Picking encoder / decoder technology

VIRB Edit 3.4 introduced allowing the user to pick which encoder and decoder to use.

You can select this under Settings / General / Advanced.

Encoder (only affects export / sharing):
Media Foundation: Fast, lower quality. Cannot create videos bigger than 4GB on Windows 7, and cannot create videos larger than 1920x1080 or frame rates greater than 120fps. These constraints are caused by Microsoft, so they cannot be fixed by us.
Ffmpeg: Slow (extremely slow at higher quality settings), high quality. No file size or resolution constraints. Produces smaller files than Media Foundation.

Decoder (affects export/sharing and playback):
Media Foundation: (Fast over all performance, but low quality and can't read videos that are too big) Uses graphics hardware, but with lower quality (causes some color quality loss causing videos to look gray). Does not work with videos larger than 1080p. Uses lots of memory
Ffmpeg: (Very fast on PCs with decent CPUs) Higher quality with no resolution constraints. Uses less memory. CPU power is the limiting factor on speed. Fastest performance for PCs with newer CPUs, very very slow for machines with older or slower CPUs.
DXVA: (Really really fast on laptops / notebooks) Uses graphics hardware with comparable quality to ffmpeg. Extremely fast on laptops and other devices with integrated graphics hardware. Slower on machines with dedicated graphics cards. No constraints on resolution.

Summary
Over all, if you have a laptop, DXVA is likely your best option. For PC users, if you want high quality and don’t mind waiting, use Ffmpeg for everything. If you want your video faster, use Media Foundation for everything. Using the Media Foundation decoder and Ffmpeg encoder is a good compromise between quality and speed.

0 Deep_Thought_Cycle_blog_YouTube over 8 years ago

What are the processing times we can expect?

Can you please give be an expected time frame for processing video :

1 hour video @ 1080 @ 60 fps
1 hour video @ 1080 @ 30 fps
1 hour video @ 720 @ 60 fps
1 hour Video @ 420 @ 30 fps

etc?

IS there a thread already I missed dedicated to youtube workflow processing?

I need to get 3 hours uploaded to youtube per day. I dont have 12 hours to spend processing the video daily.

Ive got a dell 6540,
i7-4810MQ 2.8 cpu
samsung msata 850 evo
16gb ram
radeon hd 8790M

0 Pedroski_Nazareno over 8 years ago

Slow, slow, and slow

When i tested the 3.3.2 version, i wrote:

"As i said in previous replies, in 3.1 versión my videos of 2-3 hours of road bike route, with speed, distance and map overlay, in 1080p - 50 fps, the export time is, aprox, 1% each 2 minutes. With this last version, same kind of routes's videos, with same overlay, 1080P - 50fps AND MEDIUM QUALITY as you said to me, it is now exporting ¡10% in 1 hour! Yes, medium quality is 'faster' than maximum quality, but is sloooooooooow sloooooow option too."

In this last 3.4.2 version, i can select encoders and decoders, but both in Media Foundation (faster option ¿is it?) it is as slow as v3.3.2.

Resumen:
In 3.1, i can export mY 3h video in 3.5 or 4 hour.
In 3.4.2, it is unimaginable! i need 10 hour more o less!!

Of course, in the same pc, same options, etc.

0 Xxxzanka over 8 years ago

slow slow slow

same here.
I had to revert to 3.1.
In 3.4.2, media fundation encoding is faster, but files are 3 times bigger than the files encoded with ffmpeg, sono not usable option (1080p, 60 fps, with overlay).
Please give us speed!!!!!

0 Purdington over 8 years ago

Media Foundation outputting mono audio is intentional, but I can't say there's any really good reason behind it anymore. Changing that is something we've put on our very long list of things we'd love to fix or improve about VirbEdit, but so few people have any concerns about it (or even noticed) that we have not made it a priority. If this is something our community feels strongly about, we'd welcome that input and would revisit its priority in our to do list.

0 Former Member over 8 years ago

DXVA Decoder

Does anyone have any information on the DXVA Decoder that is available now?

Media Foundation
Ffmpeg
DXVA

What info do we have on DXVA on quality/color and speed vs the other two originals??

