transcoding using GPU

[Deacon Crusher]

Some of the reviews out for the brand new nvidia video cards talk about cuda Nvidia's new spec/engine/code that allows applications to use the gpu for more general computing tasks. One task that a developer is working on is using the GPU for a transcoding platform and they are seeing 3 to 10 times performance gain over the cpu as the transcoder.

Works with all 8 and later series nvidia gpus.

Kind of interesting and maybe timely given issues with transcoding the new HD PVR h264 video for the mediamvp or the placeshifter client.

[SHS]

Originally Posted by Deacon Crusher

Some of the reviews out for the brand new nvidia video cards talk about cuda Nvidia's new spec/engine/code that allows applications to use the gpu for more general computing tasks. One task that a developer is working on is using the GPU for a transcoding platform and they are seeing 3 to 10 times performance gain over the cpu as the transcoder.

Works with all 8 and later series nvidia gpus.

Kind of interesting and maybe timely given issues with transcoding the new HD PVR h264 video for the mediamvp or the placeshifter client.

Nvidia card are so way over cost it an't funny I don't see min people buy them when AMD 48xx series from what hear is about half cost of GeForce GTX 260 but we see waiting to see what the AMD 48xx series brings to the table that should have a better price/performance ratio.

[Deacon Crusher]

The new ones are crazy expensive, but remember, this 'Cuda stuff is supposed to work with all 8 series GPUs also.

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by Deacon Crusher

Some of the reviews out for the brand new nvidia video cards talk about cuda Nvidia's new spec/engine/code that allows applications to use the gpu for more general computing tasks. One task that a developer is working on is using the GPU for a transcoding platform and they are seeing 3 to 10 times performance gain over the cpu as the transcoder.

Works with all 8 and later series nvidia gpus.

Kind of interesting and maybe timely given issues with transcoding the new HD PVR h264 video for the mediamvp or the placeshifter client.

If this worked, I would run out and replace the 6200LE in my Sage Server in a heartbeat. The one disappointment right now is that even with a Core 2 Duo at 2.4ghz, you can't transcode the HD-PVR videos on the fly.....so my poor MediaMVPs will be useless for ESPN HD and DiscoveryHD (when it arrives that is).

[Deacon Crusher]

I still say this looks really interesting.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/...-gpu,1954.html

[kevine]

The math coprocessor! Wow, that brought back memories.

[Tiki]

I'm quite sure that simply adding one of these cards won't make a bit of difference on its own. The transcoding software must be re-written to take advantage of the GPU. I'm sure the transcoder that is built-in to Sage would not take advantage of it if you installed one of these cards today. But who knows, maybe sometime in the future...

[paulbeers]

Originally Posted by Tiki

I'm quite sure that simply adding one of these cards won't make a bit of difference on its own. The transcoding software must be re-written to take advantage of the GPU. I'm sure the transcoder that is built-in to Sage would not take advantage of it if you installed one of these cards today. But who knows, maybe sometime in the future...

I am pretty sure that went without saying.... It is more the possibility that if Sage could implement this with their transcoder. Unfortunately as Tomshardware pointed out, the "big three" in graphics (Nvidia, ATI, Intel) all have different versions of this very thing coming out and so it will be a matter of the software manufactures deciding which implementation is best (and most likely easiest). The article also discussing Microsoft would probably have to create a unified API that all manufacturers would built around (just like DirectX) in order for this to gain wide spread acceptance. This would be awesome though.

[Taddeusz]

There is the emerging standard called OpenCL that Apple is apparently supporting in the next version of OSX.

[wheaton]

I have the hd-pvr on order and my card was recently pre authorized so It *should* be shipping soon. I wanted to share with you all another discovery that should be of interest to many. The website www.badaboomit.com will be releasing soon an application for using the gpu (your videocard) for transcoding a video into other predefined formats. My bet is that many of you have the need to get your videos into other formats for editing maybe or down to another size so it fits on a dvd when you happened to go a little over.. In any case it probably will be able to do it. The nice thing is that it will use the gpu to do this and will do it many times faster than your cpu can do the transcoding. And just for the few that remember this is nothing like the ATI avivo technology. ATI Avivo promised this but lied and should have been sued really.

Anyhow I am so anxious for my new toy.

glad I ended up in the next group so that I have greater odds of less problems.

