ATI's Avivo Update - H.264 Acceleration & a Special Downloadable Surprise
by Anand Lal Shimpi on December 16, 2005 3:09 PM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
ATI's Gift to X1000 Owners - Get the Avivo Video Converter, Today!
Last year, ATI was busy launching a bunch of cards that didn't make it to stores in time for the holidays, but thanks to the Avivo team, things are working a little different this time around. ATI has given us permission to distribute the beta Avivo Video Converter to our readers today under one condition - that we make it very clear that this converter is not supported by ATI, so don't complain if things don't work perfectly.
Despite that warning from ATI, we had fewer problems with the Avivo Video Converter than we did with the beta H.264 decoder - it's actually in amazingly good shape for unsupported, pre-release software.
The download is approximately 2.3MB zipped and you can get it here. Feel free to distribute it as you would like. Remember, it only works on ATI Radeon X1000 cards, but who knows - some of our more creative users may be able to find ways around that.
The other item we didn't touch on that makes its appearance in the Catalyst 5.13 drivers is significantly improved video playback quality. ATI didn't have all of their Avivo ducks in a row when the X1000 series launched, but with Catalyst 5.13 they are looking to improve a number of the issues we noted in our first Avivo video quality article. We will be working on a follow-up to that piece in the near future to take a look at exactly what Catalyst 5.13 brings us in terms of video quality.
Last year, ATI was busy launching a bunch of cards that didn't make it to stores in time for the holidays, but thanks to the Avivo team, things are working a little different this time around. ATI has given us permission to distribute the beta Avivo Video Converter to our readers today under one condition - that we make it very clear that this converter is not supported by ATI, so don't complain if things don't work perfectly.
Despite that warning from ATI, we had fewer problems with the Avivo Video Converter than we did with the beta H.264 decoder - it's actually in amazingly good shape for unsupported, pre-release software.
The download is approximately 2.3MB zipped and you can get it here. Feel free to distribute it as you would like. Remember, it only works on ATI Radeon X1000 cards, but who knows - some of our more creative users may be able to find ways around that.
The other item we didn't touch on that makes its appearance in the Catalyst 5.13 drivers is significantly improved video playback quality. ATI didn't have all of their Avivo ducks in a row when the X1000 series launched, but with Catalyst 5.13 they are looking to improve a number of the issues we noted in our first Avivo video quality article. We will be working on a follow-up to that piece in the near future to take a look at exactly what Catalyst 5.13 brings us in terms of video quality.
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ShadowVlican - Friday, December 16, 2005 - link
how bout a review on the quality of the transcoded files? we all know that all encoders are not equal, that is why some mpeg2 encoders cost more than my carmongoosesRawesome - Saturday, December 17, 2005 - link
yea, i agree. speed is all well and good, but if the output sucks then why bother?JustAnAverageGuy - Friday, December 16, 2005 - link
Read the article.
PrinceGaz - Friday, December 16, 2005 - link
He's talking about ENcoding quality for transcoding purposes, not playback quality.If a test is done on MPEG2 encoding quality, I would suggest using CCE SP as the comparison encoder as it is generally considered the best available (though it is a touch expensive to purchase).
tfranzese - Monday, December 19, 2005 - link
Read a different article then. AT isn't the only place to cover this (FiringSquad had some IQ coverage).Andyvan - Friday, December 16, 2005 - link
I'm wondering if you have both a cheap ATI card and an NVIDIA card installed in your computer, whether you would be allowed to run the converter.-- Andyvan
Rys - Friday, December 16, 2005 - link
Yes, as long as one of the boards is an X1K, the transcoding tool will run. I currently have a GeForce 7800 GTX as my primary board, and an X1800 XL as the secondary one. The new driver, decoder and transcoding tool all run fine.synic - Friday, December 16, 2005 - link
read the article, it says X1000 or greater onlyAraemo - Friday, December 16, 2005 - link
"we will look at other performance comparisons upon request from you all"Just one: Compare DVD->Divx against AutoGK(Using the official Divx.com codec?) Does the ATI tool even support ripping from an actual DVD(Or decrypted DVD files) to another format? I am curious.
fnord123 - Friday, December 16, 2005 - link
Please compare against the Microsoft Windows Media Encoder (http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/9ser...">http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/9ser.... A lot of Media Center Extender and XBox 360 people are using it to recode their .avi files to .wmv (Divx isn't supported by 360/MCExtenders). It is a slow process so if the ATI accelerator speeds it up they will have a bunch of buyers!