ATI Launches All-In-Wonder Encode - Software MPEG Encoder

[Lester Jacobs]

Anyone seen this press release from ATI? If one is to believe the hype from ATI, it would appear that this encoder would let an ATI AIW card support applications like SageTV which require a hardware encoder since the ATI Encoder would "emulate" the characteristics of a true hardware encoder.

This seems to indicate that SageTV might be able to easily support the AIW users out there. That should be a fairly large market considering that SageTV is definitely ahead of ATI's own MMC offering from a feature/functionality point of view.

Lester

[Narflex]

AWESOME. That's exactly what that indicates. I was hoping they'd do something like this eventually.

I've even got an AIW card I can test with. Their press release seems to indicate this is currently available. Anybody know about this? Is it just part of the standard WDM driver download of theirs now?

I just sent a contact of mine at ATI an email about this, this is really cool.

But I'd like to know what extremely ineffecient software they were using to prove this point:
"Counterintuitively, the highly optimized ALL-IN-WONDER Encode video encoder actually uses a similar amount of CPU time to the hardware alternative.....utilization is about the same for a 2.4 GHz Pentium® 4"

That's just totally bogus. The CPU usage is <2% for a hardware encoder with SageTV. And it's probably over 70% for their software encoding. Like they say, this is just completely counterintuitive. This statement they make is flat out wrong (except for some bizarre context which I'm sure they setup to justify it were someone to hold them to it).

Hardware encoding has a major advantage over software encoding. And that's the truth.

[JasonJoel]

I have an AIW too, if you need another testing body if/when the time comes.

Jason

Originally posted by Narflex
AWESOME. That's exactly what that indicates. I was hoping they'd do something like this eventually.

I've even got an AIW card I can test with. Their press release seems to indicate this is currently available. Anybody know about this? Is it just part of the standard WDM driver download of theirs now?

I just sent a contact of mine at ATI an email about this, this is really cool.

But I'd like to know what extremely ineffecient software they were using to prove this point:
"Counterintuitively, the highly optimized ALL-IN-WONDER Encode video encoder actually uses a similar amount of CPU time to the hardware alternative.....utilization is about the same for a 2.4 GHz Pentium® 4"

That's just totally bogus. The CPU usage is <2% for a hardware encoder with SageTV. And it's probably over 70% for their software encoding. Like they say, this is just completely counterintuitive. This statement they make is flat out wrong (except for some bizarre context which I'm sure they setup to justify it were someone to hold them to it).

Hardware encoding has a major advantage over software encoding. And that's the truth.

[mlar]

Actually, if it performs anything like the MPEG-2 software encoding drivers that the AverTV tuners use, http://www.aver.com/products/tvtuner_AVerTV.shtml , it should use around 30% CPU (on a 2.4GHz P4) or so I guess. The AverTV drivers used about 50% on my old XP1800 when I tried it over a year ago. Does this mean that the AverTV Tuners could be used with SageTV as well?

[Damion]

um. for the tech-impaired:

would I be able to buy a SageTV for use with my ATI TV Wonder setup?

[dkardatzke]

Damion,

Not at this time. SageTV only supports hardware based MPEG-2 encoding cards.

[-LD]

any plans to support this in a future release?

[SHS]

Boys & Girl I wouldn't count ATI over Hype BS and if they do, do this you must likely need fastest CPU on planet oh there be no Ture VBR mode only CBR.

[Lester Jacobs]

I agree that this might be a bit of hype. However, seeing as I have and AIW in my machine anyway (currently disconnected from cable since I've totally switched over to SageTV) it definitely wouldn't hurt for Sage to support this card. Plus with only one AIW in my machine along with two PVR 250s, I should be able to quite comfortably support one software encoder along with the two hardware encoders. Right now I can run ATI's MMC software in TV-ON-Demand mode where it is simultaneously encoding and decoding video at less than 50% CPU usage (I've got a 2.0Ghz machine).


Lester

[-LD]

doesn't seem too outrageous to me...this is what MCE is using...while maybe not the performance of a hardware encoder, it certainly was considered good enough to put in their entire line of MCE products

[dkardatzke]

LD,

The MCE doesn't use the ATI card as a TV tuner, only for video/graphics output. They still use the PVR-250 or comparable card for hardware MPEG-2 encoding.

[-LD]

that is correct, i was mistaken...but, microsoft did say that will now give manufaturers the option to use a software based card

as for now, i'm happy with my creative dvcr

[cellarboy]

The ATI encoder only works with Hyper Threaded CPUs and apparantly will only be available to Windows MCE OEMS.



From Phil Taylor @ ATI:

...there are some caveats. you need an HT CPU first off. our optimized SWencoder really benefits from HT. so we can indeed match HW encoder numbers there. we have shown this in the labs, and this should definitely be replicable.