[Zundapp47]

Hi everyone,

I cannot get 4K movies (encoded with HEVC) to playback smooth in Kodi.
I think this is because hardware acceleration is not used (CPU load shoot to 100% during playback).
However hardware acceleration is enabled, but it doesn't seem to work.
My hardware isn't the problem because MPC-HC and VLC are playing the files without problems (hw accelerated).

Player/Video settings in Kodi:
Adjust display refresh rate: Off
Sync playback to display: Disabled
Minimise black bars: Off
Display 4:3 videao as: Normal
Render method: DXVA
Enable HQ scalers for scaling above: 20%
Allow hardware acceleration - DXVA: Enabled

System/Audio settings in Kodi:
Audio output device: WSAPI: HDMI
Number of channels: 5.1
Output configuration: Best match
Allow passthrough: Enabled
Passthrough output device: WSAPI: HDMI
All output formats are supported by receiver and therefore enabled.
Enable audio DSP processing: Disabled

System information:
Kodi: v17.6
OS: Windows 7 Ultimate, 64-bit (Service Pack 1)
CPU: Intel Core I5 760 @ 2.80GHz
GPU: Geforce GTX 1070 (driver v388.71 = latest)
RAM: 8GB
DirectX runtime version: 11.0

Debug log:
https://pastebin.com/rPqS1wd4 (Kodi_Debug_HEVC_No_HW_Acceleration)

Media information:
https://pastebin.com/xTyrG5Yr (Kodi_MediaInfo_HEVC_No_HW_Acceleration)

Does someone have an idea what i can do to fix this?
For now I'm using MPC-HC as external player but I would like Kodi to handle everything.

Thanks!

[jools5000]

I think HEVC main 10 support in Win7 is limited. For full support you probably need to run Windows 10.

MPC does it differently

[PatK]

Alternatively consider using an External player (wiki) using MPC-HC

[drpizznock]

Does someone have an idea what i can do to fix this?
For now I'm using MPC-HC as external player but I would like Kodi to handle everything.

Thanks!

Hi, you'll have to stick with an external player at least for Kodi 17.x. Even after upgrading to Windows 10 which is HDR friendly you'll need PowerDVD 17 which will require always-on HDR mode. An external player like MPC (HC or BE) with MadVR and LAVfilters or Kodi DSPlayer would allow you to leave Windows in SDR and enable/disable HDR as needed by the software + gpu driver. In this case you must roll back to an earlier version of the Nvidia driver, 385.69, for this to work correctly. 

It is possible that Kodi 18.x will handle everything including HDR to SDR tone mapping.

[Zundapp47]

Thanks for the replies!

I've done some further investigation whether the problem is related to windows 7, and found the following threads that describe the problem in more detail and what probably is the cause:
288362 (thread)
248239 (thread)

Unfortunately this means it's probably never going to work if I must believe the following quote:

This means that you will never see HEVC Main 10 hw decoding on win7 till GPU vendors add support of 16bit textures in drivers for FL9.x

It is a bit disappointing that it's not working, while other media players have no problems. But i also understand that the developers don't focus on backwards compatibility (for win7).

So for now I'll stick to using MPC-HC as external player.
Secretly hoping the new Kodi (v18) will have this issue fixed.

Maybe it is a good idea to add a warning to the Kodi wiki, that HEVC hardware acceleration on Windows 7 is not supported. Since many people are struggling with this issue.

[jools5000]

HEVC main 10 etc are pretty cutting edge features that didn't exist when Windows 7 was released. 

Bear in mind Windows 7 is a 8 year old OS that is rapidly approaching obsolescence (only 2 years left), and there's been many major OS releases since then

Its fine if you want to run an old OS but you will over time find regressions and issues trying to do the latest and greatest stuff with new applications and hardware running on top of 8 year old code, and this is one of those things unfortunately.