Intel's Quick Sync or AMD's more cores for faster video encoding?

[poohbear]

Hey all, just curious, would 6 cores vs Intel's quick sync technology be faster for video encoding? I do a lot of video editing and a 1 hour video takes 20-25 min to produce on my 6 core. I use Power Director v10 (which states it supports Quick Sync by Intel). Speedfan shows all 6 cores fully @ work when encoding.

Cheers & thanks for any feedback.

 

[Phynaz]

Quicksync by a longshot.

 

[inf64]

Does quality take an impact with QS? If not then it might be a better option.

 

[Denithor]

Really depends on the software you use for your encoding.

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph5871/47219.png

Here's a basic comparison using x264 encoding. Note the AMD 1100T barely hanging with the 3470 and losing miserably to the 3770K (Hyperthreading obviously making a serious difference).

http://images.anandtech.com/graphs/graph5871/47092.png

And here we see the 3770K in Handbrake losing miserably to itself with quick sync enabled in Media Espresso. By a factor of about 3x.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5835/testing-opencl-accelerated-handbrakex264-with-amds-trinity-apu

http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/...core-i7-2600k-i5-2500k-core-i3-2100-tested/9/

 

[grimpr]

Use the 5870 by enabling AMD App Acceleration in Powerdirector.

 

[Phynaz]

Use the 5870 by enabling AMD App Acceleration in Powerdirector.

No. AMD's GPU video encoding quality is truly horrid.

 

[grimpr]

Its just fine and way better than Nvidias transcoder.

 

[2is]

Its just fine and way better than Nvidias transcoder.

I think you joined the wrong discussion. We aren't comparing AMD to nVidia here.

 

[ViRGE]

QuickSync definitely can't match the quality of a well tuned software encoder (the price of speed is a lack of flexibility), but if you're already using Power Director and you're not preparing broadcast-quality video then you would probably be happy with it. So certainly it would be worth looking at, and even if QuickSync doesn't pan out for you, as others have noted Intel's latest chips are still faster in pure software encoding too.

 

[poohbear]

actually i no longer have a 5870, updated my sig with/ a Gigabyte Windforce GTX 670. Is there an option in Power director for Nvidia acceleration?

so from what i'm reading here, quick sync is faster but worse quality?

 

[cantholdanymore]

Tom HW had a good article about QS IQ compared to software only. For what I've read there and others, it looks like for youtube ans such applications QS is fine but if you're after the best IQ then use software base only

 

[ShintaiDK]

so from what i'm reading here, quick sync is faster but worse quality?

Quality wise i think its CPU best then quicksync then last a battle between nvidia/AMD on GPUs.

 

[ViRGE]

actually i no longer have a 5870, updated my sig with/ a Gigabyte Windforce GTX 670. Is there an option in Power director for Nvidia acceleration?

It's complex. Basically the answer is yes, but depending on how new the software is you'll have radically different results.

so from what i'm reading here, quick sync is faster but worse quality?

Correct. QuickSync is an intentional trade-off between speed and quality for the purpose of having low-power real-time video encoding for simple transcoding jobs, video conferencing, etc. It's not meant for archival/broadcast quality video.

Quality wise i think its CPU best then quicksync then last a battle between nvidia/AMD on GPUs.

Agreed.

 

[alyarb]

If you are taking bluray source material and transcoding it to the maximum quality per bit for media server and/or archiving purposes, I would stick with x264.

If you are doing anything else, encoding down to 720 or lower for mobile devices or web production, the slightly slightly softer edges from QuickSync will not be noticeable.

Once I used a batch file renamer to see if I could tell the difference between a QuickSync output screenshot vs x264. I could never actually make the distinction correctly, but once I had the pics named properly, my mind "decided" that the QuickSync images were 0.1% noisier. That's just my bias for x264 I guess, but QS is without a doubt a close second to x264, and it's so stupefyingly fast that the negligible loss of accuracy should be forgiven.

Really subjective topic though... gotta try QS and x264 on your own material and take the pepsi challenge. The insane speed is such that you would be remiss if you did not attempt to advocate QS for at least some of the encoding you do.

 

[BenchPress]

Wait for Haswell. It has 256-bit integer vector instructions and gather support, both of which are exceptionally well suited for video processing (at least 2x speedup).

Codecs that make use of Haswell's new instructions have been in development for quite some time now, so you can be sure it will be well supported on the day of launch.

 

[JAG87]

NVENC is the best solution (fastest and actually slightly better quality than QS), and you have it on your GTX 670.

http://www.guru3d.com/article/geforce-gtx-680-review/6

I'm not sure if Power Director supports it, but Media Espresso does, so I would think it does or support is coming soon.

 

[alyarb]

You make a claim about NVENC quality, and then link to an article that says nothing about quality other than that they need to do further testing? I don't mind the added sharpness of quicksync. Maybe if the scene was really dark it would be noisy.

 

[JAG87]

You make a claim about NVENC quality, and then link to an article that says nothing about quality other than that they need to do further testing?

Sorry, more accurate source

http://www.hardware.fr/focus/67/encodage-h-264-retour-nvenc-quicksync.html

Quality is comparable to QS, (the numbers say NVENC is better, but my eyes say it's pretty much the same, awful lol), speed is actually better with QS (not sure what how Guru3D tested) and power efficiency is definitely not even close to QS.

Basically I'd say it's the best he can do without spending money on his machine right now, while just waiting for Haswell.


Edit:
I actually presume the OP is looking for quality TBH, because he's doing NLE. So it's probably home footage that he wants to archive. So I don't think anything besides CPU encoding is recommendable here, just put up with the slow speed until Haswell, unless money is no object, then get a 3930K now.

 

[nismotigerwvu]

QuickSync definitely can't match the quality of a well tuned software encoder (the price of speed is a lack of flexibility), but if you're already using Power Director and you're not preparing broadcast-quality video then you would probably be happy with it. So certainly it would be worth looking at, and even if QuickSync doesn't pan out for you, as others have noted Intel's latest chips are still faster in pure software encoding too.

This.

Fixed function hardware is blazing fast at specific tasks, but lacks the flexibility of general purpose hardware. Truth be told, your best best may handbrake's upcoming OpenCL based encoding on whatever is the best compute GPU at the time of release. If we are talking about the hear and now, I'd say software encoding on as many Intel cores as you can get is your answer.