Talk:Nvidia PureVideo

GT240 is VP5, not VP4!
At http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_PureVideo#The_Fifth_Generation_PureVideo_HD the GT240 is listed.

Read http://www.nvidia.com/object/io_1260507693932.html —Preceding unsigned comment added by 95.91.113.66 (talk) 01:01, 18 January 2010 (UTC)

"Certified"?
I don't know if the PureVideo HD capable hardwares are actually "certified" for Blu-ray and HD-DVD playback, but it's a fact that PureVideo HD hardwares does hardware acceleration to videos with the same encoding (MPEG2, MPEG4, VC-1, H.264) as most of the Blu-ray/HD-DVD video streams. Though most of the computers (Pentium 4 class or above) also have the ability to decode video stream smoothly (through CPU) without the assistant of video cards, so is the term confusing? ... Yeah, you're probably right. From a vendor's standpoint, NVidia's product guidelines dictate the minimum feature-set/characteristics for PureVideo-HD label/seal. (For example, Geforce 7600GT or better, HDCP, 256MB video RAM, etc.) But whether Nvidia handles the program with full-blown compliance-testing, or simply 'rubber-stamps' the OEM's submission, I don't know.

...I think a category should be added for "Purevideo software", since that's ANOTHER point of confusion. The add-on Purevideo software is basically just an MPEG-2 video player (since XP doesn't come with an MPEG-2 decoder), with some extra fancy post-processing modes not available to third-party players like PowerDVD, WinDVD, etc. If you're only interested in the hardware-acceleration, then any third-party DVD-player (PowerDVD, WinDVD, Nero Showtime, etc.) is sufficient -- the hardware-decoding is accessed through a public-API called DirectX-VA.

For HD-DVD/Bluray playback, the Purevideo software isn't involved at all (so purchasing it is unnecessary.) WinDVD-HD, PowerDVD_HD, and Nero HD-DVD plugin talk directly to the ATI/NVidia display-driver (using DirectX-VA.)

...I would love to see a video chipset/purevideo version comparison matrix chart. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Special:Contributions/ (talk)

Fair use rationale for Image:Nvidia purevideo logo.png
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BetacommandBot (talk) 17:22, 5 December 2007 (UTC)

This page is extremely windows centric. If this is a windows only product that should be noted in the page. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 74.71.245.199 (talk) 00:21, 6 March 2008 (UTC)

Naming confusions
I do not know any rules for editing Wikipedia articles, so instead I will write here and hopefully someone in the future will read this and change the article.

There is only PureVideo™ and a superset PureVideo™ HD. The headings Purevideo1, Purevideo2 and Purevideo3 are incorrect and need to be removed or replaced with the broader heading of simply PureVideo.

PureVideo features are dynamic, with additional functions added within the video driver and also improved/additional hardware on the video card. When nvidia released the G84/G86 video cards with a faster video processor (VP2), this was dubbed PureVideo 2 by some media and review sites. In this sense I guess the term PureVideo 2 colloquialism deserves at least a mention. The additional PureVideo hardware on the G84/G86 video cards is not linked solely to the video processor (VP2), but also relies on the bit stream processor (BSP) and encryptor (AES128).

Here is a link to an article which better describes the additional features on G84/G86 video cards. http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2977

Currently the wikipedia article seems to be confusing VP2, VP3 with PureVideo2,3

If the advances in hardware features and/or additional driver functions needs to be distinguished then it could be shown as PureVideo Generation 1,2,3 etc to show major advances but not to ambiguously imply a change in the trademark name or additional versions of PureVideo. I feel a chart would be simpler, such as linked to on the nvidia site in the references, which shows features corresponding to hardware. The corresponding date or driver version which exposed the feature could be shown separate. Here's a link to the product comparisons. http://www.nvidia.com/docs/CP/11036/PureVideo_Product_Comparison.pdf

An example of the confusion can be seen under the heading PureVideo 3. In it's current state, the article implies a hardware change beginning with 9600GT cards, which is ambiguous. The additional features (Dynamic Contrast Enhancement • Dynamic Blue, Green & Skin Tone Enhancements • Dual‐Stream Decode Acceleration. • Microsoft Windows Vista Aero display mode compatibility for Blu‐ray & HDDVD playback) are all driver enhancements enabled in Forceware version 174 which can be exposed with previous hardware also.

