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Pentium
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Hi all,
So armed with an ATI 4870 I'm trying all sorts of things out. I've tried the games, I've tried the GPU folding and now I'm looking at HD video.
There's not much properly encoded HD video about. I've found one here
Now, I know that PowerDVD and Intervideo both support the HD decoding chips from Nvidia and ATI, however, do they support using the chip from files, or is it only from Blu-Ray drives?
Are there any video players out there that support the use of HD decoding chips from file?
I've had a good search, but can't seem to find much.
TIA 
Disclaimer: Any advice I provide is only applicable in my reality and may need altering to fit yours There is no place like 127.0.0.1  
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Pentium
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That's a question I'd like answering too. AVIVO seems to have been around for ages now, but I never see any mention of whether you can actually use it yourself or not.
Did you ever try MPC-HomeCinema? It plays back HD WMV files and is claimed to support VC-1. I have no idea how it implements VC-1 support though. It may be hardware optimised. You never know.
Cheers, Slipstreem. 
System specs:
"Phoenix" / "The '43' Special" - 1.8GHz Intel C2D E4300 overclocked to 2.83GHz with ACF7Pro HSF on Volt-modded ASRock 775Dual-VSTA mobo (BIOS rev 2.10, VNB=1.65, Vagp=1.8), 1GB Vitesta DDR500 RAM (2.5,3,3,7,1T @ DDR472MHz), Jetway ATI X1950Pro 256MB GDDR3 PCIe graphics card with modded AC Accelero X2 cooler dynamically overclocked to 650MHz GPU & 1.5GHz RAM. Powered by Hiper Type-M 580W PSU. Guess who likes overclocking on a budget. 
MP3 Encoding for Audiophiles
Fun MPEG-4 Encoding Race
MPEG-4 Playback Enhancement Using FFDShow
Optimise ATI Image Quality with ATT (X1XXX Series under WinXP)
Boosting ATI Framerates with CCC (X700 on)
How good is the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro HSF really?
   
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Pentium
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MPC-HomeCinema uses two cores to decode it all so that's how it plays smooth playback (I think. It uses more than 50% of CPU).
Still not HD Decode chip. Pity there aren't more programs that do it 
Disclaimer: Any advice I provide is only applicable in my reality and may need altering to fit yours There is no place like 127.0.0.1
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Pentium
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FreakShow! (08/07/2008)
MPC-HomeCinema uses two cores to decode it all so that's how it plays smooth playback (I think. It uses more than 50% of CPU).
That would explain where it gets its horsepower from then. I did wonder.
Still not HD Decode chip. Pity there aren't more programs that do it
ffdshow itself has the ability to decode VC-1, if memory serves. It may use the same routine as MPC-HomeCinema to do it though. ffdshow is only a collection of custom video filter DSPs and such wrapped inside a GUI environment for easy settings adjustments. Many parts of ffdshow have been stand-alone filters in their own rights at one time or another. They pop up all over the place in modified forms.
Cheers, Slipstreem.
System specs:
"Phoenix" / "The '43' Special" - 1.8GHz Intel C2D E4300 overclocked to 2.83GHz with ACF7Pro HSF on Volt-modded ASRock 775Dual-VSTA mobo (BIOS rev 2.10, VNB=1.65, Vagp=1.8), 1GB Vitesta DDR500 RAM (2.5,3,3,7,1T @ DDR472MHz), Jetway ATI X1950Pro 256MB GDDR3 PCIe graphics card with modded AC Accelero X2 cooler dynamically overclocked to 650MHz GPU & 1.5GHz RAM. Powered by Hiper Type-M 580W PSU. Guess who likes overclocking on a budget.
MP3 Encoding for Audiophiles
Fun MPEG-4 Encoding Race
MPEG-4 Playback Enhancement Using FFDShow
Optimise ATI Image Quality with ATT (X1XXX Series under WinXP)
Boosting ATI Framerates with CCC (X700 on)
How good is the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro HSF really?
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Pentium
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While my processor is able to do the work, the reason for my testing is that I am hoping to get a media centre PC HD ready.
It's not the most powerful (Celeron 2.66GHz), I'm hoping that adding a relatively low powered graphics card with said HD chip will help it along.
CoreAVC claims to be bringing GPU decoding onboard, but that doesn't seem to have actually happened yet, so no idea when it can be expected.
Disclaimer: Any advice I provide is only applicable in my reality and may need altering to fit yours There is no place like 127.0.0.1
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Pentium
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See my reply in your other thread. I think there may be a fix. 
