AMD Polaris (Radeon RX 4xx) H265 Encoding Samples

[KarMa]

Wow those numbers are not good, especially at the quality setting, it can't even do 1080p60 in real-time.

If you are talking about the VCE 3.4 (RX 460-480), it can do 1080p60 no problem, just a matter of the quality settings. With the speed preset reported at 140fps. In my own testings there was little quality difference between the speed, balance, and quality presets. So for realtime captures I would just used speed or balanced.

[wiak]

Wow those numbers are not good, especially at the quality setting, it can't even do 1080p60 in real-time.

If you are talking about the VCE 3.4 (RX 460-480), it can do 1080p60 no problem, just a matter of the quality settings. With the speed preset reported at 140fps. In my own testings there was little quality difference between the speed, balance, and quality presets. So for realtime captures I would just used speed or balanced.

yep relive probably uses speed with CABAC and 2-Pass enabled + encode priority in driver

[Roph]

I dunno about the 2-pass; for a given bitrate I can't seem to get the same quality from ReLive as I can from OBS or A's convertor. I think relive is just using relatively simple settings in order to try to avoid impacting FPS.

If you're capturing at a different resolution with relive it's using a terrible downscaling filter too.

I've given up on relive, gone back to OBS for streaming. You can get much more quality from 3.5mbit/s with a decently configured OBS+VCE than you can with relive.

[KarMa]

I've given up on relive, gone back to OBS for streaming. You can get much more quality from 3.5mbit/s with a decently configured OBS+VCE than you can with relive.

If you are into streaming, are you wanting to stream with HEVC right now? Cause that is probably going cut into your viewers, assuming anyone can even decode it in a browser. Or you just wanting the HEVC for storage or something else. I'm not a streamer so I don't have to worry about such things.

[Roph]

Apparently RTMP doesn't support HEVC, so that's impossible. When I do stream I use H.264, but with OBS & the VCE plugin you can squeeze more quality out for a given bitrate than you'll get from ReLive.

I enable CABAC, use VBR with a higher peak, 16 reference frames, extended GOP, pre-analysis pass and so on. It allows for perfectly acceptable 720p30 video in twitch's 3500kbit/s soft-limit. I prefer to do 720p60 at around 5-6mbit/s instead though, using hitbox (Attached example).

It'll be nice if in another year or two HEVC streaming is available / widely supported. Polaris' HEVC doesn't quite achieve the infamous "half the bitrate for the same quality" mark, but it's still a big savings. No browser currently decodes HEVC natively. MS Edge will play it, but it's just passing it off to the OS.

[vhelp]

It'll be nice if in another year or two HEVC streaming is available / widely supported. Polaris' HEVC doesn't quite achieve the infamous "half the bitrate for the same quality" mark, but it's still a big savings.

why not use --icq ?

I tested it at 18 and it was pretty good and small. does OBS not support hevc? I did not try it at first but i can check if there is support.

[ezcapper]

It'll be nice if in another year or two HEVC streaming is available / widely supported. Polaris' HEVC doesn't quite achieve the infamous "half the bitrate for the same quality" mark, but it's still a big savings.

why not use --icq ?

I tested it at 18 and it was pretty good and small. does OBS not support hevc? I did not try it at first but i can check if there is support.

OBS supports HEVC with NVENC through the custom output ffmpeg option. It will support HEVC with Polaris cards very soon, as soon as the AMD staff fixes a bug in their SDK.

[vhelp]

so no QS support via ffmpeg through OBS ?

hevc via api 1.19 makes pretty good quality videos at { --icq 18 }
avc via api 1.19 make preety good quality videos at { --icq 17 } but at much higher bitrate.

[Roph]

... And then through what service were you planning on serving this HEVC hackjob? And to what web browser that can actually play it?

QS? icq? No idea what you're talking about. As far as I know, ICQ is a dead instant messenger.

[jlmcr87]

Can someone help me? I downloaded latest beta, stable etc. no matter what settings or encoder (microsoft or amd), after pressing the start button it says "failed" and nothing is done.
I have windows 10, installed Microsoft Visual C++ 2008 SP1 Runtime x64, and I have a radeon rx470.

What happen?

[Roph]

Make sure you have the latest ReLive drivers installed. Also make sure you have up to date LAV filters installed.

In A's disable its hardware decoding (seems flaky to me):



A's will use LAV to decode pretty much everything as a result. And you can configure LAV to hardware decode:



If LAV can't hardware decode it will fall back to software. Likewise, on the filters tab I prefer the software filters. HW seems to impact encode performance negatively. Here are settings I use for 960x540 HEVC:



Lastly, using A's internal muxer which produces .mp4 files results in issues when seeking through the files. Both VLC and MPC-HC both end up with grey blocky messes. You can fix this by selecting MKV, and giving A's the path to mkvmerge:



Doing all this, I get nice (enough) quality small 960x540 HEVC videos from A's, that are seekable Obviously change the bitrates and filters (if any) to suit your desired resolution / quality.

