ATI Avivo
 | |
| Developer(s) | ATI |
|---|---|
| Initial release | 2005 |
| Website | ati |
ATI Avivois a set of hardware and low level software features present on theATI Radeon R520family ofGPUsand all later ATI Radeon products. ATI Avivo was designed to offloadvideo decoding,encoding,andpost-processingfrom a computer'sCPUto a compatible GPU. ATI Avivo compatible GPUs have lower CPU usage when a player and decoder software that support ATI Avivo is used. ATI Avivo has been long superseded byUnified Video Decoder(UVD) andVideo Coding Engine(VCE).
Background
[edit]The GPU wars betweenATIandNVIDIAhave resulted inGPUswith ever-increasing processing power since early 2000s. To parallel this increase in speed and power, both GPU makers needed to increase video quality as well, in 3D graphics applications the focus in increasing quality has mainly fallen onanti-aliasingandanisotropic filtering.[citation needed]However it has dawned upon both companies that video quality on the PC would need improvement as well and the current APIs provided by both companies have not seen many improvements over a few generations of GPUs.[citation needed]Therefore, ATI decided to revamp its GPU's video processing capability with ATI Avivo, in order to compete with NVIDIA PureVideo API.[citation needed]
In the time of release of the latest generationRadeon HDseries, the successor, the ATI Avivo HD was announced, and was presented on every Radeon HD 2600 and 2400video cardsto be available July, 2007 after NVIDIA announced similar hardware acceleration solution,PureVideo HD.
In 2011 Avivo is renamed toAMD Media Codec Package,[1]an optional component of theAMD Catalystsoftware. The last version is released in August 2012.[2]As of 2013, the package is no longer offered by AMD.
Features
[edit]ATI Avivo
[edit]During capturing, ATI Avivo amplifies the source, automatically adjust its brightness and contrast. ATI Avivo implements 12-bit transform to reduce data loss during conversion; it also utilizes motion adaptive 3D comb filter, automatic color control, automatic gain control, hardware noise reduction and edge enhancement technologies for better video playback quality.
In decoding, the GPU core supports hardware decoding of H.264, VC-1, WMV9, and MPEG-2 videos to lower CPU utilization (the bitstream processing/entropy decoding still requires CPU processing). ATI Avivo supports vector adaptivede-interlacingand video scaling to reducejaggies,and spatial/temporal dithering, which attempts to simulate 10-bit color quality on 8-bit and 6-bit displays during process stage.
ATI Avivo HD
[edit]The successor of ATI Avivo is the ATI Avivo HD, which consists of several parts: integrated 5.1 surround sound HDMI audio controller, dual integratedHDCPencryption keyfor each DVI port (to reduce license costs), the Theater 200 chip forVIVOcapabilities, theXilleonchip for TVoverscanandunderscancorrection, the Theater 200 chip as well as the originally-presentedATI Avivo Video Converter.
However, most of the important hardware decoding functions of ATI Avivo HD are provided by the accompaniedUnified Video Decoder(UVD) and the Advanced Video Processor (AVP) which supports hardware decoding ofH.264/AVC andVC-1videos (and included bitstream processing/entropy decoding which was absent in last generation ATI Avivo). ForMPEG-1,MPEG-2,andMPEG-4/DivXvideos, motion compensation and iDCT (inverse discrete cosine transform) will be done instead.
The AVP retrieves the video from memory; handles scaling, de-interlacing andcolour correction;and writes it back to memory. The AVP also uses 12-bit transform to reduce data loss during conversion, same as previous generation ATI Avivo.
HDMIsupports the transfer of video together with 8-channel 96 kHz 24-bit digital audio (and optionally Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD Master Audio streams for external decoding by AV receivers, since HDMI 1.3). Integration of an audio controller in the GPU core capable of surround sound output eliminates the need forS/PDIFconnection frommotherboardorsound cardto the video card, for synchronous video and audio output via HDMI cable.
TheRadeon HD 2900 serieslacked theUVDfeature, but still was given the ATI Avivo HD label.
ATI Avivo Video Converter
[edit]ATI has also released a transcoder software dubbed "ATI Avivo Video Converter", which supports transcoding between H.264, VC-1,WMV9, WMV9PMC,MPEG-2,MPEG-4,DivXvideo formats, as well as formats used iniPodandPSP.Earlier versions of this software uses only the CPU for transcoding, but have been locked for exclusive use with the ATIX1000 seriesof GPUs. Software modifications have made it possible to use version 1.12 of converter on a wider range of graphics adapters.[3]The ATI Avivo Video Converter forWindows Vistawas available with the release of Catalyst 7.9 (September 2007 release, version 8.411).
The ATI Avivo Video Converter with GPU transcoding acceleration is now also available for use with HD 4800 and HD 4600 series graphics cards and is included with the Catalyst 8.12 drivers. Support for Vista x64 is available via a separate download starting with Catalyst 9.6 (9-6_vista32-64_xcode). The new software is faster than Badaboom, an encoder that uses NVIDIA'sCUDAto accelerate encoding, but has a higher CPU utilization than Badaboom. One review reported visual problems with iPod and WMV playback using Catalyst version 8.12, and although concluding there was no clear winners, if forced to choose would go with the Avivo converter.[4]
Software support
[edit]- ArcSoft TotalMedia Theatre
- Corel WinDVD
- Media Player Classic Home Cinema
- MediaPortal
- Cyberlink PowerDVD
- MicrosoftWindows VistainternalMPEG-2decoder
- Nero
- AllLinuxplayers supportingXvoutput (withAMD Catalyst9.1 or newer)
See also
[edit]- Unified Video Decoder(UVD)
- Video Coding Engine(VCE)
References
[edit]- ^"AMD Technology Glossary".AMD.Retrieved2013-11-01.
- ^"Previous AMD Display Drivers".AMD.Retrieved2013-11-01.
- ^"Rage3D thread".Archived fromthe originalon 2016-03-03.Retrieved2007-04-13.
- ^"PC Perspective - Battle of GPU Transcoders: ATI Avivo Converter and NVIDIA Elemental Badaboom".Archived fromthe originalon 2008-12-16.Retrieved2009-01-20.