0 Purdington over 8 years ago

@EnduroKTM
DXVA is a new decoding technology we added in 4.2 whose primary use is on machines with integrated graphics hardware (vs a dedicated graphics card like most PCs). This means DXVA will have the largest impact on laptops. My tests show that on such machines performance is nearly 10 times better than the next closest decoding technology. On an modest laptop, I was able to play a 4k video at about 240 FPS, as opposed to about 25 with the next best decoding technology available. On my PC however, DXVA performs slightly worse than ffmpeg (by 3 to 5 FPS or so). In terms of color quality, I have not observed any quality difference, but I have not set aside time to do a careful comparison. If you have any observations in that regard, I'd love to hear them

0 Former Member over 8 years ago

@EnduroKTM
DXVA is a new decoding technology we added in 4.2 whose primary use is on machines with integrated graphics hardware (vs a dedicated graphics card like most PCs). This means DXVA will have the largest impact on laptops.

Based on encoding/decoding experience I think the better GPU you have, the faster DXVA should work: on my laptop with an ancient Nvidia GT8600M (and no IGP at all!) I can play HD and Full-HD videos only when I switch DXVA support on in codec config, otherwise it's a choppy, painful experience. :)

My tests show that on such machines performance is nearly 10 times better than the next closest decoding technology. On an modest laptop, I was able to play a 4k video at about 240 FPS, as opposed to about 25 with the next best decoding technology available. On my PC however, DXVA performs slightly worse than ffmpeg (by 3 to 5 FPS or so).

Maybe you're using an old DXVA implementation (not DXVA2)? Anyway, ffmpeg should be able to use DXVA(2) too...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DirectX_Video_Acceleration
http://news.softpedia.com/news/ffmpeg-3-0-is-a-massive-release-with-dxva2-accelerated-vp9-decoding-new-filters-500451.shtml

0 Purdington over 8 years ago

Maybe you're using an old DXVA implementation (not DXVA2)? Anyway, ffmpeg should be able to use DXVA(2) too...

The DXVA decoder in VirbEdit is actually ffmpeg's DXVA2 implementation. Our ffmpeg decoder uses ffmpeg's software based codecs, which is why a lot of people see really high CPU usage during playback / export.

I can play HD and Full-HD videos only when I switch DXVA support on in codec config

I'm glad to hear that our new addition helped you have a better experience with VirbEdit!

0 Former Member over 8 years ago

Some findings with different settings

Running Virb Edit 4.2.2
Windows 10 Pro 64Bit
i7 3770K OC @4.1Ghz
16GB Ram
GTX 970

So I performed some tests of my own to see what would happen with all combinations of the encoders / decoders.

I used the same 10 second video clip recorded on a new Virb Ultra 30 @ 2.7K 60FPS and always exporting with MAX quality. To note source file is 60K for bit rate.
I'm making note of the bitrate because I find it interesting they are way above the source file.

Ffmpeg Encoder
Ffmpeg Decoder 100% CPU 9% GPU took 5:05 mins and created a 127mb file with a bitrate of 96K

Ffmpeg Encoder
Media Foundation Decoder 96% CPU 9% GPU took 4:56 mins created a 113mb file with a bitrate of 86K

Media Foundation Encoder
Media Foundation Decoder 95% CPU 35% GPU took 32 seconds and created a 269mb file with a bitrate of 205K..

Media Foundation Encoder
Ffmpeg Decoder 80% CPU 35-40% GPU took 34 seconds and created a 267mb file with a bitrate of 203k

Media Foundation Encoder
DXVA Decoder 70% CPU 35% GPU took 30 seconds and created a 268mb file with a bitrate of 204k

Ffmpeg Encoder
DXVA 95% CPU 8% GPU took 4:55 mins and created a 113mb file with a bitrate of 86k

So what I found was that Media Foundation and DXVA using the GPU are around 10x faster than the Ffmpeg using the CPU.
For a desktop computer in my situation MF and DXVA don't make any real difference.

The main issue is the quality and colour loss when using either MF or DXVA.
IF you want good colour you have to use Ffmpeg unfortunately and wait for just over 5 minutes to encode 10 seconds worth of video.....

0 Purdington over 8 years ago

@EnduroKTM This is very interesting, thank you! The way I read the data, it looks like the decoding technology you use has almost no impact on export speed, it is all about the encoder. All tests that used Media Foundation to encode took on the order of 30 seconds, while all the ones that used ffmpeg took around 5:00. That is quite a difference! Sadly, on Windows 7, the Media Foundation encoder cannot produce files larger than 4GB, so its not a viable universal option

Using the max quality setting is sure to make things slow. I'd be curious to see what difference using medium quality makes.