HandBrake

Hi,

coming from a fairly slow and old quad core i7-4790k i wonder what cpu is the best for h.264 encoding.

I've read the older codec didn't benefit beyond 8 core cpu's and filter's pretty much slows the encoding down (no multithreading?).

So wouldn't the most efficent way for encoding h.264, 1080p, present: slow basically running 2 instances of Handbrake on a 16 core cpu like Ryzen 5950x or i9-12900k?

Or did i miss something?

While a single instance can go past 8 cores, "it depends". Scaling really depends on many factors but that's the point of diminishing returns for each new core added for a typical setup.

Some filters are multi-treaded, some aren't. Even if a filter is multi-threaded, doesn't make it fast. NLMeans is for example but it's very compute intensive so the overall process takes longer.

If your going to go for a 16-core machine, then yes you can run multiple simultaneous encodes. (If your on Windows, you'll be able to run 2 or more simultaneous encodes in a single instance of handbrake)

for CPU/Software encoding, the 5950x is a beast...i just built a system based on that chip recently, right before the 7k Ryzen chips came out, and the 5k series were on sale for ~$200 less than normal. handles h.264 & h.265 extremely well. AV1, not as good, but it can still encode AV1 1/2 real time speed. still playing around with AV1 settings to find what works best for me.