HDR 4K video support - macOS vs Windows

[orph]

mac pro forum may not be the best place to ask about mac mins, you may be best asking apple? sounds like a sales thing.

is this just for blue ray playback or something ?
it has HDMI 2 so id gess as long as your application supports that it will, so check your application's website

edit you mention the Blackmagic eGPU, is this a production question or a consumption question.
you relay do need to give more info! for things like this.
app,media,for watching blue-ray/netflix/amazon video, video editing PP/DR/FCX and so on

 

[InquiringMac]

Thank you, @orph !
I am just a simple guy, consumer looking for a simple answer if I will be able to watch modern movie titles employing HDR10(+)/Dolby Vision encoding using MM 2018 + 5K monitor, and would eGPU help...
Please help me, dear experts!

 

[orph]

if you already have mac min try and see what happens

if you dont ask the shop that you will buy from, make them work for your money

if you want to know about eGPU ask the shop/website for the item

& check your Tv actually supports it

 

[InquiringMac]

Will do. Thank you!

 

[eksu]

Would a KEXT enable HEVC decoding in a Vega FE in 10.14.2? I'm on 10.14.0 right now, but I'm already installing a kext to control the fans, so it's no big deal to use a kext for other things.

Thanks.

 

[fhturner]

Would a KEXT enable HEVC decoding in a Vega FE in 10.14.2? I'm on 10.14.0 right now, but I'm already installing a kext to control the fans, so it's no big deal to use a kext for other things.

Thanks.

Did you ever try this or learn anything noteworthy?

 

[h9826790]

Would a KEXT enable HEVC decoding in a Vega FE in 10.14.2?

Please try the latest Mojave beta. I just got this yesterday.

 

[fhturner]

Please try the latest Mojave beta. I just got this yesterday.

View attachment 829065

After my post earlier, I went ahead and updated my test system to 10.14.5b to see if we might have gotten lucky w/ some H.264 or HEVC acceleration. From what I can tell, it's still the same. While GPU usage is pretty high in QT Player on those Sony videos (probably 70-90% sometimes), so is CPU usage, at 300-500% or so. Trying to play back in FCPX 10.4.6 is a bit choppy and I was even getting a momentary "blink" to a black frame every few seconds.

I'm encouraged that you got that response, but I'm curious what exactly they're referring to...

 

[eksu]

Please try the latest Mojave beta. I just got this yesterday.

View attachment 829065

I'm updating to the Beta tonight and preparing to jump from Vega FE to Radeon VII. Just trying to figure out how to get my firmware to flash to 141.0.0.0 from 140.0.0.0. I think I need to do it from a SATA HDD instead of a NVMe drive.

 

[h9826790]

I'm updating to the Beta tonight and preparing to jump from Vega FE to Radeon VII. Just trying to figure out how to get my firmware to flash to 141.0.0.0 from 142.0.0.0.

You want a firmware downgrade?
[doublepost=1553810162][/doublepost]

After my post earlier, I went ahead and updated my test system to 10.14.5b to see if we might have gotten lucky w/ some H.264 or HEVC acceleration. From what I can tell, it's still the same. While GPU usage is pretty high in QT Player on those Sony videos (probably 70-90% sometimes), so is CPU usage, at 300-500% or so. Trying to play back in FCPX 10.4.6 is a bit choppy and I was even getting a momentary "blink" to a black frame every few seconds.

I'm encouraged that you got that response, but I'm curious what exactly they're referring to...

The bug report is about "GPU hardware encoding fail". So, despite I asked them to "enable HEVC hardware video acceleration" in that particular reply. May be they only enable something like H264 encoding, but nothing else.

 

[eksu]

You want a firmware downgrade?
[doublepost=1553810162][/doublepost]

Typo, I meant 140.0.0.0. Edited my original post.

 

[fhturner]

The bug report is about "GPU hardware encoding fail". So, despite I asked them to "enable HEVC hardware video acceleration". May be they only enable something like H264 encoding, but nothing else.

