H.265 / HEVC support

[Pavel_Kolotilov]

Hi guys,

Coming back to H.265. Myself, I lived in the PowerDirector (PD) universe for some years with its magnificent support of HW acceleration and file formats. Nevertheless decided to come back to ease of use of VS again. And also got a nice offer from VS, which stands very well against rip-off PD pricing

I am generally very satisfied with VS2022, except for some old problems, for example support of H.265 HW acceleration. It kind of works, but I needed a day of tests to find a way to use it. Summarizing, when I created UHD MP4 files with H.265, I found the following problems:

1. If I do not use HW acceleration, processing takes a lot of time and the resulting file DOES NOT correspond to the set bitrate. For example, I set the bitrate to 30 Mb, 50 and 70, and always got in the end 75VBR. Quality is tops, but I cannot watch it on my LG TV from NAS, because LG has a fast ethernet connection (100 Mb), and the variable bitrate jumps over it all the time - so the playback stops constantly.

2. I used Cuda HW acceleration (have a pascal-based card, Nvidia quadro P400). Processing is much faster, holds bitrate quite well (around 10% less then set). Problem is the quality: the resulting stream has some serious artifacts on the grey backgrounds (like the asphalt, for example), which makes the whole thing look terrible sometimes.

3. HW accelertation with Intel Quick Sync. This is the only one that works for me. It holds well the bitrate, almost exactly what I set. And the quality is acceptable (though compression without HW acceleration gives the best result, but bitrate is much higher there).

Another thing that I miss in VS2022 is the MKV file format and and maybe surround audio support. I mean, to put UHD video and DD audio in the same file.

Any comments about my findings or I do something terribly wrong?

[Radim]

So it is not better render 4k MP4 h264 and then convert to h265? With something like https://www.videohelp.com/software/x265-Encoder or https://www.videohelp.com/software/ffmpeg
I myself am not familiar with those but in comming weeks want to try 4k + h265.

[Pavel_Kolotilov]

Well, it is possible, of course, but it means to loose a generation (quality loss) and time. It is not 2015, by now VS just must encode with H.265 well.

[Ken Berry]

I certainly agree about it being time that HEVC is handled well in VS, especially since my GoPro Hero can be set to film in it in 4K (which is what I often do though with the bitrate usually set below 40 mbps). As you'll see from my Profile, my system is based on AMD and has a Radeon 6600 XT graphics card and no auxiliary graphics on the motherboard.

I would normally set hardware acceleration in VS 2022 to AMD for other formats. However, when set to that and trying to produce a HEVC video, VS always freezes instantly and I have to use Task Manager to end VS. With hardware acceleration not ticked, rendering is slow but I am always pleased with the output and have learnt over the years to be patient.

Oddly enough, since I got my new computer at the beginning of January, I had never thought about using Hardware Acceleration set to Intel Quick Sync. When I did so, I was surprised to find VS did not freeze. However, rendering was as slow as it was with acceleration turned off. End quality of the video was the same as far as I could see.

I also agree that it is more than time we had the chance to output to MKV. It's a wrapper format which has been around now for many years and works well. And if, as Pavel says, surround sound 5.1 can be worked into it that would be even better and at least lessen the impact of Corel's strange dropping of Dolby. Even if Dolby 5.1 remains excluded from VS, perhaps using (L)PCM 5.1 could still be worked into MKV -- though I confess I am not aware of the technicalities involved in that.

[Pavel_Kolotilov]

Ken, Intel Quick Sync is a part of the Intel processors. So, if you don´t have the Intel processor, so when you set to it, it actually keeps coding without HW acceleration. That is why it takes so much time. The same happens when even having Intel processor, one does not connect at least one monitor to the motherboard hdmi/DP socket (but rather to the video card). In this case, the graphic processor in the Intel processor is "sleeping" and Intel Quick Sync cannot be used.

[Ken Berry]

Thanks, and of course that makes sense. In a sense, though, I would have thought it might show as inactive for an AMD user with no Intel, or not even appear. But I guess that is wishful thinking.

[Davidk]

Something else to consider with Intel processors is whether the video driver software works with the on-chip-editor cpu. In my case, it didn't - acceleration selected/on, and when rendering, got an error message. No message but slow when accel off. Eventually tracked to a driver bug. So if your rendering works but with no readily apparent difference between accel on and off, maybe the driver has an un-messaged bug. Possibly is not an issue if you have a separate display adapter card installed (probably desktops only) and configured to work with the main editing software. Just be aware.