80% faster encoding? [hardware]

[antdgar]

Apparently the new software for ATI's 48** cards:

http://downloads.guru3d.com/ATI-Aviv...load-1973.html

and the news story
http://xtreview.com/addcomment-id-56...h-HD-4850.html

"ATI’s Avivo Video Converter can take a 30 minute recorded show, and convert it into a format playable by an iPod in less than 1 minutes. It can cut the conversion time by 80% or more. When compared to competitive solutions, the Avivo Video Converter easily beats them. This means you’ll be watching more, and waiting less."

They also claim to convert 1080p in real-time, "8x faster than the fastest intel core 2 duo"

"The most exciting of the new developments however has to be the implementation of faster than real time transcoding of 1080p videos. This leverages the parallel computing prowess of the 800 stream processing units on the GPU and is an additional AVT (Accelerated Video Transcoding) layer on top of ATI's Compute Abstraction Layer (CAL) that handles the GPGPU programming. Currently, only the latest CyberLink PowerDirector 7 is able to utilize the GPU for transcoding but ATI cites a 19x speed up compared to using the CPU for transcoding"

Has anybody with a new ATI card used this? And are their claims true about the H.264 encoding speeds?



My 4850 arrives on Tuesday :3

[wyti]

it's easy to get a high speed with an encoder designed for.
What quality give this encoder ?

[antdgar]

I don't know. I have not received my 4850 graphics card yet.

[Sharktooth]

that version should use the GPU for encoding too. the previous version didnt. however i really hope they improved the quality...
however anyone with a 48x0 AND Vista for testing? i cant do that right now since i dont have Vista...

[Dark Shikari]

The last marketing claim of "8x faster than a Core 2" I saw was crap, since it was actually slower (Badaboom). They're probably comparing to a rather slow encoder.

But more to the point, given that AVIVO is often considered a benchmark for awful encoding (used for "vs H.264" comparisons to make H.264 look bad), I'm not expecting much...

[antdgar]

haha,
I'll test it out on Tuesday.

[Sharktooth]

yeah... they said 8x faster... than what? and with what encoder?
the 48x0 have a huge processing power however we need to see some test results and output quality to judge though... otherwise it's all speculation...

[antdgar]

I believe it's similar technology as Nvidia's
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8C_Pj1Ep4nw

They showed that it was faster than 'itunes encoder'. They state the name in the video... I forgot it's proper name.

[Sharktooth]

@antdgar: uhm... dunno. however 48x0s are waaaay more powerfull than any nvidia GPUs for stream processing. the results may be wildly different.. but it will depend on the encoder implementation.

[Dark Shikari]

Originally Posted by antdgar

I believe it's similar technology as Nvidia's
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8C_Pj1Ep4nw

They showed that it was faster than 'itunes encoder'. They state the name in the video... I forgot it's proper name.

The iTunes encoder is Apple's, which is widely known as one of the worst H.264 encoders in the entire world.

[cogman]

Originally Posted by Dark Shikari

The iTunes encoder is Apple's, which is widely known as one of the worst H.264 encoders in the entire world.

Come now, Almost any encoder pales in comparison to x264. Ateme (sp?) and the Mainconcept encoder are the only ones that compare, and they are both commercial (This win goes to the GPL)

[RunningSkittle]

downlading cyberlink trial.

Will post results later.

What x264 options do you all want tested? Post command lines.

[CruNcher]

I doubt that this Xcodec release from june is accellerated, im useing it since then it's just a updated xcodec.dll (works also on XP you don't need Vista) (and it's working with the OLD gui on my Nvidia Card) also nobody ever said something about it on any forum that it works accellerated with his 4800 series card under Vista, i highly doub't Ati gonna release this for free without incorporating a 3rd party. it will come as a free Cyberlink PowerDirector 7 Ultra update very soon now, they released another part or the final of the 4800 Ruby Raytracing (Otoy) Tech Demo Video after the X2 release wich blasts Nvidias Medusa away http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wi5s4yP1Kpg im sure they makeing themselves ready for the big PR bang vs Nvidias recent Physx Pack Release and as part of that the Cyberlink AVT update will be released .

