Hardware Encoding...

[Luke2000]

hello!

i got an idea but i am not sure if its possible to do this.
so ATI brought out a nice tool to encode video through
graphics card - AVIVO; this would be an gread addition to your
tool if you could include this function.
as autogk creates awesome video files but encoding
takes hours (i know thats not the fault of autogk)

i tried encoding a video today (single pass)
its 70minutes long
takes like 3-4 hours on CPU
was done in 10 MINUTES with gfx card (NVIDIA GF6600!!)

so when you install avivo it also installs an avivo codec
possibly this helps using those awesome features??

thanks for reading my thoughts
let me know if this is interesting for more ppl
and if you are able or even willed to look at it
THANKS IN ADVANCE
luke

[ilovejedd]

Ok, so I guess it's more appropriate to put this in the Hardware & Software Forum, but since the thread is here...

Does AVIVO work even if you don't have an ATI graphics card? Also, is the codec/format it converts to proprietary?

I only have a measly NVIDIA GeForce 6200TC but it would be great if it can help speed up conversions. I usually convert whole seasons of TV shows and on an AMD Sempron 3200 1.8GHz, that translates to a really long time.

[Luke2000]

yeah, there is an "hacked" version out, which accepts ALL graphic cards, ATI AND NVIDIA
i tried it on my gf6600 works like charm! (but only target size or 4 bitrate settings in single pass in this version)
and i love to use autogk cause of accurate file size and excellent quality

note: quality isnt poor when encoding with gfx card but its single pass... therefore the filesize is too large

greets

[ilovejedd]

Darn, tried this on my work PC which has an NVIDIA GeForce4 MX 4000. I converted a 40-minute AVI file to PSP format and it took just 4mins 6secs. I re-encoded the same AVI file via ffmpeg using similar specs as the AVIVO output MP4 (320x192, MPEG4/30fps/512kbps video, AAC/Stereo/96kbps) and it took 11mins 20secs on a P4 3.4GHz w/2GB DDR SDRAM. :eek:

[Luke2000]

as i said, its way faster! here its even more faster cause of a newer card...
can hardly wait to get my new gfx card (already ordered and paid!)
GF7900 GX2 1024MB :D
must be fast as lightning ;D

[ilovejedd]

Scratch that. Apparently, I have a dual-core PC. I didn't think to look at CPU usage the first time I did the test. I tried converting another AVI. AVIVO Video Converter makes use of both cores while ffmpeg utilizes only one. I can't really make a fair comparison on this PC. In fairness, AVIVO still seems to be faster. I'm not really sure how CPUs work but I'm guessing if conversion using both cores takes 4mins 6secs, it'll take 8-9mins if AVIVO was using just one core. That's still more than 2mins less than the time it took ffmpeg to transcode and if I'll be converting, say 24 episodes at a time, that'll save me a little less than an hour. Not bad at all.

Incorporating AVIVO in AutoGK might be tricky as I'm not aware it has any command line switches. What would be nice is if video editing/transcoding programs could make use of discrete graphics cards to speed up processing. I remember reading about an AviSynth filter that makes use of the GPU for certain functions (resizing, etc). Problem was it was a bit buggy and didn't work for a lot of video cards.

[jggimi]

Moving to PC Hardware forum.

(By the way, folks, aAGK development has officially ceased, even if Len0x makes occasional patches.)

[UofC]

Wow looks to good to be true. Would you be willing to do a comparison?

Take one video and run it through both processes. Then report back transcode times, CPU usage, hard drive utilization, and computer specs?

I am curious if this uses the GPU or if it is a new type of transcoder. ATI's site does not have much infromation.

[setarip_old]

@Luke2000

Hi!...accepts ALL graphic cards, ATI AND NVIDIA
i tried it on my gf6600 works like charm!I'd like to experiment with this (on one of my systems that has an NVIDIA card). Where is it available for download?

[joelancer]

ilovejedd - since you say your P4 usess DDR, an not DDR2... it might just be a socket478 Pentium4 with HT, and not a socket775 Dual Core.

HT - hyper threading, is just 2 Virutal Cores. you can disable the function in your BIOS if you like, for testing that conversion speed.

