Hardware vs software encoding decoding

What is hardware video decoding, and should i enable it. However, youve encountered one of the problems with hardware encoding. Pixel peeping down to magnazoom levels can vary greatly depending on the footage, but thats where im headed next. What is the difference between hardware encoding and software. These complex compression algorithms are processed by the dedicated gpu for that. Support for quick sync hardware accelerated decoding of h. This makes obs studio a great software encoder for dacast users, especially those. What does it do, and how does it impact my performance. Mercury playback engine gpu accelerated is a renderer used to process gpuaccelerated effects and enhances playback.

Elgato game capture hd and hardware accelerated decoding. What platforms and devices are supported for gpu encoding mcebuddy supports intel quicksync, nvidia nvenccuda and amd vceamf which are used for decoding and encoding h. Broadcasters who use video cameras in their live streaming setup need either a hardware or software encoder for the job. Software decoding the first technique to decode video and read the video information using cpu only. Oct 04, 2012 but software based encoding has some drawbacks. Jan 11, 2017 an mqa encoded file can be played back in four ways. Today we investigate the advantages and disadvantages of hardware vs software streamingrecording setups and why you might choose one over the. Even in hardware encoding, theres software in the firmware, so in a way its all software. Dec 22, 2017 the hardware decoding is done by the video card itself what means, the full power of the video card being used to decode the video, thus, being much faster, over all in modern video cards that have 900 cores or more and up to 12 gb of video memor. Games freeze after a while, dont know if hardware or software is involved.

Dec 08, 2016 hardware designers have been more focused on getting hevc decoding blocks into mobile hardware first, as the cpus in these products typically arent fast enough for software decoding. Difference between encoding and decoding compare the. Softwarebased decoding is a different beast altogether. Third party software includes macx video converter pro, adobe media encoder, davinci resolve, iina, vlc and others. Enabling highperformance video encoding, decoding, and. Software encoding s greatest advantages over pure hardware encoders are its flexibility and quality. Hardware acceleration is a term used to describe tasks being offloaded to devices and hardware which specialize in it. Just as with encoding, this assumes the steam software is configured to work well with your hardware but the likely worst case is that it doesnt have the right hooks for your modelgeneration of celeron and reverts to software decoding even if you have hardware selected. Hardware designers have been more focused on getting hevc decoding blocks into mobile hardware first, as the cpus in these products typically arent fast enough for software decoding. While this is fine in most general usage cases, especially if someone has a strong cpu, there are others. Ryzen 7 2700x takes a commanding lead in the multicore cinebench benchmark, which we expected in light of the radical cache latency and bandwidth improvements that amd made. Dec 04, 2018 power consumption will get sharply increased in software decoding, almost 7688mw for 1080p and 14400mw for 4k 2160p video. Also, this in general is what hardware decoding in terms of graphics will refer to, so you can watch out for it elsewhere. This post addresses the benefits of using a hardware encoder vs.

Its definitely not the most sophisticated program weve ever seen, but it seems to work fairly well if. Nov 03, 2002 by the way, i posted numerous messages to this forum for help. In those cases, normal software decoding without hardware. This dedicated hardware for hardware encoding gives the low latency while streaming. I understand that hardware encoding is a thing, but what is the benefit of that over software encoding. The ones who responded to my messages dont seem to realize the potential of software.

Software encodings greatest advantages over pure hardware encoders are its flexibility and quality. Encoding computer programs you run on a personal computer. Software versus hardware accelerated decoding parsec. In which encoding is done by using the gpu of that hardware. The key difference is that a hardware encoder is a piece of physical equipment youll. A hardware encoder takes a feed from your camera and audio sources or your video mixer into a physical box. These encoders are commonly used by professionals due to their awesome video quality. This option will allow your gpu graphics processing unit to process certain video data, instead of your cpu doing it. Hardware accelerated decoding is a process which is used to accelerate decoding h. This is the most efficient way to go in terms of processor resources and electrical consumption. Hardware decoding vs software decoding would be mentioned most in the field of hd 4k h264 hevc videos playback. Hardwareaccelerated encoding is used to accelerate the encoding performance while exporting the timeline in h. Elgato game capture hd and hardware accelerated decoding and. What are the areas a decoder, an encoder and a multiplexer are used.

