Opinions / Info - AmigaOS 4.x Systems

[takemehomegrandma]

Pegasos 2 has a limited possibilities to choose graphics card. It is not a possible to use Radeon HD cards with it.

However, the possibilities to use Radeon HD cards for anything useful in OS4 is rather limited, where a Radeon 9250 offers 2D acceleration, 3D acceleration and overlay. And technically speaking, there are many possible AGP cards that would work in a Pegasos 2 so I wouldn't call it "limited selection", but as usual it's a matter of drivers, which has always been an Achilles Heel in OS4...

[takemehomegrandma]

Choosing lower specced second hand hardware may not be the best choice soon...

OTOH $3,000+ HW with slightly worse performance than some second hand HW may not be a possible choice at all...

[Hans_]

* RadeonHD cards are currently supported in 2D only (Respect to Hans's 2D work, which seems to function well from what I have read (haven't used myself)). Hardware video scaling on these cards requires 3D drivers, which are dependent upon Hyperion's Gallium3D work, which has been some years and appears to have made little progress.

Correction, hardware scaling could be done today using CompositeTags(). All that is required is for application developers to actually use it.

What can't be done (yet) is directly display YUV bitmaps, which is one of the key things that makes video playback with overlay faster. None of this has anything to do with 3D drivers or lack thereof. 3D drivers won't magically change anything.

Consequently, video playback performance on these cards really sucks, so until/if/when/somewhere-over-the-rainbow 3D drivers arrive (and video scaling via textures) you're probably better off sticking with a Radeon 9xxx if you want to be able to watch videos or play 3D games.

Define "video playback sucks." My experience has been that video playback of non-HD content via Radeon HD cards is pretty good.** I certainly don't have trouble playing DVDs. If you're talking about HD content, then I'm pretty sure that no AmigaOS system with a Radeon 9xxx can play that smoothly either.

According to these benchmarks, a Sam460ex with a Radeon HD card (and no overlay) actually plays back video better than a Sam440 with overlay. NOTE: These results were obtained with MPEG-4 video, which is more CPU intensive than the MPEG-2 on DVDs.

Hans


** On systems with an actual PCIe port.

[takemehomegrandma]

Define "video playback sucks" ... I certainly don't have trouble playing DVDs.

Well, you kind of said it yourself there. Even the Efika 5k2 could play DVD resolution MPEG-2 streams on a 9xxx card, and if this is your peak performance on a system with PCIe and Radeon HD, then it actually kind of sucks IMHO.

If you're talking about HD content, then I'm pretty sure that no AmigaOS system with a Radeon 9xxx can play that smoothly either.

Maybe not OS4 systems, but many of the more popular G4 based MorphOS systems with Radeon 9xxx cards can usually manage proper x264 720p streams, which is a HD resolution, and the G5 systems does x264 1080p.

[Duce]

I didn't see anyone showing interest in MOS systems in this thread, TMHG.  

I know how much you like preaching the blue gospel, but enough sandbagging other peoples threads.

[takemehomegrandma]

I didn't see anyone showing interest in MOS systems in this thread, TMHG.  

I know how much you like preaching the blue gospel, but enough sandbagging other peoples threads.

Sorry that you didn't like my post, but in a HW discussion about what could (or should really) be expected in terms of video playback performance on PCIe based Radeon HD systems, and whether it sucks or not compared to Radeon 9xxx (or vice versa), it certainly illustrated what is possible on good, old G4's with AGP Radeon 9xxx HW, as a reference, albeit on a different OS. I Leave it up to the reader to decide for himself just where the "suckyness" lies here...

[Iggy]

I didn't see anyone showing interest in MOS systems in this thread, TMHG.  

I know how much you like preaching the blue gospel, but enough sandbagging other peoples threads.

HARDLY, its a valid point. And as MY interests cross both OS'. I'm interested.
So your OS can't do HD video?
How come every time there a flaw in OS4 performance, we're preaching 'blue gospel'?

