Question / Help GPU-assisted encoding on new nvidia cards?

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rlex

New Member
Hello.
Well, i'm just wondering.
Nvidia announced new GPU, GTX 780
But as for me interesting part is new recording software, that, citing: "utilizes the H.264 video encoder built within the Kepler GPU to create an efficient and lag-free recording program"
Is that dedicated H.264 encoder or just some CUDA stuff?
So question is... will we be able to use that for streaming in OBS?
Probably i'm asking too early...
 
T

Timothy003

Member
Hi.

The encoder they are referring to is most likely NVENC. NVENC is a dedicated hardware H.264 encoder, just like Intel Quick Sync Video, and was actually already present in the last-gen GeForce 600 series cards. Unfortunately, its output image quality is not much better than Quick Sync, and the SDK required to use it doesn't actually support GeForce. I've tried to run the sample app in the SDK with my GTX 670, and I kept getting a license key error. Their developer forum has several people asking about this error without any official response. I've even emailed Nvidia about it and I haven't received a reply yet.

So, it looks like there's very little chance that this encoder will be used in OBS. Most people who have a GeForce 600 series card likely also have an Intel CPU that supports Quick Sync. With Haswell coming in two weeks, Quick Sync's image quality will improve, and Broadwell next year is expected to bring quality close to that of software encoders. Only a handful of applications use NVENC today, most of which are written by Nvidia, and it seems they're happy with that.
 
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WayZHC

Member
If someone wants to use this feature, someone has to write the plugin for it. There would be so few users for this feature so it's not worth spending time to code it for OBS by Jim or the other contributors. Quicksync is really much more promising feature for encoding so thats what they are focusing on.
 
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Tak0r

Member
VCE the complement of nvenc is in the same bad spot as faar as support goes. I don't really know if there are actually usable sdk sample out who utilize that feature.
 
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