nVidia recently released an update for their GPU video transcoding Badaboom software. The new version 2 now supports the newer ‘Fermi’ family based GPUs (i.e. all of the GTX4xx and GTX5xx cards). The new version also has a large list of supported output devices– including Apple iPad, AppleTV, Motorola Xoom, Samsung Galaxy Tab and many others.
However, it appears that Badaboom does not work with the latest version of nVidia’s drivers; running display drivers v266.58, Badaboom 2 will crash at 6-8 seconds into transcoding. When I reverted back to v263.09, transcoding works as designed.
It takes about 7 minutes to transcode a 40 minute 720p video file to Motorola Xoom format; much better than straight CPU encoding (which takes about 20 minutes on a Core i7 860) !
Update: It appears it is not a problem with nVidia’s driver- but rather with my system. I did a full rebuild Badaboom 2 will work properly with either version of the driver…