Can't get accelerated video working @mobility HD 4330 (black/green pic)

Hi everybody, I've crawled through lot of stuff in last few hours so my head's like a baloon so I may be on something what somebody has already solved somewhere, just cannot find it.

I'm installing this MSI DE200 "net-top" with Atom 330, which is too weak to play anything (maybe 720p). Been hoping to use the embedded Radeon Mobility HD 4330 for the task but both VLC and MPC-HC only show green (black) screen with no video. Tried several MKV-contained files of different levels (4.1-5.1), nothing. The graphics has a potential to still make this bloody thing usefull for some light work including playing movies, but I just cannot make it output any picture. Got Win 7 HP x86-64 there with only 2 GB RAM (not more supported) but I've put an SSD in for much faster SWAPping. It runs quite nicely with it.

Drivers are the lasted Catalyst 13.9. I tried reinstalling it without the transcoding and decoding stuff which comes with but no joy. DXVA checker shows support correctly as well as GPU-Z does. Tried several combinations of encoders and outputs, no change whatsoever. Installed latest DirectX stuff too (as some sources claimed there is no DX9 in Vista/7 which is strange but who knows). Any idea what the problem may be?

I can run games outta Steam on it (well, it is too weak to play even NWN:EE, but HL2:LC seemed to run so-so with lowered details). Just this bloody video.

I've run into this post https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/radeon-hd4000-series-dxva-fully-restored-under-win7-8-10.414275/ and tried the procedure of creating my own driver based upon 13.9 and 10.7, same result. Also tried to install the recommended K-Lite version (incl. MPC-HC), no change either. The acceleration at least seem to be doing something as both programs have little to no CPU utilisation, just that I see no picture lol

 

You are dealing with out of date HW which is not supported. Then you need all software components out of date too. Including player, as new ones may have connection to libraries in driver which were not available years ago.
Try DS Filter Graph, and build your decoding chain manually step by step. Maybe you'll manage to find part where it goes wrong.

 

Yeah that makes sense. Though judging by the fact that CPU decoding works (it just does not have enough power to do it fast enough), I'd presume problem is somewhere between the splitter and the renderer.

I am not a programmer though so if by creating a chain you mean writing a C/++ program with selected filter, that may be somewhat a problem

 

As someone that has an HD4350 (the hd 4650 i had died, reflowing it failed...) still working I can tell you for sure that 1080p@60fps will not work if you try to use the hw acceleration from that gpu.
Drivers depend on the OS you use. On win 7 (that well will be out of support soon) you can try Catalyst 11.12, everything newer is just crap performace and bugs. On win 10 you are kinda stuck with the drivers that windows will provide.

The HD 4350 I have struggles when I combine it with an old Athlon 64 X2 4000+ and this x2 4000+ is considerable better than your Atom 330.
(1080p@60 fps on my hd 4350 is like this: it display properly first max 10 frames of the video, it gets stuck to one frame and from that point I have only audio and the image is the frame it got stack and doesn't change; keep in mind that the 4000+ might easily have double the performance of your Atom 330 and I also have 4gb of ram on that pc).

With only 2GB of ram, that cpu and that gpu I'd use Win7 x86 or Win10 x86, but I wouldn't make much hopes to be honest. It will have problem even when opening multiple tabs in a browser.
Using an x64 OS with only 2GB is not that good, usualy win x64 and x64 applications use more memory than their x86 version.

I'd look for some better hardware to be honest. For office stuff like word,excel sure it can still work. Games are clearly a no go except some really really old ones. Movies maybe u can watch something that is 720p@30fps maybe. Even browsing will prove to be a nightmare.
If you install an antivirus on this machine things will be extremely slow.
If you want to watch videos can't recomend Linux, you won't have hw acceleration and the cpu will just not be powerfull enough to do it...

I usualy install VLC and nothing else.Been an army of years since I last installed K-Lite mostly because at that time it did more bad than good.

 

Could try 11.12 if I find it, what version of VLC and MPC-HC would be recommended with such old version? I tend to have both as often one of them does not play some video while the other does (like on my "new" workplace machine with Pentium D and HD 2600 XT), but in this case both are screwed.

It is just fine otherwise but that's not really what the thread is about. Fast SSD makes swapping reasonable so the system always manages to keep few hundred MB free. AV is already on and makes not that much of difference. Things only get slow when there are two CPU intensive tasks (it has 4 threads, but it's still just 2core with SMT). It will of course be intended just for some everyday home/office stuff, but when it has such graphics it could at least manage to play FullHD videos. Nobody wants 60 FPS, never seen such file anyway, absolute majority of movies is 24/30 FPS. Ppl tend to watch a video from time to time though and if it could not even do that, it would really be useless. I only mentioned gaming to show the GPU is not so tragic, it is actually much better compared to the CPU.

 

I'd try Kodi, I've also seen some of the devs on their forums throughout the years mentioning various workarounds for driver bugs on old AMD hardware

 

OK, will try that, I am not familiar with this SW. I've installed K-Lite only as it was suggested in that driver-hacking thread. Already been messing with naked VLC and MPC-HC before that to no end, that's why I went to other directions too.

Though that makes me wonder, when plaine VLC and MPC-HC use their own filters and K-Lite uses LAV filters if I am not mistaken, that would suggest the problem is not anywhere in these filters. Only thing they all have in common is the DXVA thing so I'd think it is it what's screwing the chain. Is there some way how to test the DXVA components? I mean to really test it does something (and monitor what), not just putting info tools on it (like DXVA checker or GPU-Z).

