Hardware MPEG-2 encoder cards

[cybertheque]

Greetings,

Searching this site's archives for threads discussing hardware MPEG-2 encoder
cards finds few hits. A list of products past and current would be useful as well
as personal experience with them. Perhaps a broadcast industry TS encoder
board that can be used a PS encoder, or some old products targetd at
post houses? I'm really interested in something designed for MPEG-1 and -2
only and not newer containers or formats.

Thanks

Michael

[jman98]

Do you want video capture cards that do hardware encoding to MPEG-1/2? Hauppauge makes a variety of cards that do this such as the PVR-250 and PVR-350.

If you want a card that will not capture video but encode something already on a hard drive then I can't help you with that.

[cybertheque]

Cards that encode (not transcode) existing (uncompressed) material; PC or MAC
or even standalone SDI boxes if such things exist.

Some old threads on other web forums hint at some unknown Broadcom
KFIR-II_based PCI card for the PC but I couldn't find it.

There is also discussion of GPU-based hardware-assisted MPEG-2 encoding
but again nothing for specific products.

Michael

[jman98]

Such cards, if they even exist, will be VERY expensive. Try $500 or more as a rough guess.

Never heard of GPU-based encoding, but I've heard of GPU-based decoding. Note the difference.

[aedipuss]

jman98 gpu encoding is for real. at least for those with recent nvidia cards. google "gpu encoder".

[tmw]

Can't you just use a cheap DVDR for this? Then just rip the disc and VOB2MPG to get the mpeg.

What format is the material in? If you can output it via composite cable, most DVDR's should be able to record that as mpeg2.

[lordsmurf]

Hauppauge, Canopus, Matrox.

[cybertheque]

Can't you just use a cheap DVDR for this? Then just rip the disc and VOB2MPG to get the mpeg.

What format is the material in? If you can output it via composite cable, most DVDR's should be able to record that as mpeg2.

The material is large huffyuv-encoded NTSC avi files. These are source for NLE.
I don't have a high-speed software mpeg-2 encoder (like CCE-SP) and wouild like
a hardware solution, especially an older one that may appear in auctions, TV
station housecleaning, etc.

There is an old Mediostream product IIRC called XtreamMPEG which was an end-user
packaging of the high-speed encoder embedded in such things as NeoDVD; from
the little info on the web it appears that it exposed a lot of settings to the UI and
used patented algorithms that benchmarked 'world's fastest' within certain Q
constraints; would be nice to try...

So far, I have found bbmpeg/avi2mpg2 to work the best for me, but for VBR encoding
on an Athlon 2800 I barely exceed 5 fps.

[cybertheque]

Hauppauge, Canopus, Matrox.

Indeed, one would expect this kind of product from those companies, but
specifically what offline encoder boards did they/do they make of which
you are aware? I haven't found any ;)

[cybertheque]

Hauppauge, Canopus, Matrox.

Indeed, one would expect this kind of product from those companies, but
specifically what offline encoder boards did they/do they make of which
you are aware? I haven't found any ;)

Well, more drilling in web forum archives found mention of the Matrox
RTX.100 "Premiere Accelerator"; although it is a capture card, it does
do realtime mpeg-2 encoding from the Premiere timeline, so it
qualifies as an offline encoder.

Can anyone add to this list?

[Soopafresh]

Maybe this? Never tried it.

http://www.tigerdirect.com/applications/searchtools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3206365&Sku...H4CjCmmVCjCmmV


Much better would be to plunk down $450 and get yourself a duo core machine from Dell or TigerDirect. You could then use an Mpeg2 encoder like HC or Quenc, or ConvertXtoDVD for multicore processing speedup. My Intel 8400 machine encodes SD resolution material at 60-75fps.


Remember, if you try to turn a Volkswagen into a Porsche, all you end up with is a funny looking Volkswagen.

[deadrats]

Cards that encode (not transcode) existing (uncompressed) material; PC or MAC
or even standalone SDI boxes if such things exist.

Some old threads on other web forums hint at some unknown Broadcom
KFIR-II_based PCI card for the PC but I couldn't find it.