Here's a review which explains PureVideo's implementation is identical on 9600gt and 8800gt. http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/nvidia-geforce-9600-gt,1780-4.html Here's a link to driver release notes which show additional features in release 174 (page 3,4) http://us.download.nvidia.com/Windows/174.74/174.74_WinVista_GeForce_Release_Notes.pdf

VP2/VP3 controversy
To date, there is no video cards with a VP3 video processor, although it is proposed for the future. When these video cards are released it will not automatically be "purevideo 3". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 203.59.18.120 (talk) 23:02, 23 September 2008 (UTC)

...At least one Nvidia developer disagrees about the (non)-existence of VP3. Introduced with the 55nm/66nm NVidia GPUs, VP3 adds some new documented hardware, and some undocumented -- It's most certainly more than just new driver-caps on previous (8800GT) hardware. See this discussion-thread http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/8300945231/m/732002115931/p/2 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.122.48.253 (talk) 01:11, 23 October 2008 (UTC)   You might be right about the 9600GT (G94) and 8800GT (G92) both being VP2, but the newer laptop and desktop Geforce 9300/9400/9500 line are definitely VP3-class GPUs.

--- My 2 cents...NVidia may not trademark 'Purevideo2' or 'Purevideo3', but NVidia's marketing has done nothing to stamp out the confusion that all their partner websites, advertising copy, etc. Why doesn't an anonymous Nvidia employee could clean up the main-page and put the RIGHT information there? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.103.25.50 (talk) 17:15, 26 September 2008 (UTC)

Supported software ?
What software supports PureVideo ? I downloaded a HD video from nvidia, and the CPU usage while playing in WMP is pretty high. Does WMP use PureVideo ? Do other players ? Is there a list ? Is there a way to test if PureVideo is used ? --Xerces8 (talk) 08:31, 2 October 2008 (UTC)


 * If you have other decoder installed, use this to select the default decoder. What's your video card? If it's not one of the supported NVidia video cards, then the PureVideo would simply be a software decoder (using CPU). --Voidvector (talk) 16:26, 2 October 2008 (UTC)


 * The card is 8800GT. --Xerces8 (talk) 09:47, 3 October 2008 (UTC)

H.264 Level
In the second generation paragraph, it currently says "VP2 capable cards are able to decode H.264 High@L5.0". I seriously doubt this (imo level4.1 is the "guaranteed" limit and that is what the article says as well) and will remove the sentence if no source (other than xbmc forum) can be added. --CE 62.178.80.242 (talk) 09:48, 30 April 2009 (UTC)


 * Though this isn't conclusive, I tried to play some sample 1080p60 AVC clips recorded by the Panasonic HS700 AVCHD camcorder. (The 1080p60 recording-mode isn't AVCHD compliant, it's a special proprietary mode using the same H264/AC3 codecs at a higher bitrate.)  In both Nero Showtime 9 (Windows Vista/32 on a NVidia Quadro NVS160M), and Windows 7 Ultimate (Nvidia 9800GT), the clip played in slow-motion.  Nero's info display said the MPEG4-file was "Level 4.2"  The frame-rate counter in Nero showed a playback rate of ~45fps (somewhat lower than 60fps.)  If I turned off hardware-acceleration in Nero, then the clip played at full-speed (60fps), but used more CPU-time.  I downloaded the 1080p60 sample-videos from here:

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1225613&page=5 (links checked on 03/22/2010)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.182.67.114 (talk) 14:01, 24 March 2010 (UTC)
 * Information about Level 5 removed. --Regression Tester (talk) 01:02, 25 March 2010 (UTC)

Nasty advertisement of Media Player Classic
Not only Windows Media Player is not mentioned but MPC directly uses its renderer. --195.74.250.81 (talk) 03:58, 14 May 2010 (UTC)
 * Well you're wrong there. If you're referring to renderers MPC-HC supports several different ones, including standard windows ones (like EVR and VMR) most or all of which may be used by, but can't said to be part of WMP (they are a part of Windows, this is particularly the case for EVR but I believe you'd find VMR-9 on Windows XP N editions for example provided you have the appropriate version of DX). The more important thing here isn't renderers but codecs. MPC-HC also has internal codecs which support Nvidia PureVideo. WMP on the other hand doesn't support PureVideo by itself, for licensing reasons they don't distribute such codecs with standalone WMP. Newer versions of Windows in some variants come with codecs which support PureVideo this is already mentioned in the article. You can also use other codecs like the Nvidia ones in WMP. But of course any software which support DirectShow codecs or Media Foundation codecs in new versions of Windows should work with PureVideo DS or MF codecs provided you meet the other requirements (in Vista and Windows 7, the EVR rendered is needed), this doesn't have to be stated. P.S. Do note MPC and MPC-HC while sharing the same original code base have diverged from each other a fair bit Nil Einne (talk) 16:01, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