[Duce]

I'm a MOS user as well, bought and paid for, so don't indoctrinate me

Thread title is:  Opinions / Info - AmigaOS 4.x Systems

Isn't it?  I could have very well said "Well, a $200 used Mac will likely give you a more powerful Amiga NG experience", but such a comment would hardly be solicited in such a thread.  Considered rude even, perhaps.

If a guy is interested in a '57 Chevy and asking opinions and experiences with one, it'd be crass to blaze in and jack his thread with "c'mon man, buy a Vette, don't be stupid!".

[Hans_]

Well, you kind of said it yourself there. Even the Efika 5k2 could play DVD resolution MPEG-2 streams on a 9xxx card, and if this is your peak performance on a system with PCIe and Radeon HD, then it actually kind of sucks IMHO.

Where did I say that DVD resolution was peak performance? I've noticed a lot of nonsense about how horrible video playback is without overlay, with someone going as far as saying that he'd rather hang himself. He was talking about 480p at the time...

My question still stands.

Maybe not OS4 systems, but many of the more popular G4 based MorphOS systems with Radeon 9xxx cards can usually manage proper x264 720p streams, which is a HD resolution, and the G5 systems does x264 1080p.

I assume that you're talking about the low-end H.264 profiles here (i.e., basic MPEG-4), because decoding full HD H.264 AVC with a software decoder is multi-core territory. That's a bit misleading to claim HD playback when only a subset of such HD files can actually be decoded in real-time. Or, are you really claiming that a MorphOS G5 system can handle any 1080p video, including H.264 AVC?

Hans

[Kernel]

I'm a MOS user as well, bought and paid for, so don't indoctrinate me

Thread title is:  Opinions / Info - AmigaOS 4.x Systems

Isn't it?  I could have very well said "Well, a $200 used Mac will likely give you a more powerful Amiga NG experience", but such a comment would hardly be solicited in such a thread.  Considered rude even, perhaps.

If a guy is interested in a '57 Chevy and asking opinions and experiences with one, it'd be crass to blaze in and jack his thread with "c'mon man, buy a Vette, don't be stupid!".

Can't we all just get along? ;-)

You're right, that is the title and intent of my original post.  I don't mind the topic straying a bit here and there as long as it remains close to the spirit of the original... there is definitely a lot of useful information I've gained from it so far.

I'm not interested in MorphOS at this time but the discussion of video and what is/isn't supported and why is good info.

[Duce]

Could always try both platforms, Kernel.

MOS machines are cheap and the OS free to try.

As for OS4, some people, including myself on a couple occasions - have helped out people considering buying an OS4 machine out by letting them VNC into our OS4 boxes and letting guys take them for a whirl.

[Hans_]

Well, you kind of said it yourself there. Even the Efika 5k2 could play DVD resolution MPEG-2 streams on a 9xxx card, and if this is your peak performance on a system with PCIe and Radeon HD, then it actually kind of sucks IMHO.

Just following up on this; I downloaded and played a 720p DIVX (so MPEG-4) clip on my A1-X1000 with no noticeable frame-skipping. This was with a Radeon HD 7750, so no overlay was available.

The exact stats are:

Code: [Select]

RAM Disk:BigBuckBunny_DivX_HD720p_ASP.divx
Video: AVI, 1280 x 720, 24.00 fps
Audio: 01 [MP3] 16-bit 48000 Hz, Stereo
Total Nr of Frames:   14710
Nr of Frames played:  14689
Nr of Frames skipped: 21 (1%)
Total Playback Time:  612.853 seconds
Average Framerate:    24.002 fps
Displayed Framerate:  23.968 fps
NOTE: If you do the calculations, you'll see that it skipped 0.14% of frames, not 1% as DvPlayer states above.

Don't get me wrong, overlay/textured-video would improve things. However, I think that some people are significantly overstating the problem.

