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/...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]

Originally Posted by Mr.X

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]

Originally Posted by StephaneM

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]

Originally Posted by Rich A

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?

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...

[Rich A]

Originally Posted by 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...

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. 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

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.

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?"

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