ATI Avivo Video Converter

[Mr.X]

I was so excited about this possibility last year, and when the beta came out and it was so fast, I thought, this is definitely what I want! Lots of buzz on the 'net and tests were done, but nothing too serious since it was just an example, not the "real thing"

Then Catalyst 6.3 came out, with almost no announcement, a released version of the converter. Almost not a peep out of anyone. I've posted on AVSForum and Rage3d, Doom9 and other places, but there seems to be no interest in this at all.

Considering the amount of discsussion on DivX, XviD and H.264, I would have thought this would be of great interest to people. The idea that a conversion could be done quickly on a normal PC you'd think would be a big deal. Evidently not.

The converter's got it's issues, for sure, but what about the concept? It's like the Math Coprocessor or Graphic Accelerator for video.

For those of you who don't know about this, it's a video transcoding tool from ATI that supposedly uses the power of the VPU on the video card to accellerate the decoding and encoding. http://www.ati.com/technology/Avivo/pdf/Avivo_Whitepaper.pdf

Am I totally out to lunch? Maybe some less-enthusiastic folk could educate me as to why this is "no big deal"...

[StephaneM]

Am I totally out to lunch? Maybe some less-enthusiastic folk could educate me as to why this is "no big deal"...
I tried it on my X1800XL and though it was fast, the video quality was horrible (for a PAL video) at the maximum quality settings (If I remember correctly I choosed a DivX sortof profile).

So, I have not tried to see if I could have a better quality neither if you can automate the converter (for now accessing the converter is a little akward).

Regards,
Stéphane.

[Rich A]

I tried it on my X1800XL and though it was fast, the video quality was horrible (for a PAL video) at the maximum quality settings (If I remember correctly I choosed a DivX sortof profile).

So, I have not tried to see if I could have a better quality neither if you can automate the converter (for now accessing the converter is a little akward).

Regards,
Stéphane.

I read the ATI paper in the above link. Frankly only spent a minute speed reading it. But I don't really see anything ground breaking. They are talking about hardware assisted video decoding. (that's been around for some time) And (new to them) hardware mpeg encoding. (aka haupauge capture cards)

It's entirely possible that they are using their own proprietary on video card firmware to "assist" the CPU in video DE-coding. Most video cards are DX supporting. That's a standard .. so programmers can make use of the DX firmware enabled on said video cards to achieve hardware assisted video processing. Nothing new there. Except maybe that ATI is touting their OWN proprietary hardware assisting firmware .. which might work better, but scares me. the "Proprietary" word (my word) is what scares me.

BTW, ATI is famous for pre-production hoopla followed by months and years of waiting.

[Mr.X]

I read the ATI paper in the above link. Frankly only spent a minute speed reading it. But I don't really see anything ground breaking. They are talking about hardware assisted video decoding. (that's been around for some time) And (new to them) hardware mpeg encoding. (aka haupauge capture cards)That's the thing - it's the hardware encoding that's interesting. You can't take a computer video file and run it through a hauppauge card and have MPEG come out the other end. Yet that is what ATI is talking about with their converter. And not just MPEG-2, but MPEG-4 and H.264.
What a great thing if we could accelerate transcoding with hardware!

[spyboy]

I just ran the AVIVO software on my Radeon x1300 (PCI Express x16) on a P4 2.8 dual core.

A 7gb file was converted to mpeg2 in 45 minutes.

Yes, it's fast, but I haven't found any options in it. I'd like to spec a bit in the conversion process (audio, resolution, etc). Perhaps in a later edition.

[Rich A]

What was the original file? Type and frame size? What was the output file specs? It would be good to know the specs for a real world analysis.

[Rich A]

I just saw an ad from TigerDirect for a new ATI Video card. Says it's got Avio technology. It is the new FireGL V7350 ATI video card.

And ... it's ... only ... $1,649.99. Hoooo boy ... let's see, should I buy one video card or three computers? :lol:

I guess for some gamers it's the sky's the limit eh?

[SkAiN]

I too am interested in the AVIVO transcoding engine, as I'm stuck between buying an X1600 or 7600GT... Anyone else have anymore specifics?

By the way, FireGL is for professional workstation-class rendering. You wouldn't want one of those for gaming.

