Enabling hardware acceleration

Hardware acceleration (explained)

Hardware acceleration improves the decoding capability and performance of the computer running XProtect Smart Client. This is particularly useful when you view multiple video streams with high frame rateClosedA measure indicating the amount of information contained in motion video. Typically measured in FPS (Frames Per second). and high resolution.

XProtect Smart Client supports hardware accelerated decoding using Intel® and NVIDIA® GPUs. Milestone does not recommend the use of Scalable Link Interface (SLI) configuration of your NVIDIA display adapters.

Check hardware acceleration settings

  1. Go to Settings > Advanced > Hardware acceleration.
  2. There are two settings for hardware acceleration: Auto and Off.

    Select the default setting Auto.

    Hardware acceleration settings in XProtect Smart Client.

  3. Go to Video diagnostics overlay.
  4. To make the current status of the stream, including the GPU resource used for hardware acceleration visible, select Level 2.

    5. This setting applies to all view items. The default setting is Hide.

    The video diagnostics overlay status for Hardware acceleration can be: Intel, NVIDIA or Off.

    The video diagnostics status for hardware acceleration in XProtect Smart Client.

    If the status is Off, continue to examine your computer so you can enable hardware acceleration, if possible and make sure that all hardware acceleration resources are utilized.

  5. Use the System Monitor to check the current XProtect Smart Client decoding performance. See Monitor client resources.

Verify your operating system

Make sure your operating system is Microsoft® Windows® 10 (build 1809), Windows® Server 2016, or later versions.

Only non-virtual environments are supported.

Check CPU Quick Sync support

To verify that your processor supports Intel Quick Sync Video:

  1. Visit the Intel website (https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/search/featurefilter.html?productType=873&0_QuickSyncVideo=True).
  2. In the menu, set Processors and Intel Quick Sync Video filter to Yes.
  3. Find your CPU in the list.

    Hardware acceleration in XProtect Smart Client - check support for CPU Quick Sync.

Examine the Device Manager

Make sure that an Intel or NVIDIA display adapter is present in Windows Device Manager.

Hardware acceleration in XProtect Smart Client - examine the device manager.

You can connect your displays to any display adapter available. If a more powerful display adapter is available in your computer, typically NVIDIA or AMD®, connect your displays to this adapter to use all available GPU resources for hardware accelerated decoding and rendering.

Not all NVIDIA display adapters supports hardware acceleration. See Check NVIDIA hardware acceleration support.

If the Intel display adapter is not present, enable the Intel display adapter in the BIOS. See Enable the Intel display adapter in the BIOS.

Check NVIDIA hardware acceleration support

NVIDIA products have different compute capabilities.

Hardware accelerated decoding using NVIDIA GPUs requires compute capability version 6.x (Pascal) or newer.

To find the compute capability version of your NVIDIA product, visit the NVIDIA website (https://developer.nvidia.com/cuda-gpus/).

Enable the Intel display adapter in the BIOS

If another display adapter card, for example NVIDIA or AMD, is available in your computer, the onboard Intel display adapter may be disabled, and you must enable it.

The Intel display adapter is located on the motherboard as a part of the CPU. To enable it, look for graphics, CPU or display settings in the computer BIOS. The vendor's motherboard manual may be helpful to find the relevant settings.

If changing the settings does not enable the onboard Intel display adapter, you can try to move the display adapter card to another slot and then connect the display to the motherboard. In some cases, this can enable the onboard display adapter.

Update the video driver

Make sure that the driver version for all your display adapters are updated to the newest version available from Intel or NVIDIA.

The Intel driver version provided by the PC vendor can be an older version and may not support Intel Quick Sync Video.

There are two ways of updating your video driver. Manual download and install or using a driver update utility.

Intel

Manual download and install:

  1. Go to the Intel download website (https://downloadcenter.intel.com/).
  2. Enter the name of your integrated display adapter.
  3. Manually download and install the driver.

For automatic detection and updates of Intel components and drivers:

  1. Download Intel Driver and Support Assistant (https://www.intel.com/p/en_us/support/detect/).
  2. Run the assistant to auto search for the drivers.
  3. Choose to update the driver for Graphics.

NVIDIA

Option 1: Manually find drivers for my NVIDIA products.

  1. Go to the NVIDIA download drivers website (https://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx/).
  2. Enter the name of your product and the operating system.
  3. Manually download and install the driver.

Option 2: Automatically find drivers for my NVIDIA products.

  1. Go to the NVIDIA download drivers website (https://www.nvidia.com/Download/index.aspx/).
  2. Click GRAPHICS DRIVERS.
  3. Your system is scanned.
  4. Download and update the driver.

Check memory modules configuration

If your system supports more than one memory channel, you can increase the system performance by making sure that a minimum of two channels have a memory module inserted in the correct DIMM slot. Refer to the motherboard manual to find the correct DIMM slots.

Example:

A system with two memory channels and a total of 8 GB of memory obtains the best performance using a 2 x 4 GB memory module configuration.

If you use a 1 x 8 GB memory module configuration, you only use one of the memory channels.