The only renderers that can play Purevideo are Microsoft. This is the Purevideo article. --195.74.250.81 (talk) 17:57, 16 May 2010 (UTC)
 * That depends what you mean by Purevideo. One of the problems is it isn't really defined, and it's arguablly not really possible to define since Nvidia doesn't. Is PureVideo solely the hardware acceleration functionality or do you only call it PureVideo when access is provided via certain methods? In other words, if you access the hardware decoding functional via VDPAU is that PureVideo? Or only if you access it via DirectX Video Acceleration? What about if you access the hardware decoding functionality via CUDA (e.g. as with CoreAVC)? If you include either or both of the first and last, then clearly you don't need a Microsoft renderer. Even if you restrict it to DXVA, while EVR or VMR & overlay are required depending on OS, and these can indeed probably be called Microsoft renderers, this isn't surprising since DXVA is a Microsoft component and they are also best described as (core) components of Windows that are used by (as they are intended to be used by) many Windows programs including WMP and MPC-HC along with a host of other programs. Of course as I pointed out above, whatever renderer you use, you also need an appropriate codec which WMP doesn't generally provide by itself but MPC-HC does. As I mentioned these are available with certain versions of Windows, and this is already described in the article. Interesting enough these codecs are apparently even included in appropriate N versions of Windows 7 if I understand correctly although as Media Foundation apparently is not, I'm not sure if any program can use them. Regardless do note that N editions exclude "Windows Media Player or other Windows Media-related technologies" not just WMP and Media Foundation is listed seperately from WMPanyway. Of course the distinction between WMP and Windows components is not a clearcut one because of the way Microsoft handles things anyway however the article already adequetly describes the situation, so I don't see any need to include WMP. Nil Einne (talk) 23:46, 16 May 2010 (UTC)

Full protected
This page has been fully protected. A fully protected page can be edited only by administrators. The protection has been currently placed for three months. The "Edit" tab for a protected page is replaced by a "View source" tab, where users can view and copy, but not edit, the wikitext of that page.

Any modification to this page should be proposed here. After consensus has been established for the change, or if the change is uncontroversial, any administrator including I may make the necessary edits to the protected page. To draw administrators' attention to a request for an edit to a protected page, place the template on the talk page.

All requests to unprotect this page may be submitted at the page meant for such requests. Please get in touch directly with me on my talk page for any clarifications.  Wifione    .......  Leave a message  18:20, 23 March 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from Hajj 3, 13 April 2011
Nvidia GT 520 was released today April 2011 not January 2011 as stated in the table, please correct this.

Hajj 3 (talk) 12:43, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
 * iirc, this error (or a similar one) was one of the reasons that lead to the revert-war.--Regression Tester (talk) 14:27, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Please provide evidence of a consensus for this change. Woody (talk) 21:41, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Edit request from Hajj 3, 13 April 2011
according to this the card also has a new feature set D for purevideo which is the first card to do so:

ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/270.41.03/README/supportedchips.html ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86_64/270.41.03/README/vdpausupport.html#vdpau-implementation-limits-decoder http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OTMyNA

Feature Set D adds support for WebM/VP8

Hajj 3 (talk) 12:55, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
 * While I am not convinced it is the first card to support "D" (afaict, all cards with "0x1..." or at least "0x10.." support it), this would be a useful change. (Note that VP8 support is currently only a rumour, no confirmation available.)--Regression Tester (talk) 14:29, 13 April 2011 (UTC)
 * So do I view this as consensus?  Wifione    .......  Leave a message  02:41, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
 * Consensus for changing the release date and feature set to "D". Unfortunately, we can't give an explanation for "D" yet, so far it is known that it contains all "C" features.--Regression Tester (talk) 09:24, 14 April 2011 (UTC)
 * I've disabled the edit-protected template for now. Please come to a consensus here about what you specifically want changed, (ie specific instructions: please change X to Y). When you've got that, please change answered back to no and someone will be along. Thanks, Woody (talk) 21:43, 15 April 2011 (UTC)

Edit request June 13 2011
This is in regards to Feature Set D and the Nvidia Geforce GT 520.

