[mythtv-users] ATI AVIVO

[Mike Choy]

Michael T. Dean wrote:
> On 07/02/2006 11:38 AM, Mike Choy wrote:
>   
>> Michael T. Dean wrote:
>>   
>>     
>>> On 07/02/2006 02:21 AM, Mike Choy wrote:
>>>       
>>>> Ivan Kowalenko wrote:
>>>>         
>>>>> On Jun 30, 2006, at 18.23, Mike Choy wrote:
>>>>>           
>>>>>>> Have enabled ATI AVIVO Support on my laptop , seems to work, has  
>>>>>>> anyone
>>>>>>> else got any experience, say vs XvMC.
>>>>>>>               
>>>>> Uhh, I'm not totally sure it's going to work. AVIVO (http://
>>>>> en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AVIVO) seems to be purely software. Not sure  
>>>>> there's any Linux support on that. Even if it is, I doubt you're  
>>>>> going to see any improvement versus XvMC. The purpose of XvMC is to  
>>>>> offload some of the MPEG-2 decoding to the GPU.
>>>>>
>>>>> AVIVO doesn't have a thing to do with the GPU, but relies entirely on  
>>>>> the CPU for work. High-Def MPEG-2 is straining enough to the CPU, so  
>>>>> I doubt you're going to see ANY improvement. Besides, AVIVO does  
>>>>> ENcoding. XvMC does DEcoding.
>>>>>           
>>>> Sadly Wiki pedia is out of date.
>>>> Avivo provides accelerated Video playback using the 3DGPU, for any
>>>> application that uses XV and xorg 6.9 and above (standard in SUSE 10.1),
>>>> which gives it huge compatability vs XvMC.
>>>>
>>>> http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=442&num=12
>>>>         
>>> But also means--in that mode--it's only doing the same acceleration that 
>>> Xv does, but doing it with 3D hardware instead of 2D hardware.  
>>> Therefore, AVIVO does not decode the stream or any part of it--it simply 
>>> accelerates moving the image to the display once the CPU decodes it.  
>>> Basically, it's a marketing thing to say it's there.
>>>
>>> If Myth wanted to use AVIVO to decode the stream, Myth would have to 
>>> send the undecoded stream to the card using ATI-proprietary API's 
>>> (because AVIVO itself is ATI-proprietary).  So, I don't think it will 
>>> happen.
>>>       
>> Granted, but some quick benchmarks  of  playing back  Elephants Dream at
>> 720P in mplayer show  the following, using top
>>
>> 1. Standard ATI XV Overlay   -average CPU utilization  show 35%-40%
>> 2. Using ATI AVIVO Overlay -average CPU utilization  show 18-25%
>>
>> I believe that the average gains using XvMC are about 20% ?
>> Of Course with an ATI card, there is no Option of XvMC.
>>
>> If anyone knows of a better way to benchmark this please let me know.
>>     
>
> What video output devices on MPlayer for your two tests?
>
> Basically, I'm just saying that if the app doesn't know that the card 
> can do math for it, it obviously can't use the card to do math for it.  
> I have never heard of the Xavivo standard extension for X or anything 
> like it, so unless you're using MPlayer's XvMC video output device (-vo 
> xvmc), I'm pretty sure the card isn't decoding anything for you.  If you 
> are doing "-vo xvmc", you're just using XvMC and ATI decided to use 
> their trademarked name for video stuff to indicate their support for 
> XvMC--instead of explicitly saying they support the standard API.
>
> If you're not using "-vo xvmc" (and you're not talking about a benchmark 
> published by ATI which may have actually created an AVIVO video output 
> device for MPlayer), something else is happening.  But, I'd need more 
> info about the test to even guess what that could be.
>
> Mike
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>   
Thanks Mike, Here is a bit more detail.
I am running mplayer  1.0pre8-SUSE.
I have downloaded the 720P XVid version of Elephants Dream  from Here
http://www.elephantsdream.org/

I am not running with any mplayer command per se, just right clicking on
the movie icon in Konqueror and selecting Open with mplayer. As far as
I'm aware that uses the standard Xv video output device delivered via
the driver.

Dont forget that ATI does not support XvMC.

I manually set the Video Overlay in Xorg.conf for each of the tests. I
init 3, then init 5 to restart the X server.
ATI only allows one overlay at a time.

Enable Xv Support
	Option "VideoOverlay"       "on" 	Device
Enable 3D Support
	Option  "OpenGLOverlay"  "off" 	Device
AVIVO Support
	Option  "TexturedVideo"     "on" 	Device


The timings are rough using top, but that's what I'm seeing.
I have also just run the same but with kaffeine DVD playback, and I'm
getting about a 10% performance improvement using the avivo overlay.
Maybe ATI slowed down the standard Xv Overlay to make the AVIVO look
better :-) or the standard Xv overlay still needs some CPU.

I will try some myth recordings as soon as I get some time, but given
they are mpeg streams , I would expect similar to DVD playback.

ps I'm not an ATI fanboy, just reporting what I'm seeing. With the
advent of h.264 HD content will we need something other than XvMC.

Mike C