On Twitter I saw Dmitry of HardwareCanucks tweet this:
That got me wondering something because I recently switched from Adobe Creative Cloud to buying a copy of Vegas. Vegas 15 added a new functionality for using your Nvidia GPU to do encoding. In the past it was just utilized for effects or something but not direct encoding. I set off on benchmarking this on a similar video to the one he mentioned at least in terms of length and resolution. I just recorded 13 minutes of me messing with my computers on my GoPro and then took it into Vegas Pro 15 and then exported it with the NVENC, CPU and an AVI file that I took into MEGUI to encode on my CPU with x264. Here are the results.
Specs:
- Intel i7 8700k @ 5GHz core 4.4GHz Cache
- Gigabyte z370 Aorus Gaming 7
- 32GB DDR4-2800
- 480GB Sandisk Ultra 2 SSD Boot Drive
- 960GB PNY CS1311 SSD For Data
- EVGA 1080Ti FTW3
- Seasonic Prime Titanium 850w PSU
Our baseline will be using the CPU encoder of Vegas Pro 15:
This encoder produced:
General Complete name : E:\13min benchmark cpu.mp4 Format : MPEG-4 Format profile : Base Media / Version 2 Codec ID : mp42 (isom/mp42) File size : 5.47 GiB Duration : 13 min 0 s Overall bit rate mode : Variable Overall bit rate : 60.2 Mb/s Encoded date : UTC 2018-05-01 22:15:21 Tagged date : UTC 2018-05-01 22:15:21 Video ID : 2 Format : AVC Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec Format profile : High@L5.1 Format settings, CABAC : Yes Format settings, ReFrames : 3 frames Format settings, GOP : M=4, N=15 Codec ID : avc1 Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding Duration : 13 min 0 s Bit rate mode : Variable Bit rate : 60.0 Mb/s Width : 3 840 pixels Height : 2 160 pixels Display aspect ratio : 16:9 Frame rate mode : Constant Frame rate : 29.970 (30000/1001) FPS Standard : NTSC Color space : YUV Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0 Bit depth : 8 bits Scan type : Progressive Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.241 Stream size : 5.45 GiB (100%) Language : English Encoded date : UTC 2018-05-01 22:15:22 Tagged date : UTC 2018-05-01 22:15:22 Color range : Limited Color primaries : BT.709 Transfer characteristics : BT.709 Matrix coefficients : BT.709 Audio ID : 1 Format : AAC Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec Format profile : LC Codec ID : 40 Duration : 13 min 0 s Bit rate mode : Variable Bit rate : 192 kb/s Maximum bit rate : 271 kb/s Channel(s) : 2 channels Channel positions : Front: L R Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz Frame rate : 46.875 FPS (1024 spf) Compression mode : Lossy Stream size : 17.6 MiB (0%) Language : English Encoded date : UTC 2018-05-01 22:15:21 Tagged date : UTC 2018-05-01 22:15:21
The GPU encoder did it in
And produced a file with
General Complete name : E:\13min benchmark gpu.mp4 Format : MPEG-4 Format profile : Base Media / Version 2 Codec ID : mp42 (isom/mp42) File size : 5.47 GiB Duration : 13 min 0 s Overall bit rate mode : Variable Overall bit rate : 60.2 Mb/s Encoded date : UTC 2018-05-01 20:46:09 Tagged date : UTC 2018-05-01 20:46:09 Video ID : 1 Format : AVC Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec Format profile : High@L5.1 Format settings, CABAC : Yes Format settings, ReFrames : 1 frame Format settings, GOP : M=1, N=30 Codec ID : avc1 Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding Duration : 13 min 0 s Source duration : 13 min 0 s Bit rate : 60.0 Mb/s Width : 3 840 pixels Height : 2 160 pixels Display aspect ratio : 16:9 Frame rate mode : Variable Frame rate : 29.970 (30000/1001) FPS Minimum frame rate : 29.970 FPS Maximum frame rate : 30.000 FPS Color space : YUV Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0 Bit depth : 8 bits Scan type : Progressive Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.241 Stream size : 5.45 GiB (100%) Source stream size : 5.45 GiB (100%) Language : English Encoded date : UTC 2018-05-01 20:46:11 Tagged date : UTC 2018-05-01 20:46:11 Audio ID : 2 Format : AAC Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec Format profile : LC Codec ID : 40 Duration : 13 min 0 s Bit rate mode : Variable Bit rate : 192 kb/s Maximum bit rate : 271 kb/s Channel(s) : 2 channels Channel positions : Front: L R Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz Frame rate : 46.875 FPS (1024 spf) Compression mode : Lossy Stream size : 17.6 MiB (0%) Language : English Encoded date : UTC 2018-05-01 20:46:11 Tagged date : UTC 2018-05-01 20:46:11
Using MEGUI involves some extra steps like encoding to an AVI file, in which I used the MAGICYUV codec and then taking it into MEGUI by indexing the file and then setting the advanced x264 settings and then encoding it.
