PD 9 with AMD E-350 - Encoding not being accelerated.

chippy

Newbie Location: Germany Joined: Mar 30, 2011 18:20 Messages: 14 Offline

Solved by

Mar 30, 2011 18:32

I've been spending a lot of time with PD9 and other software over the last 48hrs and was impressed with my Lenovo S205 (AMD Fusion - Zacate E-350) ability to render H.264 720p, 6mbps at about 3X real time.

I was also very excited to see an announcement that APP (AMD Paralel Processing) is supported. (1th Feb press release) that could bring up to 3.5x rendering speed improvements.

Having downloaded patch 2702 (AFAIK this is the patch that enables AMD APP on the Fusion platform) on a trial version of PD9, I see no difference at all.

Interestingly I can adjust 'power play' to reduce the GPU power and it makes no difference at all to processing speed. The same is true of HD decoding.

What's up?

Is this something that's only supported in the retail version or are Cyberlinks claims of "up to 3.5x" just false?
Press release sounds great here - 11th Feb.
http://www.cyberlink.com/eng/press_room/view_2735.html?affid=2581_853_509_15006_0_ENU&utm_source=CLHP_HotNews&utm_medium=CLHP_HotNews_15006_powerdvd&utm_campaign=CL_Homepage

Chippy.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Apr 04. 2011 16:00

http://HiBlue.com
Video studio in Bonn, Germany

AllenChicago

Senior Member Location: Chicago (USA) Joined: Jan 28, 2010 22:06 Messages: 151 Offline

Mar 30, 2011 19:20

Hi ya Chippy!

I've learned over the past 14 months of using Power Director that only certain Graphic Cards enable PD9 to use its full capabilities, in terms of rendering/transcoding speed enhancement. Unfortunately my ATI HD4350 card is archaic, from way back in 2008. It's not "supported" by PD9, but I don't complain because PD9 shines in so many other areas.

-Allen

chippy

Newbie Location: Germany Joined: Mar 30, 2011 18:20 Messages: 14 Offline

Mar 30, 2011 20:04

Thanks Allen.

With the announcement that Cyberlink are explicitly supporting the E-350 and announcing a big improvement in performance, i'm hoping to see something otherwise i'll tend towards Corel as their product seems simpler and faster on a low power device.

I'm still researching tho. Happy to hear any thoughts, news, tips.

Chippy. http://HiBlue.com
Video studio in Bonn, Germany

chippy

Newbie Location: Germany Joined: Mar 30, 2011 18:20 Messages: 14 Offline

Mar 31, 2011 15:14

An update...I purchased the full 64 bit version, updated to 2702 and updated Catalyst. While I can see some advantage with the hardware decoding feature I see no difference with APP enabled or disabled.
I suspect the PD9 still isn't using APP yet.

I have a query out directly to cyberlink and i'll report back here if I find anything.

For the record, I can render a 11mbps 720p h.264 file into a 6mbps file of the same format at a time ratio of about 2.8x which isnt bad for a 399 euro 1.4kg laptop. http://HiBlue.com
Video studio in Bonn, Germany

chippy

Newbie Location: Germany Joined: Mar 30, 2011 18:20 Messages: 14 Offline

Mar 31, 2011 18:11

After a lot of research, I think I found part of the answer. (although i'm waiting for official confirmation)

AMD Parallel Processing (AMD GPU processing using Open CL 1.1 / ) applies only to the preview and rendering of certain effects available in the effects room. In these cases it does speed things up. More importantly though, applying APP doesn't affect any rendering speed where there are no effects applied. (According to many tests i've done)

However, AMD claim that Cyberlink "MediaEspresso takes advantage of the AMD UVD engine on AMD GPUs and APUs to accelerate the decode section of the transcode and uses AMD Accelerated Parallel Processing (APP) technology1 to accelerate the encode section of the transcode."
http://sites.amd.com/us/fusion/apu/Pages/apps-demos.aspx#6

So if Cyberlink can do it in mediaEspresso, why not in Power Director 9?

Research continues.

http://HiBlue.com
Video studio in Bonn, Germany

chippy

Newbie Location: Germany Joined: Mar 30, 2011 18:20 Messages: 14 Offline

Apr 04, 2011 15:58

After a lot more research it does appear that encoding (not just effects) should be accelerated by the AMD APP unit but I've tested and tested and the GPU is not being used at all.

I don't even see 'Fast Video Rendering Technology' enabled for any profile at all. The user manual says this needs to be enabled to enable the AMD GPU.

Clearly some parts of PD9 use the GPU. Effects are accelerated as I said above but I suspect that the encoding part of the equation is relying on some subsystem external to PD9. Perhaps the AVIVO/AMD video converter or Catalyst Drivers are broken in some way? I'm using 11.3 Catalyst drivers all round.

I'm still trying to get a direct answer from Cyberlink about this.

Steve / Chippy.
http://HiBlue.com
Video studio in Bonn, Germany

chippy

Newbie Location: Germany Joined: Mar 30, 2011 18:20 Messages: 14 Offline

Apr 07, 2011 06:31

I finally have the answer.

AMD Fusion C and E ranges do not implement Avivo encoding acceleration.
The reason is not clear but I have a hint from an AMD engineer that the CPU can actually do it faster than the GPU so there's no advantage in enabling it in the drivers.

Obviously Cyberlink have written specific code for some effects which help. I also hear from a Cyberlink engineer that there's some enhancements that have been done on the DMA side of things which help but my summary is...

If you're outputing H.264 (or other complex codecs) at 720p or above, you will see very little (almost no) advantage in turning on AMD APP acceleration and AMD AVD acceleration. If you want to use the special AMD-enabled cyberlink effects, yes, there is some good acceleration happening there.

My hope: Cyberlink and others can write some specific code that does part of the encoding process on the GPU and shares the load with the CPU.

Steve http://HiBlue.com
Video studio in Bonn, Germany