FFmpeg is an open source multimedia framework used by many open source, as well as closed source, projects to handle audio and video containers parsing, hardware or software video decoding / encoding, and more. I also used it a few months ago to test H.265 hardware encoding with an Nvidia GPU using the development branch, but the developers have now released FFmpeg 3.1 “Laplace”, so it’s possible to use a stable release to perform H.265 hardware encoding.
Some of the most noticeable features of the new version include:
- Generic OpenMAX IL H.264 & MPEG4 encoders for Raspberry Pi
- VA-API accelerated H.264/HEVC/MJPEG encoding
- VAAPI-accelerated format conversion and scaling
- Native Android MediaCodec API H.264 decoding
- CUDA (CUVID) HEVC & H.264 decoders
- CUDA accelerated format conversion and scaling
- DXVA2 accelerated HEVC Main10 decoding on Windows
- Many new muxers/demuxers
- A variety of new filters
The complete list of changes for FFmpeg 3.1 can be found via the Changelog in Git.
Thanks to Harley for the tip.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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so finally HEVC HW-decoding in VLC?
@TC
i don’t know about windows, but on linux if you want hw decoding (h264 or other codecs), you don’t want to use VLC.
I’m not sure what they’re not doing right but HW decoding in VLC is extremely poor and they are not known to use the latest ffmpeg in their releases so it’s probably not going to improve soon. Too bad, it was a nice player back when hw video decoding was not a thing.
Personally i’m waiting for S912 (?) arm chip to get hevc hw encoding on low power devices, i will have uses for that.