After virtually a decade of high quality points, AMD’s AMF encoder has lastly obtained an enormous improve in picture high quality due to the introduction of B-Frames in AMF Launch 1.4.24. The replace truly dropped months in the past, nevertheless it wasn’t till yesterday that Chris Griffith from Code Calamity lastly put the brand new replace to the take a look at.
In response to Griffith, he noticed large positive factors from the replace. The AMF encoder was in a position to shut in on Nvidia’s latest NVENC encoder present in its RTX 20 collection and 30 collection GPUs. This replace might see AMD Radeon GPUs as rather more viable resolution for sport streaming, with low bitrate pictures trying virtually pretty much as good as Nvidia’s counterpart.
Main points surrounding AMD’s encoders have gone again so far as the 400 collection Polaris GPUs, and in some instances even additional. Assist and high quality have been fixed points and, for probably the most half, have been at all times inferior to different encoders comparable to Nvidia’s NVENC or Intel’s QuickSync encoder.Â
However the high quality problem was compounded by the introduction of Nvidia’s sixth technology NVENC encoder, launched into the RTX 20 collection, which elevated GPU encoding considerably, placing efficiency on par with good x264 encoding.
Regardless of sixth technology NVENC popping out over 4 years in the past, AMD by no means actually made a comeback, with its encoders remaining largely the identical, even on the most recent Radeon RX 6000 collection GPUs. Streaming knowledgeable EposVox‘s video illustrates how horrible AMF’s streaming efficiency is in low-bitrate situations operating on the H.264 codec.
The one exception to that is HVEC encoding, the place AMD’s AMF encoder performs exceptionally effectively. However this functionality will virtually by no means be utilized in the true world, with all fashionable video gamers in the present day requiring H.264 assist.
B-Frames Are Again
The decisive function enhancing AMF’s picture qulaity is the re-introduction of B-frames into the AMD encoder. Sarcastically, AMD initially had B-Body assist with its unique encoder and decoder engine VCE (beginning with the 2nd gen implementation). However AMD appears to have dropped assist for it when the corporate launched its new VCN engine, which was first launched with AMD Raven Ridge APUs and RDNA1 graphics playing cards.
B-Frames are an important facet of video compression within the fashionable period. These frames are paired with I and P frames to construct a extremely compressed video file. B frames permit the H.264 compression algorithm to foretell picture knowledge from each previous frames and future frames in a video stream. It’s an non-obligatory function, however one which has confirmed to considerably improve the picture high quality of streams at decrease bit charges.
Benchmarks
Code Calamity used VMAF to measure the picture high quality differentiation between AMF, NVENC and Intel QuickSync, with Large Buck Bunny because the reference video. On this benchmark, the very best potential rating 100 is factors. For reference, NVENC scores 96.13 factors, and Intel QuickSync scored 96.37 on this take a look at. In response to Code Calamity, AMD’s AMF encoder is simply half a degree behind each these encoders, the place as earlier than (with out B-Frames), AMD’s AMF Â was a full two factors behind.
This benchmark could be obscure. However mainly, it means AMF’s picture high quality is true beneath Nvidia’s newest NVENC encoder proper now, which is far significantly better than the place it used to take a seat earlier than the most recent replace.
Assist Is Nonetheless Largely Absent
As of now, the one downside with this new AMF encoder replace is that no streaming platform has supplied assist, together with OBS, regardless of the replace being out for practically 4 months. It is unclear why nobody has applied assist for the replace but, however AMD does have a historical past of not broadly supporting builders in implementing its encoder SDKs. This may be the explanation why assist is taking so lengthy to implement.
So for now, we have now to take this benchmark as a future look into AMF’s efficiency. Hopefully, it will not take lengthy for apps like OBS to benefit from the brand new replace, in order that present and future homeowners of AMD playing cards could make higher use of them for streaming and different duties.