You can pick up an AVIVO ready X1300 for around $120. (And up, of course)

I like to game occaisionally, but mostly for PVR/Media Center type stuff. I've got a 6800GT but am looking to sell it as I don't game that much and would get 10x the use out of a working PureVideo chip or AVIVO than a fast GPU.

I for one can't wait to find out more real world experiences...:dude:

[Rich A]

I too am interested in the AVIVO transcoding engine, as I'm stuck between buying an X1600 or 7600GT... Anyone else have anymore specifics?

By the way, FireGL is for professional workstation-class rendering. You wouldn't want one of those for gaming.

You can pick up an AVIVO ready X1300 for around $120. (And up, of course)

I like to game occaisionally, but mostly for PVR/Media Center type stuff. I've got a 6800GT but am looking to sell it as I don't game that much and would get 10x the use out of a working PureVideo chip or AVIVO than a fast GPU.

I for one can't wait to find out more real world experiences...:dude:

Yeah I know ... I was trying to be funny. Surprised to see such an item on TigerDirect.

[Fickey]

I just installed an X1600 pro thinking I could transcode a lot of files quickly, but no. At least for now, the ATI Avivo Video Converter is fully software based. My results were not nearly as good as spyboy's. Using an Athlon 64 3500+, a 2 GB "Good (DVD ready)" mpeg takes 3 hours to convert to a "Super Video CD" 1 GB mpeg. Quality is fine for my taste on say a documentary I only plan to watch once.

I'm doing this just to save space on older larger recordings made before BTV fixed the "zoomed recordings" bug on the PVR-150. The one nice thing about this is it allows me to keep the file as mpeg which I can watch & hear on "fast play" in Zoom Player. "Fast play" allows me to watch an hour show in little more than 30 minutes! Other formats like wmv can't be "fast played".

I've read opinions that ATI plans to eventually enable hardware acceleration for video conversion, which is why they only enable the converter for X1000 cards, but I could not get any confirmation from ATI on that.

[Mr.X]

ATI is adamant that the card does hardware encoding and the AVIVO Video Converter does all encoding via hardware acelleration.

[Fickey]

While the X1000 cards do use hardware decoding for video playback, the Video Converter is currently still just software based (apparently with one exception). Here's the best answer I got from ATI after fighting my way past several idiotic canned support responses.
Solution: The AVIVO video converter is a tool that is provided "as
is" with no real troubleshooting or support from us. The hardware
assisted conversions is only available when using certain forms of
encoding. For example, when converting MPEG2 to H.264, it is hardware
assisted but MPEG4 to MPEG2 or DVD is not.I don't buy the "as is" & "no support" BS, I think they just got tired of me asking the same question. :rolleyes: A few of the ATI product reviews actually mention that the converter is not hardware assisted, but you have to look closely to find that. Here's an older review I came across, I'm too lazy to find a newer one:
http://www.elitebastards.com/page.php?pageid=13022

I agree with the theme of your original post & I wondered the same "This is huge, why aren't people jumping on this?" The answer is, while the X1000 cards should be capable of hardware assisted transcoding, it's not yet enabled (though the expectation is it will be someday). It may well be that ATI's focusing development on Vista & DirectX 10 right now & will come back to this later. Regardless, once & if it's enabled, I think we would see in short order a Showsqueeze plugin to take advantage of it.

[Bigbird999]

Abit of background before you read this lengthly post on my travels inAVIVO Converting Land:lol:

As per my sig I have BTV 3.74 (no HD in my area) installed on my HTPC in the bedroom. My main PC (basement) has an AIW 9600 connected to analog cable. I use ATI MMC to watch TV on a secondary monitor while I work and record the occasional show that conflicts with my single tuner HTPC. I recently added BTV Link to the PC so I can watch the digital channels from the STB connected to the HTPC. The PC is an Athlon XP2500+ Overclocked to 3200+ so not much of a machine by today's standards.

