Avivo Video Converter Application
The third piece of what's about to become available is the Avivo Video Convertor application, which uses the conversion engine in ATI's own Multimedia Centre, codename Cobra, to accelerate the transcode of video (anything that can be fed in via a DirectShow filter) in a standalone application. The Video Converter application is entirely CPU-bound at the moment, not using any of the graphics hardware, X1K or otherwise, to transcode. Early versions were unlocked and ran on any CPU with any GPU present, however the version ATI will present shortly is locked to systems with a Radeon X1000-series graphics board installed, due to the hardware-specific stuff they'll add in the future.
It's a very simple application that only offers you options to choose an input file, output a file into a user selectable directory, and the video format you want to transcode to. The formats it supports are numerous, but don't let that fool you into thinking the application can do much else other than convert, since there's no options for video scaling, cropping or other video conversion basics that you'll find in a multitude of other free applications. The Video Converter application's main forte is its speed. Here are the formats it supports, with MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 missing from the list but also supported.
With the exception of the Sony PSP and Apple iPod profiles, the converter won't scale the input video, keeping the same resolution throughout. For the PSP and iPod it'll scale (mostly) to the fixed pixel array of those devices. For most video formats the only user adjustable option is the output video bitrate.
It doesn't support H.264 AVC for the Sony PSP, only does 1-pass encoding and only scales to 320x192 for that device, which results in fairly disgusting looking video, but it is quick. Our test pits the Video Converter versus PSP Video 9, a freely available CPU-based transcoder for outputting PSP-compatible H.264 video, including AVC.
Given the limitations of the Converter, we have it use the same 320x192 output resolution from our 41m 40s minute input video in XviD format (an episode of Alias at 624x352 original resolution), at the same constant 768kbit/sec bitrate and the same single pass. Output from both is equivalent.
Video Converter Performance
Performance is incredible, and it's not just limited to outputting scaled video for the PSP, too. Performance with almost all other formats will show the same kinds of speedups (6.6x here, and HEXUS have seen 9x from different input video into PSP format), especially if the Cobra engine doesn't have to scale your video.
The surprising thing is still that it's CPU-only. When ATI start accelerating Cobra using the GPU, things will get even quicker and quality can jump up more freely. And instead of relying on the horrible user interface and limited control of their own application, users will be able to find the Cobra transcode engine, originally from MMC, inside of other popular applications. ATI are loathe to name names at this point, but it's not too hard to guess who the popular video converter software vendors are and go from there.
Which is a good thing, since apart from the speed the application, in its current state, has little going for it. There's no support for AVC (that's coming in the new year, apparently), no support for 2-pass encoding of H.264, or better resolution for the PSP at the moment (may or may not be added, no confirmation as yet), and many other quality adjustments you'd like to make for good looking video. It's a speed demo at best right now, and I wouldn't rely on it except for getting a video processed in an absolute hurry, since the tradeoffs for quality aren't acceptable, at least to this reviewer.
