Hardware acceleration for x264 playback on windows 7

Question

Using VLC 2.0.0 with windows 7 to replay various mkv files (x264) the cpu usage of VLC media player averages 25%. How is it possible to enable hardware acceleration so that CPU usage will be lower?

The display adapter is a) NVIDIA NVS 4200M (driver 8.17.12.6883), and b)Intel(R) HD Graphics Family (driver 8.15.10.2418)

The VLC video settings looks as:

And the resource monitor showing high CPU usage despite current drivers/vlc version that's compatible with hardware decoding of h264:

Solution 1

The video setting tabs you showed are only for rendering.

Go to:

Preferences - Inputs & Codecs and mark "Use GPU accelarated decoding"

Solution 2

In Preferences, select the Video tab and make sure Accelerated video output (Overlay) is checked. If it already is, your graphics card and/or driver may not be capable of accelerating video. Make sure your graphics drivers are up to date.

Comments

[Thalys]

This would likely depend on your video card as well, so it would be something to put into your question.

[eichoa3I]

how would one know if they were capable or not? In my case, drivers are up to date.