H264 x264 ATI Radeon Vid Card Question

[mforcex]

http://ati.de/products/RadeonX1900/specs.html
Accelerated MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, WMV9, VC-1, and H.264 decoding and transcoding

I read that on another site:

H.264/MPEG-4 AVC aka x264,h264,AVC
H.264, MPEG-4 Part 10, or AVC, for Advanced Video Coding, is a digital video codec standard which is noted for achieving very high data compression.

x264 is a program that encodes videos into h264. The x264 category on the site are all encodes created by this program.


ATI Radeon 1900 GT will accelerate x264 decoding/transcoding?

[celtic_druid]

Given the right decoder. Not sure how much it helps compared to newer cards though. As for transcoding, last I checked ATI/AMD's xcode app was pure software encoding, but then I guess if your source was AVC, then at least some of the decoding would be done in hardware.

Another issue is that x264 encodes tend to end up in an mkv container and the app with the hardware decoding support might not be capable of handling mkv's.

[jman98]

For what it's worth, my very limited experience with similar nVidia cards that do hardware decoding is that celtic_druid is completely right. nVidia cards definitely won't do hardware decoding on MKV containers. You will probably have to put any x264 files you have in another container, such as AVI, and you may have to rename the x264 file to have an H264 name before you create the AVI file. Do not expect miracles with x264/H264 decoding and if it works at all for you, consider yourself lucky.

[DereX888]

When GPUs reach >2GHz they'll all do hardware H264 decoding and even encoding on those with input

[squegole]

I've been toying with similar issues for a while: which graphics card will support which non-gaming features. There's AMDTi with AVIVO and nVidia with PureVideo. Only AMDTi suggest their cards help with transcoding.

I've just purchased a Sapphire X1950 GT card and I was amazed to find there are no codecs or other means installed to support encoding. In the Add/Remove there is a unique reference to "AVIVO Codecs" but unlike a trial version of nVidia's PureVideo codec, there is no sign of any AMDTi codecs within the lists of available encoding codecs that various encoding programs (Virtual Dub) read from the system.

I've drilled through the AMDTi websites and the **only** way they suggest that AVIVO's publicised transcoding ability can be accessed is by the 'Basic' wizard within the Catalyst Control Centre, or CCC as it's now referred to by it's start menu shortcut.

That AMDTi market the AVIVO functionality of their cards but don't provide a generic codec so that other programs can use the GPU for extra transcoding grunt, is a joke.

That they don't provide a friendly and simple but comprehensive transcoding utility of their own - linked off the start menu - is pathetic.

If some graphics manufacturer out there (I'd like to believe there is still a niche player or three meaning there isn't merely a duopoly like AMDTi and nVidia seem to have) can focus on something other than gaming, they may see that there is a market for those who aren't gamers but want good graphics cards that supplement the CPU for HDTV decoding, High-res video and transcoding.

[jman98]

squegole - As much I'd love to believe that there is a market for non-gamers, neither ATI nor nVidia have ever believed that. ATI in particular likes to pretent they care about video enthusiasts with their All-in-Wonder type cards, but the fact is that ATI rarely fixes bugs in the video capture stuff they put out but they are all over game related bugs and fix them quickly. It seems to me that gamers are a lot more likely to spend a lot of money for the latest and greatest and I am all the time seeing people in the video world trying to make very old hardware work or cutting costs with software by using (cough cough) "demo" versions of expensive programs that never happen to expire, so I'm not sure that there really is a big market for us video enthusiast non-gamer types.

[squegole]

jman98 you may well be right that there isn't a big market for the likes of myself who are more interested in the video processing, not gaming, abilities of graphics cards, but I'm not sure there isn't a niche market.

Your example of forum dwellers who are unwilling to pay for video editing software is a debatable I think. Most video editing software that I am aware of is either horrendously over-priced because it's aimed at professionals or it's a butchered version with generic interfaces and limited options targeted at 'Mum and Dad'. I'd pay for a reasonably-priced general purpose video editing package any day - especially one expandable via extensions or plugins. Instead I end up searching for a plethora of free or cheap single-purpose tools and try to get the job done that way.

Back to GPU talk. AMD have apparently stated that regardless of demand from gamers vs others, they are moving towards a generic processing model (or something like that, I can't remember the specific term they used) whereby so-called 'central' processor units will be more like multi processor units. They will have the ability to put three graphics cores on a quad core chip, for example. Two cores could be for game heads, one for video processing and one non-graphics core for general use. This sounds like a huge degree of flexibility to me so why they can't start looking at cores optimised for certain purposes within the one chip, yet still sell these chips to the general masses and niche markets, is beyond me.

So I suppose technology is changing with multi-core and slowly marketers are changing and realising the possibilities, but it seems like they still need a lot of nudging away from a massive gaming focus.

I thought processor manufacturers were on a good track when Intel started rolling the Centrino concept into ViiV and AMD followed with Live. But where are these boxes? Nowhere! Instead we're stuck in a present-day where graphics cards are still supersonic 3D processing units with video processing ability tacked on. it's a frigging joke that they are trying to flog us successive generations (PureVideo, PureVideo 2?, PureVideo HD) of marketing hype about some piss-weak 'features' of their gaming cards. Features that - if they work at all - only work when the correct moon is in alignment with your star sign.

Anybody who knows me would die of shock but all this shit is enough to make me think that the crApple "it just works" graphics design and video processing reputation must be warranted. No matter how crappy pre-OSX and x86 Macs were, the current generation cannot be any more annoying than the way Windows handles video.

As soon as HD drives for computers become affordable, I bet there will be quite an outcry from gaming heads who've shelled out near $1K for super duper graphics cards yet for some obscure reason they have to pay $30 to nVidia for a PureVideo HD codec to view decent Blu-Ray or HD-DVD.