Microsoft reveals native Win 7 video transcoding

Author: Tim Smalley
Published: 2nd June 2009

Microsoft's Murray Vince revealed one of Windows 7's hidden features: native GPU accelerated video transcoding. Huang gave him a big hug after hailing Windows 7 as the most important OS ever.

COMPUTEX 2009: Microsoft’s Murray Vince yesterday revealed that Windows 7 features native support for GPU accelerated video transcoding.

Vince announced this interesting development during Nvidia’s pre-Computex shindig, where he joined Drew Henry on stage.

The implementation was seamless as Henry simply dragged and dropped the high definition video file onto a Sony Walkman portable media player in Windows Explorer, where it automatically started transferring the file onto the Walkman.

The demo included an Ion-based machine and another, similarly specced machine without Nvidia integrated graphics – the Nvidia-based machine finished the transcoding task around five times faster than the Atom-based PC with Intel integrated graphics, taking just over 1 minute 30 to complete.

Vince said that you can treat media as easily portable content with Windows 7 – “it’s conveniently capable across multiple devices,” he added.

With native support for features like this, it’s easy to understand why Huang is so excited about Windows 7. “DirectX Compute is the most important API in Windows 7,” proclaimed Henry as Vince returned to his seat in the audience.

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