NV40 has hardware MPEG 1,2,4 decode/encode

[AthlonXP1800]

Quote from The Inquirer (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=14524)

NVIDIA'S NV40 is not going to be just fast in shaders and pixels, it will have some additional features that will be interesting to anybody that messes with Video.

The video capabilities of NV40 are quite something.

It seems that all NV4X generation of cards will feature very attractive video options.

Nvidia wants to promote NV4X generation of chips as the ones with high quality video, complete and ready for HDTV and PVR.

High quality video will brought motion adaptive de-interlacing, high quality scaling and filtering, good old video de-blocking and integrated TV encoder.

As for HDTV, Nvidia claims Transport stream handling, HDTV output (720p, 1080p, 480p CGMS) and HDCP - High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection as well as HDMI High-Definition Multimedia Interface support.

The PVR part is the most interesting as Nvidia claims that the NV4X generation will have support for no more and no less then MPEG 1/2/4 encode and decode as well as WMV9 decode acceleration.

This means that all decoding and encoding operation previously done by software and very CPU dependant will be able to be processed on NV4X chips. We are not aware specifically how Nvidia plans to do that but it sounds promising.

NV40's introduction is just weeks away. µ

WOW Hardware MPEG4 decode/encode :eek:

It remain to be seen how good NV40 hardware MPEG4 encode compare to software DivX 5.11.

I think Jen-Hsun played cat and mouse at the Morgan Stanley Semiconductor and Systems Conference aim at ATI about NV40 launch timetable in 2 months time. Actually the NV40 introduction are just weeks away, yeah that is within a month. :)

[russo121]

Originally posted by AthlonXP1800
Quote from The Inquirer (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=14524)



WOW Hardware MPEG4 decode/encode :eek:

It remain to be seen how good NV40 hardware MPEG4 encode compare to software DivX 5.11.

I think Jen-Hsun played cat and mouse at the Morgan Stanley Semiconductor and Systems Conference aim at ATI about NV40 launch timetable in 2 months time. Actually the NV40 introduction are just weeks away, yeah that is within a month. :)


Within a month? Yeah! The good and old paper launch....:angel:

[Mariner]

It would be good if the chip did, indeed, contain these capabilities. Unfortunately, as the only current source of the rumour is The Inquirer, I'll be taking it with a pinch of salt for the moment! ;)

As an example, here is one of their articles which came out shortly before the NV30 announcement:

The Inq. (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=5610)

Everything they said in that article turned out to be incorrect!

Certainly, if either NV40 or R420 can accelerate video encoding drastically it would be a great advantage over the competition.

[-=DVS=-]

Originally posted by Mariner
Certainly, if either NV40 or R420 can accelerate video encoding drastically it would be a great advantage over the competition.

What competition only ATI and Nvidia only gamers in town , everyone else is in shadows :D

That would be realy cool , hope they not gonna charge premium :rolleyes: could be two version of card one with and other without , gamers could buy version without MPG 4 capabilitys. ;) and save $$$

[Mariner]

Should have been clearer - I meant if NV40 has it and R420 doesn't then it would be a big advantage to NV. The reverse applies, of course!

[sxotty]

If this is true it would be freakin awesome I was just about to buy an mpeg2 encoder card (with tv inputs and whatnot) for $150, if the nv40 does it I can go $450-150=300

and $300 is much more reasonable than some ludicrous amount. Seriously if the card does it I will be stoked, of course as was said it is very likely it won't, but crap it it performed within 10% of the r420 and did the encoding I would still buy it :). We shall see.

[GlowStick]

Id like to see it with a built in tv tuner also heh.

[PoorGuy]

You know, nVidia is on a roll. Whether we believe all these rumours or not, it's all great advances in architecture. 16 pipelines, ddr3, package with Doom3, built in HDTV/Mpeg encoding/decoding, completely rewritten AA algorithm, 205 million transistors.

Is it all we want to hear or is it true? If it's all true, then it really show that the American company with American engineering is the best.

