Playback Picture Quality - Intel Quick Sync vs. GPU

[darrenkdean 29]

Including Rob @hooray4me as this thread will apply to him as well.

Running Emby Server in docker on the latest ubuntu server build, I9 10900K with UHD 630 ,128GB DDR4 RAM & NVME disks.  Running 10G SFP+ to synology disk stations.  Small family server.  We're trying to understand picture quality, as it applies to Intel Quick Sync vs. GPU (ie: RTX3080 vs. A770).  With fiber internet becoming more widely available over the years, we find ourselves direct streaming more often than transcoding, which is great as now we can focus our efforts on delivering the best possible picture quality & Emby experience.

Questions:

When video is Direct Streaming, does the GPU matter?  All of these GPU specs that talk about improved lighting, shading, FPS, rendering, etc... are they applicable to Direct Streaming or just Transcoding?

Let's say on average, there are 5x - 10x streams (small family), & never more than 15x - 20x at one time, with a good bit of 4K HEVC content.  Would adding a GPU such as an Intel Arc A770 or Nvidia RTX 3080 improve the picture quality, etc.?  Assume for this question, the receiving device is an Amazon Firestick 4K Max attached to a 4K TV with HDR.

Also, not sure if this is relevant, but the ASUS TUF MB I have supports 11th Gen Intel processors, so I also have the option to upgrade from UHD 630 to UHD 750.

Appreciate any guidance you can provide here.  Again, this is less of a performance question as we don't seem to be experiencing any transcoding bottlenecks, but more a question of whether or not a GPU would be able to produce a better picture quality.

Best-

Darren

Edited October 12, 2022 by darrenkdean

[Luke 37056]

Quote

When video is Direct Streaming, does the GPU matter?

Hi, no, because the video is just passing through without modification.

Quote

All of these GPU specs that talk about improved lighting, shading, FPS, rendering, etc... are they applicable to Direct Streaming or just Transcoding?

Only when transcoding video.

[hooray4me 52]

does this leverage the gpu? 

[Luke 37056]

11 minutes ago, hooray4me said:

does this leverage the gpu? 

No because the video stream itself is not being converted.

[darrenkdean 29]

1 hour ago, Luke said:

Hi, no, because the video is just passing through without modification.

Only when transcoding video.

Thank you!!

[rbjtech 4257]

If you do need to transcode - then the iGPU's UHD 750 is a very worthwhile upgrade over the UHD 630 wrt quicksysnc.  It is much faster (5-6x ) and also produces better quality h264/h265. 

As an example - It will allow ~8-10 x 4K remux transcodes (to 1080p) vs only 1-2 on the UHD630.

If you wish to go down the AV1 route - then the discreet Intel A series cards will allow this for lowish $ - not yet fully supported in software (see threads in this forum) but no doubt will be shortly.  Nvidia 4000 series will of course also support AV1, but that will be a huge outlay just for the AV1 encoding/decoding engines..

Edited October 12, 2022 by rbjtech

[darrenkdean 29]

5 hours ago, rbjtech said:

If you do need to transcode - then the iGPU's UHD 750 is a very worthwhile upgrade over the UHD 630 wrt quicksysnc.  It is much faster (5-6x ) and also produces better quality h264/h265. 

As an example - It will allow ~8-10 x 4K remux transcodes (to 1080p) vs only 1-2 on the UHD630.

If you wish to go down the AV1 route - then the discreet Intel A series cards will allow this for lowish $ - not yet fully supported in software (see threads in this forum) but no doubt will be shortly.  Nvidia 4000 series will of course also support AV1, but that will be a huge outlay just for the AV1 encoding/decoding engines..

Thanks for this.  Was thinking the upgrade to the UHD750 was a worthwhile endeavor.  Will be picking on up this afternoon.

 

Interested in playing with/testing the Arc A770 but would have to be able to get my hands on one first, lol.

 

Best-

[VirulentPip 83]

2 hours ago, darrenkdean said:

Interested in playing with/testing the Arc A770 but would have to be able to get my hands on one first, lol.

For pure encoding/decoding purposes. An Arc A770 would be overkill, I have an A380 (£149.99) - Which HW Encodes/Decodes AV1. (Granted Emby player doesn't have HW Acceleration for AV1 playback yet - Nor the server HW Decoding when needs transcoding)

H265 > H264 Transcoding is blistering fast with the right drivers though. However, if you're not interested in AV1 encoding, the intel UHD iGPU will more than suffice. 

 

Edited October 12, 2022 by VirulentPip

[darrenkdean 29]

On 10/12/2022 at 5:48 AM, rbjtech said:

If you do need to transcode - then the iGPU's UHD 750 is a very worthwhile upgrade over the UHD 630 wrt quicksysnc.  It is much faster (5-6x ) and also produces better quality h264/h265. 

As an example - It will allow ~8-10 x 4K remux transcodes (to 1080p) vs only 1-2 on the UHD630.

If you wish to go down the AV1 route - then the discreet Intel A series cards will allow this for lowish $ - not yet fully supported in software (see threads in this forum) but no doubt will be shortly.  Nvidia 4000 series will of course also support AV1, but that will be a huge outlay just for the AV1 encoding/decoding engines..

