CUDA video encoding/trancoding with GF100

[nitromullet]

I tried doing some CUDA encoding with Badaboom, and this apparently does not support GF100 based gpus yet. http://www.badaboomit.com/node/507

So, I figured I'd find out what Anand used to bench gpu encoding in his GTX 580 review, which led me to MediaExpresso 6. MediaEspresso works, and it is a little bit quicker than straight cpu encoding. It's only about 1.5x quicker though, which is nothing like what I was expecting.

I also checked out the cpu and gpu usage during encoding. It's ~40% on the cpu (all four cores) and ~18% on the gpu (2D clocks) compared to ~98 cpu and ~1% gpu during cpu encoding. FWIW, for cpu encoding I'm either using TVersity or the encoder included with Vuze so I can encode/transcode and stream to my Xbox.

It doesn't really look like the GTX 580 is working very hard, so I'm assuming there is more headroom here that is not being taken advantage of. There aren't a whole lot of settings in MediaEspresso, just two tick boxes for "hardware acceleration", both of which are checked.

Is this the best current CUDA encoding option, or is there something better?

 

[3DVagabond]

After reading Hardware heaven's review of the "Gainward GTX 570 GLH", where they use Badaboom in the review, I asked if Badaboom now supported Fermi. Two Admins answered my posts. You can read the exchange here.

http://www.hardwareheaven.com/hardware-reviews/206718-gainward-gtx-570-glh-review-hh.html

Basically, they danced around the subject of Badaboom compatibility with Fermi cards. They did mention that, "there are some manual configuration steps required". Maybe you could ask them what it was they had to do to make Badaboom work. They also say that they have no idea where they got the version of Badaboom they used for the review. They admit to the possibility that it was from nVidia, which I had heard were supplying a version of Badaboom that worked with Fermi, but that it was a special version not available to consumers.

Personally, I don't think reviewers should do benches, supposedly showing how superior a product is at something, when it doesn't work for consumers on the commercially available product.

 

[Lonyo]

Hi all--please check out the Badaboom blog for news and we will give more information next week:

http://badaboomit.com/blog

(Posted on the 30th December @ http://www.badaboomit.com/node/522)

Hello all,

As Q4 ends, we've got some so-so news for you: Badaboom is still coming, but not in the next two days. Yes, we have missed our target release period of Q4, but there have been some big changes made in the application, and this has pushed out the general release, which is now February 2011. Some of you have seen the demo version of Badaboom running on the NVIDIA Fermi GPUs (i.e. GeForce 400s, 500s, etc...) many months ago, but that's exactly what it was: a demo version. Our company's focus on our enterprise product line has not changed, and Badaboom has felt the effects of it. That said, we are excited about the version of Badaboom that is coming in February!

In terms of the big changes mentioned earlier in the post, including new features, these will be further detailed when we can discuss them next week. Thank you so much for your patience--we know it has not been easy.

(http://www.badaboomit.com/node/525)

So if you want Badaboom, you have another month or two at least to wait. After already waiting since March.


For something else, maybe try:
http://www.arcsoft.com/en-us/software_title.asp?ProductCode=AMC7
"Ultra extreme performance with support for NVIDIA® CUDA™ or ATI® Stream™ while encoding"

 

[nitromullet]

Interesting... Thanks for the responses. I would have thought this feature would be more functional at this point.

 

[Zstream]

It's pure bs in my mind. I bought my 460 based off of two reviews that had badaboom in it. I am pissed off!!!!

/rant

 

[nitromullet]

I went ahead and gave ArcSoft MediaConverter a shot as well. When it detects a CUDA gpu it has a checkbox to enable gpu usage, which wasn't present for me. There was 1% gpu usage during encoding.

So far, it seems that only MediaExpresso 6 is actually using the gpu.

 

[Genx87]

I used Expresso 6 a few weeks ago to transcode blue ray movies. My 470 was able to perform this in just about an hour compared to over 6 for my E8400@3.6Ghz using ripbot264. My problem was getting the correct audio stream. It appears media players will default to the first decodable stream. Usually spanish it seems on blueray. So I need something to transcode the correct audio. I am such a nub at this and have been using ripbot 264. Mediaexpresso didnt seem to have the option to pick which audio stream to default.

But the result were like night and day. When using my GTX 470 it took 1/6th the time to perform the same workload.

 

[Lonyo]

I used Expresso 6 a few weeks ago to transcode blue ray movies. My 470 was able to perform this in just about an hour compared to over 6 for my E8400@3.6Ghz using ripbot264. My problem was getting the correct audio stream. It appears media players will default to the first decodable stream. Usually spanish it seems on blueray. So I need something to transcode the correct audio. I am such a nub at this and have been using ripbot 264. Mediaexpresso didnt seem to have the option to pick which audio stream to default.

But the result were like night and day. When using my GTX 470 it took 1/6th the time to perform the same workload.

Comparing Expresso 6 to something that's not Expresso 6 isn't "the same workload".
Try doing it on your CPU in Espresso 6.
Most of these accelerated transcoders seem to be more of a quick and dirty design.
The Sandy Bridge article shows the actual results of Arcsoft, and using CUDA it's fairly fast, but the quality is terrible. Not sure about Expresso, but comparing almost any of these no option click one button transcoders to another program which aims for quality not speed is silly.

 

[Zstream]

Hmm, I just tried the mediaespresso and it uses 90% CPU and takes over a minute to do an Iphone video 14mb. Something doesnt seem right...

 

[rolodomo]

I have both Cyberlink Mediaexpresso and PowerDVD 10. PowerDVD gets more support from Cyberlink in terms of Cuda support. It has many more CUDA supported transcodes and the GPU usage (on my 480) are higher. As someone recentlly mentioned on this forum though, if you start adding specialized filters and such CUDA support will drop out.

Probably the same deal with ATI Stream.

Cyberlink just recently modified MEdiaexpresso to version 6.5 to support Quicksync, which was then featured prominently in the Sandbridge reviews. Intel probably threw some money at them (good for Cyberlink).

 

[WelshBloke]

I have both Cyberlink Mediaexpresso and PowerDVD 10. PowerDVD gets more support from Cyberlink in terms of Cuda support. It has many more CUDA supported transcodes and the GPU usage (on my 480) are higher. As someone recentlly mentioned on this forum though, if you start adding specialized filters and such CUDA support will drop out.

Probably the same deal with ATI Stream.

Cyberlink just recently modified MEdiaexpresso to version 6.5 to support Quicksync, which was then featured prominently in the Sandbridge reviews. Intel probably threw some money at them (good for Cyberlink).

This is why SB is probably going to be a success. Intel has lots of cash and some very talented coders.

NV/AMD have been messing around these subjects for too long, I was browsing the forum earlier and came across the one about the 6800 video processor and I thought that they are both still half-arsing it.