Faster H.265 Encoder with Nvidia GTX960 GPU: FFmpeg and Pavtube

Date January 20, 2017 Author Catherine Category Alternatives, HEVC, Video Tips

H.265 promises twice the compression possible when keeping the same video quality. The idea of HEVC is to offer the same level of picture quality as AVC, but with better compression, so there’s less data to deal with. This is key if we want 4K/Ultra HD broadcasts (including satellite), 4K Blu-rays, and more. So you may have thought about converting your H.264 videos to H.265/HEVC in order to reduce the space used by your videos. However, if you’ve ever tried to transcoding videos with tools such as HandBrake, you’ll know the process can be painfully slow, and a single movie may take several hours even with a machine with a power processor.

HEVC encoding is very CPU heavy. To get rapid HEVC encoding speed, the better way is to use a HEVC Encoder supporting GPU acceleration. FFmpeg and Pavtube Video Converter Ultimate are better and fater solution thanks to hardware accelerated encoding available in some Intel and Nvidia graphics cards. The recommended NVIDIA graphics cards is Maxsun MS-GTX960 graphics card, a second generation Maxwell GPU, that supports H.265 accelerated video encoding and promised up to 500 fps video encoding. Besides Nvidia GTX960, other GeForce GTX 900 Series GPUs are also recommended to encode HEVC with FFmpeg and Pavtube Video Converter Ultimate.

In order to leverage Nvidia Maxwell 2 GPU capabilities you’ll need to download and install Nvidia Video Codec SDK. The latest version (6.0.1) requires Nvidia Drivers 358.xx or greater. Then install the latest drivers on Windows to restart your PC to make the drive installed. Now, you can encode video to HEVC with FFmpeg and Pavtube Video Converter Ultimate.

Part 1: FFmpeg and H.265 Encoding Guide

H.265 (also known as HEVC) offers 50-75% more compression efficiency compared to H.264 video, while retaining the same visual quality. ffmpeg has support for HEVC encoding using the x265 encoder. Note: libx265 is under heavy development. The API may change.

Getting ffmpeg with libx265 support

In order to obtain a copy of ffmpeg with libx265 support, you need to build it yourself, adding the –enable-libx265 configuration flag, with x265 being installed on your system.

You can also ​download a static build, all of which bundle libx265.

Encoding

Similar to x264, the x265 encoder has multiple rate control algorithms, including:

• 1-pass constant bitrate (by setting -b:v)
• 2-pass constant bitrate (see H.264#twopass)
• Constant Rate Factor (CRF)

In this guide we are going to focus on CRF encoding.

Constant Rate Factor (CRF)

Use this mode if you want to retain good visual quality and don’t care about the exact bitrate or filesize of the encoded file. The mode works exactly the same as in x264, so please read the H.264 guide for more info.

In this example, we will use the following settings:

• default CRF of 28. The CRF of 28 should visually correspond to libx264 video at CRF 23, but result in about half the file size.
• medium preset. The preset determines how fast the encoding process will be – at the expense of compression efficiency. Put differently, if you choose ultrafast, the encoding process is going to run fast, but the file size will be larger when compared to medium. The visual quality will be the same. Valid presets are ultrafast, superfast, veryfast, faster, fast, medium, slow, slower, veryslow and placebo.
• AAC audio at 128 kBit/s. This uses the ffmpeg-internal encoder, but under AAC you will find info about more options.

ffmpeg -i input -c:v libx265 -preset medium -crf 28 -c:a aac -b:a 128k output.mp4  

Generally, options are passed to x265 with the -x265-params argument. For fine-tuning the encoding process, you can therefore pass any option that is listed in the ​x265 documentation. Keep in mind that fine-tuning any of the options is generally not necessary, unless you absolutely know what you need to change.

Part 2: Encode Video to HEVC Using Nvidia GTX960 GPU with Pavtube

Step 1: Download and install this Pavtube HEVC video converter, then run it.

Step 2: Add the videos you need to HEVC Converter. Simply click “Add Videos” or Drag Files to add the videos you would like to convert to H.265 format. Since Pavtube Video Converter Ultimate supports to rip Blu-ray and DVD. So you also can load DVD and Blu-ray including 4K Blu-ray to encode to HEVC.

Step 3: Click "Format" to choose “H.265 HD MP4 Video” in “HD Video” catelog.

Step 4: Now, move your cursor to “Tools” button on the top of the main interface to choose “Options”. Then you can enable GPU acceleration.

Step 5: Back to the main interface then click "Convert" then start to encode video to H.265 with NVIDIA NVENC and NVIDIA CUDA acceleration.

Beside saving time, transcoding videos with a GPU graphics should also reduce your electricity bill. How much exactly will depend on your video library size, electricity rate, and overall computer power consumption. While the original file size was 2.0GB, the H.265 video was only 985 MB large, and video quality appeared to be very close to the one of the original video.

Pavtube Video Converter Ultimate is Better Than FFmpeg

• Wide Range of Output Formats and Codec

Besides MPEG, Pavtube Video Converter Ultimate also can convert video to H.265, DivX, XviD, H.264 and other codec. As for video formats, it can offer much more: MP4, MKV, AVI, WMV, 3GP, ISO, M3U8, etc.

• Customization

Pavtube Video Converter Ultimate allows users to DIY their video by trimming video, merging video to single one file, rotating video, deinterlacing video and adding watermark.

• Eye-popping 3D effect

You can create 3D SBS video from 2D video, Blu-ray and DVD for your Samsung Gear VR, Oculus Rift DK 2, HTC Vive, Zeiss VR One, Google Daydream, PS VR, Freely VR, Oculus Rift CV1, and other VR Headsets, 3D TVs, 3D Projectors.

• Blu-ray/DVD Backup

FFmpeg can’t handle Blu-ray/DVD while Pavtube Video Converter Ultimate can remove the copy protection and extract digital files from Blu-ray and DVD movies. It also can directly rip Blu-ray and DVD to your iPhone, Galaxy Tablet/Phone, Microsoft, Game Console, YouTube, Vimeo, Facebook, etc.