Doubling back on this.  The Intel QuickSync chart below, indicates that 11th gen Intel processors with embedded UHD 750+ GPU will be able to decode AV1 & AV1 10 bit.  Is it safe to assume this is sufficient for Emby's transcoding purposes once implemented or would it need to both decode & encode, requiring a dedicated GPU to add this functionality?  Appreciate any & all guidance on this.

[VirulentPip 83]

Transcoding from AV1 only requires the Decoding part, it will then encode into H264. That is of course once Emby add HW AV1 Decoding for AV1 for transcoding. But then you'd need to get the AV1 files somehow, so without a graphics processor to encode to AV1 you'll be left with software encoding. 

[rbjtech 4257]

For av1 decode then yes, you can use the igpu's but for encode,  only the arc gpus (and the 4090 lol) can do this.  From @VirulentPip hw encoding is very fast vs the painfully slow sw encoding.  But the idea of av1 is to direct play .. its currently not useful if you need to transcode,  so I may have misled you slighly with my earlier reply.   My advice is to just use the uhd 7xx for the moment and wait out the av1 options .. that is what i am doing.  

[heffeque 39]

As far as I've heard on specialized forums, AV1 encoding is really not very good for series/movies (or at least not with today's encoders) because lots (if not most) grain is lost, leaving washed out images that don't look good.
AV1 encoding still needs a lot of work until it is useful

And AV1 decoding can be so power-hungry that not having HW decoding can make most playback devices crawl into slideshow mode.

Copy-pasting from myself from another place:

Quote

Tried a 52 Mbps 8K HDR 60fps AV1 video... nothing.
Tried the same video but 25 Mbps 4K HDR 60fps AV1... still nothing.
Tried it with 12 Mbps 4K HDR 60fps... some frames here and there, but terrible viewing experience on VLC, MPC-HC, MPC-BE and PotPlayer.
My PC can only play AV1 if it's 1080p, and sometimes even then I'll get skipped frames.

My i7 8550U CPU is not powerful, but not weak, and it can't handle high resolution/bitrate AV1 videos.

 

Personally can't wait for AMD Phoenix APUs to get a NUC-like HTPC that can handle whatever video I through at it (plus some light gaming).

[darrenkdean 29]

3 hours ago, heffeque said:

As far as I've heard on specialized forums, AV1 encoding is really not very good for series/movies (or at least not with today's encoders) because lots (if not most) grain is lost, leaving washed out images that don't look good.
AV1 encoding still needs a lot of work until it is useful

And AV1 decoding can be so power-hungry that not having HW decoding can make most playback devices crawl into slideshow mode.

Copy-pasting from myself from another place:

 

Personally can't wait for AMD Phoenix APUs to get a NUC-like HTPC that can handle whatever video I through at it (plus some light gaming).

I haven't played with AV1 encoding yet as the Intel Arc A770 GPU drivers for Linux still need some work.  That being said, an Intel 11th generation processor or higher, with integrated gpu (igpu) should be able to handle just about anything you can throw at it from a transcoding perspective.  Encode and Decode Capabilities for 7th Generation Intel® Core™...  Intel Quicksync has become a game changer over the years for us, in terms of transcoding capabilities.

[heffeque 39]

h.264 and h.265 are plenty good right now. I don't really see the need for AV1 right now unless bandwidth and/or drive space have extremely strong limitations.

In a decade or so I do see AV1 being much more popular.

[lightsout 144]

On 10/12/2022 at 2:48 AM, rbjtech said:

If you do need to transcode - then the iGPU's UHD 750 is a very worthwhile upgrade over the UHD 630 wrt quicksysnc.  It is much faster (5-6x ) and also produces better quality h264/h265. 

As an example - It will allow ~8-10 x 4K remux transcodes (to 1080p) vs only 1-2 on the UHD630.

If you wish to go down the AV1 route - then the discreet Intel A series cards will allow this for lowish $ - not yet fully supported in software (see threads in this forum) but no doubt will be shortly.  Nvidia 4000 series will of course also support AV1, but that will be a huge outlay just for the AV1 encoding/decoding engines..

Are we talking 8-10 4K transcodes that are tone mapped as well? That is really impressive if so.

[rbjtech 4257]

22 minutes ago, lightsout said:

Are we talking 8-10 4K transcodes that are tone mapped as well? That is really impressive if so.

Yes incl tonemapping - Crazy isn't it - the iGPU's have come a long way.

Tonemapping has maybe a 5-10 fps 'hit' per session.

[lightsout 144]

On 12/21/2022 at 12:24 PM, rbjtech said:

Yes incl tonemapping - Crazy isn't it - the iGPU's have come a long way.

Tonemapping has maybe a 5-10 fps 'hit' per session.

That is crazy. I am over here with a lowly 1050ti that can do one or two I think. Thankfully that's all I need. But eventually I need to do a platform upgrade. My 1800x first gen ryzen has served me well. Hesitant to do a clean install with all the stuff I have running.