[Luke2000]

ill look into tests tomorrow (as its too late today)
i can test it this week on an
amd xp 2800+ 2gb ram and a geforce 6600 256mbram

next week on an amd 64 3800+ 2gb pc6400 dualchannel ddr2 ram and an geforce 7900 GX2 (some vendors call it 7950)

i found the tool here:
h**p://i4memory.com/X1800XT/AvivoVideoConverter1_12_anycard.zip

NOTE: replace * with t

greets
PS: report your results too

[Luke2000]

use this video to test:

http://download.microsoft.com/download/1/5/0/15092c6c-5af1-4208-b5e2-54af6f1009a4/T2_720.exe

[setarip_old]

@Luke2000

Thanks for the link ;>}

This converter certainly is intriguing. As an experiment, I used this ATI converter and (my personal favorite) "MPEGMediator" to convert a DVD ("Don't Come Knocking" R1) to a 3IVX-compressed .AVI. The same system was used for both conversions.

The results? "MPEG Mediator" a respectable 1hour and 39 minutes. The ATI converter a remarkable 32 minutes! Based on a quick run through of each version, video quality appeared to be comparable.

**ADDENDA** - In this particular instance (From .VOB to DivX [3IVX]), the converter "decided" that the framerate was 29.970fps, when it should have been 23.976fps. It also "decided" on resolution of 720x368. Lastly, it "decided" on .MP3 at 44,100Hz...

[Sulik]

You can disable dual-core in any app by setting the processor affinity in the task manager (right-click on the process and select "set affinity")

[foxyshadis]

So far not a single comment on quality? It isn't worth bothering with 3x encoding speed if it still looks as horrible as in Doom9's last shootout.

[Sulik]

I endoded the T2_720 (1280x720, WMV9, 120seconds) to 640x352 DivX-Compatible with the ATI converter (4Mbps).

System: P4 HT 2.6GHz (Northwood), GPU: AIW 9600XT
Time: 62 seconds (~2x faster than realtime)

I would think it should be even faster with a higher-end system.

[Sulik]

Quality looks good for me, but I tend to use fairly high bitrates (3Mbps+ for SD). I believe only the H.264 was compared in the codec shootout, though not a single screenshot was actually shown.

Last I remember, ATI's H.264 implementation is only Baseline Profile (no CABAC or B-frames), and only works well on SSE2-enabled CPUs, so it seems like it was somewhat unfair to have it compared with High Profile encoders on an AthlonXP (No SSE2).

[dragongodz]

search is a wonderful thing no ?
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=104157&highlight=avivo

It isn't worth bothering with 3x encoding speed if it still looks as horrible
i agree, however some people are happy with getting "OK" quality really fast. :)

[ilovejedd]

ilovejedd - since you say your P4 usess DDR, an not DDR2... it might just be a socket478 Pentium4 with HT, and not a socket775 Dual Core.

HT - hyper threading, is just 2 Virutal Cores. you can disable the function in your BIOS if you like, for testing that conversion speed.

No idea what the actual system specs are, although I'm pretty sure it's LGA775 (saw the manual for the motherboard once). But you're probably right regarding the PIV w/HTT comment.

I don't have access to the BIOS. It's password protected and as I've said, it's my work PC. Neither do I have administrator privileges. I'm actually a bit surprised the AVIVO Video Converter installed on my PC considering that it had to register a couple of DLLs.

Just a test I did this morning before I went to work.
Test PC (yeah it sucks, 5-yr-old PC being used by the whole family)
PIV 1.7GHz, 384MB RDRAM
NVIDIA GeForce2 MX 400

Test file is an anime 24mins 59secs long in AVI-XviD. Output settings for AVIVO is MPEG-4 (Sony PSP Compatible Video) at supposedly 608kbps (supposedly 512 for video and 96 for audio). Again, ffmpeg was used
ffmpeg -y -i "file.avi" -bitexact -vcodec xvid -s 320x240 -r 29.97 -b 512 -acodec aac -ac 2 -ar 24000 -ab 48 -f psp "file.MP4"

Encoding Times
AVIVO 6:06
ffmpeg 11:25

Quality of the AVIVO output sucks, though. Despite the supposed 608kbps, the resulting file was only 432kbps. When you take into account that 96kbps is audio, well, you get the picture (which basically looked like square tiles). Hands down, ffmpeg wins. While ffmpeg's output was blocky and had a lot artifacts, it couldn't compare to the blockiness, artifacts and jerky picture on AVIVO's output.