The accelerator executes the motioncompensated prediction mcp, and may also execute the inverse discretecosine transform idct and the variablelength decoding vld. They are available in form of portable, small boxes. I wanted to compare premieres software compression to virtualdub. The gaming pc can use hardware encoding and send a 25,000 bitrate stream to a server. However, premiere is the only capturing tool that i know of that is incapable of using the software encoding on capture. If you play back a 24bit192khz mqaencoded file using itunes through a regular dac i. Hardware video encoding and decoding codec support. What exactly is hardware encoding for the host pc or hardware decoding for the client for that matter. Overall, the performance with gpu hardware acceleration is very impressive. Apr 19, 2018 ryzen 7 2700x takes a commanding lead in the multicore cinebench benchmark, which we expected in light of the radical cache latency and bandwidth improvements that amd made. A hardware decoder is something like an xcard or hollywood plus there were some quadrant cards also. Today we investigate the advantages and disadvantages of hardware vs software streamingrecording setups and why you might choose one.

So enabling hardware encoding does not take significant resources away from the gpu for rendering the game although it will push up the thermal load, even if that silicon is superefficient, so can have some impact on perf. What is the difference between hardware decoding and. Q what is the difference between hardware and software. While for hardware encoding gpu power is used for compression algorithms. There are two types of encoders, hardware and software.

Now, you know a thing or two about the differences between hardware decoding and software decoding and their respective advantages. An mqa encoded file can be played back in four ways. Encoding and decoding are actually the process through which data is transferred into such shape which is understand able for receiver. Theoretically, hardware encoding should be more efficient and be much faster than software. If that option is off unticked, then your cpu does the encoding. Oct 30, 2019 first up, software encoders are programs that run on a computing device. Video cards can do hardware assist at best and even that often requires tweaking.

This report of a control experiment intends to examine high quality video playback performance in a software decoding environment and a hardware decoding environment with dearmobs hardware accelerated 5kplayer as the subject. Software based decoding is a different beast altogether. Exact capabilities will depend on what youre using for the hardwareaccelerated decoding e. The most important parameters of encoding are quality, flexibility, price, latency, and support. Little more advance knowledge about both the difference is quality of algorithms, and whether the algorithm has to work on a livelinear stream or not. Software has always been able to adopt and update incredibly fast. Hardware encoding is when you have a dedicated gpu. Hardware vs software encodingdecoding comparison did anyone conduct a comparison between hardware and software in both decoding and encoding using amd and nvidia gpus. Hardware decoding cpu transfers the heavy decoding job to gpu to decode video faster when referring to highres videos. Sometimes they connect straight to the camera and always to the internet.

I have read user comments here that suggest the use of the h264 hardware decoding options in convertxtohd can speed up encoding times but will give less quality results than letting the program use your cpu only for the encoding. What is hardware acceleration and why does it matter. Hardware encoding takes some of the load off of cpu but requires a much higher bitrate to make up for the loss of quality. Apr 14, 2020 overall, the performance with gpu hardware acceleration is very impressive. Hardware decoding vs software decoding a case study of 5kplayer. But even at that a 700800mhz processor can usually do software decoding without a glitch if the drive can keep up and the filters are any good. I have a question when it comes to software vs hardware and what i should be using and overall how they work. What is the difference between hardware decoding and software. Hardware encoders are based upon dedicated processors and they follow specific algorithms for video encoding. The server will then use software encoding to reencode the stream to. All i said was that these forums are the wrong place for problems or otherwise with dvdfab software.

Intel quick sync video is intels brand for its dedicated video encoding and decoding hardware core. Pros and cons of using a hardware or software encoder in your live video. Discussion in clonebd started by 4lfred, mar 24, 2018. For best quality results, h264 hardware decoding on or off. Compared to the existing hardware acceleration method using quicksync. What is the difference between hardware encoding and. Directx va permits one or more stages of the video decoding process to be divided between the host cpu and the video hardware accelerator. It is now a valuable resource for people who want to make the most of their mobile devices, from customizing the look and feel to adding new functionality. Never get confused in between software encoding and hardware encoding. The hardware decoding is done by the video card itself what means, the full power of the video card being used to decode the video, thus, being much faster, over all in modern video cards that have 900 cores or more and up to 12 gb of video memor. Where the modes communication matters a lot here this also has utmost importance that you message should be conveyed properly. But remember, parsec on software decoding is not awesome.

