with all of these GPU generations and macOS does not support VP9 acceleration on them. I start getting tired repeating myself again and again. If you don't believe me, ask Apple, they should know. lol.

 

[startergo]

VP9 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

According to the table VP9 codec is supported by third party apps only in Mac OS (Firefox does). Regardless of Apple not supporting VP9 ( I think for good as it is inferior to HEVC) the user can still watch VP9 videos in Catalina/Mojave in Firefox with as minimum as 25% CPU usage with HWA enabled as demonstrated before.

 

[CMMChris]

Yes of course it is supported by third party browsers. But IT IS NOT HARDWARE ACCELERATED!
If Apple doesn't implement hardware acceleration for VP9 in their graphics drivers there is no way third party browsers can access it. All they can do is to run software decoding which Firefox obviously does better than Chrome.

 

[h9826790]

VP9 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

According to the table VP9 codec is supported by third party apps only in Mac OS (Firefox does). Regardless of Apple not supporting VP9 ( I think for good as it is inferior to HEVC) the user can still watch VP9 videos in Catalina/Mojave in Firefox with as minimum as 25% CPU usage with HWA enabled as demonstrated before.

For VP9 hardware decode support, we need hardware + OS support + Application support.

I haven't check the API etc. But there is no sign that UVD is working when playing VP9.

So, let's assume OS support doesn't exist in this case, we only have hardware + Application support. Since the OS does not provide a path for the application to use the hardware properly. Therefore, VP9 hardware decode won't work.

TBH, for those who have the 7,1 or W5700X, it's time to submit bug report to Apple now.

 

[startergo]

we only have hardware + Application suppor

I am wondering one thing:
If HWA is NOT enabled, would it be even possible to watch VP9 video in Firefox at all? I will check that. I am not talking about VP9 decoding simply about playback without stuttering.

 

[CMMChris]

Do you even read what's written here? It is called software decoding.

 

[h9826790]

I am wondering one thing:
If HWA is NOT enabled, would it be even possible to watch VP9 video in Firefox at all? I will check that. I am not talking about VP9 decoding simply about playback without stuttering.

That's my doubt as well.

Apparently my single processor (W3690) 5,1 just able to play 8K 24FPS VP9 video.

So, it's possible that dual Hex cores 3.xxGHz processor 5,1 just have enough processing power to play 8K 60FPS VP9 video without shuttering.

However, I still can't explain why the CPU usage is that low in your case. For that CPU demand, I should able to play 8K 60FPS VP9 on my cMP as well, but obviously it doesn't work (in both FireFox and Chrome)

 

[startergo]

For that CPU demand, I should able to play 8K 60FPS VP9 on my cMP as well

I can play videos like this:

but not 8K HDR 60FPS (FUHD) like this:

 

[AidenShaw]

I can play videos like this:

but not 8K HDR 60FPS (FUHD) like this:

For what it's worth, for me playing the Peru clip in the Brave browser on Win10, full screen 4K, gives 1% CPU (E5-1650v2) and 20% GPU (Quadro P2000 - 1024 cores, 5GiB, single slot, 75W).

Smooth, no glitches. Brave does low resolution scrubbing, so can't comment on what full resolution scrubbing would be like.

Just providing a data point for full hardware decoding with a modest CPU and GPU....

 

[startergo]

Well in Windows I can play 8K HDR 60P (FUHD) with 6% CPU:

 

[jasonmvp]

Well in Windows I can play 8K HDR 60P (FUHD) with 6% CPU:

I think there's a lot of confusion in this thread and chasing down how much CPU and GPU is being used isn't helping. In your specific resource manager output, there's 0% load on the decoder. That's what would be used if there was "hardware acceleration" of said video. Instead, the load you're seeing on the GPU is the real time scaling that it's doing, because you're (I assume) not watching it on an actual 8K display. GPUs are really, really good at real-time scaling, but it does work them a bit to do so.

That would happen regardless of hardware acceleration. Any time you play a video that doesn't line up with the display resolution, your GPU has to do some extra work, along with just playing the vid.

 

[startergo]

I think there's a lot of confusion in this thread and chasing down how much CPU and GPU is being used isn't helping. In your specific resource manager output, there's 0% load on the decoder. That's what would be used if there was "hardware acceleration" of said video. Instead, the load you're seeing on the GPU is the real time scaling that it's doing, because you're (I assume) not watching it on an actual 8K display. GPUs are really, really good at real-time scaling, but it does work them a bit to do so.

That would happen regardless of hardware acceleration. Any time you play a video that doesn't line up with the display resolution, your GPU has to do some extra work, along with just playing the vid.

Even so. What is happening is the same videos can't even play in OSX on the same hardware or use 25-60 percent CPU and stutter a lot. All I am testing is the playback performance and the CPU/GPU usage.

 

[Pressure]

I have an 8K monitor and I can't play back any of the videos without them stuttering. Mac Pro 5,1 x5680 with VEGA FE. The slideshow I do see looks fantastic. I've tried Chrome and Firefox.

 

[startergo]

I have an 8K monitor and I can't play back any of the videos without them stuttering. Mac Pro 5,1 x5680 with VEGA FE. The slideshow I do see looks fantastic. I've tried Chrome and Firefox.

Have you tried Brave?

 

[konqerror]

There's no reason to guess and argue. There's a trivial way to see what's going on in Chrome.

First, right click on the video in Youtube, choose "Stats for Nerds" and see what the codec is. Then go to the URL chrome://gpu. Under the heading "Video Acceleration Information", it will list the HW accelerated codecs.

 

[Pressure]

Have you tried Brave?

I do now. It's a stuttering mess.

 

[startergo]

Catalina tests
Firefox:

[automerge]1583533414[/automerge]
Unplayable 60HZ firefox:

So 30Hz 8K no problem (No dropped frames). 60Hz 8K unplayable

 

[Pressure]

Does it matter that my GPU is in slot-2?