According to this comparison article, Feature Set D (in GT 520) is a performance enhancement over Feature Set C (in GT 430).
 * http://www.anandtech.com/show/4380/discrete-htpc-gpus-shootout/10
 * http://www.anandtech.com/show/4380/discrete-htpc-gpus-shootout/11

(1) NVIDIA confirmed that the GT 430 couldn't decode 60 fps videos at 80 Mbps.

(2) 'For 1080p24 streams, we find that the GT 430 is unable to keep up with the real time decode frame rate requirements at 110 Mbps. For 1080p60 streams, the limit gets further reduced to somewhere between 65 and 70 Mbps. The GT 520 has no such issues.'

(3) 'We asked NVIDIA about the changes in the new VDPAU feature set and what it meant for Windows users. They indicated that the new VPU was a faster version, also capable of decoding 4K x 2K videos. This means that the existing dual stream acceleration for 1080p videos has now been bumped up to quad stream acceleration.'

Feature Set D is also in Nvidia Quadro NVS 4200M (PCI Device ID: 0x1056). This is found by comparing the first Linux driver release (270.41.03) to support Feature Set D and the more recent 275.09.04 release.
 * ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/270.41.03/README/supportedchips.html
 * ftp://download.nvidia.com/XFree86/Linux-x86/275.09.04/README/supportedchips.html

At this time, Geforce GT 520 and Quadro NVS 4200M are the only GPUs to support this feature. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 114.76.184.117 (talk • contribs)


 * imo, it is sufficient to say that the GT 520 is the best-performing PureVideo hardware so far (the exact decoding ability depends heavily on the implementation, so numbers do not make much sense although 1080p60 typically does not work on older hardware). It is not yet relevant to mention D: There are no user-visible differences so far (some size limits have been lifted but that was not documented so far). --Regression Tester (talk) 14:56, 13 June 2011 (UTC)
 * Not sure what is being requested here and whether there is consensus for it. Please clarify. &mdash; Martin (MSGJ · talk) 14:07, 14 June 2011 (UTC)

VDPAU feature set D
Nvidia has released documenation stating the GT 520 supports VDPAU feature set D, but also clarified that currently no VDPAU drivers support resolutions above 2k x 2k (and no API exists for MVC decoding). So while a GT 520 certainly supports resolutions higher than 2k x 2k (and is able to decode MVC hardware-accelerated), this is currently not possible with VDPAU.--Regression Tester (talk) 11:58, 4 July 2011 (UTC)
 * The Windows benchmarks clearly show that the performance increase for VC-1 and MPEG-2 decoding already works on Windows and Linux drivers. Why are you so stubborn and refuse to acknowledge the fact it works already?

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph4380/38171.png http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph4380/38172.png http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=2432786&postcount=371 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 175.138.159.46 (talk) 09:32, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Thank you for finding the post on nvnews, it is exactly what I have been searching for! Please note that VC-1 decoding is not slower on the GTX580 (where H264 decoding is nearly exactly half as fast): http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showpost.php?p=2426779&postcount=368 --Regression Tester (talk) 10:50, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Concerning MPEG-2: Users complained very often on the forum that H.264 decoding via PureVideo was not fast enough for their use-case. H.264 decoding has seen an enormous performance boost with VP5 that should be noted prominently in the article (as it is done). MPEG-2 HD decoding was 100+ fps before VP5, so I have problems believing that anybody will notice a (possibly) improved decoding performance (I at least do not remember anybody complaining about MPEG-1/MPEG-2 decoding performance and I have never seen a sample >60fps - the 1920p60 samples played easily on earlier PureVideo hardware when encoded in MPEG-2, but typically could not be played if they were encoded in H264). It should therefore at least not be mentioned in the same sentence as the H264 decoding improvement because this would make the impression that it is similarly important for end-users (which it certainly isn't).--Regression Tester (talk) 10:59, 8 July 2011 (UTC)
 * You must be blind or or intentionally ignoring the facts, http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph4380/38171.png 77FPS VP4 to 141FPS VP5, thats DOUBLE the performance for VC-1 decoding. http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph4380/38172.png 98FPS VP4 to 189FPS VP5, thats again DOUBLE the performance for MPEG-2 decoding. I don't know what I even bother arguing with you, you're just a stubborn person that refuses to acknowledge the facts.
 * Given that I use your source to prove my point, I don't think so. --Regression Tester (talk) 12:12, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Retarded blind persons like you shouldn't be editing since you can't be objective and you're only inflating your retarded way of thinking and ego. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 175.138.158.174 (talk) 16:39, 12 July 2011 (UTC)

