H.264 encoding

[entropy1982]

What exactly is H.264 encoding?

Will I not need a tv tuner in my comp if I have one of the new ATI cards? (i'm not sure what this AVIVO thing is that's why i'm asking)

 

[mooncancook]

Originally posted by: entropy1982
What exactly is H.264 encoding?

Will I not need a tv tuner in my comp if I have one of the new ATI cards? (i'm not sure what this AVIVO thing is that's why i'm asking)

I guess it's just like mpeg2 encoding, while mepg2 is for standard dvd, H264 is for HD content. Anyway a 1080p H264 trailer utilize mroe than 60% of CPU in my AMD x2 system, so I bet encoding will be super cpu intensive, so if ATI can provider some hardware acceleration for H264 ecoding that'll be great

 

[xtknight]

H.264 delivers twice the quality as MPEG-2 can at the same bitrate. Either can be used for HD (or anything), it's just a matter of which is a better choice. H.264 is a better (which almost always means more complex) compression algorithm, of which the complexity makes it more CPU intensive. Most tuners I know of won't accelerate H.264 anyway. AVIVO so far is the only thing I've heard of to accelerate H.264 for a PC.

 

[obeseotron]

It has absolutely nothing to do with TV tuners. MPEG4 H.264 is the new standard in video compression, replacing MPEG2. MPEG2 is used on DVDs and to transmit most digital television, but it is very inefficient compred to any more modern codec like divx, xvid, wmv, etc. It allows for higher quality at lower bandwidth but takes a lot more processing power, so much that even an FX57 won't run Apple's high def trailers that are in H.264, though that's probably because of quicktime being terrible for windows. Putting it on the video card is natural to offload a lot of the work from the CPU the same way cards offloaded DVD decoding when it was an intensive task for PCs.

 

[gsellis]

Originally posted by: obeseotron
It has absolutely nothing to do with TV tuners. MPEG4 H.264 is the new standard in video compression, replacing MPEG2. MPEG2 is used on DVDs and to transmit most digital television, but it is very inefficient compred to any more modern codec like divx, xvid, wmv, etc. It allows for higher quality at lower bandwidth but takes a lot more processing power, so much that even an FX57 won't run Apple's high def trailers that are in H.264, though that's probably because of quicktime being terrible for windows. Putting it on the video card is natural to offload a lot of the work from the CPU the same way cards offloaded DVD decoding when it was an intensive task for PCs.

Just a minor correction. H.264 is an alternative to MPEG2. MPEG-2 still lives as a HD alternative along with WMV-HD. All three are supported for Hi Def on both Blu-Ray and HD-DVD.

 

[entropy1982]

should it influence my buying decision (nvidia vs ati) or......

 

[Wreckage]

Both NVIDIA and ATI will be providing H.264 decoding. Neither has mentioned any support for encoding.

 

[tuteja1986]

Originally posted by: Wreckage
Both NVIDIA and ATI will be providing H.264 decoding. Neither has mentioned any support for encoding.

last time i checked , ATI was bragging about H.624 so your statment is wrong about "Neither has mentioned any support for encoding". Nvidia also mentioned that they will support H.264 encoding with a driver update later on this year.

 

[lifeguard1999]

H.264

 

[Wreckage]

Originally posted by: tuteja1986

Originally posted by: Wreckage
Both NVIDIA and ATI will be providing H.264 decoding. Neither has mentioned any support for encoding.

last time i checked , ATI was bragging about H.624 so your statment is wrong about "Neither has mentioned any support for encoding". Nvidia also mentioned that they will support H.264 encoding with a driver update later on this year.

You need to learn the difference between encoding and decoding.

 

[obeseotron]

I understand MPEG2 is still being supported, but I'd imagine in the same way DVD players supported MPEG1.

Yeah I'm sure nVidia's driver is coming the same way PureVideo on my 6800GT was going to be enabled with an update. I could be wrong though.

I don't think it's a huge deal unless you really forsee being a very early adopter of one of the new disc formats and then watching them on your PC. It's a nice feature and all, definitely a plus, but HD-DVD and Blu-Ray PC drives are a while off and content maybe even further. Ask how long you really plan to keep the card.

 

[Traire]

Originally posted by: Wreckage

Originally posted by: tuteja1986

Originally posted by: Wreckage
Both NVIDIA and ATI will be providing H.264 decoding. Neither has mentioned any support for encoding.

last time i checked , ATI was bragging about H.624 so your statment is wrong about "Neither has mentioned any support for encoding". Nvidia also mentioned that they will support H.264 encoding with a driver update later on this year.

You need to learn the difference between encoding and decoding.

I think he knows perfectly well what the difference is. Check out Anandtechs Avivo article. Page 3 is about ATi supporting hardware assisted transcoding of H.264, VC-1, WMV9, WMV9 PMC, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, and DivX. Transcoding is, of course, combined decoding of the original video and encoding into the new format, in case you didnt know what transcoding was.

 

[Vernor]

Of course, the most HD content out there is in Xvid...

 

[eelw]

Originally posted by: Vernor
Of course, the most HD content out there is in Xvid...

Wrong. Easily over half the HD content available on the Internet is in transport stream/MPEG2 format. And AVC/h.264 HD content is increasing everyday.

 

[rbV5]

Originally posted by: Traire

Originally posted by: Wreckage

Originally posted by: tuteja1986

Originally posted by: Wreckage
Both NVIDIA and ATI will be providing H.264 decoding. Neither has mentioned any support for encoding.

last time i checked , ATI was bragging about H.624 so your statment is wrong about "Neither has mentioned any support for encoding". Nvidia also mentioned that they will support H.264 encoding with a driver update later on this year.

You need to learn the difference between encoding and decoding.

I think he knows perfectly well what the difference is. Check out Anandtechs Avivo article. Page 3 is about ATi supporting hardware assisted transcoding of H.264, VC-1, WMV9, WMV9 PMC, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, and DivX. Transcoding is, of course, combined decoding of the original video and encoding into the new format, in case you didnt know what transcoding was.

Nvidia promoted H264 encoding support with Purevideo since april 04, and now ATI with AVIVO.

None of it matters at all untill its enabled and working, so far its not.