Nvidia Prepares their own Video Encoder ??

[CruNcher]

"NVIDIA Pure Video Encoder" NvPVEnc.ax apeared in the newest Beta Driver (currently investigating it) :)

After their own Mpeg-2 Decoder way back then i can't wait to see their own Encoder in Action the Decoder was first class quality and @ that time had even less bugs then Elecards one, though could be that Nvidias Encoder is based on ETIs Engine (which seems logic as ETI is their Main Partner in GPU Encoding CUDA algorithms currently).

PS: I heavily suspect this will be Nvidias answer to the 16 December Free AVT Encoder release by AMD/ATI, so im pretty sure (but no one can guarantee it) this will be Free for every Nvidia user :) though it still has to be seen how this gonna work with Badaboom as a Commercial Product (i guess they can easily coexist as Badaboom is a DVD backup focused GUI), very interesting what's happening here :)

Nvidia GPU Encoding (Status):
------------------------------
Badaboom (Elemental Technologies)
PowerDirector7 (Cyberlink)

[popper]

"PS: I heavily suspect this will be Nvidias answer to the 16 December Free AVT Encoder release by AMD/ATI,"

hmm did i miss something?

are you saying that your reliably informed that ATI/AMD after a full 3 years since their AVIVO encoder front end that used the CPU(s) only, AMD/ATI are finally ready to release the hardware assisted AVIVO Encoder backend plus the old frontend (hopefully with far better fine bitrate controls etc on the generic GUI)as a stand alone (only for X* and HD* ATI Gfx chips+ OC) HD AVC/VC-1/Mpeg2 GPU assisted Encoder on the 16 December 2008?

a nice quick and dirty AVIVO any video input upto generic max MS 360 10Mbit/s AVC,2 channel ACC in a mp4 container, and 15Mbit/s VC-1,etc WMV container for replacing Tversity on the fly slow transcoding might be a very good option to use realtime in some 3rd party script sometime this year, given people are now buying the 360 for HD LAN streaming after its price reduction.

[MarcN]

hmm did i miss something?
Um, well, yes. :D

Actually you can already get the Beta-Version of the 8.12 driver. From the changelog:

ATI Stream application: ATI Avivo Video Converter

Using ATI Stream technology, owners of ATI Radeon™ HD 4800 Series and ATI Radeon™ HD 4600 Series of graphics cards can take advantage of this video conversion tool (found in Catalyst Control Center Basic View) to achieve incredible performance levels in video transcoding.
Source (http://forums.guru3d.com/showthread.php?t=280709) (with download link)

More here: Battle of GPU Transcoders: ATI Avivo Converter and NVIDIA Badaboom (http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=647)

The converter comes in the form of a DirectShow-Filter:
http://home.arcor.de/dagorath/ati_enc.gif

Don't be confused by the 'Copyright 2005', the DLL says 2008 (Ver. 10.0.0.31121)

[toytown]

I have the Beta version 8.12 installed, so i thought i would give this a go.

Whilst running, i bought up GPUZ and the catalyst hardware monitor, both showed about 1-2% GPU usage whilst half way through the encode and there was no temperature increase on the GPU.

I also loaded some apps so that the cpu was at 100% and lowered the CCC.exe (i think) priority in task manager and the encoder time shot up from 3mins to almost 10mins

I was encoding a fear2 trailer in WMV to ipod video using highest quality, as far as i can tell it doesnt use the gpu at all.

Edit - 4870 if it makes any difference

[RunningSkittle]

How do you access the directshow options?

[shon3i]

How do you access the directshow options?
Graphedit for example :)

btw what is big deal anyway where is no at least MP or HP profiles?? Realy it's just another Nvidia vs ATI war :)

[RunningSkittle]

well then its sort of useless to average users if its not exposed in the encoder front end...

[popper]

its slightly odd, i ran the GPU-Z http://www.techpowerup.com/gpuz/ to see if the new driver pointed to above would in fact use the GPU hardware to do its transcode, and be better and faster than the old 2005 freeware stand alone AVIVO app (made to run on any gfx card BTW) http://files.filefront.com/ATIAvivoVideoConverter2zip/;12557121;/fileinfo.html

and it turns out apparently this new one is infact just useing the CPU IF YOU DONT HAVE the HD4* series cards

i only have the older ATI/AMD X1550 and HD3650, and the driver/transcoder works fine and fast, but this latest 8.12 driver/trancoder set above is not using any GPU hardware assistance as of yet on these older cards, that AMD/ATI said would infact get this real hardware assisted transcoding ability in a driver update.

i was under the impression that infact the X* and the HD* series were supposed to also have this hardware assistance, code written for them but it appears they only activate it for the new HD4 and above......chips.

its a shame and not what i was lead to beleave when i purchased these less powerful cheaper ATI/AMD cards, its still the fastest (after the old hacked one above) "quick and dirty" way to take any input and make for instance a WMV VC-1 or AVC Mp4 container file for xbox360 HD playback, but the old 2005 is still faster on any given hardware/CPU machine...

this AVIVO is still a good product for quick and dirty, so i dont really get why doom9 readers didnt talk it up and about the this much ,sure its not great for highest quality, but i cant find a faster transcoder for makeing your content play on the xbox360 with its MS restricted 10Mbit/s AVC, and 2 channel AAC.... a faster product doesnt exist for free thats for sure...

its just a shame we cant use better settings as you could get at in the 3rd party apps when using the directshow ,and iv not found a generic GUI app to help you load up the ATI supplyed directshow binarys and use them in a tversity HD on the fly transcode replacement for the 360 (thats all i have, no expensive but better supported HD video streaming PS3 as yet)use.

any working ABC tips or howto's for that simple thing ?

