The wretched state of GPU transcoding - Slideshow | ExtremeTech

This story began as an investigation into why Cyberlink’s Media Espresso software produced video files of wildly varying quality and size depending on which GPU was used for the task. It then expanded into a comparison of several alternate solutions. Our goal was to find a program that would encode at a reasonably high quality level (~1GB per hour was the target) and require a minimal level of expertise from the user.

It’s been several years since Nvidia began pushing Badaboom and the idea of GPU-assisted transcoding, and given Intel’s major entry into the market last year, we expected to find a crop of mature, effective solutions. Cyberlink’s MediaEspresso and Arcsoft’s Media Converter aren’t new products; the latter is often recommended by Intel and Nvidia as a way to see the potential of Quick Sync/GPU transcoding. Users are posting more video of themselves on social networks and the camera quality of cell phones is a major buying point for a lot of people — so what software solutions work best?

The primary comparison here is between Xilisoft’s Ultimate Video Converter, Arcsoft Media Converter, and Cyberlink’s MediaEspresso. Other potential options, including Avivo, Badaboom, and MediaCoder are discussed at the end of the article. Initially, the goal was to include quality assessments on three separate sources, but none of these three solutions were able to properly encode our 30GB Blu-ray rip of Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King. MediaEspresso was able to render the video but not the audio, Arcsoft simply crashed, and Xilisoft’s audio was distorted. Data on the encoded file (when one was created) is still included here as it sheds light on how these programs handle different workloads.

MediaCoder was the one application capable of properly encoding Return of the King properly, but it’s not on our list of direct comparisons. Our goal was to review consumer-oriented packages that offered simple presets; MediaCoder is immensely capable, but thoroughly intimidating for anyone who doesn’t have an intimate understanding of the encoding process. We have included screenshots from both the source material and Handbrake as a default, CPU-driven video encoder.

We’ll be comparing the encode quality of two test files. The first is a standard DVD rip of the movie Stargate: Ark of Truth. It’s a bog standard 720×480 DVD laid down using MPEG-2; we encoded the first 20 minutes of the movie (one VOB file). The second is an already-encoded version of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode “The Inner Light.”

The TL;DR version of this article is as follows: If you want a video encoder that’ll run on virtually any system, has well-thought, easy-to-use presets, and neatly balances quality and file size, go download Handbrake. It’s fast, free, and efficient — it just doesn’t use the GPU.

The best we can say of these three is that some of them do a decent job, on some hardware, some of the time.