I have been toying with the idea of building a new dual core box, but decided that I could get another year out of this box with a minor upgrade. So a couple of weeks ago I decided to add a Sapphire Theatrix 550 hardware encoder to replace the AIW tuner while still using the 9600 as a video card. I must say I was impressed with the 550's performance. Since I no longer had a swoftware encoding card, I was able to use all the latest ATI drivers and CCC 6.6 as well as the latest 9.14 MMC. Of course once you start upgrading, you can't stop, so I started researching a new video card to repace the 9600. I wanted cheap and needed AGP, and wanted to check out this AVIVO stuff, all of which led me to the Sapphire X1600 Pro ($130 Cdn).

During my research, I discovered that there was a freely available, hacked, version of the ATI AVIVO Video Converter on the web. This is supposed to work with any video card, not just ATI X1xxx cards. I downloaded it and tried it out with my 9600 and researched it some more. Like others have said, info is conflicting and hard to find. I found one review that said it was 10 times faster when converting mpeg 2 to divx and a few quick tests on my machine with the 9600 seemed to confirm this.

Yesterday I installed the X1600 Pro and after a few gaming benchmarks, I started playing with the AVIVO encoder. I did a bunch of test conversions using the AVIVO converter on both BTV recordings (DVD best 4GB/hr CBR, and a 174 MB (1 min 45 sec) test clip of 1280 x 720 HDTV capture (DL'd from the web)

Based on the time to do these conversions, I feel that the PC must be using the video card to assist in the conversions. The CPU goes to 100% for all of the conversions, but it does not seem to affect performance on other tasks indicating that a low priority is somehow assigned.

First
The SD 4 GB/hr BTV recording 30 min 2 GB
To convert to
divx 11:49 min file size 722 MB
H264 10:08 min file size 861 MB
MPEG 1 11:11 min file size 1432 MB HiQuality
MPEG 1 10:29 min file size 972 MB Lo Quality

Conversion time is about 20 min per hour and compression is about 40%

The HD 4 GB/hr mpg sample 105 sec (1:45 min) 174 MB
To convert to
divx 51 sec file size 43 MB
H264 88 sec file size 95 MB 8000kbps
H264 87 sec file size 47 MB 4000kbps

Conversion time is 30 to 45 min per hr in all cases and compression is 25 to 50 % depending on quality.

The way I interpret this is that The AVIVO converter must be using hardware acceleration to assist in the conversion or they have written some super code to do the compression because I never got speeds like this before.

When I convert to xvid or divx I usually see 2 hrs per hr of video here I am seeing 20 min/hr of video ie 6 times faster.:wow:

Attached are a couple of screen shots,

If anybody can poke holes in my conclusion that "something" about AVIVO is working please do so. Like Mr X asked, "Why isn't everyone exited about this?:banana:"

BB

[Fickey]

Well, you're seeing a much better performance than I am. It takes me about 3 hours of transcoding for each hour of "Good (DVD ready)" video! Based on your screencaps, it appears to me that you're using an older version of the Video Converter, possibly still the "hacked" version, as mine looks different. Keep in mind that the Video Converter is a separate download from the Cats, (at least with 6.6) so if you didn't grab it along with the drivers, you're likely using a different converter. Regardless, can you post a link to that non-X1000 locked converter? I recall reading about it somewhere, but can't locate it now. I also recall something about ATI removing true H.264 transcoding from the converter due to bugs, so maybe they "downshifted" some other aspects as well for compatibility? Also, do you have the Cyberlink H.264 codec installed, as ATI claims that enables some GPU accelerated transcoding?

One last thought, are you sure you're using Cat 6.6? I ask because ATI only offers 6.2 for W2K, and your sig says W2K, but I downloaded 6.6 for my W2K box anyway. If you're actually using an older Cat version, that might be another explanation for the differences we're seeing. Anyway, here's what my 6.6 screencaps look like:

[Bigbird999]

Fickey

Lots of of interesting questionsand thoughts. I will start with a couple of easy ones and get to the rest later.

Here is a torrent link to the hacked avivo video converter http://www.fulldls.com/get_app_5600
or PM me. It's only a 3 MB zip file.

Yes I have the Cyberlink decoder
Yes installed Cat 6.6 drivers on Win 2K
yes downloaded 6.6 encoder 33678 and installed but it does not show up in my cat control center. Does yours. I have to launch it separately.

