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GPU accelerated trans-coding

O

Oi-Oi-Oi

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 16, 2009
60
0
New York
Hi guys,

done some reading up on this and it seems it's a bit difficult to achieve on ye old Mac. I know it can be done in Windows where ATI and NVidia supply programs/API to do this.

I also know that Apple made an API available back in Leopard (or was it SL) to take advantage of the GPU power.

Does anyone know if there is like a Handbrake program which uses the GPU?

Cheers,
oi
 
Oi-Oi-Oi said:
Hi guys,

done some reading up on this and it seems it's a bit difficult to achieve on ye old Mac. I know it can be done in Windows where ATI and NVidia supply programs/API to do this.

I also know that Apple made an API available back in Leopard (or was it SL) to take advantage of the GPU power.

Does anyone know if there is like a Handbrake program which uses the GPU?

Cheers,
oi
Click to expand...

What was provided was only a decoder for nVidia GPU and not a transcoder. If you're talking about a transcoder then it will need to be written to take advantage of OpenCL - IIRC Mainconcept makes a h264 OpenCL powered encoder.
 
Last edited:
MrNomNoms said:
What was provided was only a decoder for nVidia GPU and not a transcoder. If you're talking about a transcoder then it will need to be written to take advantage of OpenCL - IIRC Mainstage makes a h264 OpenCL powered encoder.
Click to expand...

1. The Apple H.264 decoder supports more than just NVIDIA GPUs:
"This reference describes the Video Decode Acceleration framework available on Mac OS X v10.6.3 and later with Mac models equipped with the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 320M, GeForce GT 330M, ATI HD Radeon GFX, Intel HD Graphics and others."
From: http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#technotes/tn2267/_index.html
2. QuickSync inside of Sandy Bridge CPUs can provide hardware accelerated transcoding.
 
Mr. Retrofire said:
1. The Apple H.264 decoder supports more than just NVIDIA GPUs:
"This reference describes the Video Decode Acceleration framework available on Mac OS X v10.6.3 and later with Mac models equipped with the NVIDIA GeForce 9400M, GeForce 320M, GeForce GT 330M, ATI HD Radeon GFX, Intel HD Graphics and others."
From: http://developer.apple.com/library/mac/#technotes/tn2267/_index.html
Click to expand...

Thank you for the correction - the last time I checked (would have been over a year ago) it only covered nVidia GPU's at the time - since then it has been updated 2 times in 2011.

2. QuickSync inside of Sandy Bridge CPUs can provide hardware accelerated transcoding.
Click to expand...

Assuming such functionality is exposed within Mac OS X - whether it is easier for programmers to tune for AVX or just jump into OpenCL 1.1.
 
Haven't heard of anything using OpenCL yet, even on Windows.

I love the idea though.

And there for a while, Apple was making sure all their PCs had real GPUs...until recently. Made it seem like they were going to do something big with OpenCL, but...then nothing happened.
 
Oh cool-didn't know anyone was (supposedly) using it...

Except it's weird, given that they reference AMD's proprietary thing, keep calling it ATi, and if it was really OpenCL...well, the whole point is it would run on both, and Nvidia provided OpenCL support first.

But at least they are supporting both one way or the other.

Wish Intel wasn't including video and this "quicksync" stuff though...they appear to be wasting enough space for a fifth core, or a ton more cache :(
 
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