* merged *

[Ryokurin]

You could find software for the past couple of months that could use Geforce and some ATI video cards for encoding video. The problem was that it was all simple profile video. Unless its high its pretty worthless to me but so far, high has only been promised but not delivered by anyone.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by wheaton

I have the hd-pvr on order and my card was recently pre authorized so It *should* be shipping soon. I wanted to share with you all another discovery that should be of interest to many. The website www.badaboomit.com will be releasing soon an application for using the gpu (your videocard) for transcoding a video into other predefined formats. My bet is that many of you have the need to get your videos into other formats for editing maybe or down to another size so it fits on a dvd when you happened to go a little over.. In any case it probably will be able to do it. The nice thing is that it will use the gpu to do this and will do it many times faster than your cpu can do the transcoding. And just for the few that remember this is nothing like the ATI avivo technology. ATI Avivo promised this but lied and should have been sued really.

Anyhow I am so anxious for my new toy.

glad I ended up in the next group so that I have greater odds of less problems.

* merged *

That sucks, I have an ATI card. That software won't be of any use to me.

[SHS]

I know I tryed to talking to hauppauge in doing add-on card last year and you do know there are a few hardware transcoding devices out there rigth now.
Dell Xcelerator (New System Only), ADS InstantVideo To Go USB H.264 or Elgato's Turbo 264 MAC and belive there are other but there not in USA.

[Taddeusz]

Anyone know of any programs besides the AVIVO Video Converter that are accelerated for ATI cards? I was messing around with it last night and I'm kind of questioning how accelerated their H.264 encoder really is. To top it all off the AVIVO Video Converter for Vista x64 doesn't seem to have any profiles that actually compress to H.264. Only MPEG 1/2, Divx or Windows Media. Either it's broken or incomplete.

I tried using the encoder in Graph Edit but while it seemed to go faster than Nero Recode it nearly pegged my CPU for the duration. Which begs the question of how much of the encoding is actually GPU accelerated? I have a Radeon 3870 so it should be quite accelerated.

I'm excited about the idea of being able to use the GPU for more than just games. But because I have an ATI card I fear I may be left in the cold because it seems, at least so far, that most of the support is going towards nVidia's CUDA platform.

[Ryokurin]

As far as I still know AVIVO still isn't GPU accelerated, in fact some early builds were cracked so that it would work with any processor, not just x1000 and above it is quicker than normal encoding but its due to some shortcuts which is also why its kind of a crappy encoder in general.

http://www.rapihd.com/ this is the closest I've seen personally to something that can handle high profile, but its for professionals.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by Ryokurin

As far as I still know AVIVO still isn't GPU accelerated, in fact some early builds were cracked so that it would work with any processor, not just x1000 and above it is quicker than normal encoding but its due to some shortcuts which is also why its kind of a crappy encoder in general.

http://www.rapihd.com/ this is the closest I've seen personally to something that can handle high profile, but its for professionals.

And it's still only for nVidia cards. No ATI lovin'.

[wheaton]

The RapiHD product is essentially the same as the badaboomit program.

I finally have my hd-pvr and its awesome. Hopefully soon I can use my 8800GTS to manage some of the times where I record at just slightly too high of a bitrate to fit on a desired disk.

[Djc208]

See here, the RapiHD is supposed to be the professional version of the software, the BadaBOOM will be the "lite" or consumer version, probably bundled free with video cards in the future. It has drastically fewer options than the RapiHD version will.

I see either this company or a similar one aiming for the ATI market soon enough, probably with AMD/ATIs backing. They're just now getting competitive again with nVidia and can't afford to let an area like this go un-answered.

[mikesm]

Originally Posted by Djc208

See here, the RapiHD is supposed to be the professional version of the software, the BadaBOOM will be the "lite" or consumer version, probably bundled free with video cards in the future. It has drastically fewer options than the RapiHD version will.

I see either this company or a similar one aiming for the ATI market soon enough, probably with AMD/ATIs backing. They're just now getting competitive again with nVidia and can't afford to let an area like this go un-answered.

ATI has already said they will have GPU based HD trasncoding implemented soon through a relationship with cyberlink. Apparently powerdirector is being given this capability, and may even ship sooner than the badaboom software.

[Taddeusz]

Originally Posted by mikesm

ATI has already said they will have GPU based HD trasncoding implemented soon through a relationship with cyberlink. Apparently powerdirector is being given this capability, and may even ship sooner than the badaboom software.

Grrr... I don't need a whole video editing program just so I can transcode videos. That's just overkill.