BB

[Bigbird999]

One last thought, are you sure you're using Cat 6.6? I ask because ATI only offers 6.2 for W2K, and your sig says W2K, but I downloaded 6.6 for my W2K box anyway. If you're actually using an older Cat version, that might be another explanation for the differences we're seeing.
When I ran the hacked version installer it assumed XP so it installed 2 small files in the windows/system32 folder (the winXP folder) instead of the WINNT/sytem32 folder (the Win2k folder). It would not run so I moved the 2 files to the WINNT folder and it worked.

Note to administrators, I don't want to get in trouble by talking about "forbidden" items. This version seems to be freeware and ATI says the official version is provided as is with no support so I am assuming that it is OK to talk about it.

It did not show up in the CCC but as a separate, executable file, avivoxcode.exe, 872 KB, dated 12/17/05 that is launched directly (I just dragged it to the ATI program files folder). screenshot attached. This is much earlier than the 3/16/06 date of the official drivers. Come to think of it I don't remember uninstalling it before installing the official version so maybe the official version didn't install (just guessing here). I will try installing it again and see. I have an image of the current installation (screwed up as it may be) because it seems to work so well.
Based on your screencaps, it appears to me that you're using an older version of the Video Converter, possibly still the "hacked" version, as mine looks different.
After poking around in my system, you are right. I am using the hacked version.:applause: My bad, or maybe, my good!!!

BB

[Fickey]

Just a quick clarification. The official Video Converter shows up in the Basic view of the CCC (go figure). So if it's in yours, it'd be interesting to see if you get the same performance (presuming it's not somehow "corrupted" with better performance from your earlier Video Converter ;)).

[Bigbird999]

The official Video Converter shows up in the Basic view of the CCC (go figure).
Nice catch! Go figure indeed!!!!!!!!!!! I never use basic view of anything so I never saw it, Don't know if it was there before I did my reinstallation of the "official" version. Trying it now.

Yup, you hit the nail on the head. Another nice catch.
Transcoding a 3 min mpg recording to medium (3 mbps) divx takes

with the "official" version 8 min 10 sec (490 sec)
with the "hacked" version 51 sec

Like the article said: 10 times faster!!

The Divx files are almost identical in size 56,610 KB and 56,477 KB Quality is identical.

I will play around some more and post results.

BB

[Bigbird999]

More tests.

Same results 10 times faster converting HD to Divx

Also noted that when using the "hacked" version it runs as avivoxcode.exe in task manager. It pegs the CPU at 100% but it does not slow the machine down. I can run other programs, surf, screen capture without so much as a hesitation.

When using the "official" version, it runs as one of 3 instances of CLI.exe in task manager (CLI.exe is part of ATI's bloated CCC). It pegs the CPU at 100% and stalls everything else. I can't open a new application (say to do a screen shot) and bringing up a running application like perfmon takes about a minute.

ATI definitely did something to the originally released version.

edit I have attached a screen shot with avivoxcode running at the same time as watching live TV from my HTPC on Link, live tv on ATI via my Theatre 550 and surfing the SS forum. This increased the conversion time of a 30 min BTV recording from 10 min to 14 min.

People should get excited. This thing is awesome!!!!


BB

[Fickey]

Thanks for all the info BB!:clapping: I can't wait to tinker with the older converter, unfortunately, it will probably have to wait at least a week. :(

By the way, you said you have the Cyberlink h.264 decoder. Did you get that from ATI when they had it as a free download, or did you have to purchase it separately?

[Bigbird999]

Re cyberlink, I don't have the h264 decoder, at least I don't think i do, I just have the mpeg 2 dvd decoder that came with my old AIW.

I find this codec crap very confusing!!!

BB

[Fickey]

Well, I found myself running out of HD space sooner than expected, so I went ahead & installed the 12/17/2005 version of the ATI AVIVO Video Converter. I must say I'm really pleased! What used to take over 3 hours with the latest Cat 6.6 version, now takes less than 30 minutes! And, like Bigbird999 said, multitasking is easily done, where it was impossible with the newer version.

Now, I'm no videophile, but the transcoded files look/sound fine to me, no sync issues or anything. I'm sure there's some reason why ATI made the changes it did to the newest Video Converter, but I'll keep using this older one. Props to the Birdman!
:banana:

[collin]

Hi,

Is there any way to integrate this with the BTV showsqueeze or do you have to do all this manually? If the latter, how are you reintegrating the ATI recompressed shows into BTV's listings?

