Fastest h265 transcoding software?

[savvyguy]

Hi guys,

I have some old home videos in h264, and would like to transcode duplicates into h265 files for mobile consumption. Which is the fastest software out there which doesn't cost an arm and an leg (like Cinemartin)? Preferably if it comes with CUDA and multi-core acceleration.

Thanks!

[KarMa]

Buy an Intel Skylake processor that supports Intel Quick Sync, for fast H.265 encoding.

Or just use x265 with a fast preset. (The newest version of Handbrake is easy to use and contains x265 v1.5)

[savvyguy]

New hardware is unfortunately not an option for me.

As for Handbrake, how is the transcoding quality and speed vs Wondershare?

[KarMa]

Currently x265 has the best quality/per bit for H.265. But it's not the fastest. The current version of x265 is now in 1.9 while Handbrake still only contains version 1.5 of x265. There have been some decent speed improvements since then, so you may want to use something like MeGui so you can use a more recent version of x265.

As for Wondershare I don't know, as this is the first I am hearing of them.

[pandy]

Fastest is NVEnc, Intel QSV is slower but provide better quality (and support 10 bit in hybrid). Software is very slow and still immature - x.265 is probably best free and open source h.265 encoder implementation available today...

[savvyguy]

Thanks for the replies guys.

Have a few more questions:

1. Is it true that NVENC is only supported by Quadro cards? I have a GTX660Ti.
https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/740489/gtx650ti-not-support-nvenc-/

2. If my card is supported, which software uses NVENC for accelerated transcoding?

3. Where can I go for benchmarks on x265 1.9 vs other implementations like Wondershare/CINEC?

[sneaker]

Currently x265 has the best quality/per bit for H.265. But it's not the fastest. The current version of x265 is now in 1.9 while Handbrake still only contains version 1.5 of x265.

Latest HandBrake (stable) uses x265 1.9.

1. Is it true that NVENC is only supported by Quadro cards? I have a GTX660Ti.
https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/740489/gtx650ti-not-support-nvenc-/

You don't need a Quadro but your GTX660Ti does not support NVENC HEVC encoding. That would require a second generation Maxwell card (GTX950 or better).
(The GTX660Ti should support NVENC H.264 encoding, though.)

[pandy]

Thanks for the replies guys.

Have a few more questions:

1. Is it true that NVENC is only supported by Quadro cards? I have a GTX660Ti.
https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/740489/gtx650ti-not-support-nvenc-/

2. If my card is supported, which software uses NVENC for accelerated transcoding?

3. Where can I go for benchmarks on x265 1.9 vs other implementations like Wondershare/CINEC?

Nope, H.265 aka HEVC is supported by latest generation of NVidia chips - in fact it is not software encoder but dedicated hardware encoder (accessible trough software and that's why i provided information as your goal was speed and speed mean sacrificing quality or higher bitrate).
Your card not support H.265 as it is not https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_NVENC#Third_Generation_.28Maxwell_GM20x.29 .
As this code (x265) is under intense development any benchmark is outdated after few days...
I would suggest you to perform benchmark - use representative sample video and measure time - maybe somebody is aware of some kind of automation solution to perform this kind of benchmarks...

[vhelp]

imo, i don't think the x265 encoder will ever get any faster than it is today.

after several years, the speed has not gotten any better.

on my dell laptop win7 64bit, intel i3 core processor, i get roughly (7 fps @ slow) to (32 fps @ ultrafast) with 720x480 SD material.

I just ran a quick run of some encodes on a 30fps video with 1000 frames:

brief details

preset     size     duration  fps min  fps max
ultrafast  7,374KB  00:00:31  29.00    32.01  
fast       6,346KB  00:00:53  15.00    18.86  
slow       6,587KB  00:02:17  05.90    07.28

