AVIVO

AVIVO is a video platform ATI first introduced with its R520-based line of GPUs. The platform is designed to enhance the quality and flexibility of ATI's current video capabilities. The platform involves hardware video decoding and a variety of tools to aid in the process. AVIVO compatible GPUs have lower CPU usage when a player and decoder software that support AVIVO is used. However, the GPU itself does not convert TV signals to video signals usable on computer monitors. Such jobs are done by Rage Theater or Theater 200 on reference video card designs, and the availability of such decoder depends on the decision of implementation of the manufacturer and market positions of various models.

ATI's AVIVO is a technology still under development and as such will be continually upgraded via ATI's Catalyst series of drivers. Like NVIDIA PureVideo HD, AVIVO does not offer any actual decoding software like the PureVideo MPEG-2 decoder. It only allows decoder developers to utilize the DXVA API.

Background

The GPU wars between ATI and NVIDIA have resulted in GPUs with ever increasing processing power since early 2000s. To parallel this increase in speed and power, both GPU makers needed to increase video quality as well, in 3D graphics applications the focus in increasing quality has mainly fallen on anti-aliasing and anisotropic filteringFact|date=July 2008. However it has dawned upon both companies that video quality on the PC would need improvement as well and the current APIs provided by both companies have not seen many improvements over a few generations of GPUsFact|date=July 2008. Therefore, ATI decided to revamp its GPU's video processing capability with AVIVO, in order to compete with and outperformFact|date=July 2008 NVIDIA PureVideo API.

In the time of release of the latest generation Radeon HD series, the successor, the AVIVO HD was announced, and was presented on every Radeon HD 2600 and 2400 video cards to be available July, 2007 after NVIDIA announced similar hardware acceleration solution, PureVideo HD.

Features

AVIVO

During capturing, AVIVO amplifies the source, automatically adjust its brightness and contrast. AVIVO implements 12-bit transform to reduce data loss during conversion, it also utilizes motion adaptive 3D comb filter, automatic color control, automatic gain control, hardware noise reduction and edge enhancement technologies for better video playback quality.

In decoding, the GPU core supports hardware decoding of H.264, VC-1, WMV9, and MPEG-2 videos to lower CPU utilization (it should be noted that the bitstream processing/entropy decoding still requires CPU processing). AVIVO supports vector adaptive de-interlacing and video scaling to reduce jaggies, and spatial/temporal dithering, enabling 10-bit color quality on 8-bit and 6-bit displays during process stage.

AVIVO HD

:"See also: Unified Video Decoder"

The successor of AVIVO is the AVIVO HD, it consists of several parts, integrated 5.1 surround sound HDMI audio controller, dual integrated HDCP encryption key for each DVI port (to reduce license costs), the [http://ati.amd.com/products/theater200/index.html Theater 200] chip for VIVO capabilities; the Xilleon chip for TV overscan and underscan correction, the [http://ati.amd.com/products/theater200/index.html Theater 200] chip as well as the originally-presented AVIVO Video Converter.

However, most of the important hardware decoding functions of AVIVO HD are provided by the accompanied Unified Video Decoder (UVD) and the Advanced Video Processor (AVP) which supports hardware decoding of H.264/AVC and VC-1 videos (and included bitstream processing/entropy decoding which was absent in last generation AVIVO). While for MPEG-1, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4/DivX videos, Motion compensation and iDCT (inverse discrete cosine transform) will be done instead.

The AVP retrieves the video from memory, handles scaling, de-interlacing and colour correction and writes it back to memory. The AVP also uses 12-bit transform to reduce data loss during conversion, same as previous generation AVIVO.

HDMI cables support the transfer of aggregate bandwidth of 4.95 Gbit/s at most, supporting a maximum of 165 Megapixel/sec video in 1080p (or in UXGA) at 60 fps together with 8-channel 96 kHz 24-bit digital audio. Integration of an audio controller in the GPU core capable of surround sound output eliminates the need for S/PDIF connection from motherboard or sound card to the video card, for synchronous video and audio output via HDMI cable.

The Radeon HD 2900 series lacked the UVD feature, but still qualifies for the AVIVO HD label.

AVIVO Video Converter

ATI has also released a transcoder software dubbed "ATI AVIVO Video Converter," which supports transcoding between H.264, VC-1, WMV9, WMV9 PMC, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX video formats, as well as formats used in iPod and PSP with hardware compression. Earlier versions of this software do not have hardware encoding, but have been locked for exclusive use with the ATI X1000 series of GPUs. Software modifications have made it possible to use version 1.12 of converter on a wider range of graphics adapters [ [http://www.rage3d.com/board/archive/index.php?t-33838774.html Rage3D thread] ] . The AVIVO Video Converter for Windows Vista was available with the release of Catalyst 7.9 (September 2007 release, version 8.411).

oftware support

*WinDVD
*PowerDVD
*KMPlayer
*Microsoft Windows Vista internal MPEG-2 decoder

ee also

*NVIDIA PureVideo
*Intel Clear Video

References

External links

* [http://www.ati.com/technology/Avivo/ AVIVO page]
* [http://www.beyond3d.com/previews/ati/avivo/ Beyond3D AVIVO preview]
* [http://www.anandtech.com/video/showdoc.aspx?i=2645 AnandTech article]
* [http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=226&type=expert&pid=1 PC Perspective article]
* [http://www.hexus.net/content/item.php?item=1622&page=2 Hexus.net article]