Badaboom: A Full Test of Elemental's GPU Accelerated H.264 Transcoder
by Anand Lal Shimpi on August 18, 2008 12:00 AM EST- Posted in
- GPUs
Image Quality
Given that one of the best H.264 codecs is actually open source (x264) the image quality target is clear, and free. There are a number of front ends that use x264, I chose Handbrake as it was the most Badaboom-like in its interface but the x264 codec itself is doing all of the work.
The Handbrake interface is very much like Badaboom’s, except no where nearly as polished. I compared encode quality on a single-pass of the x264 codec to the output from Badaboom using a couple of settings (5Mbps Xbox 360 profile and 1.5Mbps iPhone profile). The image below is taken using a single-pass encode from the x264 codec, hold your mouse over the image to see what Badaboom's encoder can output. Forgive the lack of a pixel-perfect comparison, as I mentioned before Badaboom always seemed to muck with my aspect ratio whenever I was up or downscaling.:
Hold mouse over image to see Badaboom's Image Quality
Hold mouse over image to see Badaboom's Image Quality
The Badaboom output quality is definitely lower than what x264 was able to produce, but it's close enough for our purposes. Since Badaboom can't really deal with Blu-ray content right now preserving maximum quality isn't a top priority for the application, thus the outputted video is close enough to what x264 was able to produce. Let it be very clear though: in motion the x264 codec did output a superior image.
Hold mouse over image to see Badaboom's Image Quality
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Staples - Monday, August 18, 2008 - link
From the introMedical imaging and scientific analysis benefitted tremendously from GPU acceleration, but it's rare that you are a gamer with a $400 GPU is going to be searching for oil deposits in his/her spare time on the same machine.
Dobs - Tuesday, August 19, 2008 - link
Perhaps you can help me understand what Medical Imaging has to do with searching for oil deposits?Staples - Monday, August 18, 2008 - link
Or maybe that should be:a typical gamer
Probably the latter.
Doormat - Monday, August 18, 2008 - link
"I want a CUDA enabled version of x264"Amen to that. Plus possibly a WPF version of Handbrake to make it look more elegant. I could care less about video preview.
Also, does BadaBoom support reading from ISOs or do I have to mount with DaemonTools?
I have a Q9450 OC'd to 3.2GHz, so I'm pretty happy with my x264 performance. My iPhone movies are usually done in about 3x realtime (90 minute movie in 30 mintues) at 700-900kbit/s, and the PS3/360 movies are done a little bit quicker (since there is no resizing going on, just transcoding).
Anand Lal Shimpi - Tuesday, August 19, 2008 - link
Badaboom doesn't support reading from ISOs, you have to mount with DT.-A
Manabu - Monday, August 18, 2008 - link
>> "I want a CUDA enabled version of x264"It was already tried: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=139158">http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=139158
Dark Shikari (x264 developer) said:
"Given my experience so far in trying to port the motion search to CUDA, and Avail's hiring of a contractor to attempt to do so, I'd put the quote for porting the whole encoder somewhere on the level of a few million dollars... if you can even find people willing and able to do it."
"GPU encoding has a lot of potential, but it has a lot of weaknesses too. Its a bit like programming for a Cell or an FPGA, except exponentially more of a nightmare."
EvilBob - Monday, August 18, 2008 - link
page 6 appears to have the wrong figure - according to the text, it should show energy use information, but the table currently rendering shows the badaboom regular v. pro comparison.sideshow23bob - Monday, August 18, 2008 - link
Isn't the product name Badaboom maybe a Fifth Element reference considering the company has the name Elemental in its name. Just a guess. If that's the case it's slightly cooler.