There is also discussion of GPU-based hardware-assisted MPEG-2 encoding
but again nothing for specific products.

Michael

the cards you describe exist, but they tend to be expensive, professional level cards that are capable of encoding/transcoding HD at bit rates up to 50MB/s in real time cost in the thousands (i have seen one at over 10 G's).

if you wait just a couple of months there are 2 companies (can't remember their names off the top of my head) that are poised to released add in cards based on the cell processor that specifically designed for encoding/transcoding of video at resolution up to 1080p.

there are 2 notebooks currently on the market that have a 4 core cell processor integrated on the motherboard, and with just a dual core core 2 cpu they are able to decode 42 hd streams simultaneously.

needless to say i expect great things from these add in cards...

edit: here's the cards i was talking about:

http://gizmodo.com/5057586/video-cards-featuring-spursengine-cell-processor-coming-soon

[deadrats]

Such cards, if they even exist, will be VERY expensive. Try $500 or more as a rough guess.

Never heard of GPU-based encoding, but I've heard of GPU-based decoding. Note the difference.

you never heard of gpu based encoding? you're kidding right? ati cards have been capable of this for years, before amd bought up ati the ati catalyst driver suite used to come with an application call avivo, it was only available for 32bit xp sp2 and despite being very beta software it allowed you to transcode video up to 10 times faster than the fastest cpu's available at the time (i tested it myself).

if i remember correctly the beta app is still available with the catalyst suite under 32 bit vista, and then there's badaboom (i think that's what it's called) a cuda application for encoding on geforce 280's.

but as i've said before, i really don't expect gpu's to be around for too much longer, i think larrabee and ray tracing will be the death of video cards as we know them. i also expect to see a much wider adoption of the cell processor in add in cards, as the cell processor excels in both video and ray tracing and in fact their are 2 companies ready to release graphics cards with cell processors.

give it a couple of years and D3D, OGL and video cards as we know them will be history.

[jman98]

you never heard of gpu based encoding? you're kidding right?

Nope. I honestly never heard of it. I've only heard of the GPU being used for decoding. Given that you say that ATI cards can do GPU encoding explains it perfectly as I don't keep up with ATI for video work at all. Too many problems with their products years ago made me not interested in ever using another one.

[cybertheque]

Such cards, if they even exist, will be VERY expensive. Try $500 or more as a rough guess.

Never heard of GPU-based encoding, but I've heard of GPU-based decoding. Note the difference.

you never heard of gpu based encoding? you're kidding right? ati cards have been capable of this for years, before amd bought up ati the ati catalyst driver suite used to come with an application call avivo, it was only available for 32bit xp sp2 and despite being very beta software it allowed you to transcode video up to 10 times faster than the fastest cpu's available at the time (i tested it myself).

An 'open' version of the Avivo Video Converter is still available at '3dguru.com'; It is manually installed
and involves registering a few dlls, and does not use or require any ATI hardware. It does require
MSVCR71.dll and MSVCP71.dll, which can be downloaded from web sites (I needlessly installed MS dotNET
framework 1.1 for MSVCR71.dll which is a real waste) and these also need to be self-registered, however
I got dll entry point errors during the registration (on Win2k) but the avivo application worked anyway.

Edited: the MSVC dlls don't self register, just put them in sytem32 (entry point errors were for
attempts to register them); also I installed the avivo program on a different machine, without the dotNET
1.1 framework, and discovered that an additional dll is needed: mscoree.dll. Also, wbhelp2.dll needs to
be moved to system32 (or be in the path) or the program crashes with access violation.

Indeed, it seems to be a speed daemon; estimated conversion time for the large avi in my tests that took
eight hours using bbmpeg is about 2.5 hours in this program; note however that the program does not
expose any parameters of the underlying encoder except bitrate (CBR only it seems). A dropdown
menu permits selecting output container format which then implies the codec.

There is a recent version on the ATI/AMD site which may be hardware accelerated; has anyone tried that one?

[fk]

Search for "Vidac VMagic". Some years ago they made such a hardware encoder card without capturefunction. I remember it being tested in a German magazine that judged it as very good and blistering fast.

