GPU Accelerated H.264 Encoder

royia · 21st June 2010, 06:16

Hello.
I have few video files I want to encode.
As far as I know x.264 would provide the best quality.
Yet, does it have a version which uses the GPU for acceleration?

Which encoder which does utilize the GPU (Open CL / CUDE / Stream) has the best quality?

Thanks.

Midzuki · 21st June 2010, 06:21

Hi there.

Please take a look at these threads:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=151631

&&

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=146209

HTH.

royia · 22nd June 2010, 08:56

Thank You for the references.

I read what's written there and I wonder about 2 things:
1. Is there a way to accelerate some parts (To the least) of x.264 using Open CL / Direct Compute? Will we ever see something like that? That would mean a lot to many users. I read the main developer said I runs solely on the CPU, my question is it some kind of built in limitation of the code or just no effort in this direction ever been made?
2. I see x.264 us much superior to any GPU Accelerated H.264 Encoder. Yet which GPU Accelerated Encoders are considered to produce legitimate quality (Let's something above xVid in the same Bitrate).

Thanks.

aegisofrime · 22nd June 2010, 10:34

Quote:

Originally Posted by royia

Thank You for the references.

I read what's written there and I wonder about 2 things:
1. Is there a way to accelerate some parts (To the least) of x.264 using Open CL / Direct Compute? Will we ever see something like that? That would mean a lot to many users. I read the main developer said I runs solely on the CPU, my question is it some kind of built in limitation of the code or just no effort in this direction ever been made?
2. I see x.264 us much superior to any GPU Accelerated H.264 Encoder. Yet which GPU Accelerated Encoders are considered to produce legitimate quality (Let's something above xVid in the same Bitrate).

Thanks.

Rest assured the developers have considered the possibility. In fact, accelerating part of x264 is one of the projects in x264's 2010 summer of code.

Here's the excerpt:

Quote:

GPU motion estimation

While porting x264 entirely to CUDA or OpenCL is an insane task, there are three possible methods that could be used to offload some work to the GPU:

* High-complexity motion search designed to get useful predictors to be used by the main motion search.
* Massively parallelized lookahead motion search, designed to do a lot of the work normally done in the lookahead thread. May also improve B-frame decision and other parts of the lookahead.
* Motion search designed to completely replace x264's main motion search: would require a lot of threading trickery to sync it perfectly with the main encoder threads.

The general algorithm that has been agreed on after a great deal of discussion is the hierarchical search method. If you have a better idea, feel free to propose it, of course. More description of this method is in the Qualification Tasks section.

This project is not recommended unless you have a very significant amount of experience with CUDA or OpenCL.

* Difficulty: Very High
* Amount of work: Medium
* Skill required: Very High

Source:

http://webcache.googleusercontent.co...ient=firefox-a

(google cache link because of 404)

Original link:

http://wiki.videolan.org/SoC_x264_2010

royia · 22nd June 2010, 11:46

I hope someone will take it upon himself.
I wish I could help with that.

Has anyone applied for it?

hust_xcl · 28th July 2010, 12:49

Quote:

Originally Posted by royia

I hope someone will take it upon himself.
I wish I could help with that.

Has anyone applied for it?

i am trying it now.It is hard, so I can not promise the result

royia · 28th July 2010, 13:09

Quote:

Originally Posted by hust_xcl

i am trying it now.It is hard, so I can not promise the result

Crossing my fingers for you.
Just for knowledge, are you aiming for Open CL or CUDA?

I wish I could help :-).

kemuri-_9 · 28th July 2010, 13:26

Quote:

Originally Posted by hust_xcl

i am trying it now.It is hard, so I can not promise the result

there are a group of people trying to accomplish this, they can often be found talking or conversing in #x264dev on freenode.
if you're not among this group then you're at a serious disadvantage

hust_xcl · 2nd August 2010, 06:13

Quote:

Originally Posted by royia

Crossing my fingers for you.
Just for knowledge, are you aiming for Open CL or CUDA?
aim for cuda
I wish I could help :-).

,i will ask for your help when i need.

royia · 2nd August 2010, 07:17

Will you be using CUDA or Open CL?

hust_xcl · 2nd August 2010, 15:10

Quote:

Originally Posted by royia

Will you be using CUDA or Open CL?

using cuda

hust_xcl · 2nd August 2010, 15:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by kemuri-_9

there are a group of people trying to accomplish this, they can often be found talking or conversing in #x264dev on freenode.
if you're not among this group then you're at a serious disadvantage

I want to verify my algorithm before joining them.

aegisofrime · 2nd August 2010, 20:28

Quote:

Originally Posted by hust_xcl

I want to verify my algorithm before joining them.

