(Bug) VideoProcessing enabled by default only on Intel's discrete Arc cards during video playback.

[NikosD]

Hello.

Another technically deep and specific issue with Intel's drivers that will need to be raised to Video Engineers.

I was running a few playback performance benchmarks using various HEVC and VP9 clips with Intel Hardware like Core i7 8700 (Coffee Lake GT2 iGPU – UHD 630) and newer Iris Xe iGPU (Tigerlake GT2) from Core i5 1135G7.

The tool I used is the famous DXVA Checker v4.6.0 application.

Both iGPUs have zero VideoProcessing utilization while normal Playback and during Playback performance (benchmark mode)

But when I used the Intel’s Arc A380 discrete GPU using the same clips and same decoders MF HEVC (D3D11), MF VP9 (D3D11), LAV (DXVA2 for both HEVC/VP9) and even SW decoder LAV (SW) I always see a huge utilization of VideoProcessing value ~85% in Playback performance mode, dropping the speed of decoding and the speed overall– a lot.

Even normal playback of Arc A380 uses a lot of VideoProcessing power, dropping the performance of Arc A380 lower than Iris Xe and even UHD 630 iGPUs when iGPUs use fast dual-channel RAM.

This is ridiculous for Intel.

Pure video decoding (not playback) is a lot faster for Arc A380, of course.

QUESTION:

Are there any hidden VideoProcessing parameters enabled by default in the driver and how could I disable them ?

It seems that only Arc discrete cards have them enabled by default.

Intel's Arc control and Intel Graphics Command Center (Beta) do not expose Video Processing settings/ parameters in order to disable them. I tried them both.

It is very important and mandatory for users to be able to disable video parameters that trigger Video Processing that could affect video decoding performance even for discrete cards.

A user should be able to disable ALL video processing parameters in the drivers.

Thanks in advance!

[RamyerM_Intel]

Hello NikosD, 

Thank you for posting in the communities. Kindly please allow us to investigate this properly for you by coordinating with our team. I promise to get back to you as soon as possible.

Ramyer M. 

Intel Customer Support Technician

[RamyerM_Intel]

Hello NikosD, 

Thank you for patiently waiting. Our team is actively investigating this for you. We do want to ask the following details to further speed up the investigation: 

1. Please share with us the steps you have taken before encountering the bug or screenshots of the issue you have experienced. You may also share a short recording so we can check it for you. 
2. When you did the testing did you disable the iGPU of your system or is it on a hybrid setup (discrete + iGPU) 
3. Please share with us the SSU logs of your system where the Arc GPU is installed. This will allow us to be more familiar with your configuration and check for possible errors. 

Ramyer M. 

Intel Customer Support Technician

[NikosD]

Hello Ramyer.

I think I was misunderstood a little.

First of all my tests and benchmarks were done on three different systems.

My system has Core i7 9700 with Arc A380 and iGPU always disabled.

On a different desktop system, I did the iGPU tests with Core i7 8700 with iGPU enabled obviously and no discrete cards in the system.

And Tigerlake Core i5 1135G7 was used in a laptop of course, with no discrete cards.

So, three different measurements on three different systems using only discrete card (A380) with no iGPU or only iGPUs (8700, 1135G7) with no discrete cards.

Moreover, as I said above, I used a specific software called DXVA Checker in order to measure the performance of hardware/software video decoding and video playback of those three different systems using various codecs.

There are a lot of guides out there to see how is this doable.

But it doesn't matter, as this is just one way to expose the use of video filtering during video playback of Arc A380 and no use of video filtering during video playback of iGPUs.

The video developers could do it using different tools and methodologies and probably you as Intel have proprietary tools to measure such things.

After these results of DXVA Checker I did this post in order to ask the video developers if they enable by default deep inside the drivers some video filtering and do not expose those settings to users (using Arc control or/and Intel Graphics Command Center (Beta)) so users could disable them.

I hope it's clear now.

[RamyerM_Intel]

Hello NikosD

Please accept our sincere apologies for the delay in response and thank you for sharing additional information. For now kindly allow me to coordinate this further with our team and I promise to get back to you as soon as possible.

Ramyer M.

Intel Customer Support Technician 

[AlfredoS_Intel]

Hi Nikosd,

Thank you for waiting for our update.

First, I would like to clarify that the "VideoProcessing" is actually a report of the utilization of the Video Enhancement (VE) engine found within the GPU's media acceleration engines and it is often interfaced through the Intel® Video Processing Library (VPL).

The reason why newer GPUs actually show higher utilization on "VideoProcessing" is because Intel provides a software library so that ISVs can utilize the hardware acceleration of video decode/procession/encode from our GPU's Media Engine. However, ISVs are responsible of correctly integrating these features. Currently, the library Intel offers for this purpose is the Intel® Video Processing Library (VPL).

 So, the main difference of recent Intel GPUs vs older ones is that newer ones rely on the Intel VPL, while older ones use the Intel Media SDK. So, it possible the tool this customer is using correctly implemented the Intel Media SDK, but it still hasn't fully implemented the Intel VPL.

You can refer to these sites for more info:

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/developer/tools/vpl/overview.html#gs.bk5cbj

https://github.com/intel/libvpl/

https://github.com/Intel-Media-SDK/MediaSDK

We look forward to your feedback regarding our post.

Best Regards,

Alfred S

Intel® Customer Support Technician

[NikosD]

Hello Alfredo.

The issue raised up here by me is something different than what you describe.

The real problem is the fact that this tool uses the simplest form of playback, without any video processing enabled by default - VPL or MSDK.

That's why is not a matter of more video processing versus less.

The iGPUs have z e r o video processing during playback while Intel Arc has around ~85 % Video Processing during the exact same method of playback for the same clip.

It's not a matter of more or less video processing - something around video processing is ON and working during Arc's playback and is OFF and not working during iGPU's playback - for the same simplest way of video playback, designed to have the least interference during playback.

The result is obvious during playback, which drops a lot the performance between pure video decoding (without renderer and without displaying frames) and normal video playback.

Something triggers the Video Processing Engine to interfere during normal video playback using Arc, but not using iGPU.

Are you saying that this behavior appears only using this tool ?

I have seen the same struggle during normal video playback without turning on any Video Processing features in the driver for Arc A380, using different Video Players/ Tools.

That's why I think the issue is something deeper and general, probably inside the driver.

BR,

Nikos

[AlfredoS_Intel]

Hi Nikosd,

Thank you providing your feedback.

Please allow us some time to check on this.

We will get back to you as soon as we have updates.

Best Regards,

Alfred S

Intel Customer Support Technician