full details

                                   preset          size    duration  fps min fps max
c:\videos\video.1.8.201.video.A.02.ultrafast.hevc  7,374KB 00:00:31  29.00   32.01  avs4x265 -P 357x265_main_1.8+201-769081eb5f4c.GCC530.64bit.exe --preset ultrafast --frames 1000 --crf 17 --ssim --log 3 --csv c:\videos\video.1.8.201.video.A.02.ultrafast.csv -o "c:\videos\video.1.8.201.video.A.02.ultrafast.hevc" "C:\avs.avs"
c:\videos\video.1.8.201.video.A.04.fast.hevc       6,346KB 00:00:53  15.00   18.86  avs4x265 -P 357x265_main_1.8+201-769081eb5f4c.GCC530.64bit.exe --preset fast      --frames 1000 --crf 17 --ssim --log 3 --csv c:\videos\video.1.8.201.video.A.04.fast.csv      -o "c:\videos\video.1.8.201.video.A.04.fast.hevc"      "C:\avs.avs"
c:\videos\video.1.8.201.video.A.05.slow.hevc       6,587KB 00:02:17  05.90   07.28  avs4x265 -P 357x265_main_1.8+201-769081eb5f4c.GCC530.64bit.exe --preset slow      --frames 1000 --crf 17 --ssim --log 3 --csv c:\videos\video.1.8.201.video.A.05.slow.csv      -o "c:\videos\video.1.8.201.video.A.05.slow.hevc"      "C:\avs.avs"

[KarMa]

after several years, the speed has not gotten any better.

It certainly has, much of which has come from better assembly instruction set support. You could test an older x265 version (1.5 for example) to today's.

[pandy]

imo, i don't think the x265 encoder will ever get any faster than it is today.

Well... it was clear to everyone that H.265 depends on case require somewhere between 16 and 64 (dirty finger extrapolation) times faster CPU to reach same encoding speed as for H.264.
H.265 is encoder where overall improvements are due increase computational complexity rather than to innovative methods for encoding.
one strong point is MPP capabilities from H.265 and i believe with multicore hardware it should be soon way faster.

[savvyguy]

bumping this up.

With the release of the 1080 cards, may I know if there is any new technology compare to the 980s that enable faster GPU-accelerated transcoding?

[pandy]

bumping this up.

With the release of the 1080 cards, may I know if there is any new technology compare to the 980s that enable faster GPU-accelerated transcoding?

AFAIK software using GPU video compression (CUDA, OpenCL etc) is still not available (at least not as free software).
Nowadays HW compression is implemented as independent from GPU subsystem (intense video compression produce no load on GPU part).

[savvyguy]

Hi Pandy,

So what would be the paid software that can fully maximize (100%) the GPU AND CPU load?

[xxxxx]

I think it´s TMPGEnc Video Mastering Works 6, there is a test version out there.
It uses CPU+GPU+X265.
Overall 100%, CPU ~66 GPU ~33% with GTX970

[savvyguy]

hmm odd, how come it doesn't put 100% load on both CPU and GPU? Is the GPU only limited to certain effects?

[sophisticles]

hmm odd, how come it doesn't put 100% load on both CPU and GPU? Is the GPU only limited to certain effects?

His answer was only partially correct, in the example he quoted encoding is being done on the cpu via x265 and the gpu is most likely handling some gpu-accelerated filters, decoding is either done by the cpu or done by an ASIC chip on the video card (decoding is never done on the gpu itself).

As for your implied question concerning gpu/cpu usage, I have spent years using all kinds of gpu powered (CUDA/OCL) encoders and hardware based encoders (Quick Sync and NVENC) and I can tell you this: you do not want a gpu powered encoder that uses 100% of the gpu, unless you have 2 video cards in your system and you can dedicate one just to encoding.

With gpu encoders that are capable of loading up a gpu to really high gpu and on board ram usage (like adobe media encoder), what you find is that the whole system slows down to the point it's unusable for anything else, resizing windows, moving the mouse, etc, becomes a slide show, it's slow as molasses.

In fact, nearly a decade ago, the x264 developers, used to be (I'm not sure if they still are) financed by a broadcasting company based out of Brazil called Avail Media (iirc). Back then the company financed work on a x264 variant called x264cuda, but they eventually abandoned that project and instead focused on dedicated ASIC's and FPGA's that were both faster and used much less power; this was right around the time when x264 LLC was formed, which basically created a fork of x264 under a non-gpl license. To the best of my knowledge Avail Media has never made their ASIC/FPGA powered x264 variant public.

Long story short, if for some reason you see fit to take existing h264 video and transcode it to h265, I would just go out and buy a cheap skylake powered laptop (microcenter has one for $330+tax), install Staxrip on it and start transcoding using Skylake's quick sync encoder/decoder; in various tests it comes close enough to in quality to x265 and x264 that I doubt most people would notice the difference, especially with enough bit rate and on a mobile device.