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AVC 444 RDP Codec support? HW Acceleration?

Posted: Thu Feb 06, 2020 3:07 pm
by TimW
Hi there,

So with Server 2016/Windows 10 the RDP protocol has had a pretty big upgrade - and video/3d stuff is working a lot better - it sounds like they encode the whole screen in AVC 444 and send that to the client (if supported...)

I've built up a 2016 testbox with a quadro graphics card and been seriously impressed - on my Windows 10 clients, using remote desktop onto the RDS server, the experience is very close to perfect - video is smooth with no lag even full screen, and looks close to HD quality - it wouldn't quite pass muster on my home cinema but I doubt my users will be able to tell the difference! - and 3d stuff is actually better because it can use the 3d processing from the quadro (so something like the Heaven benchmark runs smoothly on the server, whereas running it on the i5 desktop with intel graphics is a slideshow).

Anyhow, this is lovely for our BYOD users and remote workers, but what I really want is to deploy this on thin clients in some areas to replace ancient desktops.

So I've had a look at WTWare - I love the functionality and ease of use, but right now the support for AVC 444 doesn't seem to be there?

I've tried wtware on a Raspberry Pi 4 and a Sandy bridge era i3 desktop, but the video is tearing and crummy quality compared to what I'm getting using remote desktop from Windows 8.1 and 10 (and similar spec machines - worth noting that the windows 7 remote desktop client is poor quality too!)

I stuck Ubuntu on that same desktop, I found the latest version of Remmina had an option to select "GFX AVC 444" mode and this seemed to do the trick - quality was basically similar to what I was getting on the windows remote desktop client.

Is there some tweak on WTWare to enable this mode? Is it in the pipeline?

I've got a Raspberry Pi 3 on order to see if that is any better with remote desktop, guessing the more mature platform might help there a bit?

Thanks in advance
Tim

Re: AVC 444 RDP Codec support? HW Acceleration?

Posted: Thu Feb 06, 2020 7:08 pm
by aka
TimW wrote: Thu Feb 06, 2020 3:07 pm So with Server 2016/Windows 10 the RDP protocol has had a pretty big upgrade - and video/3d stuff is working a lot better - it sounds like they encode the whole screen in AVC 444 and send that to the client (if supported...)
I've built up a 2016 testbox with a quadro graphics card and been seriously impressed - on my Windows 10 clients, using remote desktop onto the RDS server, the experience is very close to perfect - video is smooth with no lag
What about server CPU usage when several clients watching FullHD videos?
TimW wrote: Thu Feb 06, 2020 3:07 pm but right now the support for AVC 444 doesn't seem to be there?
We are working on this. Sorry, I can’t name the terms now.

Re: AVC 444 RDP Codec support? HW Acceleration?

Posted: Fri Feb 07, 2020 2:35 pm
by TimW
aka wrote: Thu Feb 06, 2020 7:08 pm
TimW wrote: Thu Feb 06, 2020 3:07 pm So with Server 2016/Windows 10 the RDP protocol has had a pretty big upgrade - and video/3d stuff is working a lot better - it sounds like they encode the whole screen in AVC 444 and send that to the client (if supported...)
I've built up a 2016 testbox with a quadro graphics card and been seriously impressed - on my Windows 10 clients, using remote desktop onto the RDS server, the experience is very close to perfect - video is smooth with no lag
What about server CPU usage when several clients watching FullHD videos?
Seems fine so far, although I haven't really started torture testing - certainly with my desktop and laptop running video from the server it appears minimal in task manager (as it should, as decoding should be hardware accelerated, and encoding is going via the NVEnc block on the graphics card)

Of course my expectation is that most of the time the users will be on Outlook/Word/Powerpoint or just browsing, it's more that I want the video capability in place for the occasions it is needed (as obviously youtube etc works fine on the current pcs, it's just everything else about them that is slow!)
TimW wrote: Thu Feb 06, 2020 3:07 pm but right now the support for AVC 444 doesn't seem to be there?
We are working on this. Sorry, I can’t name the terms now.
That's good - hope it goes smoothly and we have some good news soon!