Hi Chad,

Using the search function might get you an answer quicker than a new post.

Check out the following :-
http://forum.cyberlink.com/forum/posts/list/3307.page

Cheers
Adrian Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. (see below)
Confucius
AMD Phenom IIX6 1055T, win10, 5 internal drives, 7 usb drives, struggling power supply.

Thank you, sorry if this topic was already addressed.

No problems, it's sometimes just quicker than having to wait to see if someone can answer a post, especially if you're in the middle of some problem or other.
Cheers
Adrian Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated. (see below)
Confucius
AMD Phenom IIX6 1055T, win10, 5 internal drives, 7 usb drives, struggling power supply.

is there any news on quality, speed and release date?

Hi!
After reading some disappointing threads about cuda optimization i begin to wonder if i have to much hope on ATI? How exactly is GPU transcoding going to work? I have a AVCHD camera and a not so fast computer (amd opteron 165 @2.35Ghz and 2Gb RAM) and in my thoughts I could just upgrade my videocard to get a editing boost (and not have to by a new computer).
1. Is ATIs transcoding only goint to help me to convert the avchd movie to a easier editing format as mpeg2.
2. Or am I going to have faster rendering time using my original avchd-files (cutting, joining, adding effects, adding sound)
3. Have i totally misunderstood what ATI is goint to do, and the ATI patch is not going to replace the need for a faster computer.

GPU acceleration for video transcoding was a lie. The only benefit is the CUDA optimization for certain advanced video effects.

Looks like we're all going to have to buy Adobe Premier or Badaboom for increased video transcoding performance.

can someone confirm that ATIs transcoding will work the same way as cuda

GPU acceleration for video transcoding was a lie. The only benefit is the CUDA optimization for certain advanced video effects.

Looks like we're all going to have to buy Adobe Premier or Badaboom for increased video transcoding performance.

and i if doesn´t work as like cuda does it works as follows:

1. Is ATIs transcoding only goint to help me to convert the avchd movie to a easier editing format as mpeg2.
2. Or am I going to have faster rendering time using my original avchd-files (cutting, joining, adding effects, adding sound)
3. Have i totally misunderstood what ATI is goint to do, and the ATI patch is not going to replace the need for a faster computer.

Quote: can someone confirm that ATIs transcoding will work the same way as cuda

GPU acceleration for video transcoding was a lie. The only benefit is the CUDA optimization for certain advanced video effects.

Looks like we're all going to have to buy Adobe Premier or Badaboom for increased video transcoding performance.

and i if doesn´t work as like cuda does it works as follows:

1. Is ATIs transcoding only goint to help me to convert the avchd movie to a easier editing format as mpeg2.
2. Or am I going to have faster rendering time using my original avchd-files (cutting, joining, adding effects, adding sound)
3. Have i totally misunderstood what ATI is goint to do, and the ATI patch is not going to replace the need for a faster computer.

Support for ATI transcoding was never released. I believe it was scrapped.

can somone please confirm if what Dave is telling me is true?

Hi Andreas,

for all our sakes, I hope it's not true!

I have some encouraging news, however.

After bandying emails with Cyberlink support, I finally bullied the following response from them:

"Thank you for contacting CyberLink Technical Support.

We understand your concern related with PowerDirector software.

We can very well understand your concern and the implication of this situation as a user and apologize for any inconvenience faced by you.

In regards to your concern, we would like to inform you that PowerDirector 7 will supports ATI AVT on 2009 Q1. We will keep to cowork with ATI. And we also want to inform you that we need ATI to share this technology to us for integration."

That will be very good news indeed, and if the improvement in transcoding speed bears a meaningful relationship to the number of available stream processors in a graphics card, the ATI series should be a VERY good card to have!

Interesting also that the imlication seems that AMD are dragging their feet on this one.

That is good news indeed. If they incorporate ATI support for useless tools like Guassian Blur and such, then it may be a moot point for the majority of PD7 users.

i think it´s worring that not someone from Cyberlink is explaing the situation and the function of an ati transcoding patch...

On December 11th, AMD have promised to release their own GPU-accelerated H.264 transcoder. Compared with the CUDA "Bababoom" program, AMD claim it will be significantly faster - perhaps reflecting the increased number of stream processors in ATI video cards such as the 4800 series.

Check out this Anandtech article:

http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets/showdoc.aspx?i=3457&p=3

can someone please answer my questions of what GPU transcoding is supposed to do...
1. Is ATIs transcoding only goint to help me to convert the avchd movie to a easier editing format as mpeg2.
2. Or am I going to have faster rendering time using my original avchd-files (cutting, joining, adding effects, adding sound)
3. Have i totally misunderstood what ATI is goint to do, and the ATI patch is not going to replace the need for a faster computer.

It's frustrating, isn't it!

The CUDA patch has been available for some time now. There must be PD7 users with suitable NVIDIA graphics cards in their pc's, but nobody seems interested in running some simple tests to properly evaluate the effect of CUDA support. I've only read the vaguest references to CUDA usage, generally in the form of complaints that it didn't seem to do much.

I would perform tests myself - but don't have a suitable video card. Since I anticipate upgrading my pc in the near future, I'm very interested in the benefits of CUDA or AVT support.

Certainly from the publicity material that Cyberlink have put out, CUDA should speed up video encoding, and by several times the speed at which even the fastest cpu can do it. It's not clear to me if that speed increase will only be gained when encoding to h.264, or if it will occur when, say, transcoding to mpeg2.