Hans

[Iggy]

Cool Hans.
That is exactly the kind of info I wanted back.
An X1000 system can do it, I thought that was likely (if a G4 PowerMac system handles it).
Hard to say if they e5500 cored cpus in the X5000 will improve on this.

BOTH OS4 and MorphOS could use gpu acceleration to aid these rates.

And, no, it doesn't take big cpu power with the right hardware.
Relatively underpowered ARM cpus can handle 1080p.

[Boot_WB]

Correction, hardware scaling could be done today using CompositeTags(). All that is required is for application developers to actually use it.

Easy to implement for eg mplayer? Why has no-one done this..?

What can't be done (yet) is directly display YUV bitmaps, which is one of the key things that makes video playback with overlay faster. None of this has anything to do with 3D drivers or lack thereof. 3D drivers won't magically change anything.

Apologies, I must have misunderstood Karlos, or plans have changed (http://www.amiga.org/forums/archive/index.php/t-61993.html)

Karlos wrote:

Right now, as far as I know no specific implementation exists for the RadeonHD drivers. With adequate 3D support, however, implementing a hardware video surface via video texturing becomes feasible. Since both 3D and video playback are desirable features, it makes sense to focus on the overlap.

What would be the best approach to improving video playback in your experience Hans? (Who do OS4.x users nag at to get this done... )

Define "video playback sucks." My experience has been that video playback of non-HD content via Radeon HD cards is pretty good.** I certainly don't have trouble playing DVDs. If you're talking about HD content, then I'm pretty sure that no AmigaOS system with a Radeon 9xxx can play that smoothly either.

I was trying to be fair but frank. "Pretty good" doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement. Can DVDs be watched on Sam460 with no frame dropping? Does resizing/fullscreening impact upon playback? Can you watch video windowsed/scaled whilst doing other stuff (eg web browsing)? What percent cpu is used by stuff that could/should be offloaded to overlay/textured-video?*

According to these benchmarks, a Sam460ex with a Radeon HD card (and no overlay) actually plays back video better than a Sam440 with overlay. NOTE: These results were obtained with MPEG-4 video, which is more CPU intensive than the MPEG-2 on DVDs.

Hans


** On systems with an actual PCIe port.

From the same thread (PCI>PCIe adapter notwithstanding, how much bandwidth does 480p video need anyway...), albeit an extreme case:

The Sam will play back a 720x304 video in full screen without frameskip with overlay

Results from A Sam440ep-Flex 800 with Radeon HD4800 via PCIE adapter

WorkBench:> Programs:Video/DvPlayer/DvPlayer verbose
Media :My Videos/DVDS/Viewed/Limitless {2011} DVDRIP.avi
Video: AVI, 720 x 304, 23.98 fps
Audio: 01 [MP3] 16-bit 44100 Hz, Stereo
Total Nr of Frames: 4358
Nr of Frames played: 1514
Nr of Frames skipped: 2844 (66%)
Total Playback Time: 181.746 seconds
Average Framerate: 23.978 fps
Displayed Framerate: 8.330 fps

Results from Same machine with Radeon 9250 and overlay.

8.WorkBench:> Programs:Video/DvPlayer/DvPlayer verbose
Media :My Videos/DVDS/Viewed/Limitless {2011} DVDRIP.avi
Video: AVI, 720 x 304, 23.98 fps
Audio: 01 [MP3] 16-bit 44100 Hz, Stereo
Total Nr of Frames: 4364
Nr of Frames played: 4364
Nr of Frames skipped: 0 (0%)
Total Playback Time: 182.037 seconds
Average Framerate: 23.973 fps
Displayed Framerate: 23.973 fps

*NB - I'm asking out of curiosity, since I don't have the facility to test myself, not to prove a point. These are things which will probably be a bit testing, but common operations I'd expect to be able to carry out without going slideshow/losing sync.
Efika for example can't handle most of these even with some 480p avi's and a 9250 (when played from USB).

[Hans_]

Easy to implement for eg mplayer? Why has no-one done this..?

