Hardware acceleration for live video streaming with Intel graphics

[henlo]

Hi!

I've been using a PC with a GeForce 1060 to live stream video from a webcam, for which I've been using hardware encoding (NVENC).

My question is, if I were to get a cheap PC with an Intel GPU (e.g. Intel HD Graphics 4400), would I still be able to use ANY form of hardware acceleration to encide the video on the GPU?

Any advice you can offer, especially in terms of choosing a cheap PC for video streaming, would be much appreciated.

 

[emil@obs]

There is also hardware accelarator implemended on intel core i xxx cpus, it is called quick sync. For me it works fine. I am running core i 5 4th generation with Intel® HD Graphics 4600.
I use a capture card in sdi 3g standard as video source and do encoding for steaming and recording by 60% of gpu capacity and 9-12% cpu usage.

 

[henlo]

Awesome.. thanks! So in the settings in OBS would there be an option for quick sync?

 

[Dee Adesanwo]

If your new system is mainly for OBS streaming only you could get a cheap GT 710 supports nvenc and use that instead. I've tried quick sync and it started out great, but over time my CPU usage would spike and I would drop a couple frames or have to tweak the encoder settings.

To see which cards could fit your budget check this matrix out (make sure to click the button in the middle for the complete list of cards):

Video Encode and Decode GPU Support Matrix

Find the related video encoding and decoding support for all NVIDIA GPU products.

developer.nvidia.com

Good luck.

 

[henlo]

That's great, thank you Dee! I'm actually kind of interested to try building a single board computer with an external GPU so maybe the GT710 would be ideal for this.

Cheers

 

[Harold]

the GT710 doesn't have nvenc, so no it wouldn't be ideal for this by any stretch of the imagination.

 

[emil@obs]

Awesome.. thanks! So in the settings in OBS would there be an option for quick sync?

Right. Here my settings for Facebook Live.
But if you have more budget i would recomand a nvidia cart that support h.264 and h.265 decoding and encoding. It will accelerate your workflow if you do postprocessing. You can find a list of nvidia cards that supports this standards on there webpage.

 

[emil@obs]

That's great, thank you Dee! I'm actually kind of interested to try building a single board computer with an external GPU so maybe the GT710 would be ideal for this.

Cheers

If you build a system for streaming a would recommand ATX full size Tower. There is enough space for graphic card, capture card, storage (SSD Harddrive, HDD Harddrive, M2 Harddrive). Also cooling will be something you have to think about or loudness level, reliability. All of this will be cheaper and more efficient in ATX Tower.

 

[henlo]

Yes I would normally agree with you, but I already have an ATX tower and it's too big - I want something I can put away in a drawer ideally. But, maybe it's impossible on a budget... ATX might be the only economical option.

 

[Dee Adesanwo]

Yes I would normally agree with you, but I already have an ATX tower and it's too big - I want something I can put away in a drawer ideally. But, maybe it's impossible on a budget... ATX might be the only economical option.

Rather than getting a tower you could get a low profile case like one of these:

https://www.amazon.com/Silverstone-Acrylic-Mini-ITX-Center-ML05B/dp/B00DU6RVK8

The down side is you'd be limiting yourself to SFF power supplies, which are more expensive than there regular sized versions.
You could put that in a drawer if it's wide enough, but then you'd have to worry about how to deal with heat...

Regardless of which case you get, I would still invest in a GPU to offload the encoding. The cheapest graphics card you can get with NVENC encoding that i've found is the GT710 with 2GB of ram and it does have NVENC, although it does not support H.265 codec:

This is the one I'm using ($49.99) https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B073SWN4ZM it comes with a low profile bracket
and i have my setup currently in a 2U server case in between a rack of audio equipment.