[GlowStick]

Originally posted by PoorGuy
You know, nVidia is on a roll. Whether we believe all these rumours or not, it's all great advances in architecture. 16 pipelines, ddr3, package with Doom3, built in HDTV/Mpeg encoding/decoding, completely rewritten AA algorithm, 205 million transistors.

Is it all we want to hear or is it true? If it's all true, then it really show that the American company with American engineering is the best. yeah but there is a good chance all of that info is Fiction, it was from the Inquier after all heh.

[S.I.N]

Originally posted by GlowStick
yeah but there is a good chance all of that info is Fiction, it was from the Inquier after all heh.

Yeah but Inq has been more right than wrong over the past couple months and sometimes dead on.;)

[GlowStick]

Originally posted by S.I.N
Yeah but Inq has been more right than wrong over the past couple months and sometimes dead on.;) Heh that is sort of true, but as far as i see, they kind of just speculate and make broad guesses. and then only a few days before it actually becomes public do they get the correct info.

A good example was with the 9800XT, they made a ton of guesses about it and finally came out with the conclusion that its not gonna be clocked much higher than the 9800 pro, then about a day before the nda ran up they came up with the 412mhz.

[Razor04]

Ok...hate to disappoint a lot of you but that whole article on MPEG decoding/encoding acceleration is nothing special.
High quality video will brought motion adaptive de-interlacing, high quality scaling and filtering, good old video de-blocking and integrated TV encoder.
Motion Adaptive De-Intelacing - ATI has had this for quite a while. This has also been present in a lot of software DVD players for a long time. Good solution for pure video sources but I would rather see hardware 3:2 pull-down for film sources (i.e. movies). NVDVD will have this in the next version.

Scaling - No big deal here...just the same old thing that cards do when they resize for TV Out.

Filtering / Deblocking - Hard to interpret what is actually meant here...especially the filtering. Typically MPEG2 decoders do have some minor deblocking routines built in but they aren't typically exposed to the user.

Integrated TV Encoder - Hasn't ATI had this for a while? If my memory serves me it allows better quality TV-Out which as I understand hasn't been a great area for NV. All the NV cards I have owned didn't have TV-Out so I can't comment on anything more than what I have heard.
As for HDTV, Nvidia claims Transport stream handling, HDTV output (720p, 1080p, 480p CGMS) and HDCP - High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection as well as HDMI High-Definition Multimedia Interface support.
Transport Stream Handling - Needs a software interface to the decoder...presumably through their NVDVD. This is nothing special really as all a transport stream is is a raw MPEG file that isn't in a container. This can be opened on any video card provided the playback software supports it...hardware has nothing to do with it.

HDTV Output - Again nothing special...ATI has been doing this since the Radeon 8500.

HDCP and HDMI - Very good improvement on this generation. I don't believe ATI has this in current generation cards but I am sure they will in next generation cards as it is a lovely requirement dictated by Hollywood. (i.e. you want to output a digital signal at anything higher than 480p (I believe) you need these)

The PVR part is the most interesting as Nvidia claims that the NV4X generation will have support for no more and no less then MPEG 1/2/4 encode and decode as well as WMV9 decode acceleration.
This is probably the most misleading part of the whole thing. All of the current codecs out there (from MPEG1 all the way up to MPEG4 and WMV9) are based off of DCT. Since this is the basis for all of these codecs you can build a general engine and use it for all of them. If you are really good you can also use it to speed up encoding also. Don't get your hopes up though as efforts in the past to actually use these units to speed up encoding has failed miserably (at least for the open source ones...issues arose with regards to DX). ATI added the ability to offset some of the MPEG2 encoding load to their DCT engine with the R3XX series and also has a relationship with DivX to speed up decoding of MPEG4 files (at least when played through their crappy player).

