Question about plex transcoding

[middle_pickup]

I know a lot of home servers get used for plex, and I'm sure many of you have tested the hardware transcoding of PMS. When I see people talking about intel quick sync vs nvidia nvenc the topic is always revolving around the number of encodes the GPU can manage to keep up with. What I am more concerned with, yet have never really seen discussed is the quality of the encoders.

 

What's the consensus on quick sync vs nvenc encoding? In the use case of PMS does one look noticeably better than the other? I'm still running an i7-2600 with the first generation of quick sync that supported h.264 hardware encoding. Do newer generations of the hardware encoders supported in PMS visibly look better than what I'm getting with my system?

[Motifator]

Why not AMD? People seem to ditch it for encoding just because Intel / Nvidia and CPU can roll it off. AMD's Relive and the other stuff can pull it off as well.

The software is bit latchy, but it's still good. Their HVC codec encoders.

[ChrisLoudon]

44 minutes ago, middle_pickup said:

What's the concusses on quick sync vs nvenc encoding?

Hi buddy, while output quality is generally very subjective, you'll likely get a difference of opinion with this.

 

I think NVENC is faster and slightly better quality than Quicksync BUT it does need an Nvidia GPU.

 

Since you are still rocking a 2600k then I would advise going down the NVENC route as your CPU just doesn't have the horses to do much in the way of encoding especially if its high but rate stuff like Blu-ray or UHD.

 

My plex server still uses an equally aged 3770k but its paired with an Nvidia 1650 which does all the heavy lifting.

[Needfuldoer]

4 hours ago, Motifator said:

Why not AMD?

Plex doesn't officially support hardware encoding on AMD GPUs.

[m9x3mos]

7 hours ago, middle_pickup said:

I know a lot of home servers get used for plex, and I'm sure many of you have tested the hardware transcoding of PMS. When I see people talking about intel quick sync vs nvidia nvenc the topic is always revolving around the number of encodes the GPU can manage to keep up with. What I am more concerned with, yet have never really seen discussed is the quality of the encoders.

 

What's the concusses on quick sync vs nvenc encoding? In the use case of PMS does one look noticeably better than the other? I'm still running an i7-2600 with the first generation of quick sync that supported h.264 hardware encoding. Do newer generations of the hardware encoders supported in PMS visibly look better than what I'm getting with my system?

EposVox did a video on this a could of years ago. Might shed some light on your question. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ccoOGfX9qxg

[Jarsky]

On 3/10/2024 at 9:26 PM, middle_pickup said:

What I am more concerned with, yet have never really seen discussed is the quality of the encoders.

There are a number of threads in this forum where I have explained this, as well as pointed out why to use more modern graphics with codec support. 

But in summary:

NVENC is slightly better quality transcodes than QuickSync

QuickSync is obviously cheaper as you dont need a dedicated GPU

You want a 6th Gen Intel or newer (Preferably a 10th Gen or newer due to Decode quality improvements) if using QSV, or 10 series or newer if using NVENC.

 

The newer QSV and NVENC in these generations do look better compared to earlier revisions, but more importantly they also support H265/X265 formats that are becoming more and more common. RTX 20 series and newer also support AV1...though that format as amazing as it is, is still being adopted. 

 

Decode Matrix's:

https://developer.nvidia.com/video-encode-and-decode-gpu-support-matrix-new

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video#Hardware_decoding_and_encoding

 

 

 

[m9x3mos]

2 hours ago, Jarsky said:

There are a number of threads in this forum where I have explained this, as well as pointed out why to use more modern graphics with codec support. 

But in summary:

NVENC is slightly better quality transcodes than QuickSync

QuickSync is obviously cheaper as you dont need a dedicated GPU

You want a 6th Gen Intel or newer (Preferably a 10th Gen or newer due to Decode quality improvements) if using QSV, or 10 series or newer if using NVENC.

 

The newer QSV and NVENC in these generations do look better compared to earlier revisions, but more importantly they also support H265/X265 formats that are becoming more and more common. RTX 20 series and newer also support AV1...though that format as amazing as it is, is still being adopted. 

 

Decode Matrix's:

https://developer.nvidia.com/video-encode-and-decode-gpu-support-matrix-new

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video#Hardware_decoding_and_encoding

 

 

 

As a side note, only the 40 series support av1 encoding but 20 and up do av1 decoding. 

[Jarsky]

3 minutes ago, m9x3mos said:

As a side note, only the 40 series support av1 encoding but 20 and up do av1 decoding. 

Correct, but for the sake of this thread we're only talking about decoding. 

(I know technically its NVDEC but am just using NVENC as a catch all to refer to the Nvidia NVENC/NVDEC engine as that's the descriptor people are familiar with)

[m9x3mos]

It would also be encoding the stream that it sends. It is a two part process no? 

[middle_pickup]

11 hours ago, Jarsky said:

There are a number of threads in this forum where I have explained this, as well as pointed out why to use more modern graphics with codec support. 

But in summary:

NVENC is slightly better quality transcodes than QuickSync

QuickSync is obviously cheaper as you dont need a dedicated GPU

You want a 6th Gen Intel or newer (Preferably a 10th Gen or newer due to Decode quality improvements) if using QSV, or 10 series or newer if using NVENC.

 

The newer QSV and NVENC in these generations do look better compared to earlier revisions, but more importantly they also support H265/X265 formats that are becoming more and more common. RTX 20 series and newer also support AV1...though that format as amazing as it is, is still being adopted. 

 

Decode Matrix's:

https://developer.nvidia.com/video-encode-and-decode-gpu-support-matrix-new

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Quick_Sync_Video#Hardware_decoding_and_encoding

 

 

 

Thanks for this info!

[Jarsky]

17 hours ago, m9x3mos said:

It would also be encoding the stream that it sends. It is a two part process no? 

Yes but its not encoding too AV1. It's typically encoding to H264/AAC (MP4) or for old devices MPEG-2

[Motifator]

You should keep in mind that, in theory, BOTH CPU AND H264 can be done pretty AMAZINGLY, for real, using CPU OR AMD gear. While you'll see everybody praise Nvidia or Intel for this task, both AMD and CPU can brute force the living shoot out of it. As long as there's support for your codec.

[middle_pickup]

3 hours ago, Motifator said:

You should keep in mind that, in theory, BOTH CPU AND H264 can be done pretty AMAZINGLY, for real, using CPU OR AMD gear. While you'll see everybody praise Nvidia or Intel for this task, both AMD and CPU can brute force the living shoot out of it. As long as there's support for your codec.

Yea, but software encoders (encoding with cpu) take a lot more time. My cpu can't start a transcode stream without stutters, and Idk even if newer chips can do it without the same problem. That's typically why hardware encoding is preferred. It's also far more power efficient.

[Motifator]

3 hours ago, middle_pickup said:

Yea, but software encoders (encoding with cpu) take a lot more time. My cpu can't start a transcode stream without stutters, and Idk even if newer chips can do it without the same problem. That's typically why hardware encoding is preferred. It's also far more power efficient.

My 5900X begs to differ.