We have largely become a desensitized society. We have a phenomenal amount of advertisements and product hype blasted into our ears and our eyes on a daily basis, promising that Product X is the latest and greatest thing…ever! As reality usually turns out though, these promises are little more marketing gurus’ exuberance in doing their job. The computer hardware industry is simply awash with this kind of marketing spiel:
Nvidia’s SLI was to be the greatest thing ever; No, wait! ATI’s CrossFire is the greatest ever; No, wait! The Ageia phys-X processor will change your gaming; No, wait! The Killer NIC is the answer to your dreams; No, wait! Both AMD and Intel will put graphics into their future CPU’s, thus changing the way we live!! Yawn…ho hum…. We’ve heard it all before.
But every now and then, something comes along that is truly unique. So unique, that it actually lives up to the hype. But this is so irregular, that the marketing-types are unused to it; and since they all know the standard drill about shouting at the top of their lungs for one week about the next great thing, and then moving on to something else, they forget about the product they weren’t lying about. In this case, it is Avivo, from ATI/AMD.
Here’s the gist of Avivo, according to ATI,
ATI Avivo™ is the new reference for advanced imaging and video. Integrated into ATI’s latest generation of graphics and TV tuner products, ATI Avivo delivers PVR, HDTV and next-generation HD disc capabilities with vibrant, sharp images, and the smoothest video playback ever offered by ATI. ATI Avivo also enables universal, professional-quality connectivity for TVs and displays, ensuring the ultimate entertainment experience on your PC.
Well, we can see that the marketing folks have followed their standard playbook by promising, “The ultimate entertainment experience…” And with every Radeon X1000 series product, Avivo is mentioned because it comes included in the hardware, but what does it really do? It seems like just a fancy name for hardware video acceleration, which has been around for an entire decade.
Honestly, since the time the Radeon X1800 series came out until recently, I didn’t pay any attention either. The only reason my interest was piqued, was that I was searching ATI’s knowledge base to troubleshoot some VIVO issues on my X1800XL, and because of the similarities in the words (which I think is unfortunate because I know it causes confusion) I saw some knowledge-base articles on how to use the Avivo Converter utility.
Now, this sounded interesting! It turns out that Avivo is not just a video decoder, but an encoder as well. To anybody who frequently does video conversions, and especially to anybody who has an iPod, Palm, PocketPC, or other handheld device, and likes to watch video on-the-go, you should pay serious attention. Again, here’s what ATI says about the Avivo Converter:
ATI’s new Avivo Video Converter is the fast and easy way to transform your videos to play on today’s new breed of portable entertainment devices. The Avivo Video Converter is a “transcoder,” a tool that converts digital video from one file format to another, enabling the same video clip to play on industry standard home DVD/DivX® players, PC’s or portable media devices such as the Apple® iPod®, Sony® portable gaming device, Creative® Zen™ and many others.
The Avivo Video Converter greatly simplifies the process of converting videos from one format to another. A wizard found within Catalyst Control Center enables even a novice user to quickly and easily transcode their videos. Simply select the input file format, the output format and quality level, and file location for the new transcoded video files—the Avivo Video Converter does the rest.
The Avivo Video Converter accepts almost any video file format as a source, and outputs to many different file formats including MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4/DivX, WMV, H.264/AVC™*, and more. Compared to conventional conversion file methods, the Avivo Video Converter cuts total transcoding time by up to 80%, making it the new benchmark for high performance transcoding.
|
||||||||||||||
This talks about something I do practically on a daily basis. I have a Tapwave Zodiac, which uses the Palm 5 OS, has an ATI Imageon graphics processor, and it plays video beautifully. I play movies ripped from DVD, videos I’ve found on the internet, kids’ TV shows for my little boy, it’s wonderful. But, I have to go through a time-consuming process of converting all this stuff to usable files. The cool thing about Avivo, is that it dramatically cuts down the time it takes to process all this video. It still uses CPU cycles, but gets done in about half the time. Literally. I’m not kidding. I transcoded The Matrix in about 45 minutes to DivX in high quality, while the same job took about 2 hours using my previous favorite method.
You can take practically any video file whether it’s VOB, WMA, MPG, AVI, etc. and change it over to a file in MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4 (DivX/Xvid), WMA, iPod, or PSP, and others. The directions are simple, but you won’t know the capability is even there unless you go looking for it.
Unfortunately, there are no detailed settings for important parameters like bitrate, resolution, or audio quality. There also is no option to batch encode multiple files at once, or join seperate video files… you’ll have to do all of your pre-editing prior to this conversion. It may be possible to use this with a frame server, so you could hardware-encode files from video editors like Adobe Premiere, but would require some third-party software.
In any case, if you have one of the Radeon X1000 series graphics cards you should absolutely give Avivo a try. It is a fun, practical, and genuine technology that really can revolutionize the way you do video.
Next is a step-by-step process on how to convert a video using ATI’s AVIVO.
The ATI AVIVO Video converter only works with the latest ATI video cards. It supports the X1300, X1600, X1800 and X1900 series of cards. Below is a step-by-step process on transcoding any video file to another format using ATI’s GPU for hardware processing. You’ll need to be sure you have the “Complete Avivo Suite for X1000 series products” installed.
Please note though, it seems at this time the Avivo Converter is only available for WindowsXP 32 bit… no Vista, no x86-64, no Linux. It would be very nice if ATI is working on that.
Step 1: Currently, the Avivo Video Converter is available via the Catalyst Control Center – Basic view
To access the Catalyst Control Center – Basic view, do the following:
1. Click “START”
2. Select “Programs->Catalyst Control Center->Advanced->Catalyst Control Center – Basic”
The “What would you like to do?” Dialog box is displayed.
To convert a media file, do the following:
1. Click “Easy Setup Wizards” Tab
2. Select “Avivo Converter”
3. Click “GO”
The Avivo Video Convert – Step 1 dialog box is displayed.
Selecting a media file to convert
To select a media file to convert, do the following:
1. Click the “Select Source…” button.
2. An “Open” file dialog box will open.
3. Locate the file by either browsing to the location using the Look in option or by using the side navigation buttons.
4. Once located, highlight and select the file and then click the “OPEN” button. The input file name is displayed.
5. Click “NEXT”.
You have successfully selected a media file for conversion.
Selecting the Output Video Format
You are now ready to select an output video format. To do this, follow these steps:
1. Using the drop down menu, select the output video format.
2. Once selected, click on NEXT.
The Avivo™ Video Converter progress indicator is displayed.
Once the conversion is complete, the Avivo™ Video Converter – Completed window is displayed along with the converted file name and location.
You have successfully converted a media file to another format.
3 Comment
actualy if you want to play a HD video..use splash pro…it usese you GPU and your cpu won't have to stay on load. For converting yes it doesn't do anything but for streaming :)…it makes a huge diference
seriously…. i tried badaboom its much more better… amd fails again….
AVIVO is pretty much just a gimmick. Never does the GPU play any part in the conversion process–monitor GPU and CPU load, and you'll see that the GPU never shifts from idle, and the CPU is being taxed. The reason the conversion with AVIVO is so quick in comparison to other apps used is that the encoder(s) used are sloppy, and low-quality fast conversion is the preset for the program.