AMD recently released a beta plug-in for Adobe Premiere Pro CS4(Creative Suite 4).
Function and benefit of this Plug-in: The plug-in dramatically improves the performance of a range of complex video editing(off-line editing on PCs) tasks. The plug-in is the result of an ongoing collaboration between Adobe and AMD engineers designed to take advantage of ATI Stream technology in a way that allocates processing between available system CPU and GPU(Graphics Processing Unit) resources for maximum application performance.
The Adobe Premiere Pro CS4(Creative Suite 4) plug-in draws on the computational power of both the CPU and GPU to improve the program’s performance. ATI Stream technology allows the powerful GPU to be used for more than just graphics processing, resulting in improved general computing power. This is the industry-changing power of accelerated computing ― the power of Fusion.
In the case of the Adobe Premiere plug-in, a lot of the processing is still being handled by the multi-core CPU, but what is nice here is that it now powers the user to finally unlock the ATI Stream to compute acceleration capabilities sitting on those ATI Radeon HD 4870 graphics cards.
Some Explanations:
--What are plug-ins?
Plug-ins are software modules that add to the functionality of an application.So AMD's beta plug-in for Adobe Premiere Pro CS4, is a software module, which adds functionality to the Adobe Premier Pro CS4, by gelling together the AMD hardware and the Adobe Application(software).
--What is ATI Stream Technology?
ATI Stream Technology or GPU(Graphics Processing Unit) Technology for Accelerated Computing is a set of advanced hardware and software technologies that enable AMD graphics processors (GPU), working together with the system’s central processor (CPU), to accelerate many applications beyond just graphics. In simple, the whole idea is not to leave any GPU resources unused. Whenever there's some unused resource it'll be used to accelerate the computing. This enables better balanced platforms capable of running demanding computing tasks(Like Video editing) faster than ever.
--What is AMD Fusion ?
AMD Fusion is an initiative or concept under which AMD collaborates with the Application makers/software makers, with an objective of giving a memorable experience to the user. The latest AMD beta plug-in for Adobe Premiere Pro CS4, is a result of one such effort.
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What the new AMD beta plug-in for Adobe Premiere Pro CS4 achieves on performance front ?
The results of the tests conducted at the AMD labs, give the following performance numbers:
--The latest Catalyst driver(plug-in) enhances the encoding performance up to 8 times.
More specifically, for those looking to build DVDs (or in need of MPEG2 streams) the AMD Fast MPEG2 encoder performs over 178% faster than Adobe default encoder.2 I still like H.264 for quality and compression and the AMD Fast H.264 encoder performs up to 668% faster than Adobe default encoder. --------