Regarding the other 2 source files (both Veronica Mars dvd rips) I encoded yesterday. These at least, were closer to the target bitrate. After I've viewed all 4 encodes on the PSP, I've noticed that on both, AVIVO over smoothens the image. There's a definite lack of detail on AVIVO's output. Again, I prefer the ffmpeg output to AVIVO.

Overall, not worth it for me at this time, despite the faster encoding times. But then again, I think this version was barely past beta stages when ATI released it and was subsequently hacked to support other video cards. Hopefully, newer versions would produce higher quality output. I think they'll be including H264 optimizations in newer graphics cards so development on this should be something to look forward to.

[dragongodz]

I think this version was barely past beta stages when ATI released it and was subsequently hacked to support other video cards.
read the link i gave to find out why the hacked version can run on any gfx card.

[setarip_old]

While exploring this converter, I came across a curious little anomaly. If the source video is a DivX v.3.11-compressed .AVI, the output's video (regardless of output format chosen) is vertically flipped...

[setarip_old]

Has anyone used this program to successfully create an "MPEG-4 (DivX Compatible)" .AVI that when burned to CD or DVD is playable on a Philips DVP 642-37?

The file generated has a FourCC of "DIVX".

If so, did you have to modify the file in any way, to get it to play?

[setarip_old]

From what I've now seen in exploring this "non-ATI" version, the only benefit is that it is fast. Otherwise, it appears to be far too idiosyncratic to be of any real use.

Among other things,

1) Using the "DVD" setting does NOT, as one might expect, convert the input file's resolution to a DVD-compliant resolution, if necessary

2) When output is .AVI, arbitrarily changes audio to .MP3, 44.1KHz, 128KBps, regardless of input

3) When output is .AVI, arbitrarily appears to always output a resolution of 640x368, regardless of input

[Luke2000]

so, i messaged ATI for a small "how to"
they informed me that avivoxcode DOES use their codec (which will be installed when you install avivo)
[no other program is able (yet!) to use this codec.]

so what i see the problem is:
the codec is not registered public, which means it does not show up as codec in any tools.
i do not know how the codec is triggered/called

i DO guess that it would be possible to use this codec if you decompile avivoxcode.exe and grab the encoding part.

some work might be needed, but it might be worth the work

the output of avivo is "simple" as the program is "simple" yet; but it shows that you can boost up encoding by using gfx hardware gpu's

PS still waiting for my new pc

[Sulik]

The codec is actually already usable in graphedit - which allows way more options than the avivoxcode app (such as custom resolutions etc).
Hopefully ATI will publish a SDK in the future (or AMD :)

[dexx]

From what ive read, AVIVO is a complete con. It does not use any element of GPU hardware to accelerate video encoding.

[setarip_old]

@dexx

Hi!From what ive read, AVIVO is a complete con.Can you be more specific - and provide some links?

[dragongodz]

It does not use any element of GPU hardware to accelerate video encoding.
yay someone actually gets it. :)

provide some links?
i already provided 1 in the first page under "search is a wonderful thing". people should really read that thread first.

[setarip_old]

Instead of providing a link to a long thread that contains a link, it makes more sense to indicate that at:

http://anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2645&p=3

The review statesThe Avivo Video Converter is an extremely simple utility that accepts just about any video input and converts it to just about any output (MPEG-1, MPEG-2, VCD, SVCD, DVD, MPEG-4/DivX compatible, WMV9, Portable Media Center, H.264/avi, MPEG-4/PSP and H.264/iPod). The particularly neat features of the utility are built-in presets for converting video to Sony PSP and iPod Video formats. However, keep in mind that despite ATI's release of this tool, the video conversion itself is done entirely on the host CPU and not on the GPU.

[dragongodz]

Instead of providing a link to a long thread that contains a link, it makes more sense to indicate that at:
considering that link is on the very first page(10th post infact) of the link i gave i dont see why. are you telling me people are to lazy to even read the first page or first 10 posts of that thread ? if so then they wont be reading this either since its already the second page of this thread. :sly:

but hey if people want to keep going over things that have already been discussed then go ahead. i simply tried to provide more information, because really most of the posts in this thread show a lack of it, so people would know really what the story is with avivo. if they then choose to not take make any effort to learn from it then i wont waste my time further.

[UofC]

Thanks setarip_old.

So this is strictly a transcoder and not a mystic gpu utilization software. It should be moved back to a software thread.

[setarip_old]

Thanks setarip_old.You're quite welcome! - And thanks to "dexx" for highlighting this ;>}