How to enable hardware Encoding acceleration

[Kingston]

I discovered reading the "fine print" for another product that if you have an ATI or AMD graphics card, you may need to download and install the AVIVO codec package from AMD's website in order to enable hardware acceleration for encoding. The package is not included with AMD Catalyst 12.10.

After going to the following web site, you need to fill out a survey before you can download the package.
http://support.amd.com/us/gpudownload/w ... loads.aspx

After installing the package, the "Enable Hardware Encoding Acceleration" option on the Performance tab in Preferences in VS X5 became enabled on my system.

[Ken Berry]

Thanks Kingston -- that will probably help a lot of users... though I have to say that in my own case, the enable acceleration option was always active with my Radeon card...

[Kingston]

Hi Ken,

All accelerations except for the Encoding one were already enabled. Now with the Encoding option enabled, I can share to the .m2t format and get significant reduction in render times. What took 1 minute 53 seconds now takes only 1 minute 15 seconds.

[Ken Berry]

Kingston -- thanks once again. I confess I read your original post far too quickly, and replied even more quickly! You are indeed correct -- on checking in my X5 Preferences, I too found that hardware encoding acceleration was greyed out.

I have now installed that AMD package, but the option remains greyed out after restarting X5. I will try a reboot and see if that changes things.

EDIT: Hmmm... no, the reboot still did not enable hardware acceleration... I wonder if in my case it has something to do with the dual graphics system on my computer. For normal functions, it uses the on-board Intel graphics, but can be directed to use the Radeon card for designated functions. I have set X5 to use the Radeon, but I wonder whether that only becomes active when I actually render something in X5... I suppose the next thing I could try would be to switch permanently to the Radeon in BIOS...

FURTHER EDIT: No -- switching permanently to the Radeon card did not change the situation either.

[Kingston]

Ken,

I found that I needed version 12.10 of the AMD Catalyst Control Center installed before installing the package (which has a version number of 12.8 ) .

I thought that because the package had a version of 12.8, that having CCC 12.8 would be a better match. Not so. It didn't work. I had to install CCC 12.10.

[Ken Berry]

My CCC says its version number is 2011.0930.2209.37895, so I wonder where that puts it in terms of version 12/10???

I tried downloading and installing 12.10 but got the message that it was incompatible with the card I have installed, and that I should approach HP for an update.

FWIW, the existing CCC tells me its software is up to date as of today. Moreover, both HP's updating service and Windows Update tell me there are no further updates available.

[Kingston]

My version number starts with 2012, yours starts with 2011.

[Ken Berry]

But does 12/10 actually appear somewhere in your version number?

[Kingston]

The only place where I can find 12-10 is on the details tab on the file's properties window. It's part of the file name and the product name:

12-10 AMD CCC

[Ken Berry]

Can I assume that is your entry from Device Manager? If so, then mine returns this version: 8.882.2.3000 And if so, then trying to update that -- by searching for a new driver -- returns the response that that too is the latest version... I think I had better give up at this point!

[Kingston]

That is not from device manager. That is by right-clicking on the file name (of the CCC installation file I downloaded from AMD's web site) in Windows Explorer and then selecting Properties from the pop-up menu and then clicking the Details tab.

[EdwardERS]

This is starting to bother me. Nvidia and AMD/ATI both supposedly offer hardware acceleration through either CUDA or OpenCL. Yes, in the editing preferences my acceleration options aren't greyed out, but whether they're enabled or not doesn't make any difference in how fast a video renders. Isn't that what hardware acceleration is supposed to do?

In Catalyst Control Center there's an accelerated video conversion setting under Video, but that doesn't seem to do anything.

I found some other threads discussing these things, but I can't find a definitive answer to "Can my AMD 6870 can accelerate video rendering and how to enable it through both the VS software and AMD software on my computer". I can check the boxes in VS edit settings, but nothing changes. It's like my video card software isn't configured correctly.

Video Studio Pro X6 - supported graphics card
http://forum.corel.com/EN/viewtopic.php?p=260354#p260354

[zaphodikus]

My newbie feedback:
I ran an encoding test last night with and without the acceleration boxes ticked on a video that takes 2:30 to encode, and the results are identical.

You have to re-start VS between test-runs to eliminate cacheing.
My card is not directX11 and only has 1GB ram, so I did not expect much difference anyway. I'm upgrading to a simple 2GB card this week, but before I do a performance check, this note from another thread is worth checking for anyone reading:

• Select "NVIDIA Control Panel"
• Select "3D settings"
• Select "Adjust image settings with preview" and see what is selected there. It will probably be "Use the advanced 3D image settings"
• Click on "Manage 3D settings"
• Click on the "Program settings" tab
• Pull down the menu 1
• Look for VS5 in that list and select it
• Look for "Cuda -GPUs" on list 2. It will probably read something like "use global settings (all)". This is what you want.
• If VS5 is not on menu 1, then:
• Click on the "global settings" tab
• Look at the "CUDA - GPUs" setting. It should read "all"

Getting the configuration right for a slow system can make a big difference one hopes.