Which Encoder for HEVC / X265 On a Kaby Lake i7700K

[martynmbc]

Hi,

I have been out of the loop for a while and am curious to see if I have fallen behind with the best way to encode my Movies to HEVC?

I have the following tools at my disposal,

i7700K
Nvidia 1080GTX
Intel QuickSync

I am currently using Handbrake CPU encoding and getting superb quality for a 90 minute video at approximately 1GB-1.3GB which encodes at approximately 70fps as my main goal is small file size / best quality

My question is are there any new methods that I should be aware of? I know the quality/filesize of HEVC / Quick Sync is not great but is there a way of combining CPU & GPU? or anything else that could speed up my encoding without suffering larger file sizes or quality or is CPU only encoding the only way to go?

Many Thanks!

[stonesfan99]

CPU encoding with x265 is going to give the best quality. If I remember correctly, Intel Quick Sync is the only hardware-accelerated encoder supported by Handbrake. Intel Quick Sync would be significantly faster than x265, but the quality will not be as good. If the encoding time is not an issue, I would continue to stick with x265. Otherwise if you want faster encode times, switch to Intel Quick Sync, or use another program that can make use of NVENC with your Nvidia card. Not really a way to use both.

[sophisticles]

Handbrake in an of itself sucks and is a poor barometer of how any encoder behaves.

The developers refuse to implement all the features of Quick Sync, refuse to implement Quick Sync at all on Linux, refuse to implement any advanced encoding parameters for anything other than x264 and I have tried it and found that even with x265 12-bit you can sometimes get poor quality.

If you want to use Quick Sync to the maximum quality that is available with it sans paying $5000 for Intel's commercial products that make use of it, then I suggest you learn how to use ffmpeg.

You may still come to the conclusion that x265 is the better option but at least you will be making an decision after having seen all the facts.

[CursedLemon]

You sound like you're already using the best option, which is x265 as others have said. Unfortunately, there are no "magic bullets" in video encoding that will give a person a significant boost in speed and/or quality. For a given bitrate with HEVC, x265 will be a little bit better in quality, and NVENC or QuickSync will be a little bit faster.

That's pretty much the long and the short of it.

[Bernix]

Also you can tell us, what is your encoding settings. But most probably CRF, I noticed that at certain CRF the veryfast preset gives smaller size at fastest time. But of course quality will not be same as medium or slow. I think you are using building presets, because you didn't mentioned any other settings. If you use some special settings, or filters, there probably can be way to speed up encoding a bit for minimal cost of quality. BTW as known lower CRF better quality, but also slower encoding because of higher bitrate. And one other thing, do not use VFR (variable frame rate) that is default in Handbrake and Vidcoder!!!
But all I wrote here is well known.

Bernix