Its not just about Gaming: ATI GPU Encoding and Video Playback
You know, the “other” stuff your PC can do…
Back when I started my career with ATI, I was working in marketing for a product called the ATI All-in-WonderTM HD Card (AIW) --basically a high performance graphics card for gaming coupled with a TV tuner to allow you watch, record, and edit HD content. It was a brilliant concept; we were years ahead of the curve. And, consumers-at least the video mavens-loved them. We had our own little cult following. Fast forward a few years and HD video is a mainstream application. Consumers now enjoy video content on their notebooks, desktops and use their PC’s to power their big screen HD experiences every day.
Today, the AIW concept of watch-record-edit has made its way into AMD-based mainstream notebooks via ATI TheaterTM HD, enabling consumers to edit and consume their content on virtually any device. For example: Mom takes a video of little Johnny playing soccer with any video recorder, such as a popular, unbelievably easy-to-use, FlipCam. Now, the game’s over and all Mom has to do is plug the camera in via USB to the family notebook and voilà! In minutes or even seconds, the content she captured at the game is converted to the desired format and ready to post to YouTube. Spectacularly simple. No engineering degree required.
Let’s break this down into two parts: GPU Video Encode & Video Playback
GPU Video Encode
The definition of a video transcoding is simple:
“Video transcoding is the process of converting data from one video format (e.g. MPEG2) to another format (e.g. H.264). Historically, the CPU has been the one sole compute engine to do all the converting needed by an end-user”.
With High-Definition (HD) video gone mainstream thanks to digital TV transition in different countries around the world and HD camcorders (such as AVCHD) becoming more affordable, there is now more demand for additional processing capability to edit and convert HD content. In order to edit and convert with relatively reasonable speed, end-users needed a PC with high-end CPU configuration…that is, until recently.
Consumers are now able to convert their video files leveraging their GPU hardware inside their PC. Simply put, with graphics cards and applications specially constructed to take advantage of the GPU, you are now able to tap into the massive amounts of parallel compute power, you may not even have been aware your PC had. Cool, huh?
If you are in the market for a notebook, make sure you have ATI RadeonTM HD 4000 Series Premium graphics. And, with notebooks powered by VISION Premium and Ultimate technologies from AMD, you will be able to take advantage of GPGPU Video Transcode with ATI Stream Accelerated Plug-in with either CyberLink MediaShow Espresso or Sony® Movie Studio 9 Platinum.
In a nutshell, when you need to convert video from its original format to fit on your media player or posting to YouTube, the fastest and most efficient way is to harness the performance capabilities of your GPU.
And, if you have ever encoded/converted video to play on an your multimedia device, you know it can take upwards of 3-4 hours (depending on resolution and format conversion and-not to mention--the configuration of your PC) with average CPU usage hitting close to 100% most of the time during the conversion.
However, utilizing ATI Stream Technology from AMD, on certain notebook designs powered by Vision technology from AMD, based on the 2009 AMD Mainstream Notebook Platform, we are seeing upwards of 75% faster conversion times and up to 2x times the performance with GPGPU transcoding enabled versus standard CPU enabled transcoding. This is because ATI Stream leverages all the processing resources of an notebook powered by Vision technology from AMD, both CPU and GPU for a fast transcoding, while keeping the PC responsive to ensure a good user experience. That’s the AMD balanced platform advantage at work!
Video Playback
Have you ever looked at your DVD movies on your HDTV videos and thought “Man, I wish these looked better?”
Fear not, AMD has a solution.
We have collaborated with ArcSoft to enable them to develop software that will up-convert your DVD videos into near HD quality videos. Believe it?
Here is an example of what’s possible:
ArcSoft launched SimHD in July 2009, this software will enable a consumer to take their ATI Radeon HD 4000 series GPU and put it to some real work, DVD upscaling. As the video above clearly showcases, the image on the left is near HD quality and is almost crystal clear and very vibrant. The image on the right is standard definition and is kinda blah and boring….
No magic to behold here, DVD upscaling is a function of the the GPU matching the pixel count from a standard video or DVD to match the pixel count of the HDTV. This is done in real-time and accelerated on the GPU using ATI Stream Technology.
The result is taking a 480i/p image and processing it to a new image size of 720p or even 1080i.
The GPU used to be all about FPS (frames per second). But today, the GPU is all about delivering the “visual experience,” either in more productivity time via fast transcoding, more lifelike gaming via DirectX 11 or enabling end-users to view their SD videos in almost-HD quality. The GPU has become one of if not the most important decision factor when purchasing a PC, either a notebook or desktop.
Make sure that when you are at a retail store, you ask about the GPU; make sure it will enable you to be more productive and have a true HD experience. It’s not all about gaming anymore. AMD is the only company to deliver a balanced platform for computing, a balance between CPU and GPU is the right solution for the today and tomorrow.
Our very own Pat Moorhead has done a great review of a new AMD Next-Generation laptop with the above features enabled here.
Ian “Cabrtosr” McNaughton
Ian McNaughton is senior manager of advanced marketing at AMD. His postings are his own opinions and may not represent AMD’s positions, strategies or opinions. Links to third party sites are provided for convenience and unless explicitly stated, AMD is not responsible for the contents of such linked sites and no endorsement is implied.
Nice drill down of the video features. You can find many of them in this MSI system I test drove here. http://links.amd.com/Tigris
Do you or Pat know anything about the ATi Theater HD 750? I was planing to buy the ATi theater HD 650 a while back but I had heard that AMD sold its TV division to Broadcom. Then after that happened I saw information about the ATi Theater HD 750 on AMD’s website but have yet to see the product anywhere. I am curious if this product will ever emerge and if so when? Thanks a lot.
Why don’t you people understand that the blu ray spec profile @L4/4.1 is not used by majority of videos encoded for HTPC use? Most of the encodes are in high profile @L5/5.1. ATI does not support the high profile but nVidia does (and for quite sometime now). No wonder ppl are ready to jump ship if they can’t get their videos to work properly … its like reduced functionality as compared to the competition! Try this for yourself:
http://dl.getdropbox.com/u/132004/Planet_Earth_From%20Pole_to_Pole_1080p_sample_16ref.mkv
Correction for Ian, the HD video is on the right, low qual is on the left.
“If you are in the market for a notebook, make sure you have ATI RadeonTM HD 4000 Series Premium graphics. And, with notebooks powered by VISION Premium and Ultimate technologies from AMD, you will be able to take advantage of GPGPU Video Transcode with ATI Stream Accelerated Plug-in with either CyberLink MediaShow Espresso or Sony® Movie Studio 9 Platinum.”
How can I put it…Sorry. It does not work? The Dell Studio XPS 1640 with Radeon Mobility 4670 SHOULD do all the above as stated. Unfortunately, none of the Catalyst versions will offer the Avivo Converter as an option in the Basic Catalyst Manager for this Mobility 4670. So far no one at ATI/AMD has commented on this over-sight. This article is well written, but it sure does not pass my field experience not 2 hours of technical support by Dell.
@ahmedfarazch: Yes, I too wish they will finally support the higher profiles. It’s a shame when even a lower-end NVIDIA card can handle it…
how long does it take to use GPU to encode a DVD -> MP4 for PSP?