Activating Hardware Decoding? (Steam In-Home Streaming question)

Hey everyone.

I'm trying to use Steam In-Home Streaming, but I'm having some issues.

I'm streaming from an Alienware laptop with a 7970m GPU and i7 3630 processor, so it should handle any game I throw at it, so that's not the issue.

The problem is, I get a bit of a "slow decode" error on the client laptop.

The problem I've seem to have figured out, is that the client laptop is using software decoding instead of hardware decoding.

Okay, so I enabled hardware decoding for the client laptop in the Steam settings, but when I take a look at the statistics, it still says it's using "libavcoder software decoding with 2 threads".

I want this to be hardware decoding, but I'm not sure what exactly I have to do on my laptop's end to get it activated.

I have downloaded the Dx redistributable file, but that hasn't seemed to do much of anything. For some reason Steam just refuses to decode using my hardware and it puts too much pressure on my CPU so I get a bit of choppiness.

By all accounts I should be able to do this, but I'm missing some key step that I can't seem to figure out.

Any ideas how to get Steam to use hardware decoding instead of software?

Nevermind. I think the problem is that the ATI Radeon 3100 series doesn't support hardware acceleration…

At least for twitter I know nvidia is popular for its hardware capture and encode capabilities. Try 5 threads maybe ?

As an aside I was going to try stream streaming too. I can test for you if you want. I have an ati r9 r280. Always wondered how the gamepad would work

Originally Posted by ilm
At least for twitter I know nvidia is popular for its hardware capture and encode capabilities. Try 5 threads maybe ?

As an aside I was going to try stream streaming too. I can test for you if you want. I have an ati r9 r280. Always wondered how the gamepad would work

Steam streaming is AWESOME, I tried it earlier and had Baldur's Gate 2: EE running on my laptop in bed .

Thing is, though, there's still a little choppiness on max settings because of this decoding issue. Oh, and I read that the ATI Radeon 3100 DOES have hardware decoding capabilities (it's called UVD and the 3100 is equipped with it), so I really have no clue what is holding me back at this point.

Will investigate further but info is pretty rare it seems.

Let me know how you like Steam streaming. I think it's great minus these little niggles.

Ah sorry decoding, not encoding decoding has been a part of all video cards for a while now. Possibly steam doesn't support ati's uvd yet, or steam uses an unsupported video codec ?

I'll see if I can get it working next week, over WiFi…

Originally Posted by ilm
Ah sorry decoding, not encoding decoding has been a part of all video cards for a while now. Possibly steam doesn't support ati's uvd yet, or steam uses an unsupported video codec ?

I'll see if I can get it working next week, over WiFi…

Steam seems to support DXVA decoding, which is what UVD is, so I'm just stumped.

It says this in the Steam streaming log:

Sat Aug 30 20:57:04 2014 UTC - DXVA init resetting SDL renderer
Sat Aug 30 20:57:04 2014 UTC - DXVA: Using device ATI Radeon 3100 Graphics
Sat Aug 30 20:57:04 2014 UTC - DXVA init failed: Couldn't find H264 hardware decoder

And the option to enable hardware acceleration is greyed out in Windows (even though this card definitely supports it).

The reason why Steam In-Home streaming is amazing? I can use my old Toshiba Satellite laptop to play games in HD anywhere in the house!

I.E., I can lay on my butt in bed and play any Steam game in glorious HD on a laptop that has no business playing those games ..

I tested it today with Baldur's Gate 2 and it ran pretty well with the occasional jerk or whatever. Tested with Last Remnant and wow, it looks great on this laptop, running at 720p, 40 frames per second.

Still, I wish I could use this hardware decoding because the FPS would increase even higher (I'm greedy )

just something to try if you haven't done so…
- Enable Steam beta in both server and client (and restart Steam in both).
- Download latest (beta) video drivers for both server and client.

I think the server side requires Nvidia 650+ or something like that, and beta drivers at least last time I checked, but that's for the encoding part. But you never know.

Originally Posted by wolfing
just something to try if you haven't done so…
- Enable Steam beta in both server and client (and restart Steam in both).
- Download latest (beta) video drivers for both server and client.

I think the server side requires Nvidia 650+ or something like that, and beta drivers at least last time I checked, but that's for the encoding part. But you never know.

Tried that, didn't work.

The server laptop I'm using is an Alienware maxed out laptop with the 7970m. There are no issues with that laptop as far as I can tell. It's got the latest video drivers.

The client laptop seems to have the problem. For some reason, Steam is not recognizing the H.264 decoder, even though it should exist. I've tried 2 different drivers (the newest and an older one), and still have the same problem. Even in the driver notes it stats that H.264 5.1 support has been added, so I'm really not sure what the problem is here…

Maybe try and see if vlc works okay and that it uses dxva (and if not -> log)

I was able to turn on DXVA 2.0 for VLC and the video was smooth, but how can I tell for sure that it's working?

Not sure for vlc. But it should be somewhere there in the log or video/stream information what codec it is actually using (h264 or h264-dxva). Also make sure to play a h264 video

Played an h264 video, it ran beautifully with no problem.

VLC log -

-- logger module started --
dxva2.lo: obtained IDirect3DDeviceManager9
dxva2.lo: DXVA2CreateVideoService Success!
dxva2.lo error: DxFindVideoServiceConversion failed
dxva2.lo: obtained IDirect3DDeviceManager9
dxva2.lo: DXVA2CreateVideoService Success!
dxva2.lo error: DxFindVideoServiceConversion failed
main error: Failed to resize display

Dang, the end result here may be that the ATI Radeon 3100 doesn't support H.264 decoding after all. Who knows…

So, I'll probably just have to upgrade the client laptop. I was hoping to be able to use this old thing without buying something new, but hopefully I can pick up something nice that doesn't break the bank either..

Hmmm. I posted the same conclusion but it didn't came through. Seems the 3100 *mobility* has no support for uvd

So, anyone have any suggestions for a cheap-but-good laptop I could use for my Steam streaming?

If screen size is not too important. What about an Asus t100 (10 inch) or t200 (11.6 inch) tablet + dock. Should be powerful enough with hardware decoding and long battery life as a bonus.

Originally Posted by ilm
If screen size is not too important. What about an Asus t100 (10 inch) or t200 (11.6 inch) tablet + dock. Should be powerful enough with hardware decoding and long battery life as a bonus.

I was thinking about a tablet, or maybe a 2-in-1, but I think I would rather have a nice 15" or 17" display, full HD. Since I have a pretty powerful rig streaming the games at 1080p 60 FPS, it's only right I have a client that can handle it.

I'm thinking a used/refurbished Dell XPS M1710. Full 1920x1080 resolution, 17" screen, Nvidia graphics, a dual core processor at 2.0 ghz and a few gigs of RAM. Should be enough to handle the job nicely, right?