One of AMDs weakest points when it comes to adding custom features to its hardware compared to Intel has always been to get the software vendors to implement support for its hardware solutions. It looks like AMD has at least managed to make some progress in this regard, as CyberLink has announced support for AMDs upcoming Trinity APUs across the board of its top selling programs.
Most interesting in our opinion is support in PowerDirector 10 and MediaEspresso 6.5, as this should see the time it takes to encode video vastly reduced. In fact, CyberLink is quoting a 3.6 times performance improvement in the time it takes to produce a video in PowerDirector 10 using an AMD A10-4600M APU using hardware acceleration rather than doing it all in software mode.
PowerDirector 10 has had supported added for AMDs Video Codec Engine (VCE) and this goes for MediaEspresso 6.5 as well, which is what helps speed up the encoding and transcoding of video by leveraging the power of the integrated GPU. Judging by the fairly mediocre CPU performance of Trinity, it looks like this is a much needed feature for AMD if the company wants to compete on equal terms with Intel when it comes to consumer perception of how long time it takes to do certain tasks.
PowerDVD 12 and MediaShow 6 have also been updated to take advantage of VCE for transcoding on the fly when needed, although its not clear as to which formats are supported. AMD shouldnt really have any issues with any kind of media playback, as this has never really been a weak point for the company, although of course 3D playback is supported for those that care about it.
If you already own any of the above mentioned software, CyberLink will enable support for the Trinity APUs via a software update which is already available from its website. In the case of PowerDirector, CyberLink has also added support for Intels recently launched Ivy Bridge processors and video encoding in H.264 which works better with Apples "new" iPad.
