Editing VC-1 (section)

== Hardware-based encoding and decoding ==

Because VC-1 encoding and decoding requires significant computing power, software implementation that run on a general-purpose CPU are typically slow, especially when dealing with [[High-definition television|HD]] video content. To reduce CPU usage or to do real-time encoding, special-purpose hardware may be employed, either for the complete encoding or decoding process, or for acceleration assistance within a CPU-controlled environment. A hardware VC-1 encoder can be an [[Application-specific integrated circuit|ASIC]] or an [[FPGA]].

Hardware-accelerated (also known as hardware-assisted) video decoding can either be done on dedicated, special-purpose hardware or on generic, multi-purpose hardware such as [[GPU]]s. The former is typically found in consumer electronics devices such as [[Blu-ray Disc]] players and 3G/4G mobile phones, while the latter is typically found in PCs. Nearly all video cards manufactured since 2006 support some level of GPU-accelerated VC-1 decoding on the Windows platform via [[DirectX Video Acceleration]] APIs. The native Windows WMV9/VC-1 decoder (wmvdecod.dll) only supports DXVA profiles A, B and C, while 3rd party VC-1 decoders such as [[CyberLink]]'s support the full DXVA Profile D decode acceleration. There is no support for GPU-accelerated VC-1 decode on the MacOS platform.

[[Raspberry Pi]] hardware prior to Raspberry Pi 4 supports VC-1 hardware-accelerated decoding, although it requires purchasing of a license key.<ref>{{Cite web|title = New video features! MPEG-2 and VC-1 decode, H.264 encode, CEC support|url = https://www.raspberrypi.org/blog/new-video-features/|website = Raspberry Pi| date=24 August 2012 |access-date = 2015-11-29}}</ref>