How do I use my GPU to accelerate video encoding?

I have an ATI Radeon HD 4870 graphics card. I have read that I can use this to significantly speed up encoding DVD to AVI.

Does anyone know how this can be done?

Solution 1:

The ATI Catalyst drivers now come with the Avivo video converter. This should do what you're looking for, though I haven't tried it myself.

Solution 2:

You need to look at ATI Stream Technology if you want to being able to really gain significant speed increment in encoding/decoding videos. That is the ATI answer to CUDA from NVidia.

Both technologies aim to allow software developers to program GPU (GPGPU) to increase the performances of their applications.

Here it is the ATI web page that describe how ATI Stream could accelerate the digital home entertainment.

I hope we will see many SW in feature that will use more our GPU also when we are not playing :D