core image compatibility

cfleck

cfleck

tired
so looking at the apple web site, core image stuff is only going to work on certain gpus. the new ibooks dont seem to meet the requirements. what does this mean for those ibook users?

are they just s.o.l.? like any app that uses core video just won't work or what? i'm sort of at a loss as to why apple would be putting out systems that won't be able to take advantage of this feature. honestly, i don't even know what is so great about it, so maybe someone could elaborate on that point.
 
CoreImage and CoreVideo, as far as I understand, will scale to whatever processor it's running on.

"The performance gains and features supported by Core Image ultimately depend on the graphics card. Graphics cards capable of pixel-level programming deliver the best performance. But Core Image automatically scales as appropriate for systems with older graphics cards, for compatibility with any Tiger-compatible Mac."

http://www.apple.com/macosx/tiger/core.html

Sounds like it's optimized for certain graphics cards (which are listed on that page) but it will scale back for older graphics cards.

The wording on that page leads me to believe that no one with a Tiger-compatible machine will be left out in the cold concerning CoreImage/Video.

Bascially, CoreImage and CoreVideo implement common filters and effects for images and video and process those routines with the graphic card's GPU instead of the system processor, resulting in much better image and video effects and quality. In essence, it'll make images and video faster, since your computer's processor won't have to do much of the work concerning image and video manipulation -- instead, the graphics card will do much of it. The better your graphics card, the better improvement you'll experience with CoreImage- and CoreVideo-enabled applications. If your graphics card doesn't meet the requirements, CoreImage and CoreVideo applications and routines will still work, but you won't get the benefit of the improved quality and speed.

Think of it like Quartz Extreme for images, video and applications, except everyone gets the spinning-cube-fast-user-switching effect.
 
While this is true, a big chunk of the graphics subsystem is being updated and modified during this period, so the Tiger seeds don't currently behave properly on certain graphics setups. For example, CoreVideo with Rage 128 hardware is slower than molasses and transparency does not work on top of video in Quicktime (the playback reminds me of the speed of my old 8600 before I got a video card for it). So, once this is all done, I would expect older hardware to chug along like before for the most part, while newer hardware will be even snappier than it already is.
 
Quicktime actually runs in 10.4 exactly as in 10.3 with my Rage 128. Although, like you say, there is no transparency working yet so when you do CMD+Tab you get black outlines around the popup.

The clock doesn't flip around like it did for Steve in his Dashboard demo.
 
Captain Code said:
Quicktime actually runs in 10.4 exactly as in 10.3 with my Rage 128. Although, like you say, there is no transparency working yet so when you do CMD+Tab you get black outlines around the popup.
Click to expand...

Is this from 294? I have only had time to tinker with 264 where the Quicktime performance was abysmal. Normally a 512x384 MPEG-4 video file with AAC audio runs full framerate on 10.3.x, while in 264 I was getting 2-5 frames per second. Ouch.
 
Krevinek said:
Is this from 294? I have only had time to tinker with 264 where the Quicktime performance was abysmal. Normally a 512x384 MPEG-4 video file with AAC audio runs full framerate on 10.3.x, while in 264 I was getting 2-5 frames per second. Ouch.
Click to expand...

Yes, I am running build 294. I can run full DV streams and MPEG no problem, and works just as before. I haven't tried any MPEG4 yet because I don't have anything encoded in that.
 
(Then go encode something in that. Or rather: Encode something in H.264! ;))
 
Well, the problems extended to really anything beyond 320x240 in MPEG-1, Sorenson, well... pretty much everything bigger than 320x240. In 264 it was as if there was no such thing as video acceleration, so I will compare with 294 when I get a chance to see what is going on.
 
I'd say so, too. Could be that the build you had was specifically flawed in the graphics department for the specific card(s) you tried it on, could be that the development on those drivers only took off afterwards... But I quite definitely think that Apple would rather end compatibility for 'those' machines completely than to only half-heartedly support them in the future. After their experience with all those G3s etc. that gave them quite some headaches (lawsuits) in the past... So I guess: It'll be fine by final release at the latest...
 
Well, as I have been saying (see my first post in this thread), is that I fully expect Apple to restore the speed of Video to 10.3 levels by the time of the release. I was also explaining the reasoning behind the glitches is because of the CoreVideo/CoreImage rewrite. It isn't like tacking on something on top of Quartz, it is rewriting parts of Quartz itself. That takes time.

Another reason why they cannot drop support is that to drop support for machines without CoreImage/CoreVideo supported cards is shooting themselves in the foot worse than the 'half-hearted' support issue. More likely, this is all the lessons learned from Final Cut and the like, and adding in extra accelerations when available. Especially considering the only problem with the Lombard/Wallstreet was the lack of 3D support in OS X. Sure the card was underpowered, but I know it would have been possible for OpenGL support.
 
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