@RunningSkittle
It won't work jesus you will find a big Press announcement when the update gonna be released on AMDs and Cyberlinks Page and on every important Video GFX site on the net just look out for the words "Accelerated Video Transcoding (AVT)" Avivo has nothing todo with this, tough several Press guys allready used it but they are under NDA (impressive to read that it can do 4 1080i streams @ the same time in Parallel and Realtime and the i suggests they wan't to show off that it does the deinterlacing @ the same time i guess)

[Dark Shikari]

Originally Posted by cogman

Come now, Almost any encoder pales in comparison to x264. Ateme (sp?) and the Mainconcept encoder are the only ones that compare, and they are both commercial (This win goes to the GPL)

<cynic>Ateme and Mainconcept compare rather badly</cynic>

But more seriously, I'm not just saying in relation to x264; I'd rather use pretty much any encoder other than Apple's.

[Snowknight26]

I like how when you download it from Guru3D, the file name conatins 8_6 in reference to Catalyst 8.6.. almost 2 months old now. :\

[G_M_C]

I think GPGPU in general, and specifically on compute-intensive tasks is a very good development. But the encoders i see now, from botn Nv and Ati, are just too limited in options and quality to seriously consider using. They might be faster, but thats about the only thing they have going for them atm.

In the same "genre" there is intels "Larrabee"; That could also be a very good development for compute-intensive tasks, like encoding.

But in general i think that the encoders that are developed by Ati/Nv/Intel wont ever be as good as X264. There will offcourse be very specialized, and very expesive, commercial products.

But I think it will be up to the X264 community to port X264, or develop a hardware-assisted version1, because that will be the only way we (as community) will get a good quality encoder on hardware.

[Dark Eiri]

We'll have to see the quality, though. That Badaboom thing is truly awful in this point, and slower than most Core2Duos for SD content.

[CruNcher]

Originally Posted by G_M_C

I think GPGPU in general, and specifically on compute-intensive tasks is a very good development. But the encoders i see now, from botn Nv and Ati, are just too limited in options and quality to seriously consider using. They might be faster, but thats about the only thing they have going for them atm.

In the same "genre" there is intels "Larrabee"; That could also be a very good development for compute-intensive tasks, like encoding.

But in general i think that the encoders that are developed by Ati/Nv/Intel wont ever be as good as X264. There will offcourse be very specialized, and very expesive, commercial products.

But I think it will be up to the X264 community to port X264, or develop a hardware-assisted version1, because that will be the only way we (as community) will get a good quality encoder on hardware.

No ATI GPU Solution has been released yet i doubt the Software Encoder will have anything todo with the GPU Encoder. The Question remains tough who's providing it AMD Research, Cyberlinks most used SDK Provider Mainconcept or does it really come from Cyberlink themselves ?
If it really is Cyberlinks own creation then i somehow doubt that it's based on the Mainconcept SDK so they maybe have completely written it from Scratch with the help from AMD/ATI. And this is also the Problem if you write a Encoder from Scratch and for the GPU you can't expect it to beat a Encoder that has been much longer in Development and Optimized and Fine tuned since years (X264). I think under this viewpoint the ETI (Startup) Encoder isn't that Bad, but i hope to see even better results from Veterans like ATI/Cyberlink (compared to ETI's Encoder)

[G_M_C]

Originally Posted by CruNcher

No ATI GPU Solution has been released yet i doubt the Software Encoder will have anything todo with the GPU Encoder. The Question remains tough who's providing it AMD Research, Cyberlinks most used SDK Provider Mainconcept or does it really come from Cyberlink themselves ?
If it really is Cyberlinks own creation then i somehow doubt that it's based on the Mainconcept SDK so they maybe have completely written it from Scratch with the help from AMD/ATI. And this is also the Problem if you write a Encoder from Scratch and for the GPU you can't expect it to beat a Encoder that has been much longer in Development and Optimized and Fine tuned since years (X264). I think under this viewpoint the ETI (Startup) Encoder isn't that Bad, but i hope to see even better results from Veterans like ATI/Cyberlink (compared to ETI's Encoder)

I think the best solution we all can hope for is that Nv & Ati decide to help out the Open source community; Like Anand said, in his article about Badaboom

"... but it's a sad day when a video enthusiast has to look to Cyberlink to save the day. What both AMD and NVIDIA need to do is help the open source community and existing codec developers include GPU acceleration in their software today."

See also Anand's review (where he actually thrashes Badaboom) here: http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=3374

I can only agree with him. Hopefully the future brings up something better, and hupefully the OS-community doesnt get left out !

[Sharktooth]

AMD/ATI is usually more committed to the OS community however this is at the beginning, so im sure we will have to wait...