Hardware or Software video decoder??

[1RoyR]

I just installed MX Player on my N7>> https://forums.androidcentral.com/e...s?id=com.mxtech.videoplayer.ad&token=TCv-sWXQ

I was wondering about the advantages/disadvantages of the hardware (h/w +) decoder the app mentions?
Smoother playback? Better color? Less battery usage?

In a quick viewing of an MP4 file, I can't see much difference, although I've not yet done an exhaustive comparison between the software and hardware decoder options.

thanks...

Roy

 

[mr_nobody]

Generally, if you can view your movies using hardware, it will use less battery than software. You need to use software when the video you are trying to view is not supported in hardware.

 

[anon(847090)]

Smoother playback! Better color! H/W or S/W decoding dont impact any of this.
hw is faster, sw is slower. with nexus 7 you wont see any difference.

lets say it takes 30 seconds to decode a 10 minute video by hw and 45 seconds by software.
its a 10 minute video and decoding happens on the fly and would have decoded before that part is played.

battery life!!! that i am not sure. it could impact battery.

 

[Rusty Hyatt]

Hardware decoding is faster but doesn't support as many file types. Software decoding is flexible and can support many media formats, but it's slower.

Hardware decoding in general can also lead to glitches/artifacts in the video.

Basically hardware acceleration is helpful because it can allow playback of media when software decoding is too slow/laggy. It's only real purpose is to improve performance.

A good example would be 1080p h.264 video on a mobile phone. I think most phones would have a hard time playing that via software decoding and still get smooth playback, so hardware acceleration is very useful here.

On a modern computer hardware acceleration is usually unnecessary since most newer computers are fast enough to play high quality media files even with software decoding.

 

[Terty Tree]

Smoother playback! Better color! H/W or S/W decoding dont impact any of this.
hw is faster, sw is slower. with nexus 7 you wont see any difference.

That is very strange since on my HTC One, S/W usually runs much smoother and the video looks better, H/W usually have some missing pixels and seems very laggy.

 

[gerrya]

Plays better on my HTC One on S/W mode as well. Looking at MX Players FAQ it looks like it is only using different chipsets between H/W and S/W mode. Sounds like the HTC One's CPU is fast enough to play videos in S/W mode? Here is the FAQ:

What are S/W decoder and H/W decoder?

Mobile devices are much slower than PC as of yet, and thus it may often have trouble playing high-definition video using CPU only. Manufacturers therefore install multimedia chipsets to assist video decoding process specifically. H/W decoder is using these chipsets to play videos whereas S/W decoder only uses CPU to play them.

 

[Aasym Hussain]

hi,

i am using htc one M8 while i am playing mobile Tv . some channels showin" S/W decoder is not supported . can't play this link"

can any one help ?

 

[Mathan82]

I am having same problem too.. I am suing Amlogic S805 box, I cant play some channels , comes up with an error message "SW decoder is not supported" , Cannot play this link ..

I've installed custom codec, still no luck. "aio.1.7.32.rev1.zip"

Appreciate if someone could help me.

Many thanks

Regards,
Mathan