[FFmpeg-user] Integration of ffmpeg with Haswell

[Moritz Barsnick]

On Mon, May 18, 2015 at 15:07:03 +0000, Shiwani Agrawal wrote:

> Thanks for helping me out in this issue , just want to clarify in the
> end , does it mean that if we integrate ffmpeg with the media SDK it
> increases the speed (or Quality) of transcoding process by processor
> ? If yes , why ?

The process is called "hardware acceleration". See here:
https://trac.ffmpeg.org/wiki/HWAccelIntro

It helps applications - in this case decoders, encoders, filters, and
so on - use special hardware for certain calculations, thereby reducing
the load on the CPU and/or increasing the speed. In your case, you are
referring to the Intel Quick Sync hardware, which was created
particularly for video (and audio?) coding.

Using it _should_ increase the speed of the transcoding process (note
that speed, quality and compression size are always trade-offs), but
doesn't always, it depends on the implementation. On the other hard,
the hardware algorithms have certain restrictions and aren't as
flexible as software solutions. You won't be able to adjust all
parameters of the encoding process, and sometimes more complex profiles
or more modern codecs aren't supported either. So it really depends on
your use case.

And I think you need a really good justification to pay for an extra
license for the Intel SDK. (I'm not sure a working free implementation
exists yet.) As a normal user, I wouldn't go to the trouble of
integrating the SDK. Just check how good ffmpeg's other support is for
you first.

Moritz