Thanks.

[Bigbird999]

Manually,

Then drag it to the BTV folder but it doesn't keep all the episode data. For me that doesn't matter, I just name all my programs by title and season/episode (eg. Lost 201 through Lost 227)

FWIW I discovered today that you can use AvivoXCode to compress to an avi file using the h264 codec and play the file back in BTV. Testted on HD strams and seems to work great.

I too am puzzled as to why people aren't jumping on the bandwagon for this, but I think it is because, as covered above, the AVIVO converter that you now get with ATI products doesn't work nearly as well.

BB

[Fickey]

Same as BB, I've transcoded via ATI into several different flavors of avi, wmv, & mpg, and BTV 4.3 has played them all back fine. They also show up in the Recorded Shows listings under "All" and "Folder", but under "Series" they'll be listed under "unknown" due to the missing episode data, etc. Much of this missing show data can be added manually via the Web Admin interface if you want. You can also manually edit the proper XML file to completely recreate the show data, but that's very tedious. :wink:

I've never used a BTV addon yet, but I notice there are several that deal with transcoding & post-processing. Probably would be very easy to tweak one of these addons to use AvivoXCode.exe. They all seem to tie into a power user element of BTV called "CustomPostProcessing.xml", which might even be able to do the job itself. I won't have any chance to tinker with this stuff for quite a while, but I encourage everyone else to experiment & report back how things go. ;) Here's some info on CustomPostProcessing.xml: http://snapstream.helpserve.com/index.php?_m=knowledgebase&_a=viewarticle&kbarticleid=1254&nav=0,1

[Bigbird999]

The Geek Factor for anything that, even remotely, involves xml is way to high for me. That's why my Firefly remains programmed the way it came out of the box. I am a techhnical guy (chemical engineer) and I have spent hours trying to understand how xml works and how to do stuff with it, but to me, it is incomprehensable.

BB

[Mtabor]

Ok, where can i find this "enabled" version, i bought a x1900 AIW purely for this ability < I was very exited when i heard about this last year> and have been VERY disapointed! it maxes out my CPU and as far as i can tell my video card temp never goes up, infact it dropped 10 degrees once i started the proccess!I have been very irritated with ATI of and on over the years and after the 9550 and 9600 AIW i bought i swore i would never go ATI again, having much better luck and performance from nVIDIA. I admit most if my hatred comes from trying to use the 9600 AIW software in a Home theater setup, and being unable to use any other software for advanced features <may the Ati MMC burn in the deepest hell for all of the coming aeons>:mad:Because of that worthless buggy software i had to reinstall my operating system to restore functionality multiple times a MONTH!!!!!! I guess reading back my own post i should have expected a bit of "false advertising" but by gods i have shelled out the money for this infernal card, i want the hardware transcoding features!!!!!!!! If anyone can dirrect me to the Old version of this that works as "advertised" i will be more then grateful!
Thanks
A Video Phile :dude:

[Bigbird999]

A link is in my post #15 above

[Fickey]

Be aware that the older standalone AVIVO converter is not hardware transcoding either. It just behaves a little "differently", and for what some of us in this thread think, behaves "better". The only true hardware transcoding AVIVO currently does is if you have a special h264 codec which was free for a short while, but now costs extra (I don't have it, see post 12). I found the older converter by Googling for "avivoxcode.exe".

I'm still on Cat 6.6, not sure if anything has changed in newer drivers for the converter. Cat 6.8 supposedly improves MPEG playback, though. ATI also has a new Catalyst Media Center (CMC) which is supposed to include the converter, but so far it's only available with new Theater 650 capture cards.

[Fickey]

The Geek Factor for anything that, even remotely, involves xml is way to high for me....BBYah, I don't really know anything about xml, either, but I have edited xml files in notepad to get desired results like replacing show metadata.

I was thinking it could be as simple as editing pointers in CustomPostProcessing.xml (or another BTV post processing plugin) to link to avivoxcode.exe & figuring out what keystrokes correspond to what action in avivoxcode.exe. I'm really eager to tinker with that, but again, it'll probably be months from now before I'll have a chance.