AVT support seems to have even more promise. AMD demonstrated a pc encoding four HD video streams to h.264 in real time. Compare that with a top of the range Intel Quad taking ten hours for a single stream, and you can see the potential benefit.

A glimpse of the performance benefit of CUDA is demonstrated by the otherwise poorly featured "Badaboom" program.

I believe the ATI 4800 series video cards, having many more stream processors than even the latest NVIDIA ones, have greater potential as parallel processors used to offload video encoding from the cpu.

If AVT support is or can be properly implemented, it should change everything. Instead of paying top dollar for the fastest cpu, the optimum system for video editing might comprise a lower-end cpu paired with a mid-range to upper mid-range video card.

There's also the possible additional benefit of having multiple video cards.

The kind of parallel processing that GPU's can perform is well suited to video encoding, which is a relatively simple process readily divided up into smaller "chunks", so you would expect video encoding to be just about the first pc task taken on by video cards.

If it turns out that the benefit is limited to h.264 encoding only, the principal benefit may be to HDV users, if they wish to target their projects to AVCHD. It should also show a benefit to AVCHD users, however, if they are making much use of video filters, transitions, and so on, and anything else that would prevent SVRT from functioning. Of course in that case, however, you need to have a video editing program that actually can edit AVCHD satisfactorily in the first place, and I think we're some way off that at the moment.

Quote: can someone please answer my questions of what GPU transcoding is supposed to do...
1. Is ATIs transcoding only goint to help me to convert the avchd movie to a easier editing format as mpeg2.
2. Or am I going to have faster rendering time using my original avchd-files (cutting, joining, adding effects, adding sound)
3. Have i totally misunderstood what ATI is goint to do, and the ATI patch is not going to replace the need for a faster computer.

I don't believe graphics acceleration is going to replace the need for a faster computer.

I have a computer with a quad core processer at 2.4Ghz and with the software I used to use (the last 2 versions of which support AVCHD without transcoding) that processor speed was too slow and caused problems plus long rendering times. The lack of enough processor speed caused the NLE to have to shut off graphics card acceleration and that caused no end of editing inconveniences and problems.

Power Director is noticeably less demanding of computer resources (and has cut my HD rendering times to about 25% of what the other NLE did) but when I tried to use it on a dual core computer that met the minimum specs performance was very dicey.

No matter which way you slice it, whatever graphics card resources you have, AVCHD at 17Mbps bitrate or higher will likely require either a fast quad core (2.66Ghz as a bare minimum) or an extremely fast dual core.

I don't see any way out of a serious computer upgrade/replacement.

Hi everyone,

There are some FAQ answers (click the link to the data source) that some of you may like to read.

*********************

1. How do I enable the GPU optimization feature in CyberLink PowerDirector 7?
To enable CUDA acceleration in CyberLink PowerDirector, you must first make sure your video card supports CUDA technology and that the CUDA patch for PowerDirector 7 is installed prior following the steps listed below:
1. Download and install the latest NVIDIA driver at: http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_get.html
2. Go to: Edit > Preferences> Editing, and then select "Enable NVIDIA CUDA GPU acceleration on video effects" to enable CUDA.
3. Add any of the video effects that have the NVIDIA logo to your video clip, and then produce it as a file. You'll find the processing speed much faster.

2. Which effects can be enabled with GPU optimization?
CyberLink PowerDirector supports end-to-end HD video editing, from capturing video to production, in AVCHD, MPEG-2 HD and WMV-HD formats. These files are optimized for NVIDIA CUDA, featuring Accelerated Video Transcoding (AVT) core technology.

Currently we have 10 video effects that support CUDA acceleration:
GaussianBlur
RadialBlur
LightRay
PenInk
Abstractionism
Kaleidoscope
ColorEdge
ReplaceColor
ColorPainting
Glow

3. What are the benefits of the CUDA version of CyberLink PowerDirector 7?
CyberLink PowerDirector now supports NVIDIA CUDA Technology, which optimizes HD Video Editing Performance. With NVIDIA CUDA technology, CyberLink PowerDirector delivers a much faster video rendering performance and improved user experience by processing HD videos with advanced video effects, such as Gaussian radial blur, pen ink, and so on. The rendering performance gain is from 20%-250% (Rendering speed is up to 5X faster).

4. How do I know if my NVIDIA card is compatible with the CUDA version of CyberLink PowerDirector 7?
CyberLink PowerDirector 7 requires NVIDIA CUDA technology and will run on NVIDIA 8 series or higher GPUs.

The CUDA version of CyberLink PowerDirector 7 currently supports the following NVIDIA VGA series:
NVIDIA GeForce and GeForce Mobile
NVIDIA Quadro and Quardro Mobile
NVIDIA Tesla

For more information about NVIDIA's CUDA, go to:
http://www.nvidia.com/object/cuda_learn_products.html

********************

Dafydd

is it only "effects" that renders faster? If i for example have my avchd files and wants to add music, is there any rendering gain with CUDA or ATI´s patch? I realy want an answer...

/Andreas

Quote:
AVT support seems to have even more promise. AMD demonstrated a pc encoding four HD video streams to h.264 in real time. Compare that with a top of the range Intel Quad taking ten hours for a single stream, and you can see the potential benefit.

My Quad core isn't real time but encodes a 9 min video clip (HD 1080 Mepg2) to AVCHD 1440 in 15 mins. (see next post)