 

FFS never install k-lite crapware.
MPC-HC alone is already more than enough for everybody.

Previous thread on the matter: https://forums.guru3d.com/threads/radeon-hd4000-series-dxva-fully-restored-under-win7-8-10.414275/

 

HD 4330 is a RV710 same as HD 4350. The only difference is the clock, the HD 4330 is clocked at 450 while the HD 4350 is clocked at 600.

I know for sure that installing only the OS and the drivers on the pc with Athlon 64 x2 4000+ and HD 4350 is enough to be able to watch streams/youtube videos at 720p30fps with hw acceleration on. More than that is kinda meh at least for streams/youtube videos.

http://www.guru3d.com/files-details/amd-catalyst-11-12-whql-8-921-5-dec-29-whql.html

if that doesn't work:

https://filehippo.com/download_ati_catalyst_vista_64/11244/

no clue if it will work, the driver is for discret gpu not for mobility.

based on the information from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radeon_HD_4000_series

R710 has UVD 2.2 . I kinda think UVD 2.2 should be capable to do 1080p@30fps (I know for sure my HD 5670 was capable to handle 1080p@30fps and 720p@60 fps streams and youtube videos but it was paired with an Athlon II x4 640) as long as it's a format supported by UVD 2.2 :

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Video_Decoder

Btw what is the cpu usage when you get no image?

 

I popped in my old HD 4870 and tried this, and it works in Kodi at least. Win10, driver provided via Windows update. Says HW acceleration is on when playing H264 clip in 1080p, and I didn't notice anything weird.

 

I've done more testing today with the HD 4350:
- streams and youtube videos in Firefox are ok at max 720p30fps; 720p60fps = max 10 frames rendered and then it just display the 10th frame without updating it sound is fine; 1080p30fps= massive frame skipping, it barely display 10% of the frames; i suspect that the issues with the 720p60fps and 1080p30fps are due to the Athlon x2 64 4000+ cause at 720p30fps it often hits 80% usage
- vlc and h264 video 1080p25fps was fine, at least the sample I tested run without problems (it did said 2 lost frames in statistics but I didn't noticed that, if it wasn't in the statistics I wouldn't had even know it happened), cpu usage was low (constantly below 15%)

The hd 4350 is on my sociopath father pc and well I'm sick and tired of his madness so if I want to test something I have to do it when he is not at home (impossible to do something for my father; based on him: he is never wrong, it's always the others fault, everyone else is insane; in those conditions he doesn't even want to hear that he needs to see a psychiatrist). Anyway his pc specs are: cpu Athlon x2 64 4000+, gpu: hd 4350 512mb ddr, 4x 1 gb ddr2, hhd: wd 160gb, os: win 7 x64 sp1 fully updated. Only windows, catalyst 11.12 and latest vlc were installed.

 

AFAIK, unless you use Edge or IE, Youtube forces VP9 decoding, and that's very demanding for older CPUs

 

old hardware, not much can be done. kinda hate that there is no information regarding uvd version and the h264 level supported.

I think UVD 2.2 and UVD 3 are limited to h264 level 4.1 and that translate in max 720p@60fps and 1080p@30fps (mostly because hd 4xxx, hd 5xxx and hd 6xxx are unable to hw 1080p@60fps)

UVD 5 is limited to h264 level 5.2 and that translate in max 4Kp60 (info from here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_Video_Decoder )

L.E. UVD 4 for sure can do h264 level 4.2 (because my hd 7750 can do 1080p@60fps), no clue about more ( an video 3840x2160@30 fps is making vlc use 70+% of the athlon x4 640)

Stuff about h264 levels can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Levels but well there aren't really informations about UVD version and h264 level connection.

If I remember right I only managed to get 1080p@60fps hardware accelerated on the hd 4350 in Win XP years ago. For some reasons it worked, it wasn't actually rendering 60 fps, it was skipping a lot of frames but the image was okish, at least it wasn't displaying a static image. Don't ask me why it was happening like this in Win XP, I have no clue. From my point skipping frames is the normal behaviour while dropping them all is not the normal behaviour.

h264ify ( https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/h264ify/ ) was a good firefox extension, but well it was also making youtube not allow some resolutions for the videos. no clue in what state h264ify is now, wasn't updated in the last 1 year.

It might be possible to use OpenCL to actually do the decoding and I doubt OpenCL will have the limitation that UVD has. But well if we haven't see this implemented by now I doubt we will ever see it.

L.E.2: And regarding youtube well there is the stuff from here (it's a reply somewhere there) https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/youtube/IIMbk3lRi28

 

Mobility Catalyst 11.12 makes no difference. Well, with latest VLC/MPC-HC anyway. I guess I'll leave the system at home as a backup (currently needed lol), nobody will be playing any HD movies on it here, though it's kinda pity when it is the most interesting thing on this box. If anybody has more ideas, I can play with it from time to time, with very low priority

ADD// VLC 2.0.2 has not much acceleration so it plays, but it's a slideshow. MPCHC 1.6.something still the same.

Is it possible there is something screwed in HW? I do not know what more to really test much. So far even with old HW like HD 2600 XT, the acceleration worked, even under XP. Or at least it appeared so Either that, or the Pentium D has enough power itself to play everything.

 

UVD1 is already supposed to be "blu-ray-proof".
Even on the slowest of the CPUs. Shouldn't take more than half an athlon x2 4000.

So.. whatever the innovations brought in by the newer versions, as long as you have VP8/VP9 disabled here you should be good to go (except 1080p@60 if any)
If you have problems, check the browser info/gpu page if the driver isn't being blacklisted. Or try to switch to fullscreen.