HandBrake

AFAIK, Handbrake support Intel Quick Sync for Intel GPUs to boost the transcoding performance and I do see that option on Windows version of Handbrake but can't see it on Mac version.

Beside that, the Mac version of Handbrake seems to has less available config options in Preferences that Windows version.

I'm using Handbrake 1.0.7 on MacBook Pro with Intel Core i5 Skylake and Intel Iris Graphics 550

Handbrake uses Intel's Media Software Development Kit for QSV, which is available for Windows, but not for Mac.

FWIW, it's not as simple as Intel releasing an SDK for Mac OS X, there has to be specific support for Intel's API in the graphics driver (which is shipped by Apple).

Apple does expose the QSV hardware via their own API, but it's significantly more limited than Intel's in terms of control over what the encoder does.

So, it's also a case of Apple's desire to protect they users from possible injury and death by hiding excessively-powerful features?

Yeah, being able to specify an H.264 level and profile directly instead of from a list of preselected combos is really dangerous…

Why don't we use Metal instead of Quicksync?

Because Metal is a 3d/compute api, Quicksync is a specialised piece of hardware for video encoding. It has got nothing in common with a GPU.

I've seen QSV in action on Handbrake on a Windows PC. Nice performance boost and significantly quiets the CPU.

Just for clarity (for a novice user...), Intel QSV is not available for the Mac OS version of Handbrake? Reason: Apple has not released the API to enable this functionality and no one has a reason to expect they will? (If so, ugh.)

You got it.

Nope, you are wrong, quick sync is available on macOS, but it doesn’t support quality based encoding. So we didn't bother to add it to HandBrake. There is a fork somewhere on GitHub with it btw.

I'm assuming that quicksync is exposed correctly, in Windows via Bootcamp on a MAC, which would work fine ?. And if so, is it likely that all features are available (compared to a native Windows machine) and performance is comparable. Hopefully, apple hasn't artificially limited anything in that respect.

You assume incorrectly. Intel GPU is not active in systems with a dgpu. So no quicksync support either.

I’m not sure about machines that only have intel though. Don’t have the hardware to check

Interesting, good to know!. I managed to get a hold of a mid 2014 macbook pro now, with an Iris GPU, and QSV is exposed and works.

Yeh. Just a shame only their low-end offerings can use this, but good to know it atleast works there.

Ironically, the QSV hardware is available on dual-GPU Macs (even desktops), but via the "wrong" API

How do you know it's working?
Is this a setting in Handbrake you've enabled?

blodsbror wrote: ↑Thu Jul 19, 2018 7:41 pm Interesting, good to know!. I managed to get a hold of a mid 2014 macbook pro now, with an Iris GPU, and QSV is exposed and works.

He's using Windows I suspect.

The Mac Builds do not yet have QuickSync support enabled.