WMV9 acceleration will almost surely been seen in the next ATI card too. MS has been pushing heavily for hardware support with next gen cards. They are breaking into the home market too. Pioneer announced a player that does WMV9. The DVD Forum selected WMV9 as one of the potential codecs for HD-DVD. WMV9 is actually pretty damn nice and I would love to see hardware decoding from all manufacturers. (For those of you that don't believe me visit here. (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/content_provider/film/ContentShowcase.aspx) You don't need WMP9 to play back the files (Except for the DRM protected ones) all you need is the WMV9 codec package off Windows Update or WMP9 installed. Oh and before anyone says that WMV9 is proprietary and should be disregarded because of that...it isn't proprietary anymore. When MS bid on inclusion as a codec for HD-DVD they were required to make public information about how it works.

EDIT: I should add that the Inq seems to be grasping at straws left and right lately. They seem to throw out general info (like most of the stuff in this article) and use fancy wording to make it appear new. A lot of the things they have mentioned will be included with ATI cards too. It is too early to pass judgement on any of the upcoming cards.

[bloodbob]

Actually the full MPEG4 standard is not all DCT some of it uses wavelets.

[Razor04]

Originally posted by bloodbob
Actually the full MPEG4 standard is not all DCT some of it uses wavelets.
Yea I know...I just couldn't remember all of the different types of hardware accelerations off the top of my head. It is also dependent on what profile of MPEG4 you are using. I don't believe wavelets are used in any of the current codecs out there due to processing power issues. The other types of hardware acceleration that I forgot are:

DCT
FFT
Wavelet Transform

HW Assisted De-Interlacing
HW Assisted Motion Compensation

[goofer456]

Originally posted by PoorGuy
Is it all we want to hear or is it true? If it's all true, then it really show that the American company with American engineering is the best.

With an Asian CEO and founder, the same as ATI. Nvidia is as much American as ATI is Canadian. The both are Multi-Nationals with engineers and marketing peeps form different nations.

[goofer456]

Originally posted by AthlonXP1800
Quote from The Inquirer (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=14524)



WOW Hardware MPEG4 decode/encode :eek:

It remain to be seen how good NV40 hardware MPEG4 encode compare to software DivX 5.11.

I think Jen-Hsun played cat and mouse at the Morgan Stanley Semiconductor and Systems Conference aim at ATI about NV40 launch timetable in 2 months time. Actually the NV40 introduction are just weeks away, yeah that is within a month. :)

Ati just confirmed to doom9.org that the R3xx series already has this capability. :rofl

[AthlonXP1800]

I does not believed with ATI PR rep, I think he made it all up or probably jealous of NV40. :lol:

R350 do not have MPEG 4 decode and MPEG 1,2,4 encode in hardware in the spec. ATI PR rep wished it does but now Radeon 9800 Pro is 1 year old and it never shown MPEG 1,2,4 decode/encode in action.

[russo121]

Originally posted by AthlonXP1800
I does not believed with ATI PR rep, I think he made it all up or probably jealous of NV40. :lol:

R350 do not have MPEG 4 decode and MPEG 1,2,4 encode in hardware in the spec. ATI PR rep wished it does but now Radeon 9800 Pro is 1 year old and it never shown MPEG 1,2,4 decode/encode in action.

For more than a year Ati can decode in hardware divx even the old 9500.... check at http://www.divxnetworks.com/press/press_detail.php?pr_id=46
One way to check it fast: If you play a divx file with divxplayer check the processor usage to play the file... then try with mediaplayer and check the difference. ;)


Edit: if you don't know, divx is mpeg4.

[AthlonXP1800]

Ah I see, I dont realised DivX player had ATI hardware decode, it a big shame that almost nobody use DivX player, I never used it as I only used both Media Player and PowerDVD more often.

I remember 2 years ago ATI hype about Real Player supported ATI hardware decode, the hardware decode is not perfect as it had blurred and blocky image quality so ATI users had to switched back to software in order to view the files properly.

Now all is left are MPEG encode, I checked DivX 5.1.1 for hardware encode and here are none, it seem here are none of MPEG encode softwares has hardware encode support.

[sxotty]

It is just fanatics being silly.

