H.265 encode / decode, and Intel CPUs and QuickSync?

[VirtualLarry]

Just started messing around with MakeMKV and HandBrake. Nifty little programs.

Only, an H.265 encode job on a main-movie MKV 1080P file, takes like 7 hours on my poor little G3258.

So I'm wondering about options.

Yes, I could get a 5820K, if I had about a grand spare, I suppose, but I'm looking for cheaper solutions.

Does Intel's Broadwell CPU have hardware ("QuickSync") support for H.265 encoding? Could I pick up a $300 Broadwell i3 NUC, and encode 1080P MKV file to H.265 in 2-3 hours instead?

Or am I dreaming here?

I think I recall something about updated Haswell drivers for H.265, but I'm pretty sure that's just for decode, right, not encode, on Haswell?

 

[mikk]

There is no hardware encoding support for HSW nor BDW. Skylake should support it.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Skylake should support it.

That's good news. I guess I know what my next upgrade will be.

 

[Fjodor2001]

As for H.265 decode Broadwell has some limited support with new drivers:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8355/intel-broadwell-architecture-preview/3

Broadwell’s video decode capabilities will also be increasing compared to Haswell. On top of Intel’s existing codec support, Broadwell will be implementing a hybrid H.265 decoder, allowing Broadwell to decode the next-generation video codec in hardware, but not with the same degree of power efficiency as H.264 today. In this hybrid setup Intel will be utilizing both portions of their fixed function video decoder and executing decoding steps on their shaders in order to offer complete H.265 decoding. The use of the shaders for part of the decoding process is less power efficient than doing everything in fixed function hardware but it’s better than the even less optimal CPU.

Not sure if that applies do H.265 encode as well though.

 

[dazelord]

There is no hardware encoding support for HSW nor BDW. Skylake should support it.

Do you have a link that supports Skylake H.265 encode?

 

[ShintaiDK]

Anandtech did a HTPC article:
http://www.anandtech.com/show/9152/futureproofing-htpcs-for-the-4k-era-hdmi-hdcp-and-hevc

 

[mikk]

Do you have a link that supports Skylake H.265 encode?

http://www.cpu-world.com/news_2014/2014060901_Some_features_of_Skylake_graphics_architecture.html

 

[dazelord]

http://www.cpu-world.com/news_2014/2014060901_Some_features_of_Skylake_graphics_architecture.html

Thanks. Another reason to skip Broadwell. Skylake will be the chip to get.

 

[pm]

Here's an article on Reddit comparing encode times for haswell using Handbrake. It's a pretty substantial improvement.
http://www.reddit.com/r/hardware/comments/2dsvoi/i_did_some_tests_with_handbrake_and_intel/

 

[ShintaiDK]

Thanks. Another reason to skip Broadwell. Skylake will be the chip to get.

Lack of HDMI 2.0 on Broadwell alone did it for me.

Skylake NUC looks to be my new HTPC.

 

[jkauff]

QuickSync encodes using H.264 save a lot of time, but the video quality isn't as good as x264 software encoding. Intel has had a few years to improve it, and it still doesn't compare well.

Also, x265 hasn't been in development all that long, and consensus seems to be that picture quality is not yet up to x264 quality, although of course the file sizes are ridiculously small.

Intel will be implementing the commercial H.265 standard, and they seem to have made a major commitment to it, so the quality may be pretty good by the time Skylake is available.

Enjoy playing around with x265, but don't go upgrading your system to improve encode times. I have a 4790K running at 4.7, and it still takes hours to encode a Blu-ray. Wait a couple of years until everything matures.

 

[JeffMD]

I have to laugh. You are running around with one of the weakest budget CPUs, complaining about its raw encode speeds, and then you are all like "Skylake? I know where my next upgrade is gonna be!"

Where was your "I know what my next upgrade is gonna be" for the last 4 generations of i5's and i7s that would save you from your day long encoding marathons?

 

[mikk]

QuickSync encodes using H.264 save a lot of time, but the video quality isn't as good as x264 software encoding. Intel has had a few years to improve it, and it still doesn't compare well.

Quality improved a lot with Haswell. Do you have Haswell? There is another big improvement from Broadwell over Haswell according to Intel (I can't test it).

 

[jhu]

I have to laugh. You are running around with one of the weakest budget CPUs, complaining about its raw encode speeds, and then you are all like "Skylake? I know where my next upgrade is gonna be!"

Where was your "I know what my next upgrade is gonna be" for the last 4 generations of i5's and i7s that would save you from your day long encoding marathons?

I agree with this. Stop buying "toys" with weak CPUs. Save all of that money and buy a beefier system to begin with.

 

[Fjodor2001]

QuickSync encodes using H.264 save a lot of time, but the video quality isn't as good as x264 software encoding.

But do you have to use QuickSync? Can't you use hardware accelerated encode/decode, but without using QuickSync?

I.e. use fixed hardware blocks for encode/decode, but not QuickSync.

 

[SPBHM]

you could buy an 8 thread CPU for your motherboard (e3 1231 v3 for around $250) and the encoding time would be less than half.

it's very effective, not as good but a lot cheaper than 5820K+DDR4+x99, or waiting for new products

 

[jkauff]

But do you have to use QuickSync? Can't you use hardware accelerated encode/decode, but without using QuickSync?

I.e. use fixed hardware blocks for encode/decode, but not QuickSync.

