XEONs or Upgrade to i7? Quick Sync vs GPU?

[gable74]

So I have been using Handbrake for a few months and have been very happy with the results. I recently came into a large collection of Blu-Rays that I want to RIP to my PLEX server and I really just need a better understanding of a few terms and how they apply to different hardware so I know the next step to take. I just do not want to waste a bunch of money on the wrong thing.

My current rig is a "hand-me-down" Dell R620 server w/ dual 8 core (16 cores total) E5-2690 CPUs and 32gb ram running windows 10 pro 64bit.

I want to encode the Blu-Rays to H.265 for the smaller file sizes. I noticed that when encoding H.265, the process takes a very long time. Roughly 3-4hrs to encode a 2hr movie in H.265.

I also have a Dell Alienware r3 Laptop with an i7 6820HK 8 core CPU. When I encode the same movie on the laptop using H.265 (QSV) the process takes about 25min.

Obviously the XEON rig does not have quick sync video which is what I am assuming makes the process much faster.

My question is, can I add a video card (GPU) to the R620 that would enable the use of QSV? I do have a full height x 3/4 length 16x 3.0 PCIe slot in the R620 and it does support a GPU but I want to make sure I buy the right one, and only if adding the GPU will actually help to accelerate the encoding process. OR......do I sell the XEON rig and buy a dedicated i7 PC with QSV built in

A little advice or help please....

Thanks,
Jimmie

[SameSelf]

With hw encoding you always trade quality for speed. Two very different goals. The fact that you have a dual Xeon that takes 3-4 hrs is completely irrelevant. Use your laptop.

[themaster1]

buying a new intel processor ("quicksync ready") will cost more so i say get a 2nd hand nvidia card with hevc encoding support (gtx 950 and on i believe)

there is a good guide here

[SameSelf]

buying a kaby lake is just stupid since he already has a skylake.

[gable74]

With hw encoding you always trade quality for speed. Two very different goals. The fact that you have a dual Xeon that takes 3-4 hrs is completely irrelevant. Use your laptop.

So what you are saying is I am better off using a capable CPU than I am installing a GPU in the r620? You are correct that I do not want to sacrifice quality for speed but I would like the process to be a little faster. I am also guessing by your response that a GPU may quicken the process but the quality will go down?

I do not want to use the laptop for encoding for a few different reasons....mostly because its the family laptop and is being used regularly by others for different things.

The r620 was an older PLEX server that I retired for a new one. My thought on that was the dual 8 core XEONs "should" be fairly snappy with regard to encoding....but they were no match for the 6820 in the Alienware. I could get in the neighborhood of $1000 - $1200 for the r620 which would cover 90% or more of a nice dedicated encoding machine. Something with a 6800k or 6850k.

I guess my next question would be, am I sacrificing quality by using QSV to speed up the process or is QSV a proven and reliable method for encoding?

If someone told you that you needed to encode a bunch of stuff in H.265 and quality was important, then said you could have an r620 XEON setup like the one I described above or you could custom build a machine with a $1200 budget.....what would you do?

there is a good guide here

Good article and it sounds like my method of encoding is exactly what they recommend. H.265 Medium with a QF of 21-23. Unfortunately they did not discuss the use of QSV.

[sneaker]

I am also guessing by your response that a GPU may quicken the process but the quality will go down?

Whether it's QuickSync or NVENC: they don't speed up x264 or x265. They are completely different encoders with they own up- and downsides. Well, the upside being speed. Downside offering less quality at same size or same quality at bigger size. Although that is subject to discussion.

If someone told you that you needed to encode a bunch of stuff in H.265 and quality was important, then said you could have an r620 XEON setup like the one I described above or you could custom build a machine with a $1200 budget.....what would you do?

First I would ask: do you really need H.265 or would H.264 also do? Because I've seen at higher qualities/bitrates x264 might equal or win against x265. At faster speed.
Next question is: what is the file size goal? Again: at higher bitrates x264 might be equal or better at faster speed. And if you are aiming for higher bitrates GPU encoding might be good enough anyways.

So at the end of the day it is subjective. If you are fine with QuickSync maybe buy a i3 Kaby Lake. Or stick to your dual XEON which should also be good and use x264 or x265. If it is too slow look if you have any bottlenecks. Maybe reduce resolution (most sources suck anyways). Choose a faster preset.

[SameSelf]

Xeons snappy! LOLOLOL. That is a good one. Xeons are like a bus with a governor. Good for hauling loads of people around town, but far from the zippy sports car you were hoping for.

IIWY, I would use my laptop in the middle of the night, sell the old Xeon server, and spend the $1200+ on a trip to Vegas. Some people look for any reason they can to upgrade to the latest hw, but at 25 minutes a movie, you could chew through a large library fairly quick.

As long as progress is measurable, I never approach those sort of projects with speed in mind.

[gable74]

First I would ask: do you really need H.265 or would H.264 also do? Because I've seen at higher qualities/bitrates x264 might equal or win against x265. At faster speed.
Next question is: what is the file size goal? Again: at higher bitrates x264 might be equal or better at faster speed. And if you are aiming for higher bitrates GPU encoding might be good enough anyways.

