CoreAVC with Windows 7 RTM take 2

Windows 7 RTM has been leaked. That’s old information. Most of us have it running on our systems already, with a 30 day grace period (maybe more with a rearm). I too snapped up a copy of the RTM from the interwebs when it came out on July 14th. Since then I have updated my HTPC and the Windows Machine. With a slew of Matroska (MKV container) videos in my possession it is imperative to have flawless playback performance on my Windows HTPC, which admittedly is not the most powerful of machines.

I had blogged earlier about Media Player Classic – Home Cinema and DXVA, which granted, worked superb. However such is not the case for systems with older Graphics cards. CoreAVC is a shining beacon of hope for such machines.

As a test I tried out CoreAVC on my Windows 7 RTM (7600) machine. To get it to work was an exercise in madness, registry hacks and restarts. But I can proclaim that it indeed works, and I have full HD playback with my Media Player 12 and Media Center. I can use CUDA as well, though that’s kind of counter-productive and a matter of choice. If one can use CUDA, one is better off using MPC-HC with DXVA. But it is a matter of choice.

Here’s how I went about enabling CoreAVC – disable the Microsoft Decoder.

1. Open REGEDIT as an Administrator
2. Navigate to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\DirectShow\Preferred
3. Right click on ‘Preferred’ and select ‘Permissions’.
4. Click on ‘Advanced’ -> ‘Owner’ tab. ‘Administrators’ , check ‘Replace Owner on subcontainers and objects’ checkbox, OK.
5. Now back to the first window – click ‘Administrators’ and check ‘Full Control’. Press OK.
6. In the left pane look for {e06d8026-db46-11cf-b4d1-00805f6cbbea}
{31435641-0000-0010-8000-00AA00389B71}.
7. Edit these entries with a double click and replace the value data entry with that for CoreAVC – {09571A4B-F1FE-4C60-9760-DE6D310C7C31}.
8. Reboot. This is important.

And voila, the next time you play a MKV or H.264 video, CoreAVC will be the codec used. If in case it still doesn’t work for you, rename the following file to say whatsmynamem8.dll. Remember in order to rename this file you’ll have to take ownership of this particular folder. As with everything else in life, do it with caution.

c:\windows\syswow64\msmpeg2vdec.dll