HEVC with ShanaEncoder

[mh500]

I use Shana on all x264 Blurays and have found it very fast and providing good quality.

However I now for the first time tried to encode an x265 (5GB, 1920x1080) and it takes more than 20 hours at the medium preset and still around 10 hours at ultrafast. To compare: for the same size x264 file it takes maybe 2-4 hours at the most; and this with 2Pass.

I tried to run with HEVC(NVENC), (AMF) and (QSV) but that does not work at all, Shana reports an error.

Any ideas how to speed this up? Many thanks in advance

[JKyle]

Depending on the input video file and your CPU, x265 takes way longer than x264, so it's normal.

If you'd like to shorten the encoding time sacrificing the quality/size, either increase the video quality value(crf) or decrease the bitrate. (Higher crf = lower quality)

NVENC is possible only when you own an Nvidia video card, AMF = AMD video card, and QSV = Intel CPU with embedded graphics.

You need to present the log if you'd like to know why exactly an error occurs. Press F5 after the encode finishes with an error to see the log.

[LigH.de]

Yes, HEVC (H.265) is a lot more complex than AVC (H.264). The encoder will search for many more ways to spare bitrate to reduce the loss of visual quality.

VVC and AV1 will be even more complex. But it may be necessary to encode UHD with satisfying efficiency.

[mh500]

My thanks to both of you for this information; so I guess I have to bite the bullet and forget about re-encoding my x265 files. HandBrake takes even longer.

One more question: is there any reason Shana does not offer deblocking for HEVC?

JKyle: I have a GeForce GT 1030 with the NVidia engine. I know this is not an upper scale card, but still it's NVidia and Shana gives me the error

[LigH.de]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nvidia_NVENC

Fourth generation, Pascal GP10x

The NVIDIA GT 1030 and the Mobile Quadro P500 are GP108 chips that don't support the NVENC encoder.

Sorry.

[JKyle]

One more question: is there any reason Shana does not offer deblocking for HEVC?

Shana Encoder does not provide detailed private option settings for HEVC(x265) unlike H264(x264).
Instead, you can put in FFmpeg option settings directly in the Parameters window by pressing F8.

For example, after selecting basic option values in Quick Settings as follows


[Attachment 57010 - Click to enlarge]

press F8 and enter these extra FFmpeg parameter settings:

 -x265-params deblock=-1,-1:limit-sao=1:strong-intra-smoothing=0

[Attachment 57011 - Click to enlarge]

There must be a space at the start.

You need to translate x265 options introduced in the x265 manual to proper FFmpeg parameter settings by removing the double dash prefix, replacing colon with comma, and using colon as the delimiter between parameters.

And like I said, reviewing the log is very important in case you run into an error. Press F5 and see what the log tells you.

[mh500]

Ah - true professionals in this forum ... thanks again !

LigH.de: Very good to know. I always thought that GeForce is NVENC compatible no matter what.

JKyle: One more thing I was not aware of. Will test this out on my next x265 encoding "project"