Best of luck! If you succeed you shall become very famous!

mariush · 2nd August 2010, 21:13

I wish you would use Open CL - why limit something only to one platform... it's like designing something to work on 3dfx Voodoo2's Glide system - yes, it may work better but who knows what will happen to nVidia in a few years.

Dark Shikari · 2nd August 2010, 21:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by mariush

I wish you would use Open CL - why limit something only to one platform... it's like designing something to work on 3dfx Voodoo2's Glide system - yes, it may work better but who knows what will happen to nVidia in a few years.

On the other hand, OpenCL is missing critical features, like pointers, that are basically required (as far as we've found) to implement a lot of this...

kieranrk · 3rd August 2010, 00:14

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dark Shikari

On the other hand, OpenCL is missing critical features, like pointers, that are basically required (as far as we've found) to implement a lot of this...

How do you implement anything substantial without pointers?

Dark Shikari · 3rd August 2010, 01:22

Quote:

Originally Posted by kieranrk

How do you implement anything substantial without pointers?

Ask a Java programmer.

Sharktooth · 3rd August 2010, 03:40

may be useful: http://forums.amd.com/devforum/messa...hreadid=134809

ImmortAlex · 3rd August 2010, 05:51

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dark Shikari

Ask a Java programmer.

A quiet offtopic, but Java has pointers. We just call them 'references'

What we, Java programmers, are really lost is pointer arithmetic...

Reimar · 3rd August 2010, 10:56

Quote:

Originally Posted by Dark Shikari

On the other hand, OpenCL is missing critical features, like pointers, that are basically required (as far as we've found) to implement a lot of this...

Happen to have a reference at hand? I've only used CUDA, but my impression was that you rarely really need completely general pointers, since you have to copy the data to the GPU anyway and transforming it so far that e.g. everything ends up in a single buffer is not really a problem.

21st June 2010, 06:16	#1 \| Link
royia Drazick Join Date: May 2003 Location: Israel Posts: 139	GPU Accelerated H.264 Encoder Hello. I have few video files I want to encode. As far as I know x.264 would provide the best quality. Yet, does it have a version which uses the GPU for acceleration? Which encoder which does utilize the GPU (Open CL / CUDE / Stream) has the best quality? Thanks. Last edited by Guest; 21st June 2010 at 13:12. Reason: 12

3rd August 2010, 03:40	#18 \| Link
Sharktooth Mr. Sandman Join Date: Sep 2003 Location: Haddonfield, IL Posts: 11,768	may be useful: http://forums.amd.com/devforum/messa...hreadid=134809 __________________ MPEG-4 ASP Custom Matrices: EQM V1(old), EQM AutoGK Sharpmatrix (aka EQM V2), EQM V3HR (updated 01/10/2004), EQM V3LR, EQM V3ULR (updated 04/02/2005), EQM V3UHR (updated 17/12/2004) and EQM V3EHR (updated 05/10/2004) Info about my ASP matrices. MPEG-4 AVC Custom Matrices: EQM AVC-HR Info about my AVC matrices My x264 builds. Mooo!!!

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21st June 2010, 06:21	#2 \| Link
Midzuki Unavailable Join Date: Mar 2009 Location: offline Posts: 1,480	Hi there. Please take a look at these threads: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=151631 && http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=146209 HTH.

22nd June 2010, 08:56	#3 \| Link
royia Drazick Join Date: May 2003 Location: Israel Posts: 139	Thank You for the references. I read what's written there and I wonder about 2 things: 1. Is there a way to accelerate some parts (To the least) of x.264 using Open CL / Direct Compute? Will we ever see something like that? That would mean a lot to many users. I read the main developer said I runs solely on the CPU, my question is it some kind of built in limitation of the code or just no effort in this direction ever been made? 2. I see x.264 us much superior to any GPU Accelerated H.264 Encoder. Yet which GPU Accelerated Encoders are considered to produce legitimate quality (Let's something above xVid in the same Bitrate). Thanks.

22nd June 2010, 11:46	#5 \| Link
royia Drazick Join Date: May 2003 Location: Israel Posts: 139	I hope someone will take it upon himself. I wish I could help with that. Has anyone applied for it?

2nd August 2010, 07:17	#10 \| Link
royia Drazick Join Date: May 2003 Location: Israel Posts: 139	Will you be using CUDA or Open CL?

2nd August 2010, 21:13	#14 \| Link
mariush Registered User Join Date: Dec 2008 Posts: 589	I wish you would use Open CL - why limit something only to one platform... it's like designing something to work on 3dfx Voodoo2's Glide system - yes, it may work better but who knows what will happen to nVidia in a few years.