Mailing List Archive: MythTV: Mythtvnz

Freeview|HD - anyone tried a Mac?

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nick.rout at gmail

Aug 24, 2008, 4:21 PM

Post #1 of 6 (534 views)
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Freeview\|HD - anyone tried a Mac?

Occurs to me that at least some Mac models have hardware h.264 acceleration.
Can Myth on Mac OSX use this acceleration? Has anyone tried this? Can other
software on Mac OSX or Linux on a Mac access this feature?

Nick.

mythtvnz at hotblack

Aug 24, 2008, 5:13 PM

Post #2 of 6 (505 views)
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Re: Freeview\|HD - anyone tried a Mac? [In reply to]

Nick Rout wrote:
> Occurs to me that at least some Mac models have hardware h.264 acceleration.
> Can Myth on Mac OSX use this acceleration? Has anyone tried this? Can other
> software on Mac OSX or Linux on a Mac access this feature?
>
> Nick.
>

The Apple supplied DVD player and other Apple apps use the graphic
processor for hardware acceleration. I don't know of many other apps
that can use it. I don't know if this is because Apple is using private
APIs or not. There are some apps that use the GPU for video processing,
but they're mainly effects like Blur, Sepia Tone, Inverting colours, etc
(all effects provided by Core Image processing). I haven't seen much
info floating round on using the GPU for video decoding (but I'm not a
developer - so that doesn't count for much)

There was work a while ago on some code to try and use the DVD/MPEG2
methods for playback. I think it stalled.

0.21 has some options under the playback profiles to use quartz-accel.
This will try to use the graphics processor for MPEG2 playback. This
didn't work reliably on the machines I've tried (G5 Tower, G4 Tower, Mac
Mini G4, Mac Mini Intel, MacBook Pro). Some crashed, and others didn't
look that good when it did work. I haven't tried this since 0.21 was
first released.

As far as other apps on Linux using this, it's the same old story with
ATI/Nvidia drivers not using hardware acceleration. Once you're in
Linux, it's just a PC with Nvidia or ATI graphics hardware (or even
Intel embedded graphics on the Mini)

- Wade

_______________________________________________
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nick.rout at gmail

Aug 24, 2008, 5:18 PM

Post #3 of 6 (504 views)
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Re: Freeview\|HD - anyone tried a Mac? [In reply to]

On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 12:13 PM, Wade Maxfield <mythtvnz[at]hotblack.co.nz>wrote:

> Nick Rout wrote:
> > Occurs to me that at least some Mac models have hardware h.264
> acceleration.
> > Can Myth on Mac OSX use this acceleration? Has anyone tried this? Can
> other
> > software on Mac OSX or Linux on a Mac access this feature?
> >
> > Nick.
> >
>
> The Apple supplied DVD player and other Apple apps use the graphic
> processor for hardware acceleration. I don't know of many other apps
> that can use it. I don't know if this is because Apple is using private
> APIs or not. There are some apps that use the GPU for video processing,
> but they're mainly effects like Blur, Sepia Tone, Inverting colours, etc
> (all effects provided by Core Image processing). I haven't seen much
> info floating round on using the GPU for video decoding (but I'm not a
> developer - so that doesn't count for much)
>
> There was work a while ago on some code to try and use the DVD/MPEG2
> methods for playback. I think it stalled.
>
> 0.21 has some options under the playback profiles to use quartz-accel.
> This will try to use the graphics processor for MPEG2 playback. This
> didn't work reliably on the machines I've tried (G5 Tower, G4 Tower, Mac
> Mini G4, Mac Mini Intel, MacBook Pro). Some crashed, and others didn't
> look that good when it did work. I haven't tried this since 0.21 was
> first released.
>
> As far as other apps on Linux using this, it's the same old story with
> ATI/Nvidia drivers not using hardware acceleration. Once you're in
> Linux, it's just a PC with Nvidia or ATI graphics hardware (or even
> Intel embedded graphics on the Mini)
>
> - Wade

Yeah I figured that would be the case with linux, but I had hoped Apple
might allow some sort of open api to the hardware decoding through a OSX
API. Pipe dream I guess, knowing apple!

mythtvnz at hotblack

Aug 24, 2008, 5:33 PM

Post #4 of 6 (503 views)
Permalink

Re: Freeview\|HD - anyone tried a Mac? [In reply to]

Nick Rout wrote:
>
>
> Yeah I figured that would be the case with linux, but I had hoped Apple
> might allow some sort of open api to the hardware decoding through a OSX
> API. Pipe dream I guess, knowing apple!
>
>

Someone like Nigel or Daniel K, or one of the Devs who have been looking
at the Mac OS X side of things would have a more definitive answer on
what APIs Apple might have published. There appears to be something
called DVDV that uses the mac hardware for accelerating some functions.
It looks like it's part of VID-fixes branch.