As a final note, I like to use the nero AAC codec to utilize HE-AAC v2. You can pick nero on the audio encode tab and give it the path to neroAacEnc.exe. HE-AACv2 at 33kbit/s sounds fine.

[jlmcr87]

Make sure you have the latest ReLive drivers installed. Also make sure you have up to date LAV filters installed.

In A's disable its hardware decoding (seems flaky to me):



A's will use LAV to decode pretty much everything as a result. And you can configure LAV to hardware decode:



If LAV can't hardware decode it will fall back to software. Likewise, on the filters tab I prefer the software filters. HW seems to impact encode performance negatively. Here are settings I use for 960x540 HEVC:



Lastly, using A's internal muxer which produces .mp4 files results in issues when seeking through the files. Both VLC and MPC-HC both end up with grey blocky messes. You can fix this by selecting MKV, and giving A's the path to mkvmerge:



Doing all this, I get nice (enough) quality small 960x540 HEVC videos from A's, that are seekable Obviously change the bitrates and filters (if any) to suit your desired resolution / quality.

As a final note, I like to use the nero AAC codec to utilize HE-AAC v2. You can pick nero on the audio encode tab and give it the path to neroAacEnc.exe. HE-AACv2 at 33kbit/s sounds fine.

Thanks with lav filters work, but I don´t know why after selecting mkv and giving mkvmerge patch, after the end of the process it only generates a 1 byte file that doesn´t work.

[jlmcr87]

That´s what i have done, hope it helps:

I have a film in h.264 mkv bdremux and i want to convert it to h.265. Steps:

1. With a´s converter I set fixed QP 21, GOP size 300 and reference frames 16.

2. With mkv toolnix i enter the new h.265 file and i also open the older.

3. Only select the h.265 new video and the older and original dts audio and press "start multiplex"

4. Now you have an mkv file with h.265 and original dts audio or subtitles.

Note: The new h.265 mkv has half the size of the original and the same quality. Thanks to all people and specially the creator of a´s converter.

[Micky]

That´s what i have done, hope it helps:

1. With a´s converter I set fixed QP 21, GOP size 300 and reference frames 16.

Thanks. With QP is the result is much better than with VBR

I'm testing with .ts files from german HDTV (1280x720 50 FPS VBR > 12-14 MBs) with QP 22 is the file 40% smaler then x264, but I test still further

@jmcr87 work, but I don´t know why after selecting mkv and giving mkvmerge patch, after the end of the process it only generates a 1 byte file that doesn´t work

Here the same. when i the mp4 after coverting in mkvToolNIX multiplexing the error remains.
Maybe someone has a tip how to encode directly into .mkv. A's has I think a bug in own mp4 muxer

Thanks a lot

Best regards,
Micky

[jlmcr87]

I have noticed that with h.265 even with software there is a lot of detail loss compared to h.264 due to a strong denoiser.

Don´t know why but after spent 2 days i only find one program that keeps the same quality as my h.264 file: Staxrip

With the next settings and using intel quicksync (90fps)(sorry but no amd h.265 encoder here): --codec hevc --quality high --level 4.1 --fallback-rc --cqp 21:21:21

Decoder select QSVEncC Intel

[Micky]

Here a h.265 vs h.264 (created with A's 7.00beta2) uploaded
Same bit rate etc ..
The difference is already visible.

Source is german HDTV (only 720p)

My BD drive is in RMA, I get only in 1.week 2017 back, then I can also continue to test times

[ezcapper]

They look good, would be interesting to see high motion demanding scenes at around 5000kbps

[FluffyDiscord]

still, I think H265 is shit, tried myself and I see no difference between same h264 and h265 settings at the same bitrate, marketing is shitty....

[Roph]

Much more noticeable improvement with different content. Check these clips for example, both the exact same gameplay, at 3.5mbit/s

[FluffyDiscord]

dude, its 4K era, who the hell want 720p with 30 fps as gameplay....
streaming is not possible with this either so no point, relive streams look INCREDIBLY shitty with low bitrate no matter which settings, they said we can stream 1080p/60 to twitch, well then, how so we cant? how so it sucks balls... I am so unsatisfied with my rx 470! half a year out and still not a proper software for encoding, no sdk updates nothing.. amd is shitting on our heads! I was, an amd fan, till this happened. Next time I have to go on that ******* green side just for proper hw accelerated encoding AND for proper machine learning (cant even do that on amd because there is documentary material closing to zero, nothing).