Quad-stream decoding
Before adding the marketing claim of "support for quad-stream decoding" for the fifth PureVideo generation, please explain what it exactly means (decoding several H.264 streams - including more than four - at the same time is possible with earlier hardware).--Regression Tester (talk) 17:09, 19 July 2011 (UTC)

...modern video-codec hardware operate on thread-based memory-structures, allowing them to context-switch (multitask) among multiple streams, provided there is sufficient walltime and video-RAM resources. Well, that's a horrific oversimplification of the underlying hardware (and the API.) Just pretend that video frame decoding operations are chainable as "display lists" (much like a OpenGL or Direct3D display command list.  Obviously, total video decode throughput is fixed, so as you increase the load (frame-size, total video bitstream rate, macro-block complexity and total count), the decode frame-rate will degrade proportionally.  Analogous to how a 3D-accelerator can render a particular 3D-scene at 1280x720 60fps, the same scene at 640x720 ~120fps, 1920x1080 ~26.67fps.

Purevideo4 is designed to handle realtime decoding of dual-stream HighProfile @ Level 4.2 (1920x1080p30 x 2.) The underlying architectural are comparable (but not identical in all ways) to the following: 1 video at 1080p60 1 MVC Bluray3D video (decoded into two independent 1080p24 streams) 12 480p videos

This isn't really new ... even the old MPEG-2 decoder chipsets (late 1990s) that were used in set-top box appliances offered this feature. The hardware supported realtime decoding of 1 HD (1080i30) video-stream, or 6 SD video-streams (480i). Chipset architects could offer this by calculating the minimum required throughput for every major portion of the decoding pipeline: (VLC rate, IDCT macroblock rate, motion-comp pixel-rate, etc.)

On a modern Windows PC with Internet Explorer (or any browser that supports Flash 10.2 or later), you can open up multiple tabs, and play accelerated video in each of them simultaneously. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.109.197.169 (talk) 04:09, 2 November 2011 (UTC)

VDPAU size restrictions
It was claimed here that the VDPAU documentation - that explains that the maximum horizontal resolution is 2048 no matter which hardware generation is used - is wrong and that VDPAU feature set D does support higher horizontal resolutions for H264 (4k). I was able to test VDPAU feature set D hardware and using hardware-accelerated H264 decoding, it does not support horizontal resolutions above 2048 (this is a driver limitation). Please do not change the article in this respect until a fixed driver is released.--Regression Tester (talk) 08:38, 2 August 2011 (UTC)

Recent edits
I have reverted recent edits which do not look very constructive, at least they removed some facts about Purevideo: Please do not change these parts of the article again without offering any sources or explanation. --Regression Tester (talk) 09:32, 5 November 2012 (UTC)
 * MVC is supported on some Purevideo hardware but cannot be used from VDPAU. It was never claimed anywhere that VDPAU supports MVC afaict.
 * VDPAU limits the resolution to 2048x2048 even on newest Nvidia hardware, see above (and in the article) for references.
 * From a users perspective, there is no difference between Nvidia VDPAU feature sets C and D. They are of course (very) different hardware, but offer the same abilities. Also see the same references as above.

Mods here have their heads in their ass and remove good info
I add new GeForce 700 GPUs to the tables and you retarded mods remove my additions, no wonder this crap site is dying. Curse the day all you retarded admins and mods were ever born.

http://gawker.com/5827835/wikipedia-is-slowly-dying

VP or PV
For some reason PureVideo is abbreviated to VP and not PV? This should at least be clarified and preferably explained in the WP article.PizzaMan (♨♨) 22:07, 26 June 2015 (UTC)