- Wade

_______________________________________________
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steven at openmedia

Aug 24, 2008, 6:49 PM

Post #5 of 6 (502 views)
Permalink

Re: Freeview\|HD - anyone tried a Mac? [In reply to]

On 25/08/2008, at 12:33 PM, Wade Maxfield wrote:

> Nick Rout wrote:
>>
>>
>> Yeah I figured that would be the case with linux, but I had hoped
>> Apple
>> might allow some sort of open api to the hardware decoding through
>> a OSX
>> API. Pipe dream I guess, knowing apple!
>>
>>
>
> Someone like Nigel or Daniel K, or one of the Devs who have been
> looking
> at the Mac OS X side of things would have a more definitive answer on
> what APIs Apple might have published. There appears to be something
> called DVDV that uses the mac hardware for accelerating some
> functions.
> It looks like it's part of VID-fixes branch.

I'm currently running a mix of Linux and OS-X on a 2.4 GHz MacBook
with integrated Intel graphics.

Now in theory the Intel chipset can do some minor acceleration of H.
264 but it doesn't appear that any third party applications currently
make use of it. I've been playing with EyeTV to compare video output
quality with MythTV, and also look at CPU load. The EyeTV H.264 codes
does utilise both core's in the MacBook which is good as on TVOne/2 it
can use over 70% on both cores, and TV3 well over 80% of both cores.
Hence my assumption is that their decoder is currently software based.

I tried exporting a recording into a file format that Quicktime
supports to see if it will do HW acceleration, but I just get a green
video window.

Steve

Steven Ellis - Technical Director
OpenMedia Limited
email - steven[at]openmedia.co.nz
website - http://www.openmedia.co.nz

steven at openmedia

Aug 25, 2008, 8:56 PM

Post #6 of 6 (471 views)
Permalink

Re: Freeview\|HD - anyone tried a Mac? [In reply to]

On 25/08/2008, at 12:18 PM, Nick Rout wrote:

>
>
> On Mon, Aug 25, 2008 at 12:13 PM, Wade Maxfield <mythtvnz[at]hotblack.co.nz
> > wrote:
> Nick Rout wrote:
> > Occurs to me that at least some Mac models have hardware h.264
> acceleration.
> > Can Myth on Mac OSX use this acceleration? Has anyone tried this?
> Can other
> > software on Mac OSX or Linux on a Mac access this feature?
> >
> > Nick.
> >
>
> The Apple supplied DVD player and other Apple apps use the graphic
> processor for hardware acceleration. I don't know of many other apps
> that can use it. I don't know if this is because Apple is using
> private
> APIs or not. There are some apps that use the GPU for video
> processing,
> but they're mainly effects like Blur, Sepia Tone, Inverting colours,
> etc
> (all effects provided by Core Image processing). I haven't seen much
> info floating round on using the GPU for video decoding (but I'm not a
> developer - so that doesn't count for much)
>
> There was work a while ago on some code to try and use the DVD/MPEG2
> methods for playback. I think it stalled.
>
> 0.21 has some options under the playback profiles to use quartz-accel.
> This will try to use the graphics processor for MPEG2 playback. This
> didn't work reliably on the machines I've tried (G5 Tower, G4 Tower,
> Mac
> Mini G4, Mac Mini Intel, MacBook Pro). Some crashed, and others didn't
> look that good when it did work. I haven't tried this since 0.21 was
> first released.
>
> As far as other apps on Linux using this, it's the same old story with
> ATI/Nvidia drivers not using hardware acceleration. Once you're in
> Linux, it's just a PC with Nvidia or ATI graphics hardware (or even
> Intel embedded graphics on the Mini)
>
> - Wade
>
> Yeah I figured that would be the case with linux, but I had hoped
> Apple might allow some sort of open api to the hardware decoding
> through a OSX API. Pipe dream I guess, knowing apple!
>

Still can't get quicktime to play the original DVB-T streams, but I
did use Handbrake to trancode some at around the same bitrate to
Quicktime compatible H.264 based MP4 files. Interestingly the CPU load
under Quicktime for these is close to the CPU load under EyeTV. VLC on
the same stream is about 5-6% higher. Hence it doesn't look like Apple
has HW acceleration for H.264 in Quicktime just yet.

Steve

Steven Ellis - Technical Director
OpenMedia Limited
email - steven[at]openmedia.co.nz
website - http://www.openmedia.co.nz

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