As I already stated no one cares much about mpeg decoding as a 400Mhz processor has no problem accomplishing it. Encoding is the only thing that is actually valuable. I have an 9800pro like it says and I sure haven't been able to get it to encode things in hardware.

[goofer456]

Originally posted by sxotty
It is just fanatics being silly.

As I already stated no one cares much about mpeg decoding as a 400Mhz processor has no problem accomplishing it. Encoding is the only thing that is actually valuable. I have an 9800pro like it says and I sure haven't been able to get it to encode things in hardware.

Doom9 talks about decoding, not encoding. I do not believe the standard NV-40 will do MPEG encoding either. Possibly only a "all-In_wonder" type a card.

Ati has such a card in the retail channels for some time now.

Silly

[sxotty]

I dont beleive that the nv40 does encoding either, but it might. The article says it DOES. The R3xx DOESN'T if the NV40 does than it will be an awesome feature. That is my stance I find all the dumb people going ah but the R3XX already does it to be annoying because they are wrong.

ATI added the ability to offset some of the MPEG2 encoding load to their DCT engine with the R3XX

Now the people going "but the NV40 WON'T do it" are logical, until it is released we won't know, but I find the opinion that it will not to be very valid, I think it unlikely unless you buy a special multimedia adition or something and then it will probably be a seperate chip anyway, but if it DOES then I will applaud them for an inovative, cool, and useful feature.

I (k)new about the MPEG 2/4 en/decoding capabilities of the R3XX core.

Yup. Famous Nvidia PR (not if it actually encodes)

No, it means even if hardware supports it, such as the 9800 pro, no encoder/decoder supports the hardware rendering it useless

The encoding cabilities of the 9800 which are widely being touted are absent. Now if it is a multimedia card then perhaps they will include software that will make it function we shall all see.

[Nv40]

ATI does not support hardware encoding according to -developers- that design video capture multimedia aplications for a living.

http://www.showshifter.com/support/faq.htm#atimpeg2


Can ShowShifter make use of ATI's MPEG2 encoding?

ATI has hardware -assisted- MPEG2 "decoding" only. Its MPEG2 encoding is purely software based but is designed not to be available to 3rd party applications, so ShowShifter is not able to make use of it.

the hardware decoding capabilities in ATI cards only helps in someway while your are Watching mpeg videos, if you have a fast machine ,hardware decoding is not even neccesary. however when it comes to ->ENCODING! here even the fastest INTEL processor is not enough to handle all the quality possible in Mepg or Divx when you use COmpression. -far from that-.

i have a Pinnacle TV/video capture card at the best quality i can get in near_real time in my ATlon 1900+ in MPeg2 is 480x480 :( ,if i switch to 640x480 ,i see everything in slide showmode . when you verify your recorded videos as expected there are many missing frames and valuable data lost. in forums P4 users with 3ghz usually record at -real time- in 320x resolutions ,if the NV40 is a true encode/decode hardware card ,it should be able to record your favorite programs ,sport events or movies in HDTV (high definitionTv ..beyond 720x res. up to 16xx )in real time ,in MPEG2 ,while at the same time playing a game. :)

if you buy a ALL in wonder card from ATI ./or a video carpture card from another company,the first complain you will have is that you cant get enough quality from your realtime video recordings..like TV..movies..etc...so you will need to research a lot how to tweak and optimize to get the best QUality/compression/performance combo possible in real time.

a gaming card that ENcode/DEcode in hardware ,not just assitance, but 100% ,but also Mpeg1/3/4 is a major revolution.. only proffesionall expensive VIdeo hardware can match that ,but im not sure if they need the assitance of the CPu or if they do it all in the Video editing hardware.sounds very exciting this new Rumors from the Inquirer . :)

btw.. this program [showshifter] Rocks!!!
http://www.showshifter.com/support/screenshots/screens.htm
if you have an ALL in WONDER or another video capture card dont miss it.

[Razor04]

Originally posted by sxotty
It is just fanatics being silly.

