Haali Media Splitter Installer

Once this is installed you will find that your Matroska files will play in Media Center/Player but not using DXVA, so will be using a lot of cpu (a 30mbit 1080p VC1 video I have was maxing out my Core 2 Duo E6300 1.86GHz). So step 2 is to find and install a DXVA capable codec. Media Player Classic Home Cinema has such a codec, amongst many others which are available as a standalone filters (in 32bit and 64bit form). The one we’re interested in here is MPCVideoDec.ax. So copy this file to your system32 directory (Syswow64 on 64bit systems, i think ? The 64bit codecs go in system32 on 64bit systems, if you need the codec to work in 32bit applications you’ll the 32bit version as well and that would go in SysWOW64) and run the following command from a command prompt (make sure to run the prompt as administrator if you have UAC enabled)

Register the MPCVideoDec Codec

Now we’re close, sadly Media Player/Center will still use the Microsoft decoder as that is the preferred decoder so we need to change this. We could dive in to the registry and faff around with loads of CLSIDs ourselves, or we could use the Preferred Filter Tweaker for Windows 7 from clsid on the doom9 forums. Download and run this, and then select MPCVideoDec for H264/AVC and VC1.

Preferred DirectShow Filter Tweaker for Windows 7

Apply those changes and restart Media Center/Player (if its open), and try opening a Matroska file again. Now you should find the CPU much reduced thanks to DXVA. My CPU usage playing back the same 1080p file as before is now under 5% as you can see below.

1080p Playback CPU Usage

There is one downside to this however, because this codec requires the decoder to be connected directly to the renderer there is no way (that I can find anyway) to display subtitles within Media Player/Center. If you have a Matroska file with subtitles you’ll have to drop out and play them in MPC-HC, which can display subtitles and still decode with DXVA. If anyone has a way of enabling this in Media Center please let me know.

UPDATE 11/11
Added subtitle caveat and corrected the 32/64 bit file locations. Isn’t it somewhat ridiculous to put 32bit dlls in a folder with ‘64′ in its name, and vice versa ?

After some time consuming searching I finally found a motherboard that met all the criteria and was in stock, the Gigabyte GA-EQ45M-S2 so I went ahead and ordered one.

This is what the product image looked like when I ordered it:

GA-EQ45M-S2 Rev1

This is what I got when I opened the box:

GA-EQ45M-S2 Rev2

Can you spot the difference ?

Well, it turns out Scan ran out of stock of these at the end of October and ordered new ones, which turned out to be revision 2 boards, and had not updated the image on their website.

Thankfully the customer service was excellent at Scan and I’ve got an RMA number already. Now all I have to do is track down another motherboard that matches the criteria.

Who goes and moves the expansion slots around on a revision to an existing board, I wonder if anyone else has been caught out by this ?