The problem seems to be that AVIVO is actually a very old standard and only ever produced relatively mediocre encodings at best when compared to what a good software CODEC can achieve. Maybe development hasn't been kept up with since the X1xxx series because it's a lost cause when compared to what can be achieved with a dual-core CPU (especially a C2D) and decent software.
I wish you the best of luck if you try unleashing this power with the Omega driver, but don't expect perfection. It's going to be potentially buggy down to a lack of serious development recently. Playback acceleration may work acceptably well though if you can enable it.
Cheers, Slipstreem.
System specs:
"Phoenix" / "The '43' Special" - 1.8GHz Intel C2D E4300 overclocked to 2.83GHz with ACF7Pro HSF on Volt-modded ASRock 775Dual-VSTA mobo (BIOS rev 2.10, VNB=1.65, Vagp=1.8), 1GB Vitesta DDR500 RAM (2.5,3,3,7,1T @ DDR472MHz), Jetway ATI X1950Pro 256MB GDDR3 PCIe graphics card with modded AC Accelero X2 cooler dynamically overclocked to 650MHz GPU & 1.5GHz RAM. Powered by Hiper Type-M 580W PSU. Guess who likes overclocking on a budget.
MP3 Encoding for Audiophiles
Fun MPEG-4 Encoding Race
MPEG-4 Playback Enhancement Using FFDShow
Optimise ATI Image Quality with ATT (X1XXX Series under WinXP)
Boosting ATI Framerates with CCC (X700 on)
How good is the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro HSF really?
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Pentium
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Last Login: Today @ 00:07:55
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Well, I got AVIVO working (just set it and let it work. I'm just impatient).
Results were dissapointing for the filesize. While the quality is better on CPU, the speed is there on the GPU. And if the GPU is able to render a game at high resolutions at near instant speeds 30 times + a second, I'd have thought allowing it to convert videos to be an oK thing.
Converting an HD video on my CPU was going to take 6 hours. ATI claim they can do the same conversion in 32 minutes. I'll wait for updated drivers, or OMEGA drivers, but after that, if it still doesn't work, I may drop an email to them to see if there's something I'm missing.
The Video acceleration is definitely what I am looking for as this can be applied to the media centre PC.
Again, I'll see what happens when updated drivers come along.
Disclaimer: Any advice I provide is only applicable in my reality and may need altering to fit yours There is no place like 127.0.0.1
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Pentium
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Last Login: Today @ 03:07:44
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FreakShow! (10/07/2008)
Results were dissapointing for the filesize. While the quality is better on CPU, the speed is there on the GPU. And if the GPU is able to render a game at high resolutions at near instant speeds 30 times + a second, I'd have thought allowing it to convert videos to be an oK thing.
If you can put up with the large apparent drop in encoding quality, yes. I wouldn't use any hardware encoder I can afford for full-size, ie, non-rescaled encodes personally. Maybe for shrunk-down portable files. The improved quality that a software encoder can give offers you the flexibility of encoding properly over a longer period or using faster options and creating a file to match the hardware encoding in terms of image quality but with a potentially much smaller filesize.
I'm not sure how much of the 3D rendering hardware is actually used in video encoding mode, so it's debatable as to whether it's logical to expect it to be quick solely on the grounds of also being a graphics card. Unless the maths required to perform the encoding runs in dedicated hardware or in a language that suits the existing graphics hardware, there's no reason to assume that it can perform video encoding quickly and well.
I realise that encoding on a CPU appears to be slower, but I can almost double the speed that Vidomi encodes XviD MPEG-4 at (climbs from 95FPS to 182FPS for 16:9 SD content) just by changing two settings, and the output file is still very pleasant to watch on a 32" TV. I can provide FPS figures for different quality settings and rescales if it's helpful.
I'd be very interested to know how quickly AVIVO can encode the clip in the MPEG-4 Encoding Race thread with no rescaling at various quality settings. It would give you and us a handy reference to compare the speed to our database of PCs performing software encoding if you can provide the relevant FPS figure.
Cheers, Slipstreem.
System specs:
"Phoenix" / "The '43' Special" - 1.8GHz Intel C2D E4300 overclocked to 2.83GHz with ACF7Pro HSF on Volt-modded ASRock 775Dual-VSTA mobo (BIOS rev 2.10, VNB=1.65, Vagp=1.8), 1GB Vitesta DDR500 RAM (2.5,3,3,7,1T @ DDR472MHz), Jetway ATI X1950Pro 256MB GDDR3 PCIe graphics card with modded AC Accelero X2 cooler dynamically overclocked to 650MHz GPU & 1.5GHz RAM. Powered by Hiper Type-M 580W PSU. Guess who likes overclocking on a budget.
MP3 Encoding for Audiophiles
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