NVidia GPU-accelerated H264-encoder plugin, ready for public testing

Quick FYI, if your file has a "#" in it, MP4Box will fail every time. Found that out the hard way.

Hello, my name is Michele... thanks for your good work... with your plugin my encoding is quite faster! But I've a question for you, to resolve some problems: I've a GTX Titan, with the last nVidia GeForce drivers (350.12 WHQL), on Windows 8.1 Pro x64. I have all the software you link installed (even vcredist x86 and x64).

When I make an encoding from Premiere Pro CC 2014 (original software), the plugin works quite well. Not Adobe Media Encoder CC 2014: this one crashes and shuts down just after playing an encoding. [Premiere->Export Media Files->Queque->AME->Start->some seconds of encoding then crash]. Another little problem: I've done two tests with the same timeline, with the same codec setup... the first without mp4 multiplexing (two files, m2v and m2a that works perfectly); the second with mp4 multiplexing... the resultant mp4 stutters. I attach the encoder setting. Thanks for your help.

Edit: just an update... I've tried about ten encoding... even using the same configuration and the same timeline/effects, sometimes Premiere doesn't work, sometimes AME doesn't work. Premiere says "low-level error".

When the encoder works, it can use the 98% of Video Engine, it loads GPU for about 40% (but this value is quite variable), 11-20% Memory Controller Load, about 2.3 Gb Video Memory load. The CPU max load is about 40%.

Hello!

I have GeForce 740m. I also want to try this plugin. But

But my videocard is Kepler series!

How can I add support of my videocard?

Thank you!

I just rendered a window dub draft for my client yesterday and uploaded it to my DropBox account for her to review. I used the NVENC encoder to do this job, with better than expected results.

The minimum bitrate of 1mbs enabled me to bump the frame size from my usual 180x120 to 720x480 with minimal quality loss. I would not have believed 1mbs could look as good as DVD MPEG at 4.5mbs, but it looks almost perfect, even full-screen.

The render time was 2X realtime, even with the 50% performance penalty of using a Quicktime 32-bit video CODEC for the original footage (Atomos Shogun recorder). The fact that it took only 48m to render a 90-minute concert with color correction and titles and time code, from DNxHD MOV files, is impressive. The GPU did much of the work and the main CPU wasn't nailed the ceiling on load.

Whoever said that hardware encodes look bad at low bitrate should take another look. The quality was so good that I could use a large frame size for the draft. The whole 90 minute video fit in under 700mb h.264 file, which uploaded to DB in about 2 hours on a slow DSL connection. In the past, to get a file that small, I had to use 180x120 frame size or else the block artifacts were horrendous. And the render took HOURS, doing it the software way. NVENC has so many uses that improve workflow productivity. This alone makes the $250 I dropped on a GTX680 on eBay well worth the investment.

Works great, thanks. Render time cut by 400%. Can't get MP4BOX to work though; TSmuxer works fine (even for YouTube) though so it's all good.

Is this still being developed?

This is such a good idea, I really don't know why Adobe don't have their own team of developers doing this work, it would make their product so much more effective.

Many thanks to nvenc4everyone for putting his unpaid time and effort in to this plugin.

I'm having a problem rendering PAL 1080p 25 footage though.  I have a 3 minute clip and it renders blisteringly fast compared to my old laptop.  The problem is the video output has a stuttery / slomo quality to it and because of that the audio isn't synched..  My laptop is brand new with raided SSDs, a GTX 980M and 16GB RAM, so hardware spec should be alright.

I'm using AVCHD footage from a Panasonic GH2.  I've followed all the prequisites so far and now I'm wondering if it's something to do with my frame rate

Is anyone else using 1080p 25?

Does anyone have any ideas what might be causing the issue?

The NV_ENC_PRESET_BD_GUID with sliceMode=1, sliceModeData=4 (the '4' flag does not exist btw) and level_41 is not Blu-Ray compliant with Encore and forces Encore to transcode the video. Also the final export shows green artefacts and Encore freezes for a while while importing. Any solutions to the problem ? Thank you.

Just found a critical problem with the h.264 files encoded by NVENC: Encore CS6 chokes on them. More specifically, Encore won't author them to the disc unmolested.

It INSISTS on transcoding the NVENC encoded files. It leaves the AME encoded h.264 files alone and those show up on the BDMV as AVC, but every NVENC encoded file shows as MPEG2 on the BDMV disc. I noticed something was wrong when Encode was taking forever to author just a few minutes of video test clips. The status shows "transcoding" and the files.

This, despite the master settings being 'h.264'. The AME files show up as 'don't transcode' in the Project Blu-ray Transcode Settings, but the NVENC files show as 'automatic'. Worse still, I cannot select 'don't transcode' if I right click on them. I tried setting them to automatic h.264, but Encore still recompresses them into MPEG2 files.

So for BD authoring, this isn't going to fly. The gains in rendering speed out of Premiere are completely lost in having to re render them and compress them into a less efficient CODEC, and the quality loss kills the deal.

WORKAROUND FOR THE STILL FRAME LOSS OF SYNCH

I've been experimenting with how to solve the synch problem where black screen (or any still frame image) gets only one frame encoded, no matter how many frames in length on the sequence.

First, I tried video, with the transparency set to 0. That worked properly. So that made me think, timecode is present and the encoder needs that to keep things in synch.

So I tried bars and tone and applied "Motion" and set a few keyframes to scale it up and down. That encoded without any time slippage.

Finally, I realized that all I need to do is create ONE keyframe at the beginning of the still frame's Motion effect. No need to actually scale or move. That apparently forces Premiere to generate timecode during the export.

So the way to have still frames and not lose picture/audio synch is to enable motion keyframe.

I'm doing some testing of the quality of NVENC with various types of footage. At 35mbps, it actually has fewer artifacts than AME does at 30mbps. The output files for a 1 minute test sequence were 211MB and 247MB for AME and NVENC respectively.

The NVENC has some bands of block artifacts in areas of blue skies, but then so does AME. In fact, in one shot the AME rendered sky had some rather distracting and pronounced bands, whereas the NVENC version was more random and less noticed.

Of particular note was the vastly reduced mosquito noise in the NVENC version. Edges of roofs in a downtown scene rendered with few or no visible noise in the abutting sky colors. The AME encode has very obvious random clumps of pixels following the edges of rooftops as that camera pans slowly.

So it's a wash. In some ways NVENC looks better. In others, AME may have a slight edge. But above 30mbps, they both look decent. Of course, I only could view the results in Encore's preview function, by choosing the video chapter and selected 'preview from here' with quality setting at 'high'. My Oppo BDP83 might do a better deblocking job and it might look even better there, especially projected by DLP onto a screen. But this is very encouraging. 2-pass rendering for NVENC is about 2x faster than realtime, and 2-pass AME is about 3.5 times slower than realtime. That's a 7:1 difference in rendering times for similar results.