With the recent unveiling of the alpha release of the Badaboom software in conjunction with the NVIDIA GTX 260 and GTX 280 graphics cards the word is getting out on the performance gains seen with Badaboom…
From CNET look for “GPU-based computing” in their article:
The question, as usual, comes down to the software. Nvidia provided us with a prerelease beta of a video transcoding application called BadaBoom, from a developer called Elemental. BadaBoom uses the GTX280 to transform a video file from one format to another, and the results are very fast, much faster than if you ran the same operation on a CPU-based algorithm. Adobe has said that the next version of its Creative Suite will support GPU-based processing
From ubergizmo look for “HPC: BadaBoom Review (H.264 Encoder)”:
BadaBOOM converts a media file (audio, video) an order of magnitude faster than a CPU-driven converter. We have seen it convert to H.264 at about 120 frames per seconds using a good to very good quality settings. Anyone who has compressed video files knows that this is uber-fast!
From AnandTech look under “Hardware H.264 Encoding”:
In the worst case scenario, the GTX 280 is around 40% faster than encoding on Intel’s fastest CPU alone. In the best case scenario however, the GTX 280 can complete the encoding in 1/10th the time.
…there seems to be a lot of potential here. Given how long it takes to encode a Blu-ray movie, we needn’t even explain why it’s necessary
From Computer Shopper
On a quad-core, 3.2GHz Core 2 Extreme QX970, our sample MPEG2 video took 42 seconds to convert to iPhone H.264 format using the CPU and Vegas 8.0. Using a preliminary version of BadaBOOM to convert the file using the GPU, the same file converted in just 27 seconds. The difference will be even more dramatic on slower CPUs or processors with fewer cores, where the CPU conversion will take much longer-but the GPU version should remain around 27 seconds. (BadaBOOM should be commercially available in August.)
From Toms Hardware
With the preview version, unfortunately compatible only with the GT 200, we were able to compress our test video (400MB) in iPhone format (640*365) at maximum quality in 56.5 seconds on the GTX 260 and 49 seconds on the GTX 280 (15% faster). For comparison purposes, the iTunes H.264 encoder took eight minutes using the CPU…
From PC World look for “GPU vs. CPU”
Initial tests in our labs could verify the claim: a two-minute clip optimized for the iPod Touch (480 by 320-pixel resolution, AAC audio) took about 24 seconds. That same video, compressed using AVS Video converter 5.5, took 56 seconds. That’s impressive, no doubt, but it really is an apples-to-oranges comparison. You see, for the fairest test, we’d need to have the provided BadaBOOM software(which, by the way, works amazing well) have a toggle to switch between GPU encoding and CPU encoding.
From Extreme Tech
We took a look at a video transcoding application called BadaBOOM from Elemental Technologies that shows incredible performance gains with a GeForce GTX 280 card
From THE TECH REPORT
A firm called Elemental is preparing several video encoding products that use GPU acceleration, including a plug-in for Adobe Premiere and a stand-alone transcoder called BadaBoom. The company showed a demonstration of a very, very quick transcode and claimed BadaBoom could convert an MPEG2 file to H.264 at a rate faster than real-time playback-a huge improvement over CPU-based encoding
From PC Perspective
BadaBoom was able to transcode the source file at an average of 154 fps. Handbrake on the other hand was hitting around 32 fps. BadaBoom completed in 28 seconds while Handbrake finished its job in 2 minutes and 20 seconds. The resulting files were nearly identical in quality and bit-rate, but the GPU accelerated client was almost 5 times faster than the already quick Handbrake program running on a C2D X6800 processor.