The Intel Media SDK, which includes QuickSync, is the only way to access the encode/decode features of the iGPU. Nvidia and AMD also offer hardware accelerated encode/decode for most of their products. Handbrake only supports QuickSync encoding, however, presumably because the SDK doesn't have a license fee while the others do.

 

[VirtualLarry]

The Intel Media SDK, which includes QuickSync, is the only way to access the encode/decode features of the iGPU. Nvidia and AMD also offer hardware accelerated encode/decode for most of their products. Handbrake only supports QuickSync encoding, however, presumably because the SDK doesn't have a license fee while the others do.

I also tried using QS to encode the 2hour-something 1080P clip into H.264, but it quit after 5 minutes. Said it was going to take 2-3hours to encode. Don't know what happened. Do I have to pay to get QS ability to encode a whole movie?

 

[VirtualLarry]

I agree with this. Stop buying "toys" with weak CPUs. Save all of that money and buy a beefier system to begin with.

So, you would advocate to everyone on this forum, looking to buy a new rig, to buy a 5820K or better, rather than buy only what they need at the time? Because that's what I did, I bought what I needed at the time. And a G3258 OCed is hardly a "weak" CPU. It's faster at HB than my friend's A10-5800K, which is a quad-core, sort of.

 

[jhu]

So, you would advocate to everyone on this forum, looking to buy a new rig, to buy a 5820K or better, rather than buy only what they need at the time? Because that's what I did, I bought what I needed at the time. And a G3258 OCed is hardly a "weak" CPU. It's faster at HB than my friend's A10-5800K, which is a quad-core, sort of.

I would advocate buying more than currently needed, but not necessarily go overboard. As you have discovered, your computing needs only increase, not decrease. In your case, a quad-core i7 is the best performance/price upgrade since a hexcore requires a new motherboard and memory.

 

[Hulk]

My personal opinion is that QuickSync quality is quite poor.
Handbrake is much better.
Ripbot is better still.

If you want really great quality and decent speed you've gotta throw a lot of CPU compute at it.
Quad cores and hyperthreading at minimum if you want to see it done reasonably quickly.
Hexes are of course even faster.

 

[JeffMD]

So, you would advocate to everyone on this forum, looking to buy a new rig, to buy a 5820K or better, rather than buy only what they need at the time? Because that's what I did, I bought what I needed at the time. And a G3258 OCed is hardly a "weak" CPU. It's faster at HB than my friend's A10-5800K, which is a quad-core, sort of.

You are comparing a turd with another turd.

And if your "needs" at the time were absolutely no video encoding then that's fine. Seems like you were wondering how to improve your speeds when the answer was simple, and it doesn't necessarily mean skylake. We have many fast CPUs today ideal for video encoding. The FX series is actually strong in this area because they have an affordable 8 core cpu which can be full taken advantage of.

 

[Aikouka]

I use QuickSync quite often, and I don't notice much of a difference between it and x264 -- apart from QuickSync's larger file sizes. My only complaint is that it's too much of a pain to enable QuickSync, and it can be even worse with certain software. For example, Sony Vegas refuses to use QuickSync even though it works fine with Handbrake. I've read that it's because it isn't opened up on a monitor that's running off the Intel GPU; however, I've plugged a monitor into my motherboard's DisplayPort port and it still made no difference.

You aren't going to get good acceptance if it's too hard to use your stuff, and let me be frank, leaving it up to a developer like Sony to get it right isn't a good strategy.

EDIT:

Lack of HDMI 2.0 on Broadwell alone did it for me.

Skylake NUC looks to be my new HTPC.

I'm very wary of the NUC ever since my Haswell one. The NUC has major problems with resuming audio after the display chain (TV + AVR) has been shut off. Essentially, the sound would turn off, and not come back on when the TV turned on. It got a bit better (i.e. less frequent) after some updates and firmware releases, but it never went away. I stopped using the NUC because it just wasn't worth the hassle, and I moved up my old i3-3225 to take the NUC's place (it's in a fanless PC case, so no noise either).

 

[VirtualLarry]

My personal opinion is that QuickSync quality is quite poor.
Handbrake is much better.
Ripbot is better still.

If you want really great quality and decent speed you've gotta throw a lot of CPU compute at it.
Quad cores and hyperthreading at minimum if you want to see it done reasonably quickly.
Hexes are of course even faster.

Ok, now I'm confused. I finished encoding one of my movie files, that I already encoded with HB H.265, this time with QSV H.264 (Edit: The source was the same BR MKV, not the H.265 encoded file), and it came out smaller with H.264! Quality isn't noticeably different. Now I'm thinking that I'll just stick with QuickSync, and forget about H.265 as an option, for the time being.

Does anyone else have any experience, ripping BR with MakeMKV, and then encoding with H.265 and QSV H.264 in HB, and having the H.264 version come out smaller?

 

[Aikouka]

Ok, now I'm confused. I finished encoding one of my movie files, that I already encoded with HB H.265, this time with QSV H.264, and it came out smaller with H.264! Quality isn't noticeably different. Now I'm thinking that I'll just stick with QuickSync, and forget about H.265 as an option, for the time being.

Does anyone else have any experience, ripping BR with MakeMKV, and then encoding with H.265 and QSV H.264 in HB, and having the H.264 version come out smaller?

What quality settings are you using? Dropping the QF of the encode might not do much, but going from High to Balanced usually drops it by quite a decent amount. I'd love to keep it at High, but there are times when I have to keep it at Balanced because the sizes are just too high.