[Dark Shikari]

this AVIVO is still a good product for quick and dirty, so i gont really fet why doom9 didnt talk about the this much ,sure its not great for hiest quality, but i cant find a faster transcoder for makeing your content play on the xbox360 with its MS restricted 10Mbit/s AVC, and 2 channel AAC.... a faster product doesnt exist for free thats for sure...I'm going to be pretty surprised if x264 can't beat it with reasonable modern hardware.

[nm]

and it turns out apparently this new one is infact just useing the CPU IF YOU DONT HAVE the HD4* series cards
Most likely it doesn't use HD4xxx cards to encode either, as toytown claimed above. Also the CPU utilization graphs in the PC Perspective article that MarcN linked to suggest that it's just a CPU encoder.

However, AVIVO Converter could use the GPU (UVD) to decode and filter the input whenever possible. That would explain most of the performance increase when compared against pure software implementations since decoding HD H.264 by software is much harder than encoding low-quality H.264 at iPod-compatible resolutions and bitrates.

this AVIVO is still a good product for quick and dirty, so i gont really fet why doom9 didnt talk about the this much ,sure its not great for hiest quality, but i cant find a faster transcoder for makeing your content play on the xbox360 with its MS restricted 10Mbit/s AVC, and 2 channel AAC.... a faster product doesnt exist for free thats for sure...
I wouldn't be surprised if DGAVCDecNV/DGVC1DecNV and x264 beats it.

[toytown]

I'm going to be pretty surprised if x264 can't beat it with reasonable modern hardware.

I didnt do any proper timed benches but x264 definetely appeared to be beat the Avivo encoder and this was without even doing a fair comparisonment by doing the same options.

and it turns out apparently this new one is infact just useing the CPU IF YOU DONT HAVE the HD4* series cards

4870 here and it still seems to be using the cpu, i'll retry again once the new proper 8.12 drivers come out as im currently using the betas. But something tells me nothing is going to change :(

[popper]

well the simple fact is , given the far lower prices of the ATI/AMD HD3xxx and the new arcade360 most people will be getting and using these this cristmas rather than NV NVidea/PS3's for their video streaming.

DGAVCDecNV/DGVC1DecNV cant reallly help non NV users can they.

so while i take the point x264 (i really like it but...)might work as fast IF YOU CAN find the right command line setting for a given varied input, and while the DGAVC might help in sorting out your generic input directshow files types etc, the NV only part kind of makes it far less usable for even those that have ATI/AMD AVIVO and can find the time and effort to work out the CLI to use for a given input video file.

if its within the xbox360 ratio leave its scale and bitrate alone,and just trancode to a tryed and tested container and codec etc, and im willing to try that and take even twice as long as AVIVO on a selection of my files for slightly better quality streaming from Tversity as a batch file and wait before i playing them,but right now its not made that easy, and not as easy as the old 2005 AVIVO, select a bunch of files, pick the ouput codec and container that works on the 360 with its MS restrictions, and start it.

see: Microsoft Xbox 360 Media Capabilities http://a8t8.spaces.live.com/blog/cns!2518DD508BB713E8!188.entry

for the many people with Xxxx/HD3xxx and a generic dualcore intel's at 2Gig, a graphedit script with DGAVC/x264 using the ATI directshow driverset for decoding HD H.264 input etc might be a begining, but until someone writes that script that can take any input and parse it to x264 and any container apps etc we are just waiting and looking for that faster app to use, id love to use x264 for Tversity batch transcoding the old content to play on the xbox360
as their transcoding options are slow and many times dont keep up and so end up spending more time transcoding than streaming/playing.

[deekey777]

How do you access the directshow options?

Install ATi Tray Tools and you get a GUI for AVIVO Converter. :)


Graphedit allows more options, but it's not really user friendly.

[CruNcher]

It's out i guess we can see Nvidias Encoder in Action now with PowerDirector7 and the newest (FREE) update seems it uses the new PureVideo Encoder (Dshow) :)
http://www.cyberlink.com/multi/download/patches_4_en_US.html
http://www.cyberlink.com/eng/press_room/view_1994.html <- Press Release
http://www.cyberlink.com/multi/products/item_4_5_2.html <- see updated CUDA tab though 200% is hilarious (sure tested once again vs Apples Encoder) wait for independent comparisons :)

Ehh wouldn't that mean it's even faster out now then AVT ? my god what for a fallback for ATI as they announced it so early and still it's not ready and Nvidia even overuns them 3rd Party wise now, though it's not FREE in the sense like ATIs Encoder though i still saw no Evidence that ATIs Catalyst Encoder is even working on the GPU @ all i have it running here in no GPU mode on my 8800 GT.