[x264-devel] NVENC vs x264

[Steven Walters]

On Sun, Oct 13, 2013 at 6:57 AM, Karthick Kumar <karthik1990r at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> I have read about the quality comparison of x264 and nvenc, which says nvenc has better psnr with the following parameters.

I'll bite.

>
> --keyint 30 --no-scenecut --no-chroma-me --fps 30 --preset faster --ref 1 --trellis 0 --
> weightp 0 --b-pyramid normal –bframe n

1) Testing PSNR without the --tune psnr option?
The lack of it means "I don't really care about PSNR, so do whatever
you want", so why would you use PSNR as a comparison?

Typical of marketing to utilize this tactic!

>
> https://developer.nvidia.com/sites/default/files/akamai/cuda/files/CUDADownloads/NVENC_AppNote.pdf

2) Those options are rather speed-oriented, turning off most features
that improve quality.
In the section listing the settings, the PDF mentions that it's
comparing quality without a context of performance.
If you really ONLY care about quality, you're NOT going to use
speed-oriented settings like that.

Typical of marketing to utilize this tactic!

3) Continuing from the point of #2: None of the performance metrics
were even listed for the quality comparisons between the encoders.
Without that, there's no indication of how long it took to make those
videos, 5 seconds? 2 hours? 1 day? You get the idea.
To be fair/accurate on these graphs, it really can't be 2D, but moreso
3D including the time to create the videos.

Typical of marketing to utilize this tactic!

>
>
> Since I was looking to improve the quality of h.264 encoder (currently using x264) in my video streaming app, is it good to switch to nvenc ?
>
> What are the  improvements/drawbacks if I move to nvenc encoder?
>

All in all, typical shenanigans that you can't really trust, which is
standard for marketing purposes.
If you want accurate/non-marketing-biased comparisons, in the end you
do it yourself.

Make any decision to switch after that.

>
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