New Intel driver and H.265 QSV encoding - excellent quality!

HandBrake for Windows support
Forum rules
An Activity Log is required for support requests. Please read How-to get an activity log? for details on how and why this should be provided.
Post Reply
jkauff
Experienced
Posts: 95
Joined: Thu Nov 22, 2012 1:27 pm

New Intel driver and H.265 QSV encoding - excellent quality!

Post by jkauff »

Intel this week released a new GPU driver for newer generation CPUs and Win10 64-bit. According to the release notes, they not only fixed the Handbrake problems but included a new version of the Intel Media SDK that improves QSV encoding.

I tried it out last night, encoding the Blu-ray version of Bad Day At Black Rock to H.265 "Quality". The encode took about 30 minutes, and the result looks really good. File size was reduced from 23GB to 6GB.

I did an A/B test with the two files, and most of the time I couldn't tell which was which. There are a few telltale signs in a few scenes, but overall the HEVC encode is pretty much archive quality.

I have lots of storage space available, so I'll keep my backups in uncompressed AVC, but for anyone looking to save space this is now a viable option.

Thank you, Intel!
mduell
Veteran User
Posts: 8187
Joined: Sat Apr 21, 2007 8:54 pm

Re: New Intel driver and H.265 QSV encoding - excellent quality!

Post by mduell »

jkauff wrote: Fri Dec 15, 2017 11:39 amuncompressed AVC
AVC is far from uncompressed; in the typical Blu-ray case it's about 2-5% the size of the uncompressed video track.
jkauff
Experienced
Posts: 95
Joined: Thu Nov 22, 2012 1:27 pm

Re: New Intel driver and H.265 QSV encoding - excellent quality!

Post by jkauff »

Quite true. I should have said "AVC with no additional compression". In other words, straight off the disc.
WhatZit
Experienced
Posts: 77
Joined: Sat Feb 13, 2016 2:45 am

Re: New Intel driver and H.265 QSV encoding - excellent quality!

Post by WhatZit »

jkauff wrote: Fri Dec 15, 2017 11:39 amI tried it out last night, encoding the Blu-ray version of Bad Day At Black Rock to H.265 "Quality". The encode took about 30 minutes, and the result looks really good. File size was reduced from 23GB to 6GB.
That source is heavily grained too, isn't it?
jkauff
Experienced
Posts: 95
Joined: Thu Nov 22, 2012 1:27 pm

Re: New Intel driver and H.265 QSV encoding - excellent quality!

Post by jkauff »

WhatZit wrote: Fri Dec 15, 2017 9:24 pmThat source is heavily grained too, isn't it?
Not anymore. The new Warner Archive Collection release that came out about a year ago is a very clean transfer. The only grain now is what was intended to be there.
Post Reply