GPU for HEVC / h.265 hardware accelerated encoding?

V1v10

Newbie Joined: Oct 17, 2015 20:46 Messages: 25 Offline

Solved by

Oct 19, 2019 13:21

I'm wondering if anyone out there is running PD18 and using hardware accelerated encoding for HEVC / h.265 production. I'm hoping to do this since, for my purposes, a 4k HEVC at 37Mbps is as good as a 4k AVC at 50 Mbps. The HEVC takes about 2/3 the space, but takes about 6x as long to produce.

(I'm on PD 14 right now, and I can only use hardware accelerated encoding on h.264 / AVC. My AMD R9 380 doesn't, apparently, support HEVC hardware encoding, but my Skylake GPU does, however PD 14 has never seemed to use it.)

I'm trying PD 18 to see if I get better speed and results, and I'm willing to upgrade from that AMD R9 to something a bit newer, so I'm looking for cards in the couple-hundred-bucks range that are known to work with HEVC encoding, so I can save myself some time and disc space. As it stands, PD18 does not use the HEVC encoder in my skylake CPU. When I go to produce in h.265, none of the fast rendering options are clickable.

Unfortunately, my attempts to get help on this topic from CL support haven't worked -- they just keep pointing me to an out-of-date "how to enable hardware acceleration" page in the FAQ.

I'm now wondering if the entire problem can't be solved with a GPU that would hardware encode HEVC in PD14 as well as 18 (and I'll just get a refund on 18 since there's not much else for me there.)

Current setup:

System Manufacturer: Gigabyte Technology Co., Ltd.
System Model: Z170XP-SLI
BIOS: F5 (type: UEFI)
Processor: Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-6500 CPU @ 3.20GHz (4 CPUs), ~3.2GHz
Memory: 32768MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 32718MB RAM
Page File: 9294MB used, 24446MB available
Windows Dir: C:\WINDOWS
DirectX Version: DirectX 12
DX Setup Parameters: Not found
User DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)
System DPI Setting: 96 DPI (100 percent)
DWM DPI Scaling: Disabled
Miracast: Available, with HDCP
Microsoft Graphics Hybrid: Not Supported

DirectX Debug Levels
--------------------
Direct3D: 0/4 (retail)
DirectDraw: 0/4 (retail)
DirectInput: 0/5 (retail)
DirectMusic: 0/5 (retail)
DirectPlay: 0/9 (retail)
DirectSound: 0/5 (retail)
DirectShow: 0/6 (retail)
---------------
Display Devices
---------------
Card name: AMD Radeon (TM) R9 380 Series
Manufacturer: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
Chip type: AMD Radeon Graphics Processor (0x6939)
DAC type: Internal DAC(400MHz)
Device Type: Full Device (POST)
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_6939&SUBSYS_22B61458&REV_F1
Device Status: 0180200A [DN_DRIVER_LOADED|DN_STARTED|DN_DISABLEABLE|DN_NT_ENUMERATOR|DN_NT_DRIVER]
Device Problem Code: No Problem
Driver Problem Code: Unknown
Display Memory: 18382 MB
Dedicated Memory: 2023 MB
Shared Memory: 16358 MB

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at Oct 19. 2019 13:39

tomasc

Senior Contributor Joined: Aug 25, 2011 12:33 Messages: 6464 Offline

Oct 19, 2019 14:44

According to this article the skylake cpu support hevc in the main profile: https://software.intel.com/en-us/forums/intel-media-sdk/topic/593638 . The link here shows hevc main profile 4Kp60 at up to 240 Mbps: https://www.anandtech.com/show/9562/intels-skylake-gpu-analyzing-the-media-capabilities .

You may have to connect your monitor to integrated graphics or remove the amd card to get it to work. Others here may be able to suggest a video card in your price range.

SoNic67

Senior Contributor Joined: Sep 27, 2014 14:14 Messages: 1308 Offline

Oct 19, 2019 16:13

My Intel CPU does not have a GPU integrated so I had to use various video cards. I had an AMD RX580 and although was "working" it has some issues with the compression ratio.

