NVIDIA CUDA for non-native ffmpeg acceleration?

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I have successfully configured the latest proprietary NVIDIA drivers on a 3rd Gen GeForce Titan X.

The GPU supports HEVC encoding but no AV1, which I prefer.

I can encode video at 1x speed with a highly throttled CPU (as the CPU sucks and overheats otherwise, even with graphene thermal pad and a fine CPU fan).

But I would prefer encoding on the GPU.

Even though it doesnt natively support AV1, I suppose I could get that running with CUDA? I expect worlds better performance, would be cool to use it for more encodings.

I couldnt find many cuda packages for base support so I assume that is included in the driver. But what do I need to do for ffmpeg to support cuda?

Make a derivation and build it with CUDA support? I couldnt find anything here in the forum and after a quick web search so I am opening this thread.

Goal: run ffmpeg, maybe opusenc and other tools with CUDA on the GPU.

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AFAIK there exists no such codec in ffmpeg that could encode to av1 using only the CUDA capabilities of your gpu.

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Yeah there is no CUDA implementation of AV1. Either your GPU can do AV1 in hardware or you have to do it on the CPU (which i wouldn’t recommend, way too slow). If I may recommend a solution, get a first gen Intel Arc card. They’re cheap and good for AV1. Get the lowest tier model, the encoding speed doesn’t change between them, only the amount of simultaneus encodes which is capped by the amount of VRAM.

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yes, getting that GPU was very stupid

I use av1 with a few custom options, are these all supported or is it similar to nvenc where there is a different encoder, maybe less efficient and with a reduced config set?

And yes I heavily regret not getting a normal GPU…

this was my nvenc experiment and sometimes the HEVC video is smaller, most of the time it is way bigger.

ffmpeg -i "$input_file" \
        -vf "hqdn3d" \
        -c:v hevc_nvenc \
        -preset p7 \
        -tune hq \
        -tier main \
        -rc vbr \
        -crf 30 \
        -c:a copy \
        -c:s copy \
        -map_metadata 0 \
        -map_chapters 0 \
        -map 0 \
        "$output_file"

comparison, the av1 command

ffmpeg -i "$input_file" \
        -vf "hqdn3d" \
        -c:v libsvtav1 \
        -svtav1-params "tune=0:enable-overlays=1" \
        -crf 30 \
        -preset 6 \
        -c:a copy \
        -c:s srt \
        -map_metadata 0 \
        -map_chapters 0 \
        -map 0 \
        "$output_file"
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also, do you know if an Intel Arc 7xx actually requires a 10th gen or newer CPU?? My CPU is 7th gen (and shit) but I would prefer not to need a new one too

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There are multiple AV1 encoders, there is libaom one, rav1e. But last time I tested:

  1. svt-av1 was too slow to be usable, encoding a 2 hour movie for 2 days is just not worth it
  2. rav1e was shit
  3. libaom-av1 was more of a “hey it works” tech demo

Mind you this is from, uh, 6 years ago. So stuff has changed. But in the end encoding on a GPU is the most power efficient while giving me results that are still more than good enough and it’s also fast enough to be usable.

As for whether the Intel Arc first gen cards work on 10th gen Intel. Mine is plugged into a Intel Xeon e5-2630v2 which is roughly equivalent to 3rd gen Intel Core. Hopefully that answers the question. There may be some part which doesn’t work, but the encoding works fine. I’ve not tested the graphics or anything,

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In my experience aom was extremely slow, while svt-av1 is 1,5 times encoding speed for 1080p video on both my laptop and my older PC.

DVD content can go up to 6x speed on my PC.

As AV1 is free and better I will use it even if it is not accelerated. It is a shame that I got that GPU but hey, I learned NVIDIA, how it is actually very okay, and it might be more powerful for gaming

But yes okay, I think it is worth a try! Lets see if I can get a nice Intel Arc :wink:

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Theyre cheap, i got mine for 130 euros. I have the intel arc a310 sparkle elf. The eco has problems with fan noise. The elf is still loud but not as high pitched. Its issue is the fan curve which is very much on off instead of being nice and subtle.

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Got an A750! Lets see how it goes

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How much did you have to cough up?