I was going with H.265 because of the file size primarily. My PLEX server currently has a capacity of about 11Tb+/- and I am closing in on 9Tb of data. With the idea of ripping these Blu-Rays to my server, I wanted to keep the file size down as much as I could and still retain acceptable quality. I understand "quality" is subjective, but you know what I mean. I was seeing between 30%-40% reduction in file size using H.254/MED and a QF of 21 over the same file ripped to H.264 with similar settings using Handbrake.

Xeons snappy! LOLOLOL. That is a good one. Xeons are like a bus with a governor. Good for hauling loads of people around town, but far from the zippy sports car you were hoping for.

IIWY, I would use my laptop in the middle of the night, sell the old Xeon server, and spend the $1200+ on a trip to Vegas. Some people look for any reason they can to upgrade to the latest hw, but at 25 minutes a movie, you could chew through a large library fairly quick.

Perhaps "Zippy" was the wrong adjective, sorry. The thought was that the XEONs would have enough muscle to push through an H.265 encode a little faster than it did.

I guess what I need to determine is (Assuming the same settings are used):

1. Is the encode using my r620 without QSV better, equal, or worse than an encode with QSV on an i7?
2. Is the encode using my r620 without QSV better, equal, or worse than an encode without QSV on an i7?

Based on those answers I can figure out if the speed trade off is worth it.

[sneaker]

I was seeing between 30%-40% reduction in file size using H.254/MED and a QF of 21 over the same file ripped to H.264 with similar settings using Handbrake.

That statements is pretty useless because you can freely control H.264 size via --bitrate or --crf ("RF" in HandBrake). No one is stopping you from setting it so you have the same 30%-40% reduction (or more!) using H.264.

1. Is the encode using my r620 without QSV better, equal, or worse than an encode with QSV on an i7?

Most likely better.

2. Is the encode using my r620 without QSV better, equal, or worse than an encode without QSV on an i7?

Equal in compression (quality/size).

[gable74]

That statements is pretty useless because you can freely control H.264 size via --bitrate or --crf ("RF" in HandBrake). No one is stopping you from setting it so you have the same 30%-40% reduction (or more!) using H.264.

True, but with an obvious difference in quality.

1. Is the encode using my r620 without QSV better, equal, or worse than an encode with QSV on an i7?

Most likely better.

2. Is the encode using my r620 without QSV better, equal, or worse than an encode without QSV on an i7?

Equal in compression (quality/size).

I agree with both answers albeit the XEONs would most likely take longer in both cases.

I appreciate your help guys,I will most likely just keep using the r620 and set up large batch jobs to run.

[sneaker]

True, but with an obvious difference in quality.

Did you test that? Same source same output file size? Then good. It is subjective anyways.

2. Is the encode using my r620 without QSV better, equal, or worse than an encode without QSV on an i7?

Equal in compression (quality/size).

I agree with both answers albeit the XEONs would most likely take longer in both cases.

Which i7 is faster than dual E5-2690 in software encoding? At least x265 has some optimizations for dual CPU.

[SameSelf]

Perhaps "Zippy" was the wrong adjective, sorry. The thought was that the XEONs would have enough muscle to push through an H.265 encode a little faster than it did.

Xeons are purposely underclocked for stability. But taking this analogy to its logical conclusion, read on. I am not sure how well h.265 scales with number of threads. Assuming not very well, you may be able to speed up the encodes on your Xeons by encoding four movies in parallel (à la a render farm). Of course, each movie still won't be as fast as a single 4-core Skylake, but if you can still chew through a single BD in 3-4 hours on 8 threads, then chewing through 4 movies at once using all 32 threads is equivalent to 1 hour encode time. Or, there might be a sweet spot at 6 or 4 threads per movie. For example, if 4 threads take 6 hours, then encoding 8 movies at once will be equivalent to 45 minutes per movie. And given the stability of Xeons, I would not hesitate throwing 8 movies at once on such a machine.

Like I said, Xeons are like buses with engine governors. Great for moving lots of people across town, something I wouldn't want to do with a snappy sports car. So maybe there is an application for your old server, but it will require some testing and advanced preparation.

[KarMa]

2. Is the encode using my r620 without QSV better, equal, or worse than an encode without QSV on an i7?

Equal in compression (quality/size).

QS has been shown to be worse than x265 in quality. QS is on the better end of the hardware encoding side, but it's still hardware encoding. But I don't know what OP is using for software encoding (x265?), nor what settings are used which are a major factor in all this.

OP could try encoding multiple videos at one time, like giving half the cores to one encode and half to the other encode.

Sidenote: Interesting little animation I found on HEVC encoding. https://www.parabolaresearch.com/blog/2013-12-01-hevc-wavefront-animation.html

[gable74]

You guys must be clairvoyant because I realized just before coming back to this thread that my CPU(s) usage was only at 28% when encoding one movie. I had no idea Handbrake allowed multiple instances at once but I gave it a whirl and sure enough it does. So I did just what you suggested. I tried 2 then 3 encodes at once and it began running CPU usage up near 90%. I have found that (SO FAR) three encodes running in parallel still results in the same encode time for each file but I have tripled my product output in that same time frame. Very Cool! I think this is my answer for now....thank you guys!!

[SameSelf]

Glad to hear you found a way to parallelize your renders. As a final note, I would encourage looking into the ffmpeg CLI versus Handbrake. There is slightly less overhead involved. And ffmpeg has a -threads setting that should allow you to better fine tune how the rendering is allocated across your cpus. The web is your friend.