Intel Quick Sync Video
Intel Quick Sync Video is Intel's hardware video encoding and decoding technology, which is integrated into some Intel CPUs. The name "Quick Sync" refers to the use case of quickly transcoding ("syncing") a video from, for example, a DVD or Blu-ray Disc to a format appropriate to, for example, a smartphone. Quick Sync was introduced with the Sandy Bridge CPU microarchitecture on 9 January 2011.
Quick sync has been praised for being very fast.[1] A benchmark from Tom's Hardware showed that it could encode a 449 MB 4 minute 1080p file to 1024×768 in 22 seconds. The same encoding using only software took 172 seconds. The same encoding took 83 or 86 seconds GPU-assisted, using a Nvidia GeForce GTX 570 and a AMD Radeon HD 6870 respectively, both of which are contemporary high end GPUs.[2] Unlike video encoding on a general-purpose GPU, Quick Sync is an application-specific integrated circuit. This allows for faster and more power efficient video processing.[3] [4]
Quick Sync, like other hardware accelerated video encoding technologies, gives lower quality results than with CPU only encoders. Speed is prioritized over quality.[5]
Quick Sync is built into some Sandy Bridge CPUs, but for example not on some low-end Sandy Bridge Pentiums or Celerons.[6] The current generation of Quick Sync supports the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC, VC-1 and MPEG-2 video standards.[3] The forthcoming Ivy Bridge CPU will include a "next generation" implementation of Quick Sync.[7] Quick Sync was first unveiled at Intel Developer Forum 2010 (13 September) but, according to Tom's Hardware, Quick Sync had been conceptualized 5 years before that.[3]
The older Clarkdale CPUs had hardware video decoding support, but no hardware encoding support.[1]
Operating system support
Windows is currently the only supported OS.[8]
OS X
Apple added Quick Sync support in OS X Mountain Lion for AirPlay Mirroring and QuickTime X.[9]
Linux
Quick Sync is not currently supported on Linux. At the moment Intel does not have any plan for implementing support[10] although it has been considered previously.[11]
Hardware Decoding
Preliminary support for Quick Sync hardware accelerated decoding of H.264, MPEG2, and VC-1 video is now available using a ffdshow filter produced by Eric Gur, an Application Engineer at Intel. It has been claimed that in testing it keeps the CPU at its lowest possible frequency to reduce power consumption to maximize battery life for mobile devices while being about twice as fast as libavcodec.[12]
See also
- Intel Clear Video, video decoding using a general purpose Intel GPU.
References
- ^ a b "The Sandy Bridge Review: Intel Core i7-2600K, i5-2500K and Core i3-2100 Tested". Anandtech. Retrieved 2011-09-23.
- ^ "Intel's Second-Gen Core CPUs: The Sandy Bridge Review - Quick Sync Vs. APP Vs. CUDA". Tom's Hardware. Retrieved 2011-08-30.
- ^ a b c "Intel's Second-Gen Core CPUs: The Sandy Bridge Review - Sandy Bridge's Secret Weapon: Quick Sync". Tom's Hardware. Retrieved 2011-08-30.
- ^ http://www.anandtech.com/show/4083/the-sandy-bridge-review-intel-core-i7-2600k-i5-2500k-core-i3-2100-tested/8
- ^ "H.264 encoding - CPU vs GPU: Nvidia CUDA, AMD Stream, Intel MediaSDK and x264". Hardware.fr SARL. Retrieved 2012-05-11.
- ^ "Intel Pentium Processor G620".
- ^ "Intel's Roadmap: Ivy Bridge, Panther Point, and SSDs". Anandtech. Retrieved 2011-08-30.
- ^ "Linux support for the SDK". Post on official Intel forum. Retrieved 2011-12-26.
- ^ "Apple - OS X Mountain Lion". Apple. Retrieved 2012-06-11.
- ^ "Linux support for the SDK". Post on official Intel forum. Retrieved 2011-12-26.
- ^ "Does Intel Media SDK support Linux?". Post on official Intel forum. Retrieved 2011-08-30.
- ^ "H.264/AVC". Codecs. ffdshow-tryout.sourceforge.net.
External links
- Intel Quick Sync Video, intel.com