R300 hardware accelerates DivX codec!

[Grall]

Rage3d has coverage of a joint press release and DivX announcing what the subject says. I guess they use the pixel shaders to accomplish whatever it might be they do... They don't state any performance figures, but surely it must be better than nothing.

Interesting...

Wonder if similar codecs will be released for other compression formats? MPEG1-4 would be nice, for example. Maybe some of those are avaliable already?

*G*

 

[Fuz]

Finally! Hardware support for porn movies!

 

[Novdid]

Can you give us a link?

It would be appreiciated!

 

[Ichneumon]

Link

 

[Nagorak]

Is this for compression or decompression, because if it's decompression I don't see the point... Any card with a 9700 is going to have a CPU plenty fast to decompress. Compression might be useful, but not overly so...

 

[OVERLORD]

Finally! Hardware support for porn movies!

Porn nolonger soft!

 

[KimB]

Is this for compression or decompression, because if it's decompression I don't see the point... Any card with a 9700 is going to have a CPU plenty fast to decompress. Compression might be useful, but not overly so...

I would find it useful (as a side note, the GeForce FX should be able to do the same thing). I often watch DIVX movies (ripped from DVD's) while running other tasks in the background (sometimes just Seti@Home, other times encoding another DIVX movie...). I've even played a game while watching a DIVX movie on a TV (Unfortunately I couldn't make 'em both full-screen, but it was good enough...). While the moves tend to play fine, other processing that I'm performing suffers.

And acceleration of DIVX encoding is unlikely. I believe these cards are still very slow at transferring data back to main memory. That and I don't think the floating-point units have enough precision (I always encode using one of the double-precision iDCT's).

Btw, I'm down to 3.5 to 4 hours per data unit when running the command-line version of Seti@Home under Linux. It doesn't seem very long ago when I was sitting around 20 hours per data unit...

 

[Althornin]

Btw, I'm down to 3.5 to 4 hours per data unit when running the command-line version of Seti@Home under Linux. It doesn't seem very long ago when I was sitting around 20 hours per data unit...

bah, SETI.
Why not do something useful with your cpu time, like F@H, rather than a useless search that already has so much extra processor power that they send the same unit out multiple multiple times, because they have nothing else to send?

You may now return to yoru normally scheduled topi:

I agree with chalnoth that decompression is more likely, and more usefull. I also multitask on my PC, and any spare cpu cycle is put to use

 

[breez]

Is it only for 9500/9700 cards or will it work with other cards with FULLSTREAM support (9000, 9100)?

 

[Althornin]

i dont know, i am eagerly awaiting the divx codec which takes advantage of this.

 

[MrB]

It will only be supported by 9500/9700. The 9000/9100 line doesn't have powerful enough pixel shaders to perform the acceleration.

 

[Althornin]

It will only be supported by 9500/9700. The 9000/9100 line doesn't have powerful enough pixel shaders to perform the acceleration.

when is the codec coming out!!!

 

[breez]

Only for 9500/9700 users? 9000/9100 FULLSTREAM support is BS then. It will be useless if nobody supports it. No advance for me flashing my 8500 to 9100...

 

[K.I.L.E.R]

What Chalnoth is trying to say is that you can make a codec that accesses the video cards registers ( it DOES do that right? ) and allows for PS enhanced movies as well on the nV30.

Am I right Chalnoth?

 

[MrB]

Only for 9500/9700 users? 9000/9100 FULLSTREAM support is BS then. It will be useless if nobody supports it. No advance for me flashing my 8500 to 9100...

the only program that supports fullstream for 9000/9100 is Real.

What Chalnoth is trying to say is that you can make a codec that accesses the video cards registers ( it DOES do that right? ) and allows for PS enhanced movies as well on the nV30.

Am I right Chalnoth?

ya nv30 will have the capability as well.

 

[T2k]

Only for 9500/9700 users? 9000/9100 FULLSTREAM support is BS then. It will be useless if nobody supports it. No advance for me flashing my 8500 to 9100...

RealOne can play PLENTY of format - so there is a solid advantage if you'll go w/ 9100...

 

[Althornin]

RealOne can play PLENTY of format - so there is a solid advantage if you'll go w/ 9100...

I wouldnt let the realOne player near my computer.
What a pile of crap.

 

[T2k]

RealOne can play PLENTY of format - so there is a solid advantage if you'll go w/ 9100...

I wouldnt let the realOne player near my computer.
What a pile of crap.

...it was earlier. Now it's useful and not that agressive now...

 

[KimB]

What Chalnoth is trying to say is that you can make a codec that accesses the video cards registers ( it DOES do that right? ) and allows for PS enhanced movies as well on the nV30.

Am I right Chalnoth?

I think the codec itself would probably need to access an API, but if no API support is forthcoming, it is certainly possible to code straight to the metal.