FFmpeg: Encode x264 with AMD GPU on Windows?

Question

I am currently trying to record a Video on my Lenovo Laptop with its Built-In Webcam using FFmpeg on Windows 10. One of my goals is to keep the CPU Usage as low as possible, that's why i want to push the h264 encoding to the GPU. Now it gets a bit tricky here with my Laptop. Because it uses two GPUs. The first GPU is a Intel HD 5500 Graphics Unit as Part of the CPU. This one is most likly used for non-demanding Applications like office etc. to save Energy. The other one is a AMD R5 M330 that will be used for graphic intense applications like gaming.

Currently, i am using the following command to encode the Webcam Stream on the Intel HD GPU:

ffmpeg -f dshow -vcodec mjpeg -video_size 1280x720 -framerate 30 video="Lenovo EasyCamera":audio="Mikrofon (Realtek High Definition Audio)" -c:v h264_qsv -g 60 -q 28 -look_ahead 0 -preset:v faster -c:a aac -q:a 0.6 -r 30 output.mp4

This does work so far but it seems this GPU does not have enough Power to keep up with the framerate on higher bitrates or with a high amount of i-frames. The Video starts lacking and skipping frames. If i am using CPU encoding everything works smooth.

Now that my Laptop got that second AMD GPU with a lot more Power it would be a nice Try to encode on that one, but i can't find any information about how to encode on AMD Hardware on Windows 10. So my question is: How does the ffmpeg command look like to use AMD Hardware for h264 encoding?

Answer 1

Current versions of ffmpeg now support hardware encoding for the major GPU vendors. Here are the options for the h264_amf (H.264) and hevc_amf (H.265 or HEVC) encoders which you would use with an AMD graphics card, taken from ffmpeg -h full:

h264_amf AVOptions:
  -usage             <int>        E..V.... Encoder Usage (from 0 to 3) (default transcoding)
     transcoding                  E..V.... Generic Transcoding
     ultralowlatency              E..V.... 
     lowlatency                   E..V.... 
     webcam                       E..V.... Webcam
  -profile           <int>        E..V.... Profile (from 66 to 257) (default main)
     main                         E..V.... 
     high                         E..V.... 
     constrained_baseline              E..V.... 
     constrained_high              E..V.... 
  -level             <int>        E..V.... Profile Level (from 0 to 62) (default auto)
     auto                         E..V.... 
     1.0                          E..V.... 
     1.1                          E..V.... 
     1.2                          E..V.... 
     1.3                          E..V.... 
     2.0                          E..V.... 
     2.1                          E..V.... 
     2.2                          E..V.... 
     3.0                          E..V.... 
     3.1                          E..V.... 
     3.2                          E..V.... 
     4.0                          E..V.... 
     4.1                          E..V.... 
     4.2                          E..V.... 
     5.0                          E..V.... 
     5.1                          E..V.... 
     5.2                          E..V.... 
     6.0                          E..V.... 
     6.1                          E..V.... 
     6.2                          E..V.... 
  -quality           <int>        E..V.... Quality Preference (from 0 to 2) (default speed)
     speed                        E..V.... Prefer Speed
     balanced                     E..V.... Balanced
     quality                      E..V.... Prefer Quality
  -rc                <int>        E..V.... Rate Control Method (from -1 to 3) (default -1)
     cqp                          E..V.... Constant Quantization Parameter
     cbr                          E..V.... Constant Bitrate
     vbr_peak                     E..V.... Peak Contrained Variable Bitrate
     vbr_latency                  E..V.... Latency Constrained Variable Bitrate
  -enforce_hrd       <boolean>    E..V.... Enforce HRD (default false)
  -filler_data       <boolean>    E..V.... Filler Data Enable (default false)
  -vbaq              <boolean>    E..V.... Enable VBAQ (default false)
  -frame_skipping    <boolean>    E..V.... Rate Control Based Frame Skip (default false)
  -qp_i              <int>        E..V.... Quantization Parameter for I-Frame (from -1 to 51) (default -1)
  -qp_p              <int>        E..V.... Quantization Parameter for P-Frame (from -1 to 51) (default -1)
  -qp_b              <int>        E..V.... Quantization Parameter for B-Frame (from -1 to 51) (default -1)
  -preanalysis       <boolean>    E..V.... Pre-Analysis Mode (default false)
  -max_au_size       <int>        E..V.... Maximum Access Unit Size for rate control (in bits) (from 0 to INT_MAX) (default 0)
  -header_spacing    <int>        E..V.... Header Insertion Spacing (from -1 to 1000) (default -1)
  -bf_delta_qp       <int>        E..V.... B-Picture Delta QP (from -10 to 10) (default 4)
  -bf_ref            <boolean>    E..V.... Enable Reference to B-Frames (default true)
  -bf_ref_delta_qp   <int>        E..V.... Reference B-Picture Delta QP (from -10 to 10) (default 4)
  -intra_refresh_mb  <int>        E..V.... Intra Refresh MBs Number Per Slot in Macroblocks (from 0 to INT_MAX) (default 0)
  -coder             <int>        E..V.... Coding Type (from 0 to 2) (default auto)
     auto                         E..V.... Automatic
     cavlc                        E..V.... Context Adaptive Variable-Length Coding
     cabac                        E..V.... Context Adaptive Binary Arithmetic Coding
  -me_half_pel       <boolean>    E..V.... Enable ME Half Pixel (default true)
  -me_quarter_pel    <boolean>    E..V.... Enable ME Quarter Pixel (default true)
  -aud               <boolean>    E..V.... Inserts AU Delimiter NAL unit (default false)
  -log_to_dbg        <boolean>    E..V.... Enable AMF logging to debug output (default false)

