Videos encoded by the newest H.265 (HEVC) codec play fine on my Core i7 3Ghz + Radeon HD 4350 system, in Windows Media Player 12 or “Movies & TV” built-in app.
Videos encoded by the older H.264 (“avc1”) codec show either green or black screen (depending on app), only audio track is played.
It seems that the problem is caused by WDDM 1.1 driver that signals to the OS that it supports Hardware Acceleration for H.264, but cannot deliver.
For newest H.265, the old GPU/driver could not possibly offer any Hardware Acceleration, so Windows 10 does software rendering and everything works fine.
Probably the root cause is that WDDM 1.1 driver (the latest available) works fine on Windows 7, but later OSes adopted WDDM 1.2 “video playback improvements” (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-hardware/drivers/display/d3d11-video-playback-improvements, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Display_Driver_Model#WDDM_1.2); the OS believes that Radeon HD 4350 driver can assist with H.264, but cannot correctly take advantage of the Hardware Acceleration due to OS changes introduced in WDDM 1.2+.
Does anybody know, is there a way to make Radeon HD 4350 WDDM 1.1 driver (ver. 8.970.100.9001) to appear dumber than it is and let OS think that it simply does NOT support H.264 hardware-accelerated decoding (much like it does not H.265)?
It would solve the green/black screen issues; the Core i7 system has enough CPU power to decode even computationally intensive H.265, so H.264 decoding would be easy.
Thank you.
For reference, current dxdiag.exe data:
DirectX Version: DirectX 12
Card name: ATI Radeon HD 4300/4500 Series
Manufacturer: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
Chip type: ATI display adapter (0x954F)
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_954F&SUBSYS_E990174B&REV_00
Device Status: 0180200A [DN_DRIVER_LOADED|DN_STARTED|DN_DISABLEABLE|DN_NT_ENUMERATOR|DN_NT_DRIVER]
Device Problem Code: No Problem
Driver Name: aticfx64.dll,aticfx64.dll
Driver File Version: 8.17.0010.1129 (English)
Driver Version: 8.970.100.9001
DDI Version: 10.1
Feature Levels: 10_1,10_0,9_3,9_2,9_1
Driver Model: WDDM 1.1
(this is the latest version, “provided as a courtesy and only available via Windows Update” - https://community.amd.com/docs/DOC-1311)
Detachable GPU: No
Hybrid Graphics GPU: Not Applicable
Driver Attributes: Final Retail
Driver Date/Size: 1/13/2015 3:00:00 AM, 1094024 bytes
WHQL Logo'd: Yes
Device Identifier: {D7B71EE2-D60F-11CF-9270-9AC9BEC2C535}
Vendor ID: 0x1002
Device ID: 0x954F
SubSys ID: 0xE990174B
Revision ID: 0x0000
Driver Strong Name: oem12.inf:cb0ae4148d05d541:ati2mtag_R7X:8.970.100.9001:pci\ven_1002&dev_954f
Rank Of Driver: 00D72001
Video Accel: ModeMPEG2_A ModeMPEG2_C
DXVA2 Modes: DXVA2_ModeMPEG2_IDCT DXVA2_ModeH264_VLD_NoFGT DXVA2_ModeVC1_VLD
DDraw Status: Enabled
D3D Status: Enabled
AGP Status: Enabled