IMHO, yes, it should be pretty easy. I have no idea why no-one has done this yet. Maybe everyone has been busy with other projects...

Apologies, I must have misunderstood Karlos, or plans have changed (http://www.amiga.org/forums/archive/index.php/t-61993.html)

Karlos wrote:

Right now, as far as I know no specific implementation exists for the RadeonHD drivers. With adequate 3D support, however, implementing a hardware video surface via video texturing becomes feasible. Since both 3D and video playback are desirable features, it makes sense to focus on the overlap.

What would be the best approach to improving video playback in your experience Hans? (Who do OS4.x users nag at to get this done... )

Well, once OpenGL with shader support is available, then application developers could easily write their own GPU assisted YUV=>RGB conversion code. So, he's correct in that. However, that doesn't mean that 3D is the only way, nor would the appearance of 3D drivers magically improve anything.

Don't nag anyone; we're aware of the situation and the various options to fix it. :razz:

I was trying to be fair but frank. "Pretty good" doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement. Can DVDs be watched on Sam460 with no frame dropping? Does resizing/fullscreening impact upon playback? Can you watch video windowsed/scaled whilst doing other stuff (eg web browsing)? What percent cpu is used by stuff that could/should be offloaded to overlay/textured-video?*

Yes, I can watch a DVD on the Sam460 without frame skipping. At least, I didn't notice any skipping last time I tried. No video scaling for now. However, that's not due to driver limitations. I can't remember what the CPU usage was.

Overlay/textured-video handles the YUV=>RGB conversion and scaling. That alone helps quite a bit, but its still no match for a hardware decoder.

BTW, the DVD drive can also have a big effect on DVD playback. There are a lot of poor quality drives out there, or drives that really need a firmware update. My A1-XE G4 stopped being able to play DVDs smoothly after "upgrading" to a new DVD drive. So, if someone else with a Sam460 can't play DVDs smoothly, then their DVD drive would be the prime suspect.

From the same thread (PCI>PCIe adapter notwithstanding, how much bandwidth does 480p video need anyway...), albeit an extreme case:

For 704x480 @24fps, you need:
- 30.9 MiB/s when using 32-bit RGBA
- 11.6 MiB/s for the YUV420p pixel format (a possibility with overlay/textured-video)

Based on this GfxBench2D result, a Sam440ep-flex with Radeon HD 6670 can manage:
- 13.52 MiB/s with a CPU-based copy routine
- 90.23 MiB/s if DMA is used via WritePixelArray()/BlitBitMap()

AFAIK, MPlayer and DvPlayer use their own CPU-based copy routine, so the copy bandwidth is killing any chance of smooth playback (NOTE: the CPU needs time to decode the video too). Needless to say, I encourage developers to use WritePixelArray()/BlitBitMap() for transfers to/from VRAM.

By contrast, here are the bandwidth results for the Radeon M9 in a Sam440ep (link):
- 53.45 MiB/s CPU copy
- 90.98 MiB/s WritePixelArray
Clearly the bandwidth is enough for 480p video, especially if overlay is used.

Hans

[vox]

This is completely wrong.

If you run the compositing Boing Ball demo from Hans De Ruiter, you will see the clear performance difference between a RadeonHD 6870 and lower specced cards.  The demo is much smoother and faster.  If you run M.A.C.E full game with FPS in 1920x1080, you can also see the performance difference with RadeonHD 6870.

And A-EON has some software coming out in the next three months that will demonstrate some more of the power of the RadeonHD on AmigaONE X1000 over other AmigaOS 4 hardware.  

Choosing lower specced second hand hardware may not be the best choice soon...

Its perfectly correct as it offers just 2D.

Yes, BoingBall demo is nice, but is just a demo.

Currently, I wish I invested in Peg2, but yet you are to prove me wrong.

As I argue, its not the hardware itself, its the way OS4 use, or better say isn`t using it. Linux with LXDE does proper job on X1000 and I wouldn`t be able to cope with daily tasks if I didn`t have it.