Suggestions to speed up Video Encoding ( Handbrake )

[WaxRiver]

I am currently running a Threadripper 2950x, 1080 Ti, and 64gb of Ram. I convert all of my Blu Ray’s - (Movies/TV Shows) to digital files using ( MakeMKV & Handbrake ) for my Plex server. Is there any hardware or software recommendations to make this significantly faster ? Also looking at the new Radeon RX 7900 XTX and was wondering if AMD's Video Encoding is any better or if I should stick with NVIDIA for Video Encoding going forward.

[Electronics Wizardy]

What format are you converting to? What bitrate/resolution are you working with?

 

You can use nvenc on the 1080ti for fairly high quality h.265 at pretty high speeds.

[WaxRiver]

Converting into 1920x1080 from RAW MKV file, and I am using nvenc h.264 currently as h.265 has not seemed to make a big difference. What I am curious to know is would a new GPU or CPU make a huge difference ?    Say I went with a Threadripper Pro or the new RX 7900 XTX or 3080 / 3090 would this make a huge difference ?   ( I refuse to get the new 4000 series ) and am wondering if AMD's video encoding is any good -- I may encode 4k videos in the future

[WaxRiver]

Edit

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, WaxRiver said:

Converting into 1920x1080 from RAW MKV file, and I am using nvenc h.264 currently as h.265 has not seemed to make a big difference. What I am curious to know is would a new GPU or CPU make a huge difference ?    Say I went with a Threadripper Pro or the new RX 7900 XTX or 3080 / 3090 would this make a huge difference ?   ( I refuse to get the new 4000 series ) and am wondering if AMD's video encoding is any good 

MIght as well use h.265, better quality for a given bitrate.

 

We don't know how good amds new encoder will be yet, but it will likely be better than h.265 or av1 on the newer cards.

 

What framerate are you getting with the current setup. I have a 1080 I could test with, but I think you can get hundreds of fps if configured correctly(have the gpu do the video decoding so the uncompressed data doesn't have to go over the pcie bus). 

 

What codec is the MKV file in? If its from a blu-ray its probably mpeg2 or h.264 

[WaxRiver]

17 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

MIght as well use h.265, better quality for a given bitrate.

 

We don't know how good amds new encoder will be yet, but it will likely be better than h.265 or av1 on the newer cards.

 

What framerate are you getting with the current setup. I have a 1080 I could test with, but I think you can get hundreds of fps if configured correctly(have the gpu do the video decoding so the uncompressed data doesn't have to go over the pcie bus). 

 

What codec is the MKV file in? If its from a blu-ray its probably mpeg2 or h.264 

I am currently using a Fast1080 ( modified ) I dont change the dimensions or filters, but in video settings

I change the video encoder to h.264 nvec or h.265 nvec 

I change the quality setting to 21

I change the encoder preset to slow 

I change Framerate to ( Same as source ) and constant framerate

Audio settings will depend on blu ray / file --  usually standard stereo at 256 bit rate unless 5.1 , 7.1, or Dolby Digital is an option

and I believe the MKV file is probably mpeg2 or h.264, but the current movie I have pulled up does not have this listed in the details.  ---- I am getting around 200-300 fps depending on settings

EDIT -- h.265 has lowered the average fps down 25-50 fps so I will be sticking with h.264 as that has seemed to work the best for me, but am still curious to know if better hardware would help 

[Electronics Wizardy]

15 minutes ago, WaxRiver said:

I am currently using a Fast1080 ( modified ) I dont change the dimensions or filters, but in video settings

I change the video encoder to h.264 nvec or h.265 nvec 

I change the quality setting to 21

I change the encoder preset to slow 

I change Framerate to ( Same as source ) and constant framerate

Audio settings will depend on blu ray / file --  usually standard stereo at 256 bit rate unless 5.1 , 7.1, or Dolby Digital is an option

and I believe the MKV file is probably mpeg2 or h.264, but the current movie I have pulled up does not have this listed in the details.  ---- I am getting around 200-300 fps depending on settings

EDIT -- h.265 has lowered the average fps down 25-50 fps so I will be sticking with h.264 as that has seemed to work the best for me, but am still curious to know if better hardware would help 

Id try using FFmpeg if possible, gives you a good amount more options when it comes to hardware encoding.

 

Changing the preset to fast or normal will speed it up a good amount. Id take h.265 normal or fast over h.264

 

200-300 fps is pretty fast, you probably won't get more speed that that, but you can have multiple encodes going at the same time. I don't think the newer encodes are much faster, but better quality and allow multiple encodes at the same time on the high end cards.

[WaxRiver]

23 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id try using FFmpeg if possible, gives you a good amount more options when it comes to hardware encoding.

 

Changing the preset to fast or normal will speed it up a good amount. Id take h.265 normal or fast over h.264

 

200-300 fps is pretty fast, you probably won't get more speed that that, but you can have multiple encodes going at the same time. I don't think the newer encodes are much faster, but better quality and allow multiple encodes at the same time on the high end cards.

If I wanted to increase the average fps would a better GPU make a difference ?  or do I need to jump to a new platform as the X399 / Ryzen Threadripper 2nd Gen is limited to PCIE 3.0 and 2933mhz ram... 

[Electronics Wizardy]

7 minutes ago, WaxRiver said:

If I wanted to increase the average fps would a better GPU make a difference ?  or do I need to jump to a new platform as the X399 / Ryzen Threadripper 2nd Gen is limited to PCIE 3.0 and 2933mhz ram... 

Id take a look at task manager to see what the limit it, but id guess its the hardware encoder on the gpu.

 

I don't think a new gpu would be faster

 

Have you tried running multiple encodes at once? You could probably do 2 on cpu and 1/2 on gpu for a decent speed up.

 

I don't think ram and pcie would limit you here.

[WaxRiver]

9 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Id take a look at task manager to see what the limit it, but id guess its the hardware encoder on the gpu.

 

I don't think a new gpu would be faster

 

Have you tried running multiple encodes at once? You could probably do 2 on cpu and 1/2 on gpu for a decent speed up.

 

I don't think ram and pcie would limit you here.

I had to get 4 different videos with 4 separate windows of Handbrake open and converting all at once before the GPU would even get to 80% and at this point I was dropping average fps in each separate windows due to CPU now being the bottleneck. Is there a way to offload more of the work to the GPU ? or is it better to just run the h.264 / h.265 just on the CPU as there is no way currently that I know of to just have the GPU do all of the encoding in Handbrake.    FFmpeg is great, but due to the sometime large volume and different audio tracks / subtitles of the video files I enjoy the gui of Handbrake

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, WaxRiver said:

I had to get 4 different videos with 4 separate windows of Handbrake open and converting all at once before the GPU would even get to 80% and at this point I was dropping average fps in each separate windows due to CPU now being the bottleneck. Is there a way to offload more of the work to the GPU ? or is it better to just run the h.264 / h.265 just on the CPU as there is no way currently that I know of to just have the GPU do all of the encoding in Handbrake.    FFmpeg is great, but due to the sometime large volume and different audio tracks / subtitles of the video files I enjoy the gui of Handbrake

You can have the gpu decode the footage with the gpu, but I don't know of a way to do it with a gui. FFmpeg isn't that bad when you get used to it. You can just copy the audio from the original file, and thats what I often do in situations like this. Same with subtitles, just copy to the new file.