Nvidia PureVideo HD

As PureVideo HD called Nvidia one with the GeForce 7 series introduced video platform to the multimedia capabilities of Nvidia graphics cards to improve (quality and flexibility). The PureVideo HD technology is used for hardware acceleration of videos in popular commercial formats. The main processor , the work is thus, depending on to which generation it is and in what format the video is taken off completely or partially.

First generation

PureVideo HD was introduced with GeForce 7 series . The graphics card could process the formats MPEG-2 , WMV3 / VC-1 and H.264 , for example . In the case of H.264 material, the last two stages of decoding could be used. The main processor continues to take over the first two decoder levels, “Bitstream Processing” and “Inverse Transform”.

Second generation

PureVideo HD of the second generation can process videos in the formats MPEG-2 , H.264 and WMV3 / VC-1 and thus relieve the main processor when playing these video formats. The video processor VP2 integrated in the graphics chip can take over the last three decoder levels of the HD formats H.264 and VC-1. The first decoder stage, "Bitstream Processing", is performed by the H.264 bitstream processor (BSP), which is also integrated in the graphics chip; the main processor continues to do this for the other formats.

The AES128 engine is also integrated in the graphics chip, which decodes the AES encryption protocol. This encryption protocol is used in the AACS copy protection of many commercial HD DVDs and Blu-ray Discs .

Third generation

Third generation PureVideo HD can still process videos in MPEG-2 , H.264 and WMV3 / VC-1 formats . In contrast to the previous generation, the first decoder stage “Bitstream Processing” can now also be used for VC-1 and MPEG-2 material, so that these formats can also be processed completely via the graphics processor.

Graphics chips of the third PureVideo generation ( G98 , MCP77, MCP78 , MCP79 , MCP7A ) have a bug that prevents the accelerated decoding of H.264 videos with the following horizontal resolutions: 769-784, 849-864, 929-944, 1009- 1024, 1793-1808, 1873-1888, 1953-1968 and 2033-2048 pixels .

Fourth generation

In the case of PureVideo HD of the fourth generation, a bitstream decoder for MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Profile (ASP) was added in addition to existing functions , which is a profile of the MPEG-4 Part 2 ISO standard , but without the support of the global motion compensation , which is a part this profile is. In addition, MVC is supported for the first time . The first graphics cards with PureVideo HD fourth generation (sometimes referred to as VP4 were abbreviated) GeForce G210 and G210 M .

Fifth generation

The fifth generation of PureVideo HD received a much more powerful decoder, which, in addition to the existing functions, supports higher resolutions up to 4K in addition to greatly increased speed , but not under VDPAU. The first graphics card with PureVideo HD of the fifth generation (sometimes abbreviated as VP5 ) was the Geforce GT 520 .

Sixth generation

The sixth generation of PureVideo HD (abbreviated VP6 ) was introduced with the Maxwell architecture, e.g. B. with the GeForce GTX 750 / GTX 750 Ti (GM107) and the Geforce 900 series . Compared to the fifth generation, the decoding performance of H.264 and MPEG-2 has been significantly improved. In addition, the sixth generation is now able to decode DCI -4K videos with a resolution of 4096 × 2160 pixels and, depending on the driver and codec used, also higher resolutions of up to 4096 × 4096 pixels. Furthermore, the error concealment when decoding faulty video streams has been improved.

Software support

Nvidia provides proprietary device drivers for PureVideo HD that support DXVA (for Windows ) and VDPAU (for Unix-like operating systems ). Under macOS , the Video Decode Acceleration Framework supports decoding of H.264 from the third PureVideo generation. All programs that support one of these programming interfaces can use PureVideo HD.