Accelerating video transcoding using the GPU is all the rage these days, and AMD is working hard to stay ahead of the curve. Earlier today, the company quietly released a Catalyst driver hotfix that includes a brand-new ATI Stream transcoding runtime. The runtime promises quicker video transcoding with lower CPU usage. Here's a diagram of the new ATI Stream transcoding pipeline. AMD makes no secret of the fact that the GPU doesn't do all the work—the CPU still takes care of tasks like entropy estimation:

More info: Tech Report