Now I have a nvidia GTX1080, it has integrated the same hardware encoder (nvenc) as the less costly GTX1050 (well, the 1080 has two of those, but if you encode just one video at a time, it does not matter). It does encode H265 very fast.
The features supported are here:
https://developer.nvidia.com/video-encode-decode-gpu-support-matrix
and
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_NVENC#Fourth_generation,_Pascal_GP10x

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at Oct 19. 2019 16:18

V1v10

Newbie Joined: Oct 17, 2015 20:46 Messages: 25 Offline

Oct 19, 2019 18:55

Thanks. I grabbed an inexpensive Gigabyte card with the GTX 1650 and 4 gigs of memory. That's turing architecture but with the Volta-level NVENC, I guess. The card's 1/3 the size of the older AMD, doesn't need extra power, is quieter, and although PD 14 won't recognize it for use even with h.264 (maybe I need to reinstall or something to get it to reconfigure the graphics?), PD 18 works great with it so far.

It's doing hardware encoding of a little 10 minute 4k, 60fps trail run video I did the other day. Using PD14 and CPU encoding, that video took about 8 hours to encode. With this cheap graphics card, it's encoding at a speed of about 1.2 seconds of video per second of elapsed encoding time. As I'm typing this, it's finishing up, in less than 7 minuts. So, more than 60x faster? That's a major improvement for me and makes it much easier and more fun for me to get the rest of my video work done.

I've read that the quality on hardware-encoded video is supposed to be worse. I'm more a still photographer, and something of a pixel peeper, and I've done several CPU/software to GPU/hardware encoded 4k tests and I can't really spot much difference. That's good enough for men then, I guess.

Still running tests, but it looks like good hardware accelerated encoding in HEVC can be had for $150 -- along with PD18 anyway.

JL_JL

Senior Contributor Location: Arizona, USA Joined: Oct 01, 2006 20:01 Messages: 6091 Offline

Oct 19, 2019 20:14

Quote The card's 1/3 the size of the older AMD, doesn't need extra power, is quieter, and although PD 14 won't recognize it for use even with h.264 (maybe I need to reinstall or something to get it to reconfigure the graphics?)

For PD14, the most recent driver one can use for hardware encoding support with Nvidia products is 411.70 as CL never provided an update. So you need to select a Nvidia GPU that is compatible with 411.70 driver and never update the driver. The GTX 1650 is not compatible but any of the 10 series, other than 1030 would have worked.

For PD18 you can use the recent drivers, however, PD18 does not take advantage of any of the added capability in the RTX 20 series GPU's. The 1650 kind of a half breed as you note, it has the older NVENC capability of the 10 series.

Jeff

SoNic67

Senior Contributor Joined: Sep 27, 2014 14:14 Messages: 1308 Offline

Oct 19, 2019 21:46

Quote Still running tests, but it looks like good hardware accelerated encoding in HEVC can be had for $150 -- along with PD18 anyway.

That's why I recomended the 1050 above - to work with PD14. But maybe it doesn't matter that much.

As for PD18, if you would got the GTX1660, then it would had the newer NVENC, that have H265 encoding with B frames. For about $230.
Don't know how much matters in terms of quality... and if the $80 extra would brake the bank

Congrats for the new toy!

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at Oct 19. 2019 21:50

V1v10

Newbie Joined: Oct 17, 2015 20:46 Messages: 25 Offline

Oct 19, 2019 21:59

Yeah, I saw that after I bought, but before I installed. I'd have had the better turing-based acceleration too, but the store has a good return policy, so I put the card in and thought, eh, I don't know if I need to spend another $80 when it's this good already.

Now I just need to figure out why PD18 won't properly load the Magic YUV AVIs I've got for legacy stuff, which open fine in PD14... Always something.

optodata

Senior Contributor Location: California, USA Joined: Sep 16, 2011 16:04 Messages: 8630 Offline

Oct 19, 2019 22:02

Quote Now I just need to figure out why PD18 won't properly load the Magic YUV AVIs I've got for legacy stuff, which open fine in PD14... Always something.

V1v10

Newbie Joined: Oct 17, 2015 20:46 Messages: 25 Offline

Oct 19, 2019 22:23

Thanks. I re-checked the LAV splitter stuff that was sometimes a problem and that's all good. I don't see a patch on the update page for plain old PD 18.

optodata

Senior Contributor Location: California, USA Joined: Sep 16, 2011 16:04 Messages: 8630 Offline

Oct 19, 2019 22:36

Quote Thanks. I re-checked the LAV splitter stuff that was sometimes a problem and that's all good. I don't see a patch on the update page for plain old PD 18.

V1v10

Newbie Joined: Oct 17, 2015 20:46 Messages: 25 Offline

Oct 19, 2019 23:11

I'll cross my fingers. In the meantime I have all that newer 4k stuff to process from the GoPro anyway.