Expression encoder GPU encoding AMD F1

Question

Hi there,

I am realy considdering to buy expression encoder 4. I love this programme for encoding my video files.

but...

I have to be sure that the programme support my AMD F1 A8 processor with my ATI video card for GPU encoding.

Allot is said about CUDA, but i can not find mutch information about AMD.

Does anybody know if GPU encoding with AMD is supported by Expression encoder 4 SP1???

Answer 1

The Expression Encoder GPU encoding feature in Expression Encoder 4 Pro SP2 is supported only on Nvidia Cuda GPUs and Intel Graphics found in Sandy Bridge CPUs.

The AMD F1 A8 cpu should be supported for CPU-based encoding.

You can find more information here.

Answer 2

Dear Eric,

Thank you for you answer and information. You are very helpfull!

But i am not pleased with the fact that EE4 doesnt support AMD at all...

It takes about 30 hours to convert a movie now...thats way to long for me. Microsoft should do something about AMD GPU and multi-core support.

a vew more questions:

* Does it make a difference when you buy the software for encoding in MP4 / h.264 when using a Xbox360 for 1080p movies?

* I installed the Media encoder 9 SDK. Does that make any sense? or would it be better to delete this package when having EE4 installed?

* Also using the latest K-lite codec package. What codec would you recommend?... ffdshow & Haali only?

* Does it help to install 64 bit versions of ffdshow & Haali?

---

Win7 64bit, 8Gig, ASUS F1A75-V pro, AMD F1 A8, ATI HD 6670, crossfire

Answer 3

As I explained on the other thread, Expression Encode is fully supporting multi-core AMD CPUs. As for AMD/ATI GPUs, my team evaluated the Main Concept H.264 OpenCL encoder package and it was just not competitive with Cuda and Sandy Bridge in terms of stability, performance and work load. Note that I'm not talking about the GPU themselves, which are fine GPUs.

As for your other questions:

- MP4 does encode faster, by about ~20%, when the bottleneck is at the encoding phase, which might not be the case for you.

- Media Encoder is a totally different application and doesn't interact with Expression Encoder.

- I haven't done research on which free codecs are better than the others. I'm sure you can find more information on the Internet on the subject. I do know that typically, purchased codecs are better optimized to take advantage of multiple cores, which may help with performance.

- Since Expression Encoder is 32-bit, the 64-bit codecs are completely ignored.

Answer 4

Hi Eric,

a view more questions:

1. Is microsoft working on 64 bit version of expression encoder?

2. Will amd/ati gpu encoding be supported in the future?

Answer 5

AMD/ATI encoding will only be supported when more control of the quality is allowed by the GPU. Right now, there is so little control once the encoding is turned over to the GPU that the results are simply what they are. In close scrutiny, the results are below the threshold of acceptability for quality production. nVidia and Intel have much better output quality that is nearly indistinguishable from CPU encoding. It's sad, because the performance per watt tables favor AMD. There's just a quality problem in terms of encoding at any reasonable bitrate.