Has anyone tested Quicksync with AME CS5?

[Jon Larson]

I noticed that Intel has released a prototype plugin to enable Adobe Media Encoder to take advantage of Intel quicksync (HW accelerated encoding) for exports to H.264 and MPEG2:

Adobe* Premiere® Pro/Premiere® Elements Encoder plug-in using Intel® Media SDK and Intel® Quick Sync Video Technology - Intel® Software Network

Has anyone tested this? I'm especially curious if this can work in a laptop that uses Nvidia Optimus graphics switching...

[Randall Leong]

Originally Posted by Jon Larson

I noticed that Intel has released a prototype plugin to enable Adobe Media Encoder to take advantage of Intel quicksync (HW accelerated encoding) for exports to H.264 and MPEG2:

Adobe* Premiere® Pro/Premiere® Elements Encoder plug-in using Intel® Media SDK and Intel® Quick Sync Video Technology - Intel® Software Network

Has anyone tested this? I'm especially curious if this can work in a laptop that uses Nvidia Optimus graphics switching...

QuickSync only works with the Sandy Bridge CPUs and integrated Intel graphics only. This means that the chipset used must be an Intel H6x or Q6x series chipset used with an i3-2xxx, i5-2xxx or i7-2xxx CPU and no graphics card at all whatsoever. It does not work on a laptop with Nvidia Optimus switching because such a laptop likely uses an Nvidia chipset or a discrete Nvidia GPU or an older-generation (pre-Sandy Bridge) CPU.

In any case, the QuickSync driver helps the MPEG-2 DVD and H.264 Blu-ray encoding performance but does absolutely nothing at all whatsoever to the timeline rendering (export) performance. That is, if you ran PPBM5 on such a system, the MPEG-2 DVD and H.264 Blu-ray times would be shortened noticeably relative to an otherwise identical Sandy Bridge system with integrated graphics but without the plugin would have achieved - but the MPE would remain stuck in software-only mode.

And since no professional video editor would even consider using integrated graphics, the QuickSync plugin is of most help to those consumers using cheapo $100 video editing packages (specifically, Premiere Elements 8 or later).

[Jon Larson]

Randall,

While I understand your opinion, I think your premise--that quicksync will only work by itself--might be incorrect... The thing is, according to the following website with video demonstration, having a discrete video card work in conjunction with Intel's quicksync is possible:

Intel Demos 2nd Gen WiDi, Quick Sync and Discrete GPU Coexistence - HotHardware

Also: Lucid's Virtu Enables Simultaneous Integrated/Discrete GPU on Sandy Bridge Platforms - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

And once that becomes possible, then it might also be possible to have an nVidia GPU assist with timeline acceleration while the quicksync functions assist with encoding into h-264 or mpeg-2...

[Randall Leong]

Originally Posted by Jon Larson

Randall,

While I understand your opinion, I think your premise--that quicksync will only work by itself--might be incorrect... The thing is, according to the following website with video demonstration, having a discrete video card work in conjunction with Intel's quicksync is possible:

Intel Demos 2nd Gen WiDi, Quick Sync and Discrete GPU Coexistence - HotHardware

Also: Lucid's Virtu Enables Simultaneous Integrated/Discrete GPU on Sandy Bridge Platforms - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News

And once that becomes possible, then it might also be possible to have an nVidia GPU assist with timeline acceleration while the quicksync functions assist with encoding into h-264 or mpeg-2...

That's a big if: Currently available Nvidia ForceWare drivers do not support QuickSync.

Also, the P67 chipset technically supports QuickSync. However, since a discrete GPU is required for a motherboard with this chipset, it is up to AMD and Nvidia to support QuickSync in their graphics drivers (unfortunately, the currently available drivers from both companies do not support it).

[Steve Kalle]

The Lucid Virtu already works with an Nvidia card and QuickSync. Tomshardware ran a test Benchmark Results: The Exceptions, Explained : Can Lucidlogix Right Sandy Bridge?s Wrongs? Virtu, Previewed

QuickSync by itself took 17 seconds and QuickSync Virtualized thru Virtu took 18 seconds to encode a video using Media Espresso (I think).