Making the MAGICYUV AVI file took
Then MEGUI encode took
Which produced a file like this
General Complete name : E:\13min benchmark megui x264.mp4 Format : MPEG-4 Format profile : Base Media Codec ID : isom (isom/avc1) File size : 3.27 GiB Duration : 13 min 0 s Overall bit rate mode : Variable Overall bit rate : 36.0 Mb/s Encoded date : UTC 2018-05-01 21:51:28 Tagged date : UTC 2018-05-01 21:51:28 Video ID : 1 Format : AVC Format/Info : Advanced Video Codec Format profile : High@L5.1 Format settings, CABAC : Yes Format settings, ReFrames : 4 frames Codec ID : avc1 Codec ID/Info : Advanced Video Coding Duration : 13 min 0 s Bit rate : 35.7 Mb/s Maximum bit rate : 50.5 Mb/s Width : 3 840 pixels Height : 2 160 pixels Display aspect ratio : 16:9 Frame rate mode : Constant Frame rate : 29.970 (30000/1001) FPS Color space : YUV Chroma subsampling : 4:2:0 Bit depth : 8 bits Scan type : Progressive Bits/(Pixel*Frame) : 0.144 Stream size : 3.25 GiB (99%) Writing library : x264 core 155 r2901 7d0ff22 Encoding settings : cabac=1 / ref=3 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x3:0x113 / me=hex / subme=7 / psy=1 / psy_rd=1.00:0.00 / mixed_ref=1 / me_range=16 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=1 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / fast_pskip=1 / chroma_qp_offset=-2 / threads=18 / lookahead_threads=3 / sliced_threads=0 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / interlaced=0 / bluray_compat=0 / constrained_intra=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=2 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=1 / weightb=1 / open_gop=0 / weightp=2 / keyint=300 / keyint_min=29 / scenecut=40 / intra_refresh=0 / rc_lookahead=40 / rc=crf / mbtree=1 / crf=23.0 / qcomp=0.60 / qpmin=0 / qpmax=69 / qpstep=4 / ip_ratio=1.40 / aq=1:1.00 Encoded date : UTC 2018-05-01 21:51:28 Tagged date : UTC 2018-05-01 21:51:49 Audio ID : 2 Format : AAC Format/Info : Advanced Audio Codec Format profile : LC Codec ID : 40 Duration : 13 min 0 s Bit rate mode : Variable Bit rate : 280 kb/s Maximum bit rate : 300 kb/s Channel(s) : 2 channels Channel positions : Front: L R Sampling rate : 48.0 kHz Frame rate : 46.875 FPS (1024 spf) Compression mode : Lossy Stream size : 26.0 MiB (1%) Language : English Encoded date : UTC 2018-05-01 21:23:32 Tagged date : UTC 2018-05-01 21:51:49
To summarize the results
Encoder | Time (minutes) | File Size | Bitrate |
Vegas Pro 15 CPU Encoder | 65.0333 | 5.47 GiB | 60.0 Mb/s |
Vegas Pro 15 GPU Encoder | 12.1 | 5.47 GiB | 60.0 Mb/s |
Vegas Pro 15 to AVI | 12.2167 | 68.6 GiB | 753 Mb/s |
MEGUI x264 CPU Encode | 29 | 3.27 GiB | 35.7 - 50.5 Mb/s |
MEGUI Method Total | 41.2167 |