AVIVO Video Converter 重游 by Derek Wilson of anandtech

Edison

Actually, when we attempted to encode the MacGyver clip to "iPod Video" at maximum quality, we ended up with the same extraordinarily poor (or lack of) de-interlacing we saw before.

In fact, only one file we tried to transcode came out with acceptable quality and it still had artifacts. There was color distortion, blur/softening of edges, and blocking artifacts. Source and output were both 1080p, and the only process applied was a transcode from MPEG-2 to H.264.

This is the original video.

This is AVIVO Video Converter's attempt at 1080p H.264

AMD confirmed that movie trailers from Apple do not work with AVIVO Video Converter, but we did also try uncompressed AVI files generated by FRAPS. We wanted to compare using movies recorded from gameplay to if the tool faired any better without having to decode the file on input. In addition, the progressive video wouldn't suffer from deinterlacing artifacts. Or so we thought..

While the AVIVO video converter accepted the file and attempted to transcode it to 1080p H.264. Depending on the codec we used to try and view the file we saw different very distorted output. With one codec output ended up squeezed horizontally. It almost looked as if the output was a sideways 16:9 video (and the math came out close but not quite). Another codec had the right size, but both looked as though they might have de-interlacing artifacts despite the fact that the source was progressive.

Clearly the AVIVO video converter is still not ready.

Enter Cyberlink Espresso
AMD strongly indicated that Cyberlink's PowerDirector and MediaShow Espresso software would better represent the ATI Stream direction and capabilities. We decided to try our hand at Espresso.

MediaShow Espresso is a software conversion tool that is similar to Badaboom in that it's purpose is to transcode video and that it can use GPU hardware acceleration. The big advantage, however, is that it can use either AMD or NVIDIA hardware in the transcode process. Our initial goal was to evaluate transcoding on AMD hardware, but Espresso might have given us a way to grab a peak at how GPU accelerated transcoding might compare between NVIDIA and AMD GPUs. Or at least that's what we had hoped we would find.

We attempted to encode three videos. While our watermellon transcoding worked perfectly fine on the CPU, guess what happened when we took a look at our AMD GPU accelerated output. That's right. Artifacts. Similar to what we saw with AVIVO Video Converter, but less severe. NVIDIA's image quality was much cleaner than the on AMD hardware using Espresso as well. This was encoding to MPEG-4 AVC and maintaining the same resolution from input to output.

This is CPU only, no GPU accelerated transcode

AMD's attempt shows similar image quality degredation

Unlike with AMD hardware, NVIDIA's image quality is clean

The other videos didn't show the mosaic artifacts when using AMD hardware, but some of the blurriness/softness issues were apparent.

Armed with this data, it is clear that transcoding on AMD hardware is not ready for primetime, and thus we decided to par this article down to a quick look rather than an in depth study.

We did do some performance comparisons with Espresso, but it is very important to remember that just because we are using the same application does not mean that these numbers are directly comparable. Based on the differences in the output, it is very clear that when using CPU, NVIDIA or AMD hardware, Espresso is doing fundamentally different things. We are getting different output, and thus the paths are doing different things. One option might have better quality or be faster inherently and performance differences may have nothing at all to do with the capabilities of the hardware.

	Bruno Trailer	MacGyver DVD	Watermellon
Intel Core i7 965	3:53	6:43	0:38
GTX 275	1:56	3:04	0:12
Radeon 4890	2:02	8:41	0:31

Final WordsWe do appreciate AMD adding support for 1080p and 720p H.264 and MPEG-2 output, as before we didn't have the flexibility we have here in terms of up or down scaling and specific encoding format. But that is about the only thing that is improved over the previous version of the software that we can tell. Poor quality conversion and difficulty supporting all the input files we wanted to test are certainly issues.

AVIVO Video Converter also exhibited some issues with transcoding without installing multiple 3rd party codecs. Despite the fact that our system could play all the videos we wanted to test just fine, in order to get the converter to accept them we needed more software (but at least it did work after doing this). Even the more useful MediaShow Espresso software by Cyberlink couldn't provide us with quality output while using AMD hardware to accelerate transcoding.

Rather than harp on it any further, we've just got to cut our losses. AVIVO Video Converter, while free, isn't worth the time it takes to download. MediaShow Espresso might give us an option that will run on any hardware, but ATI Stream based transcoding is simply subpar at this point.

We plan on taking a more indepth look at GPU accelerated transcoding when we can make more objective comparisons and draw more useful conclusions. Right now everything is just too up in the air. We're hoping that the emergence of OpenCL will help to unify the implementations of developers to the point where we can have something that is equivalent (or at least much closer) in output quality in order to better evaluate the capabilities of the hardware when transcoding video.

saga1974

从画面上来看，AMD的AVIVO是完败啊

goldman948

网站收了NV很多钱？！
kc1360 发表于 2009-6-12 13:10

我比较怀疑的是那吃西瓜的小孩其实是n饭

Travis

吃西瓜的小孩是The Way It's Meant to be Played计划的一员，西瓜皮上刻着NVIDIA的LOGO来的。

boa520

这个AVIVO早就是这样了 牺牲画质换来的速度

大草原赶羚羊

我比较怀疑的是那吃西瓜的小孩其实是n饭
goldman948 发表于 2009-6-12 13:24

哈哈哈哈哈

bill_max

纸上谈兵。
今天为转一堆视频（下的电视剧给老妈看），下了AVIVO， 1.xM大小而已。
纯粹cpu转的话，一个224M的视频要半小时左右（E2140@3.2G,4G内存，转为DVD格式），用了AVIVO，时间是3分钟到4分钟之间。。。。。。。画质没得说，够好。
所以，你能体会现在我的心情吗？
让纸上谈兵去死吧。

PS：现在发现有不好的地方了，就是分辨率大小不能调，源是多少转后就是多少，不方便！

jiagm

据大力（【请勿打广告】力）网说这东西在N卡下一样能用
http://is.gd/1D61B

JoshuaChang

avivo n卡也能用，嗯嗯～

zhg9970025

CPU转码还是最好的

stcshy_1

AVIVO Video Converter 是笑话吧？
天下18 发表于 2009-7-22 12:38

我经常用
效果不错，速度很快
你是笑话吧？

rockyband

我经常用
效果不错，速度很快
你是笑话吧？
stcshy_1 发表于 2009-7-22 13:09

全世界只有你一个人用了后效果不错,速度很快...

人家全都是效果较差,速度很快...

你的显卡是什么型号?难道CROSS TIMES了?

kyo1165

k神你的马甲也太明显了吧?amd和你有杀父之仇?