Enabling AVIVO Video converter’s full functionality in Windows 7

I was a long time NVIDIA user. This summer, a month back I switched loyalty to AMD and got their once flagship, ATI Radeon 4870 1 GB for as little as Rs. 9500. Initially I wanted to go for Zotac GTX 260. But it was priced high, about 1.5k more than the ATI counterpart.

The performance of the card is awesome in games. But I use the card in other fields too such as converting videos etc. Earlier, I use to encode videos using Badaboom converter which is designed on CUDA for NVIDIA. It is a mind blowing product and is worth the $20 price. Every one who owns a NVIDIA graphics card should spare some money for it too.

Then, I started converting videos with the help of ATI’s built-in AVIVO video converter. It used to give me a lot of headaches as it was unable to decode the AVI, MP4 & MKV files. It used to give me ‘Unsupported File Format’ error. Then I found a solution. Just follow these steps :-

1. Install Shark007 codecs from http://shark007.net/ relevant to your architecture.


2. Then, download Codec Tweaker from http://www.codecguide.com/windows7_preferred_filter_tweaker.htm.


3. After that, start Codec Tweaker & un-select everything that is played via Microsoft. Select FFDSHOW instead.


4. Disable Media-Foundation, it is the primary culprit.


5. Start AVIVIO video converter via Advanced Mode's drop down menu.


6. Make sure you select Enable Acceleration.


7. Enjoy.

If you want more control over the ATI card then I suggest that you download A’s video converter from here.

Update :- As of March 1st 2011, A's Video converter is no longer available.

Regarding performance, just see the table below.

Source File & Size	Conversion Time	Final Size
175 MB TV Show	1:20 min	70 MB
700 MB Movie	5:26 min	423 MB

Check it out. Its worth the shot.