884203 - No colors, artifacts when decoding h264 video using DxVA

Status: RESOLVED DUPLICATE of bug 901944

(Core :: Audio/Video, defect)

Description

[Marcin Starzyk]

When you decode a h264 video with media.windows-media-foundation.use-dxva set to true on certain hardware, there are practically no colors, you can see a lot of artifacts and, in fact, DxVA isn't used (VPU usage=0%).
I noticed this bug on my desktop with Nvidia GeForce GTS 450, drivers version: 296.10 but on my laptop with Optimus and Nvidia GTX 660M everything is OK (the colors are OK and there are no artifacts).
Some screenshot comparisons:
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/28768
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/28769
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/28772
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/28773
http://screenshotcomparison.com/comparison/28775

Comment 1

[Chris Pearce [:cpearce (Not reading bugmail)]]

Have you tried updating your driver? I have driver version 314.22 for my GeForce GTS 240, and I don't see this problem. Once we know that it's not a driver problem, I'll probably go and buy one of these cards and test it. I want to eliminate that possibility before I go spend money though. ;)

Comment 2

[Marcin Starzyk]

(In reply to Chris Pearce (:cpearce) from comment #1)
> Have you tried updating your driver? I have driver version 314.22 for my
> GeForce GTS 240, and I don't see this problem. Once we know that it's not a
> driver problem, I'll probably go and buy one of these cards and test it. I
> want to eliminate that possibility before I go spend money though. ;)

I'll be at home on Friday and I'll update the driver, but some time ago newer drivers than 296.10 were bugged for my card.

Comment 3

[Marcin Starzyk]

I've updated the GPU drivers to the latest (320.18) and the only change is a bigger green stripe on the right side of the video.
Some screenshots:
http://sadpanda.us/images/1683989-Q7W5KJJ.jpg
http://sadpanda.us/images/1683992-N42J0R4.jpg
http://sadpanda.us/images/1683994-9F81JUF.jpg

Comment 4

[Marcin Starzyk]

I've also noticed that if DxVA is 'enabled' in about:config, the h264 decoding is much slower (50% CPU usage and video decoding is choking vs 30% CPU usage and smooth decoding when DxVA is 'disabled').

Comment 5

[Chris Pearce [:cpearce (Not reading bugmail)]]

That sounds bad!

Thanks for all the information you've posted. One last thing, can you run dxdiag.exe and "Save all information" to a text file, and either upload it here or email the text file to me? Then I can see exactly the codecs installed on your system. This will tell us whether there's another decoder interfering with things.

Comment 6

[Marcin Starzyk]

Attachment: My DxDiag Report

I've tested this case with Aurora x86, Nightly x86 and even Nightly x64 and the bug occurs in all of them.

Comment 7

[Chris Pearce [:cpearce (Not reading bugmail)]]

Thanks for that. I've ordered a card, it might take a while to arrive, that manufacturer is not very common in New Zealand where I am.

Comment 8

[Marcin Starzyk]

Thank you for your involvement, I'm waiting for the results.

Comment 9

[Trevor Rowbotham [:rowbot]]

Attachment: fishbowl.png

Last good nightly: 2013-05-04
First bad nightly: 2013-05-05

Pushlog:
http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/pushloghtml?fromchange=69008b1fd6eb&tochange=c8e47b184aba

Suspected: Bug 847267 - Use DXVA2 to offload H.264 decoding to the GPU on Windows. r=Bas

cset: http://hg.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/591a90d5975f

This is likely a regression as setting "media.windows-media-foundation.use-dxva" to "false" causes the video to display normally.  I should note that this is only a problem on my Win Vista machine.  My machine with Win 7 does not experience this problem.  Both are using nVidia graphics cards.  Win Vista is using an 8800 GTS 512 and my Win 7 machine is using a GTX 470.  Drivers are up to date and I have tried 4 older ones going all the way back to February with no luck.  I can try swapping my video cards if you think we might learn something from it.

Comment 10

[Trevor Rowbotham [:rowbot]]

Attachment: DxDiag.txt

DxDiag for my Windows Vista machine.

Comment 11

[Chris Pearce [:cpearce (Not reading bugmail)]]

I am fixing this in bug 901944. Thanks for filing this bug and supplying information here.