[FluffyDiscord]

Much more noticeable improvement with different content. Check these clips for example, both the exact same gameplay, at 3.5mbit/s

yes, incredible, its better WOW how much? well, I would say like hmmm 20%? maybe, now, should not it be better by ~50% ? No? why not? creators of H265 say that they could bring the same Q with half the bitrate =] I do not see it, at least not here, so either AMD is ******* with us, or creators of H265 are lying

[Roph]

dude, its 4K era, who the hell want 720p with 30 fps as gameplay....
streaming is not possible with this either so no point, relive streams look INCREDIBLY shitty with low bitrate no matter which settings, they said we can stream 1080p/60 to twitch, well then, how so we cant? how so it sucks balls... I am so unsatisfied with my rx 470! half a year out and still not a proper software for encoding, no sdk updates nothing.. amd is shitting on our heads! I was, an amd fan, till this happened. Next time I have to go on that ******* green side just for proper hw accelerated encoding AND for proper machine learning (cant even do that on amd because there is documentary material closing to zero, nothing).

Calm down

Almost nobody has a 4K monitor.

I used 720p30 because 720p30 is about as good as you can get when trying to use H.264 from a hardware encoder with twitch's unofficial 3.5mbit/s limit. The HEVC is 720p30 because it's a comparison. Though for another comparison, here's 1080p60 of the same replay done with HEVC from VCE.

[FluffyDiscord]

looks like badly ripped DVD movie...

[Roph]

Much more noticeable improvement with different content. Check these clips for example, both the exact same gameplay, at 3.5mbit/s

yes, incredible, its better WOW how much? well, I would say like hmmm 20%? maybe, now, should not it be better by ~50% ? No? why not? creators of H265 say that they could bring the same Q with half the bitrate =] I do not see it, at least not here, so either AMD is ******* with us, or creators of H265 are lying

It's easily possible to get a 50% reduction, but we're talking about hardware encoders. They have a fixed capability and will most likely never be as advanced as software encoders, and never be able to fully utilize all the bells and whistles that the format has to offer.

For example, I attached a 720p60 H264 file that looks better than the 720p30 with HEVC. I encoded it in software though, with pretty much every possible feature of x264 enabled and maxed out. The downside is that encoded at all of about 2 frames per second.

Look at some of the earlier attachments in this thread a page or two back to see large improvements, especially the counter strike ones. HEVC changes the demo from unwatchable to perfectly tolerable.

Look at my 1080p60 HEVC in my last post, I also attached 1080p60 in H264 from the same VCE and it's terrible. I don't know about 50%, but it's night and day.

They look good, would be interesting to see high motion demanding scenes at around 5000kbps

If you show me to some source clips I'll try some encodes at the bitrates you specify, I'm not busy today

[ezcapper]

https://forum.videohelp.com/attachments/31105-1428466828/SVT_1080p50.mkv

Thanks man!

[FluffyDiscord]

use that above me from ezcapper
use both h264 and h265 encoders
try to:
- decrease bitrate as much as possible (once you start to see blurring and/or blocks, stop)
- make 25 fps version
- downscale to HD/50fps, HD/25fps and SD/50fps, SD/25fps
everything can be done with bluesky

[Roph]

Hopefully this will satisfy you

Source file

1080p 50fps, AVC: 3.5mbit / 5mbit / 8mbit / 10mbit / 12mbit / 15mbit / 18mbit

1080p 50fps, HEVC: 3.5mbit / 5mbit / 8mbit / 10mbit / 12mbit / 15mbit

1080p 25fps, AVC: 3.5mbit / 5mbit / 8mbit / 10mbit / 12mbit / 15mbit

1080p 25fps, HEVC: 3.5mbit / 5mbit / 8mbit / 10mbit / 12mbit

I should note that though I give them the same target bitrates, it seems that it likes to go slightly above when using HEVC and slightly below when using AVC. Nothing too drastic though.

I'll do lower resolutions soon

[ezcapper]

wow thanks

[wiak]

dude, its 4K era, who the hell want 720p with 30 fps as gameplay....
streaming is not possible with this either so no point, relive streams look INCREDIBLY shitty with low bitrate no matter which settings, they said we can stream 1080p/60 to twitch, well then, how so we cant? how so it sucks balls... I am so unsatisfied with my rx 470! half a year out and still not a proper software for encoding, no sdk updates nothing.. amd is shitting on our heads! I was, an amd fan, till this happened. Next time I have to go on that ******* green side just for proper hw accelerated encoding AND for proper machine learning (cant even do that on amd because there is documentary material closing to zero, nothing).

twitch is the limitation, they barely allow 4.5mbps for premiums 3.5mbps for free, here is my maxed out h264/avc streaming sample on my custom server, i also asked amd to add higher streaming bitrates and cropping options
https://f001.backblazeb2.com/file/nwgat-cdn/misc/relive-1080p60-10mbps-custom.mp4

[Roph]

Hitbox.tv are happy to let you push 10mbit/s all day every day