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DirectX9 - For More Than Just Gamers?
Xev writes "HEXUS.net are showing a review of a new product called 3DEdit. This uses the DirectX 9 3D rendering engine; 3D transitions; DirectX 9 Shader-based filters, in order to give you a powerful home DV editing suite. This proves a lot more value to me as a Video editor than a card which just lets me play the latest games. Perhaps there is more use for these cards even at a consumer level?"
Oh and I've found that Direct3D has major issues with modifying and accessing texture data directly, which would be necessary for something like this.
We're actually considering going this route with an app here at work. It's a GUI-intensive app that spends most of its time drawing to the screen using custom MFC controls. It's fast enough most of the time but begins bogging down when we try to push through too much data.
Anyone have any experience going the DirectX route? Would it possibly be faster than what we're doing today? I assumed from my experience with the interfaces on games (Unreal Tournament, etc) that DX would be slower.
From the article: "It's even necessary to turn on anti-aliasing in the graphics card drivers to smooth the on-screen elements of the interface."
I can see this needing a little more horsepower to really run great. I love the effect of AA, but my meager P4 2.4 can't always take the extra processing required. I wish they had tested the program on a lesser machine than a Dual Xeon. =0
I'm on a chair.
A friend of mine who used to work at ATI made a video shader demo that shows some neat video effects you can do in just a pixel shader -- i.e. render 1 rectangle that fills the screen with the video as your texture, and do all the "fun" stuff in a pixel shader. The ATI developer page that links to the binary is here.
If you look at the requirements for that demo, it wants a radeon 9500, which means that cards have bene powerful enough to do these things for years. I wouldn't be surprized if apple's video editing tools used the video card to composite scenes off-screen. Probably the same thing for newer versions of Premiere.
-S
It's as good as anything, imho. The learning curve can be a pain depending on backgrounds and what technologies you are coding in. DX9 has a lot of .NET stuff that's sorta solid, yet still has a little bit of a beta quality to the API if you ask me. I got my job done and people were happy. (This is of course, as of a year and a half ago... so things like documentation have probably gotten way better.)
If you are in MFC land, DirectX isn't a bad choice. Of course, I'll always have a soft spot for OpenGL, but platform situations are often out of our control.
m.
I've always wondered about the untapped potential of video cards.
My father is an architect, and while he has the highest rated hardware his applications take no advantage of the 3d acceleration technologies of the video card - it seems like such a waste to me. All this effecient rendering power in these little affordable cards, and no serious business apps taking direct advantage of that.
The (now venerable) Matrox RT2000/2500 made use of the 3D features of the graphics card for video processing. There was still an additional board doing a lot of the work, but it was the same basic notion.
It was very impressive playing with real-time 3D transitions, flips, (one) alpha channel and so on at DV res one a standard PC. IIRC Final Cut HD depends similarly on the graphics board to be able to edit HD content on a Mac without additional hardware.
I have a friend who works for Sun Microsystems, and he tells me they're working on a 3D version of JDS (don't get me wrong, a desktop system is the LAST thing I'd want to see Java used for, but that's not the point). Among other things, you can rotate a window, say, 80 degrees and stick it in a corner. It's then still recognizable, but it doesn't take up much space. You can also turn things around and write notes on the back. This is a REAL use of 3D in a graphical shell. Now, if only somebody would take their idea and implement it in C++ (or some other language with a goal other than portability).
-Amalcon
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Guess its all in how you define "standard."
Looking at dictionary.com the most relevant definition
"Something, such as a practice or a product, that is widely recognized or employed, especially because of its excellence"
Now the excellence part is in doubt but I dont' think any sane person will argue that windows DirectX 9 isn't "widely employed." Because most people have access to this platform it is very standard and thus useful to the majority of people.
Oh, or were you just ranting because you can't use it on your Mac or Linux machine?
One should not theorize before one has data. -Sherlock Holmes-
The real power for video editing will come as PCI Express takes over.
The reason - unlike AGP, the PCI express bus is truly bidirectional, and allows for a whole lot more data to be sent to the card from the application. If you went to Siggraph, you would have already seen vendors ready to take advantage of this added bandwidth. You'll see HDTV editing, 3D Rendering, and many other apps moved to the GPUs of high end graphics cards using PCI express. As to the interface, well, Direct X is a possibility, but a lot of card vendors have an interest in promoting their own standards.
The popular and affordable consumer-level graphics cards 'supported' OpenGL to the extent that they ran the functions Quake used well. Maya has gone so far as to quit using particular features ("menu plane") because cards didn't bother to support them because Id didn't use them.
Why are you so quick to discount their impact? OpenGL would not be readily available and affordable if it wasn't for id software.
Gee, I guess I should have added an "IMNSHO".
As a person who has written numerous game engines, I can attest to the fact that OpenGL is - for me - not a better API. It is convoluted and over-complicated by the very fact that it is an "open" standard, decided upon by a committee of people who wouldn't know good design if it bit them in the rear.
I certainly disagree with this statement. I suppose you could make an argument that a C API vs. COM is a matter of taste. I think the simplicity of the C API (which is also slightly more efficient) is elegant.
Just the fact that most of the features easily found in D3D cannot be accessed in OpenGL, years after their invention, without the use of custom extensions is enough to throw me off the API.
The counterpoint to this is that hardware companies using OpenGL can expose new functionality without ARB approval. That has many beneficial effects, including the ability of game developers to use said new features in production games before the ARB gets around to deciding on the "best" official implementation.
DirectX developers, on the other hand, get to wait for Microsoft to release a new DirectX version. Guess which I find preferable?
If you want to use OpenGL that's your right. But it is not an objectively better API any more than Mac is objectively better than PC, Linux objectively better than Windows, or any of the other /. propaganda that we consistently read.
I'd say there are excellent cases to be made that "Mac is better than PC" and "Linux is better than Windows". However, the real problem is that "better" is a vague term. I should have been more specific. Let's try again:
OpenGL is a more elegant, leaner, and better designed API than Direct3D. Its cross-platform availability is simply icing on the cake. OpenGL will ultimately bury Direct3D. All IMNSHO, of course.
Happy now? :-)
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
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