NVIDIA Video Codec SDK 8.1 Released, Now Supports Real-Time HEVC 4K @ 60 FPS

[phoronix]

Phoronix: NVIDIA Video Codec SDK 8.1 Released, Now Supports Real-Time HEVC 4K @ 60 FPS

NVIDIA has released a new version of their Video Codec SDK that serves as CUDA-based, cross-platform video encode and decode functionality that ultimately succeeds their VDPAU Linux video decode stack for GPU video coding needs...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=NVIDIA-Video-Codec-SDK-8.1

[FireBurn]

Does this mean we'll start seeing movies at 60fps?

[schmidtbag]

I'm a little surprised they haven't done something like this years ago (the CUDA part, specifically). But, great to see it anyway.

[numacross]

I'm a little surprised they haven't done something like this years ago (the CUDA part, specifically). But, great to see it anyway.

There's fixed hardware for both decoding and encoding video in GPUs for many generations now. The problem is codec/resolution support differences between models. Especially for VP9 which is used by default on youtube. In the meantime there is still no official support for hardware video decoding in browsers on Linux...

I am curious about the differences in power usage between the CUDA-based version and NVDEC. If the former is all CUDA without using dedicated hardware it might burn a lot more power.

[nanonyme]

Vendor lockins <3

[coder]

I am curious about the differences in power usage between the CUDA-based version and NVDEC. If the former is all CUDA without using dedicated hardware it might burn a lot more power.

Where is there any indication that this doesn't simply use the hardware engines?

The linked page (https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-video-codec-sdk) keeps talking about hardware engines and repeatedly mentions how they leave the CPU and graphics portions of the GPU free for other work. Regarding CUDA, I think that's merely referring to a dependency on the CUDA runtime libraries.

[numacross]

Where is there any indication that this doesn't simply use the hardware engines?

The linked page (https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-video-codec-sdk) keeps talking about hardware engines and repeatedly mentions how they leave the CPU and graphics portions of the GPU free for other work. Regarding CUDA, I think that's merely referring to a dependency on the CUDA runtime libraries.

You're correct. I was thrown off by Michael's description using "CUDA-based". I thought it's a full CUDA decoder, but this is just a re-brand of NVENC/NVDEC.

[pinguinpc]

With Xubuntu 18.04 + CUDA 9.1 works ok