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H265 Decoding support / Editing - GPU or CPU
  • VortekShowVortekShow

    Hey guys, quick question: I have a NX1 and playback is impossible on my xeon haswell and gtx 770 rig. What component is responsible to decode the hevc codec in a nle such as Premiere? I wondered if it would be enough to simply upgrade the gpu to avoid transcoding footage every time. Thanks

  • 11 Replies sorted by
  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    Simplest way is to look for latest NVidia cards including cheap 1060.

    So, yes, changing GPU will be enough.

  • VortekShowVortekShow

    Didn't the CPU do much of the decoding inside NLE's ? Since it doesn't support HEVC. Thanks you for your quick answer

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    With proper software all decoding is made by GPU. Modern GPUs and CPUs also have some help with encoding, but ti is always worse compared to software (but only encoding!).

  • DrDaveDrDave

    Check your CPU and GPU load first.

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    @DrDave

    If card does not support HEVC decoding it just don't, load have nothing to do with it. In all latest cards it is even not CUDA, it is dedicated blocks.

    1080p playback must be possible using good software decoder, but 4K can have issues.

  • DrDaveDrDave

    Interesting. I can play any HEVC using Potplayer, even with older cards.

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    I can play any HEVC using Potplayer, even with older cards.

    This one I told in last sentence. This depends on CPU and in good decoders also depends partly on GPU.

    Such thing had some value year or two ago. But now latest cards have all necessary stuff.

  • chauncychauncy

    Be nice to have clarity. But it varies based on the software, doesn't it. If we're talking just playback, media player classic from klite codec back has played my nx1 h265 (4k) without incident. I used to have a gtx770 card and it worked fine. I have a gtx1080 now and it is also supported.

    Now if we're talking editing and transcoding h265... from what I understand, which is mostly confusion, transcoding is done by the cpu. I know that for sure with davinci because that's what they told me. In davinci, effects are rendered by the gpu. I've ticked every box in davinci and premeire cc 2015 and it seems to me the 1080 makes things faster. But resolve is now caching intensive to get good results and that has a far bigger effect than any hardware change I think.

    All that said, I can't get resolve or adobe to stess the 1080 gpu. I want more speed but the gpu memory usage never gets above 50%. The gpu utilization will hit 100% briefly but then drop. my i7 cpu is pretty much pinned when I edit with effects all the time same with transcoding. That's all enough to make me think the software isn't using the gpu effectively... yet.

    But than again, try to get a better answer out of these guys... or there is another magic box to click somewhere.

  • TronTron

    The AMD RX 460 and RX 470 will be launching this week, they provide hardware level 4K 60P 10 bit HEVC encode/decode in the $99 to $179 range. The RX 470 has 5 TFLOPs of compute for only $149 (4GB version).

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    It best always best to check support before buying, as even if AMD cards have necessary block they could be unsupported initially by all editors.

  • IronFilmIronFilm

    At least OpenCL support is getting to be a bit more common place, rather than just only CUDA everywhere.

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