Consequently, hardware decoding has an edge over software decoding in this round. If the hardware sucks or youre not telling the controls to use adequate bitrate youll end up with mediocre results. They get data from the capture cards, and they send it via the internet. Hardware decoding vs software decoding would be mentioned most in the field of hd. So long as the instructions sets are the same, we are dealing with identical images, regardless of who manufactures the hardware. In general, hardware decoding is faster than software decoding especially when you need to decode 4k or 8k ultra hd videos and play them on your computer or devices without causing slowness issues on other processing tasks. Encoding decoding free is a simple program that lets users easily encrypt and decode files. Mar 24, 2018 intel hd graphics 630 hevc hardware encodingdecoding. Encoding is the process of compressing large video files for easier uploading to the internet.

Supported software and hardwareaccelerated 1 codecs encoding. For example, this device could be your laptop or a desktop computer. Intel hd graphics 630 hevc hardware encodingdecoding. Whst is the digference between softwarehardware video. This thread is a quick compilation of the faqs being asked around and answered related to gpu and hardware encoding 1. Hardware decoding vs software decoding in 4k h264h265 video. To use intel quicksync, see faq 2 for driver details for h. Difference between encoding and decoding encoding vs. Software encoding x264 provides better quality for a given bitrate at the expense of making your cpu do all of the work. The purpose of this transformation is to increase the usability of data especially in different systems. When hardwareaccelerated decoding is not compatible with a video file, plex media server will automatically use normal software decoding. Dedicated pieces of hardware that run encoding algorithms. If hardware decoding is possible, use hardware decoding and leave software decoding for anything that the hardware decoder doesnt support.

Keep in mind one thing that in software encoding cpu processing power is used for compression algorithms. Im getting different results than yours, though, when it comes to achieving a high target bitrate thats equivalent between hardware vs. Everything you need to know about hardware and software encoders. There are three popular hardware decoding brands that are worth noting. A hardware encoding is a type of encoding where dedicated hardware is needed for encoding. By default in most computers and applications the cpu is taxed, first and foremost, before other pieces of hardware are. I think so too software encoding will last for about 10 hours in. Hardwareaccelerated decoding is a process which is used to accelerate decoding h. Hardware accelerated encoding is used to accelerate the encoding performance while exporting the timeline in h. Encoding is the process of transforming data in to a different format using a method that is publicly available. So i have an nvidia gtx 970 frozr and under obs i see the option to use nvnec to encode. This is a good thing if your gpu will do a better job than your cpu it will take load off the cpu and hopefully make the application run smoother. Table 1 provides the supported video codecs for these processors.

Whst is the digference between softwarehardware video decoding. The server will then use software encoding to reencode the stream to 3500 on the best cpu settings it can handle. If youre suffering from artifacting pixellation you can. Software and hardware decoding can produce the same results hardware is running software to do the decoding, but as its hard wired, it runs it quicker than software running on a general purpose processor. Difference between encoding software x264 and encoding. Obs studio is free and will allow you to get familiar with the live streaming process. So when hardware encoding is the only performance factor was in these test it takes about 1.

That being said, if your computer doesnt have a hardware decoder, you can try using software decoding. Whats the difference in sdi signals 3g, 6g, 12g, quad link, etc. Compatibility with this software may vary, but will generally run fine under microsoft windows 10, windows 8, windows 8. Gpuhardware encodingacceleration faqs hardware encoding. Im doing my best to optimize my streaming performance from my pc to my steam link, and it doesnt help that the inhome streaming settings can be vague about what they do. But most importantly, it really brings the latency down on your games. Power consumption will get sharply increased in software decoding, almost 7688mw for 1080p and 14400mw for 4k 2160p video. The host gaming pc ultimately dictates the stream settings.