[deadrats]

Such cards, if they even exist, will be VERY expensive. Try $500 or more as a rough guess.

Never heard of GPU-based encoding, but I've heard of GPU-based decoding. Note the difference.

you never heard of gpu based encoding? you're kidding right? ati cards have been capable of this for years, before amd bought up ati the ati catalyst driver suite used to come with an application call avivo, it was only available for 32bit xp sp2 and despite being very beta software it allowed you to transcode video up to 10 times faster than the fastest cpu's available at the time (i tested it myself).

An 'open' version of the Avivo Video Converter is still available at '3dguru.com'; It is manually installed
and involves registering a few dlls, and does not use or require any ATI hardware. It does require
MSVCR71.dll and MSVCP71.dll, which can be downloaded from web sites (I needlessly installed MS dotNET
framework 1.1 for MSVCR71.dll which is a real waste) and these also need to be self-registered, however
I got dll entry point errors during the registration (on Win2k) but the avivo application worked anyway.

Indeed, it seems to be a speed daemon; estimated conversion time for the large avi in my tests that took
eight hours using bbmpeg is about 2.5 hours in this program; note however that the program does not
expose any parameters of the underlying encoder except bitrate (CBR only it seems). A dropdown
menu permits selecting output container format which then implies the codec.

There is a recent version on the ATI/AMD site which may be hardware accelerated; has anyone tried that one?

the thing is that now that amd bought up ati i doubt that amd will spend any resources actually developing the software to it's full potential, primarily because it's not in their best interest. i used to do online reviews for a small, now defunct site, and reviewed the avivo software when it was first released. at the time i predicted that amd and intel would team up to put ati out of business because once you remove video transcoding as the "killer app", there is little reason to upgrade from a decently clocked dual core cpu costing less than $100 (hell, a lowly 5000+ x2 with 2 gigs of ddr 2 is more than capable of handling any non-video encoding task that most home users are likely to do.

my current hope lies in the video cards coming out with the cell processor, as well as larrabee. i see ray tracing replacing shader based graphics and the cell (as well as larrabee) both excel at ray tracing as well as video encoding and they both can be programmed for using C/C++ (and presumably java and pascal).

i think 2009 is going to be an interesting year...

[cybertheque]

An 'open' version of the Avivo Video Converter is still available at '3dguru.com'

the thing is that now that amd bought up ati i doubt that amd will spend any resources actually developing the software to it's full potential, primarily because it's not in their best interest.

It must be an engine used by some better apps and NLEs; I can't overstate my satisfaction
with its performance. Together with the MSU beta 2.0 denoiser on vdub 1.8.6, I will be using
it for VHS tape restore and transcription chores. I did some side-by-side comparisons of a
clip taken from a commercial VHS tape, captured losslessly and then encoded with various
mpeg-2 encoders at a variety of bitrate and q settings, VBR and CBR, but at the default
'advanced' settings for each encoder, and I found that for this task at least that it produces
excellent output in my opinion. I can provide a small clip of the source avi and the rendered
mpg clip if anyone needs them for analysis, however I would enjoy hearing of other folks'
experience with it using their own material.

How this could languish in obscurity and not have a broader following amazes me.

[Stiiv]

How's about this: look for a used Dazzle DVC2 PCI package...which includes a PCI card & a breakout box with s-video, composite vid, & stereo audio connectors in & out. The DVC2 does all its MPEG1 & 2 work onboard (including rendering!), so your machine's performance won't take a hit while it's working. You can probably find one with software for very little money. Good luck.

[guns1inger]

badaboom is so far a) closed beta, b) under performing all it's promises while being very limited in it's flexibility, and c) won't be free for even the most basic version. It is aimed at H264 encoding only, and only using the basic profiles. The pro version may offer more, but details are light on the ground. It is certainly nowhere near the 10 times performance boost you are talking about, or that nVidia were touting recently.

[wiseant]

Please disregard this edited post - i found AvivoVideoConverter1_12.rar which seems to work w/o ATI cards