Ah, ok. I'll give that a try when I get back to the home office. I'm more concerned w/ playback first and foremost, but if they've implemented encoding, then I'll take it! Plus then maybe decoding isn't too far off (again).

 

[fhturner]

What is your test case/method for this? On 10.14.5b, I tried QuickTime Player > File > Export As > 1080p, using a 4k30 ProRes test file of 0m12s in length. I was able to export w/ the "Use HEVC" box checked. The export took about 1m58s and CPU usage on my 12-core 3.46GHz was about 800% most of the time, w/ almost no GPU usage (this is on CPU & GPU History in Activity Monitor). So, that obviously was a software encode. What are we trying to get to happen or observe?

Also saw similar CPU & GPU usage when saving w/o HEVC checked (so H.264), but times were nearly realtime.

Additionally, tried exporting via FCPX (only have H.264 option, I guess because I don't have Compressor?) and saw about the same times, although curiously, the GPU usage kicked up to around 80%. Wonder if this is an anomaly and whether FCPX is actually doing anything w/ the GPU in this case.

 

[h9826790]

What is your test case/method for this? On 10.14.5b, I tried QuickTime Player > File > Export As > 1080p, using a 4k30 ProRes test file of 0m12s in length. I was able to export w/ the "Use HEVC" box checked. The export took about 1m58s and CPU usage on my 12-core 3.46GHz was about 800% most of the time, w/ almost no GPU usage (this is on CPU & GPU History in Activity Monitor). So, that obviously was a software encode. What are we trying to get to happen or observe?

This should be the correct way to test it.

I expect CPU usage is very low, GPU usage should be quite high during export.

And for 1080P, the export time should be better than real time even "Use HEVC".

At least, this is what I can see on my Hacktinosh when using QuickSync. I expect a similar behaviour when use AMF.

 

[fhturner]

This should be the correct way to test it.

I expect CPU usage is very low, GPU usage should be quite high during export.

And for 1080P, the export time should be better than real time even "Use HEVC".

At least, this is what I can see on my Hacktinosh when using QuickSync. I expect a similar behaviour when use AMF.

Okay, so it doesn't appear to be working for me. Have you tried it on yours yet? Do we know for sure what Developer Relations actually means when they say the "issue has been resolved"??

 

[h9826790]

Okay, so it doesn't appear to be working for me. Have you tried it on yours yet? Do we know for sure what Developer Relations actually means when they say the "issue has been resolved"??

Not yet, I just switch back to my Mac Pro 5,1 few hours ago. Have some work to do right now. And will be out of town in the next few days. So, can't update to 10.14.5 beta and run any test yet.

But I contacted Apple again to confirm their meaning of "issue has been resolved".

 

[h9826790]

Apple haven't get back to me yet.

Few more users reported Airplay options shows up in Developer preview, but not working (Airplay Desktop require GPU hardware encoding to work properly).

My own test with Public beta has same result. No GPU hardware acceleration for any H264 / H265 encoding or decoding. And Airplay shows up in system preference.

 

[h9826790]

Okay, so it doesn't appear to be working for me. Have you tried it on yours yet? Do we know for sure what Developer Relations actually means when they say the "issue has been resolved"??

We suddenly have a new idea in the Mac Pro forum, and it actually works to enable HEVC hardware decode (flawlessly), and H264 hardware acceleration (completely) in 10.14.5 Beta (18F127a).

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ac-edition-card.2101909/page-18#post-27332863

The only missing part now is just HEVC hardware encoding.

 

[fhturner]

We suddenly have a new idea in the Mac Pro forum, and it actually works to enable HEVC hardware decode (flawlessly), and H264 hardware acceleration (completely) in 10.14.5 Beta (18F127a).

https://forums.macrumors.com/thread...ac-edition-card.2101909/page-18#post-27332863

The only missing part now is just HEVC hardware encoding.

