Hi there,
I am well aware that most Hi10p questions are met with “We don’t think the Pi is fast enough” etc, but either way I would still like to force enable it. All it needs is a codec to be enabled that does CPU decoding.
Can anyone give me some advice as to how I would go about this?
ps - I don’t mind if the results are bad, I still want to try it.
Thank you
It will already be played in software if you try and play it, so just press ‘Play’ on the file. It won’t work. Even Intel Core i7 systems cannot play 10-bit content smoothly.
Sorry I think you might not be correct. I just watched an entire Hi10p movie in 1080p, smooth as butter. But with the visual artifacts caused by using a non hi10 supporting codec. This is exactly the same as when you try to play a hi10 file on a normal computer without the correct codec.
I have been able to play hi10 on very low end systems, let alone an i7. If there was a proper codec installed, hi10 would display without any artifacts, but slowdown or framedrops could occur due to cpu speed restrictions.
raspb pi 3 by the way.
It depends on the encoding. MediaInfo will show you that.
If it’s High10-H264, it may get HW decoded, this will give you artifacting. You can then force it to software by disabling hardware acceleration in Settings as suggested previously. Then it will be decoded in software by ffmpeg and will stutter like crazy.
If it’s HEVC, 10-bit, then it will be primarily SW decoded (only parts of HEVC leverage QPU). You can force the clip to be played back entirely in SW as well. This will stutter too.
10-bit H264 is a dead standard that was really only used by the anime scene. HEVC 10-bit is growing and will likely become a standard in the future.
I do not know if Pi checks ffmpeg hints for Hi-10 (to determine suitability for HW playback). I suspect that it does. @popcornmix will know.
I doubt that. You probably have an external GPU and a player which supports playback via VDPAU/DXVA etc, or perhaps the file was not really 10-bit.
Ah, okay! I didn’t know you could disable HW acceleration, this answers my question - Thanks a lot. Now I can test it out and see how it handles it. If it’s a slide-show as you say, fair enough, I just wanted to see myself.
The log (with debugging) will make it very obvious if hardware decoding is being used. You can also press ‘O’ and bring up the menu.
There is a switch on hints.codec when setting up the HW decoder which covers only acceptable AV_CODEC_ID_… supported codecs and I suspect that Hi10 won’t be there and will get sent to software.
Sorry I cannot find anywhere in the menu system to disable HW decoding, could you advise? Thanks
Disable MMAL and omxplayer. You may need to enable ‘Expert’ mode.
You won’t be able to play 1080p 8-bit H264 content in software, you absolutely won’t be able to play any 10-bit content in software on the Pi.
Hey Sam you may be amazed, I just did what you said and my Pi 3 can play 10bit at 720p without any frame drops. It can’t really do 1080p though as you suggested - although I haven’t tried overclocking or anything.
Still, 10bit 720 is excellent.
Also 1080p 8bit is 100% perfect too.
I think this has been enlightening for both of us, thanks a lot for your help 
Can you post the MediaInfo output here for both clips?
I’ll give it a try tomorrow, got to call it a night.