DivX and Atom

[weaver4]

It appears that Intel's new Atom Processor is going to be a real hit. It is designed into over 20 netbooks and maybe 100s of UMPCs and many more devices.

If you are not familiar with the Intel Atom processor it is very low cost low power processor; from Intel.

Looking at the performance at Tom's Hardware ( http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/intel-atom-cpu,1947-2.html ) it appears that has enough processing power to do DivX Decoding in normal 640 or 720 width but not nearly enough processing power to do H264 decoding.

Since Intel claims they are going to sell 100 Million Atom's by the end of the year I wanted to know what people's thoughts are when it comes to these devices and DivX.

> Will these Atom Devices be the Multimedia Player of choice in the future?
> Will Intel Atom extend the life of DivX/XviD?
> Is H264 really needed in these type of devices.

[Dark Shikari]

I'd be quite surprised if they can't handle H.264 decoding at standard-definition with CoreAVC.

[weaver4]

Atom has about 30% more processing power than a 1.3G Via C7 and about 60%-70% the processing power of the lowest Celeron. A 1.3G Via C7 is very Marginal for DivX now, loosing frames occasionally when running MPC in WinXP; in Linux I had worst results using Totem and GStreamer.

[Mgz]

i play with it a little bit with the Acer AspireOne on 1080p WMV and it plays beautifully. it is a store demo so i can't install anything.

[weaver4]

WMV is generally a low complexity codec too, I think even less than DivX in some cases. But, WMV-9/WVC1 is a complex codec but is not that widely used for consumer video.

[Dark Shikari]

WMV is generally a low complexity codec too, I think even less than DivX in some cases. But, WMV-9/WVC1 is a complex codec but is not that widely used for consumer video.No, its definitely not less than DivX, since it has an inloop deblocker. Microsoft's implementation is also not very good.

[weaver4]

I did the same video at the same resolution 640x272 in both DivX and WMV-7 and the amount of processing power to decode and display the movie was almost identical; WMV was slightly more. So you are right, it is not less, but it is not much more either. WVC1 or H264 would require much more.

[Dark Shikari]

I did the same video at the same resolution 640x272 in both DivX and WMV-7 and the amount of processing power to decode and display the movie was almost identical; WMV was slightly more.WMV7 isn't what most people refer to as WMV; almost all WMV video nowadays is WMV9.

WMV7 is (I think?) MSMPEG-4v1--which not surprisingly is quite similar to Xvid/DivX.

[Sophocles]

I suppose it could provide some service in small portable PC notebook type devices, communication devices, and entertainment devices where it could produce modestly higher quality content while extending battery life. I doubt that I will own one, but who knows.

[weaver4]

WMV7 isn't what most people refer to as WMV; almost all WMV video nowadays is WMV9.

WMV7 is (I think?) MSMPEG-4v1--which not surprisingly is quite similar to Xvid/DivX.

But doesn't WMV9 have three profiles; Simple, Main and Advanced that all take different amount of processing power to Decode? I guess it is safe to say that if your hardware can decode WMV9 Main-Medium (in real time) does not mean it can decode WMV9 Advanced-L1; even though both of them are 10Mbits/s 720x480@30.

[mdoubledragon]

I'd be quite surprised if they can't handle H.264 decoding at standard-definition with CoreAVC.

I totally agree. I can play standard definition x264 videos on my old Pentium III 733Mhz using CoreAVC, which from what looks like from reviews is somewhat equivalent to Atom.

Regarding the questions, in my opinion:

Atom is in fact going to be the first choice for portable video playback
IMHO, it wont do much to prolong life of ASPs as its just going to bring AVC within reach of portable devices. Also when a properly done 800kbps AVC encode can play with reasonable quality on 1024*768 resolution, ~500kbps (accordingly scaled) would do very well for lower resolution screens on most portable players which Atom can definitely play (using CoreAVC at least).
H.264 is not crucial but is a very good option. When your device has the processing power to play AVC, you can end up saving space by doing your encodes in AVC.

[Dark Shikari]

But doesn't WMV9 have three profiles; Simple, Main and Advanced that all take different amount of processing power to Decode? I guess it is safe to say that if your hardware can decode WMV9 Main-Medium (in real time) does not mean it can decode WMV9 Advanced-L1; even though both of them are 10Mbits/s 720x480@30.Simple is not important because it restricts to extremely small resolutions and low bitrates (its basically the equivalent of an iPod profile).

Main and Advanced aren't that different, and it isn't like AVC where there's CABAC and CAVLC--WMV doesn't even use arithmetic coding.

[Ranguvar]

WMV doesn't even use arithmetic coding.

Ouch. Or is that because they use something different / use something in the encode process that helps some, but forbids the use of arithmetic coding? Yes, I know my noobishness is showing :p

[Dark Shikari]

Ouch. Or is that because they use something different / use something in the encode process that helps some, but forbids the use of arithmetic coding? Yes, I know my noobishness is showing :pNope, they use good old VLCs, with bitplane coding for some syntax elements.

[Sagittaire]

I make test with x264 encoding. Atom N270 have 75% of the powerfull of Pentium M 1.6 Ghz. Atom N270 have MMX, MMX2, SSE, SSE2, SSE3 and HT fonctionality. It's a really good CPU for only 2 watts TDP. Atom can play 720p encoding with coreAVC but not 1080p. Be carefull 1080p WMV9 encoding are certainely not 1920*1080 but 1440*1080 encoding.

[smok3]

can we expect atom quad-core soon?

[Inventive Software]

10W TDP with 4 cores... Intel must be loving this chip. :)

Single core improvements are still to come though, and they're still to drop their hat in the performance graphics card ring! :D

[weaver4]

I totally agree. I can play standard definition x264 videos on my old Pentium III 733Mhz using CoreAVC, which from what looks like from reviews is somewhat equivalent to Atom.

Regarding the questions, in my opinion:

Atom is in fact going to be the first choice for portable video playback
IMHO, it wont do much to prolong life of ASPs as its just going to bring AVC within reach of portable devices. Also when a properly done 800kbps AVC encode can play with reasonable quality on 1024*768 resolution, ~500kbps (accordingly scaled) would do very well for lower resolution screens on most portable players which Atom can definitely play (using CoreAVC at least).
H.264 is not crucial but is a very good option. When your device has the processing power to play AVC, you can end up saving space by doing your encodes in AVC.


But most of these netbooks that use the Atom run Linux so CoreAVC is not an option.

[Dark Shikari]

But most of these netbooks that use the Atom run Linux so CoreAVC is not an option.There's an mplayer patch to support CoreAVC...

[weaver4]

10W TDP with 4 cores... Intel must be loving this chip. :)

Single core improvements are still to come though, and they're still to drop their hat in the performance graphics card ring! :D

Plus they really need to team up, or develop, a low power chipset with video. It seems silly that they have a 2.5w processor and it teams up (on their motherboards) with a 29w chipset.

[weaver4]

There's an mplayer patch to support CoreAVC...

Even in Linux? I had no idea, how cool!

[lucassp]

http://code.google.com/p/coreavc-for-linux/

but there's still lots of work to be done.