[Bigbird999]

I'm now using it on my main, (Not BTV) computer Do everything while watching TV and occasionally recording shows with ATI MMC
XP SP2
X2 3800 overc'd 30% to 2600 MHz
Sapphire X160O
Sapphire TheatriX 550
Cat 6.8
MMC 9.15

The Xcoder is still working as before fast and trouble free.

BB

[Fickey]

Hey BB, so are you saying the converter included in Cat 6.8 is fast & trouble free, or are you referring to the older standalone avivoxcode.exe?

Also, how's the playback on your X1600? Mine doesn't seem to deinterlace correctly, but honestly, I've not spent much time tweaking it. I think it may also be an issue resolved in Cat 6.8.

*Edit* Once I enabled hardware deinterlacing in Zoom Player, the media player I usually use, the picture is noticeably sharper & deinterlaces properly. CPU usage is also slightly lower while viewing video. :)

Any plans to use your X1600 and/or Theater 550 in your BTV setup? I was thinking of adding a 550 to my single PVR-150 setup. Do you find one makes better recordings than the other?

[Bigbird999]

Sorry for the ambiguity. I mean the standalone avivoxcode.exe continues to work well with the cat 6.8 drivers. The included one is still crap.

My HTPC is in the bedroom feeding a crappy SD tv. It give great PQ. My main PC is a do everything box located in the basement. I have BTV Link on it as well as ATI MMC. I use dual monitors and watch live TV using either Link (if the BTV box isn't busy recording) or the ATI MMC (sometimes I record with it too). On Sundays I watch 2 football games at the same time. One in ATI MMC in overlay on monitor 2 and the other via BTV Link on the primary monitor (kind of a poor man's picture in picture. Our Family room TV is an HD 4:3 Toshiba. We watch live TV via svideo input from a digital cable box and BTV recordings, ATI recordings and downloaded video in HD (1080i) resolution from a Linkplayer 2. So no BTV or Link in the family room.

I don't have any plans to try the 550 in the BTV server and my 9600 produces a great SD picture on the TV. I can't honestly say that there is much/any difference between the 550 and 150 recordings when played @1080i on my family room TV via the Linkplayer.

My Sapphire x1600 produces a great picture on my 2 monitors (1 cheap 19in analog LCD and one old 17in CRT). I haven't tried TV out. The stock cooler was very noisy and the card ran hot so I put a Zalman cooler on the card and it runs cool and very quiet. I was able to overclock it by 25% for gaming with no trouble.

Re the Avivo. Last week I recorded Canadian Idol with my BTV. (1 hr show). Ran it through VRD to remove commercials (now 43 min) and converted it to xvid avi with avi.net (took about 70 min). This week I forgot to record the Finale with BTV and I was sitting at my basement PC. Hit record and captured it with ATI MMC. Ran it through VRD Then I encoded it to divx with the divx converter (70 - 80 min) and then I encoded it to divx with the avivoxcode (13 min) while I was watching something else.

I can't see any difference between the original mpeg2 recordings and the compressed files.

BB

[Alex1959]

Here is a torrent link to the hacked avivo video converter
or PM me. It's only a 3 MB zip file.


BB[/QUOTE]
Unfortunately this link contains only songs. What should I do?

[jrandeck]

You know, this seemed like such a great idea when it came out. I'd love to be able to use the GPU to speed up showsqueezing.

2 years later and it seems no one has figured out how to support it :-(

Anybody know of any video coding apps that can use the GPU to assist in the process?

In a few years, the CPU and GPU will probably be on the same chip, so I guess then maybe more people will want to take advantage of it...

[danke]

i always use this total video converter (http://www.dvd-ripper-copy.com/video-converter-platinum.html), which works perfectly for me. you can also take it for a try if you have interest in it.

[Fickey]

I think ATI was hoping to get Nero or Roxio to license GPU accelerated transcoding, but couldn't make the sale & therefore dropped development. ATI does support GPU accelerated Folding@Home distributed computing (http://ati.amd.com/technology/streamcomputing/folding.html), so it is definitely technically possible.

Personally, I still use the old avivoxcode.exe for most quick & dirty transcoding. If I need to do any batch transcoding, I just use Nero as it's more configurable & resource friendly than Showsqueezing.