As I already stated no one cares much about mpeg decoding as a 400Mhz processor has no problem accomplishing it. Encoding is the only thing that is actually valuable. I have an 9800pro like it says and I sure haven't been able to get it to encode things in hardware.
You aren't looking at this from the right aspect... 400 MHz may be fine for DVDs but it isn't going to cut it for anything else. We can already see MPEG-4 needing about a 1.5 GHz processor if it uses advanced features (B-Frames, GMC and Q-Pel) and this will only increase as the resolutions grow from sub-DVD to higher than DVD and eventually HDTV resolutions. A HDTV resolution clip in MPEG-4 requires in excess of 2 GHz without any advanced features. WMV9 requires similiar amounts of processing power for HDTV resolutions. MPEG-2 at those resolutions isn't quite so bad...but it is a completely different situation with regards to the internal workings.

The PC is going to undergo a transition to being even more of a media hub in the next few years with some really interesting things being rolled out. Hardware implementations will be key to achieving this. Most of the Media PCs that will be put together will use decent processors and graphics chips, but if they can offset work to a hardware solution that frees up resources to do other things at the same time. My main point is that for DVD sure there isn't a huge need for hardware solutions, but for the up and coming applications hardware is a nice thing to have. Also typically you can get higher quality from a hardware solution than a software one but that depends on how it is engineered and what features are available.

[Razor04]

Originally posted by Nv40
the hardware decoding capabilities in ATI cards only helps in someway while your are Watching mpeg videos, if you have a fast machine ,hardware encoding is not even neccesary. however when it comes to ->ENCODING! here even the fastest INTEL processor is not enough to handle all the quality possible in Mepg or Divx when you use COmpression. -far from that-.

i have a Pinnacle TV/video capture card at the best quality i can get in near_real time in my ATlon 1900+ in MPeg2 is 480x480 :( ,if i switch to 640x480 ,i see everything in slide showmode. in forums P4 users with 3ghz usually record at -real time- in 320x resolution ,if the NV40 is a true encode/decode hardware card ,it should be able to record your favorite programs or movies in HDTV (high definitionTv ..beyond 720x res. up to 16xx )in MPEG2 ,while at the same time playing a game. :)

a gaming card that ENcode/DEcode in hardware ,not just assitance, but 100% ,is a major revolution.. only proffesionall expensive VIdeo hardware can match that ,but im not sure if they need the assitance of the CPu or if they do it all in the Video editing hardware.sounds very exciting this new Rumors from the Inquirer . :)
Wow you read way way way too much into that BS Inquirer article. There is no way that the engine (if true) will be powerful enough to do half the things you said. Your whole argument about Intel is complete BS. You have the HDTV resolutions wrong (only 1280X720P and 1920X1080I are HDTV) and don't seem to understand that capping a crappy res show at ultra high resolutions won't fix its crappiness.

HDTV captures just capture the MPEG-2 TS and save it to disk...there is no re-encoding as it just doesn't make sense to do so. There never will be any real time re-encoding (of HDTV) cause of this. As I said before you have read into the article way too much and are expecting something that just isn't feasible.

And about the hardware capabilities of the R3XX and MPEG-2 Encoding...

"RADEON 9700 supports in hardware both MPEG-2 encode and decode, enabling high-quality accelerated video capture and playback."
www.ati.com/companyinfo/press/2002/4512.html

The whole problem with regards to actually using this feature is the interface to the hardware. NV is going to run into the exact same problem as ATI in this arena. DirectX VA is the only way to access these features somewhat easily (and even then the MS documentation is horrible) but I don't know of very many codecs that are based purely in DirectX. This whole thing has been blown completely out of proportion by the Inquirer. If they had posted the same article but changed all the NVs to ATI most likely no one would have mentioned it. Just wait and see what happens...I can pretty much guarantee it (the encoding stuff) won't be anything like you or most others expect.

EDIT: The article posted below is a nice overview of ATI's hardware decoding features. It is sort of old (the infamous 400 MHz CPU makes and appearence) but everything with regards to MPEG-2 hardware decoding features is there.

www.ati.com/developer/atirdv.pdf