GPU accelerated Handbrake

[wolvers]

Finally something useful from OpenCL!!

I did a quick search but found nothing, and I though this might be of interest here.

There's finally OpenCL and HWD support in Handbrake. The link to these nightly builds is here;

https://build.handbrake.fr/view/OpenCL/

I just tested it out with my 1080p/High/RF20 profile and it's boosted my average fps by ~75%. Brilliant! It's still utilising 100% of my 8350 but has added 20-40% usage on my 7970, when enabling OpenCL and HWD support.

There's a couple of caveats though. Firstly there's a comment on HWD support;

* WARNING *

We've found that hardware decoding support is unreliable and triggering crashes in the graphics driver.
Since this crash is happening in the kernel space, it has the potential to crash your system to the point a reboot is necessary.

We therefor highly recommend that you do not use this on mission critical systems or environments where you could suffer a loss of work due to a spontaneous reboot.

I've been trying it out this morning and it seemed OK but I'll do a full encode tonight and see if it's stable.

Secondly, it only works at stock clocks so 925Mhz on the core for me which is a huge shame. If only I could mod the UVD clock to match my 1200Mhz overclock it would add even more speed.

 

[wolvers]

This is THE best video encoding app bar none though, and AFAIK the first for x264 to support OpenCL.

Quicksync, VCE and CUDA implementations in Arcsoft and Cyberlink are fast but these have quality issues and a cost. Handbrake is free and produces the best IQ.

 

[wolvers]

That's why this is a big deal IMO. Fast encoding with the high IQ you get from software x264 running on the CPU. Give it a try.

Tech Report did a good review on the IQ differences;

http://techreport.com/review/23324/a-look-at-hardware-video-transcoding-on-the-pc

Aside from slight variations in artifact patterns, it's hard to discern much of a difference between the different solutions here. That's good news. It means the OpenCL acceleration doesn't degrade image quality in a noticeable way, regardless of the hardware used.

Handbrake is the only one of our three test apps that doesn't mess with color saturation, too. Really, I'd say it has the best output, hands down.

They say it should have been available 6 months ago but AFAIK it's only just appeared since the new year.