Hardware for transcoding? (Can I get fast, cheap AND quality?)

[rfg]

I looked in the FAQ and didn't see anything in there which answered this rather obvious question...

I'll be upgrading & buying a new processor and motherboard one of these days soonish. I've read about Intel QuickSync and the nice effects that this has speed of Handbrake transcoding. But unfortunately, I'm rather steeped in the AMD ecosystem, and have been for some time. Thus, I kinda know my way around the latest AMD processors, but haven't really kept up on the Intel processors & associated motherboard offerings from the various manufacturers.

So, um, simple question: Assuming a want top quality transcodes... which I gather means that I really want some Haswell processor... and also assuming that I'm a total cheapskate who hates to pay more than around $150 USD for a CPU and motherboard, then what are my options at present? (For other reasons I need at least one USB 3.0 port on the motherboard and at least 6 SATA ports also, but other than that, I'm not at all fussy. Low end performance for non-transcoding tasks, including gaming... which I don't do anyway... is perfectly OK with me, so long as it isn't too awfully low.)

In short, recommendations wanted, i.e. for a fast & cheap handbrake transcoding machine. (I'd even be happy to get something used and/or a couple of years behind whatever expensive bleeding edge stuff Newegg and others are pushing these days.)


P.S. The online documents I'v seen so far leave it really rather vague as to which specific currently available Intel processors do or do not have QuickSync. My worst nightmare is that 'll spend lots of time, studying my options, decide on a processor and motherboard, order both, pay for them, take delivery, and after setting them up 'll find out that the one specific processor I selected is the one and only one in the current Intel lineup that doesn't have QuickSync. That would be just my luck.

[mduell]

AMD is worthless here, their CPU game is a joke this year/last year.

But the hardware encoders aren't for "top quality transcodes", they're for speed. They deliver a lot more speed for the $ than you'd get otherwise, but they're still for speed not top quality.

Intel ARK is utterly unabiguous about what chips have QSV and what don't.

The $70 Anniversary Pentium G3258 and $60 B85 board like the GIGABYTE Gaming3 would be the cheapest path to modern (Haswell) QSV with 6 SATA. The prior generations of QSV weren't as good and the chips aren't any cheaper.

[beaker1991]

I have tried the Intel QSV encoder as well as other programs that support the Nvidia CUDA encoder. AMD has a hardware encoder, but I do not believe any programs support it. From my experience the Nvidia CUDA is very fast, but quality sucks. The Intel QSV encoder is fast, but not as fast as Nvida CUDA, and quality is much improved over Nvida CUDA, but is still not as good as standard x264 CPU based encoding. The quality of the Intel QSV encode is somewhat dependent on the GPU. Intel has made improvements in the hardware, you want the GPU with either Haswell or later chips lines (I have a Haswell based chip). Therefore, if you want the best quality stay with the x264 CPU based encoder. If you need speed and OK quality use Intel QSV and stay away from Nvida CUDA unless you are really desperate.

Once of the reasons that the CPU has much better quality is that, due to cost and space, hardware does not implement all encoding options. This is way you want the latest chip.

If you have a recent Intel CPU with built in GPU you can use the Intel QSV encoder. I would stick with a Haswell or later part. If you are using an Nvida or AMD graphics card, you may need to connect a monitor to the Intel GPU to get it to turn on. The Intel GPU is usually connected to the video port on the motherboard.

[mduell]

I have tried the Intel QSV encoder as well as other programs that support the Nvidia CUDA encoder. AMD has a hardware encoder, but I do not believe any programs support it. From my experience the Nvidia CUDA is very fast, but quality sucks. The Intel QSV encoder is fast, but not as fast as Nvida CUDA, and quality is much improved over Nvida CUDA, but is still not as good as standard x264 CPU based encoding.

nVidia gave up on CUDA-based encoding (i.e. using the GPU stream processors) years ago and switched to dedicated encoding hardware on the GPU ASIC called NVENC.

[victorvdc]

I am glad I am not the only one seeing poor quality in the HW encoders. I have a Haswell . At the Best Speed and Balanced setting my videos have the same picture quality as the software encoder but once they start moving it get very irregular. At the Quality setting movement is ok but my file size is now 3 times bigger.

I found the SW decoder gives me a much better result at the Medium to Faster. Transcoding times are 100% slower at Medium but only 20% at Faster which looks the same to me. I am testing at 14 quality which gives no degradation of my HiDef camera videos.

[Deleted User 11865]

At the Quality setting movement is ok but my file size is now 3 times bigger.

The quality scale is not the same for all encoders (or even for the same encoder using different settings). This is particularly noticeable for QSV when the lookahead is enabled. Always adjust the constant quality factor *after* selecting settings that give you the speed you want.

[Deleted User 13735]

Hardware for transcoding? (Can I get fast, cheap AND quality?)

In response to the topic, you can get faster (not fast) with hardware-assisted encoding, and not much else.

Just my opinion, you understand.

[Deleted User 11865]

Hardware for transcoding? (Can I get fast, cheap AND quality?)

In response to the topic, you can get faster (not fast) with hardware-assisted encoding, and not much else.

Assuming your source is 8-bit H.264, you can use the full QSV-accelerated path in HandBrake (decode, filtering and encode), which is significantly more power-efficient (the dedicated hardware consumes a fraction of the power used by the CPU for the same encode). When I finally get around to it, this will also apply to HEVC and VC-1 sources, and possibly a couple other codecs.

[Deleted User 13735]

That is significant. Thanks for letting us know.