I caught a little bit of that this morning! Sounds promising! Perhaps I should ask these questions over on that thread, but:

1. Do we think there is something new provided by Apple in Build 18F127a to allow this?
2. Any chance it works in 10.14.4 as well (I think I saw a poster there say no)?
3. Do we think native support for this is coming w/o the use of extensions?
4. Have you heard anything from Apple since our last posts above?

Regardless...very cool! Going to try it on my "secondary" 6x 3.33 4,1->5,1 soon.

 

[h9826790]

I caught a little bit of that this morning! Sounds promising! Perhaps I should ask these questions over on that thread, but:

1. Do we think there is something new provided by Apple in Build 18F127a to allow this?
2. Any chance it works in 10.14.4 as well (I think I saw a poster there say no)?
3. Do we think native support for this is coming w/o the use of extensions?
4. Have you heard anything from Apple since our last posts above?

Regardless...very cool! Going to try it on my "secondary" 6x 3.33 4,1->5,1 soon.

1) In fact, I think YES. Their developer relation staff told me that all eGPU users (I assume they mean Apple eGPU kit users) will get hardware encoding support in 10.14.5. So, they are adding something in 10.14.5 beta now.

2) Possible, however, I won't recommend anyone extract 10.14.5 component and put them into 10.14.4. So far, it seems 10.14.5 AppleGVA.framework, AppleGVACore.framework, and some AMD kext may be required.

3) For internal dGPU. The answer is NO. That's what the Apple developer relation staff told me. They didn't "enable" hardware accel for Mac Pro 5,1 (the only Mac that can self install dGPU without iGPU). My interpretation is that they intentionally "disable" this function for dGPU users. That's why we come up this work around to fool the AppleGVA framework.

4) Yes indeed. That's why I don't wait for them to fix this issue. Because they are actually the party that stop us to use hardware accel, but not helping us.

 

[Z1839]

The Vega on iMac Pro can actually do the hardware decoding (and obviously it's a dGPU).

Also, it's confirmed that the RX580 (the same GPU as in the Apple eGPU developer kit) also able to perform HEVC hardware decoding in the current 10.14 beta. I have this GPU in my Mac Pro now. I have done the test by myself (as per the following screenshot). 4K HDR HEVC BT.2020 video can be play back smoothly in QuickTime Player on my Samsung CHG 90 with just the RX580.
View attachment 774878

I tried to show you the required info in a single unmodded screenshot (I only remove the serial numbers).

The video is the Sony_4K_HDR_Camp.mp4, it's widely available on the internet. Clip info as per Mediainfo shows.

CPU is very low workload (but QuickTime is working). The CPU is W3690 (as per my signature), and definitely not capable to doing any HEVC 10 bit high bitrate decoding in both software and hardware method.

GPU is the Apple recommended (for Mac Pro 5,1), Sapphire PULSE RX580 8GB. Which has reasonable workload when decoding the video. And system info confirmed that was the only GPU installed, and displaying 30-bit colour.

iStat showed both the CPU and GPU usage, plus the monitor was working at around 60 FPS (because the video was playing at smooth 60FPS). If the video was not playing, it will be like this (2.2 FPS in this case). Also, no QuickTime shows in the CPU process because no demand from it.
View attachment 774880

Or if the playback is not smooth, then it will shows the playing frame rate. I use IINA to play the same clip with software decoding. CPU was stressed to 1000%, only 10FPS (The colour seems over saturated in IINA as well)
View attachment 774883

And if I was playing around the mouse pointer etc to achieve higher FPS, then it will easily jump to 144FPS because CHG 90 is a 144Hz monitor.
View attachment 774882

Anyway, I think this is good enough to show you that MacOS can play HEVC 10bit HDR BT.2020 smoothly with dGPU hardware decode. And this is on a 9 years old Mac Pro without Skylake (or newer) CPU installed.

Hey man! I have the same videocard on my 2012 MP running Catalina but i'm having trouble with the 4k. I'm trying to export videos from quicktime in 4k and the option is greyed out. Any idea?