MPEG4 Encoding cards

The GeForce 6000 series and higher can have encoding offloaded to them with special software.

There are also capture cards from DiVICO that can capture HD quality video (x64 driver exists for their 'Fusion' cards btw).

:?: What budget you looking at ?

:?: What purpose we talking ?
(eg: Capturing video via S-Video out, or just encoding video at a higher speed ?)

Psudeo related links of use:
- http://www.nvidia.com/page/purevideo.html
- http://film.nvidia.com/page/gelato.html

History:
My last 6 video cards were ATI, and before that a few nVidia ones (nV Riva TNT2 Vanta kicked the 3dfx Voodoo), but looking to move back into nVidia myself as GeForce 7900 GTX can do the FSAA level I want and surpass Radeon X1900 XT/X performance while doing it. Especially at higher resolutions.

They used to have a section on the site encoding video at over 100fps (way faster than real-time), and comparing it to Xeons.

Even searching for it doesn't show the results.....

Anyways, point is the Shader Model 3.0 cards can be programmed using 'Sh' for example, and video encoding applications are usually coded in C/C++.

'Sh' and C/C++ are very similar, so the routines that do the bulk of the encoding can be ported easily.

Checked http://sourgeforge.net and only a few basic projects there too.

I know Adobe Premiere Pro can offload to the GeForce 7000 series GPU to process certain effects, etc, and possibly the final video, very quickly considering.

- Sorry for the life of me I can't find the links on the nVidia site. During the MPEG4 buzz they had a whole section on it.

Could e-mail them and ask maybe ?

I think the ATI 1x00 series cards use hardware assisted encoding. But I think you're limited to using their AVIVO Converter program.