hevc_amf AVOptions:
  -usage             <int>        E..V.... Set the encoding usage (from 0 to 3) (default transcoding)
     transcoding                  E..V.... 
     ultralowlatency              E..V.... 
     lowlatency                   E..V.... 
     webcam                       E..V.... 
  -profile           <int>        E..V.... Set the profile (default main) (from 1 to 1) (default main)
     main                         E..V.... 
  -profile_tier      <int>        E..V.... Set the profile tier (default main) (from 0 to 1) (default main)
     main                         E..V.... 
     high                         E..V.... 
  -level             <int>        E..V.... Set the encoding level (default auto) (from 0 to 186) (default auto)
     auto                         E..V.... 
     1.0                          E..V.... 
     2.0                          E..V.... 
     2.1                          E..V.... 
     3.0                          E..V.... 
     3.1                          E..V.... 
     4.0                          E..V.... 
     4.1                          E..V.... 
     5.0                          E..V.... 
     5.1                          E..V.... 
     5.2                          E..V.... 
     6.0                          E..V.... 
     6.1                          E..V.... 
     6.2                          E..V.... 
  -quality           <int>        E..V.... Set the encoding quality (from 0 to 10) (default speed)
     balanced                     E..V.... 
     speed                        E..V.... 
     quality                      E..V.... 
  -rc                <int>        E..V.... Set the rate control mode (from -1 to 3) (default -1)
     cqp                          E..V.... Constant Quantization Parameter
     cbr                          E..V.... Constant Bitrate
     vbr_peak                     E..V.... Peak Contrained Variable Bitrate
     vbr_latency                  E..V.... Latency Constrained Variable Bitrate
  -header_insertion_mode <int>        E..V.... Set header insertion mode (from 0 to 2) (default none)
     none                         E..V.... 
     gop                          E..V.... 
     idr                          E..V.... 
  -gops_per_idr      <int>        E..V.... GOPs per IDR 0-no IDR will be inserted (from 0 to INT_MAX) (default 60)
  -preanalysis       <boolean>    E..V.... Enable preanalysis (default false)
  -vbaq              <boolean>    E..V.... Enable VBAQ (default false)
  -enforce_hrd       <boolean>    E..V.... Enforce HRD (default false)
  -filler_data       <boolean>    E..V.... Filler Data Enable (default false)
  -max_au_size       <int>        E..V.... Maximum Access Unit Size for rate control (in bits) (from 0 to INT_MAX) (default 0)
  -min_qp_i          <int>        E..V.... min quantization parameter for I-frame (from -1 to 51) (default -1)
  -max_qp_i          <int>        E..V.... max quantization parameter for I-frame (from -1 to 51) (default -1)
  -min_qp_p          <int>        E..V.... min quantization parameter for P-frame (from -1 to 51) (default -1)
  -max_qp_p          <int>        E..V.... max quantization parameter for P-frame (from -1 to 51) (default -1)
  -qp_p              <int>        E..V.... quantization parameter for P-frame (from -1 to 51) (default -1)
  -qp_i              <int>        E..V.... quantization parameter for I-frame (from -1 to 51) (default -1)
  -skip_frame        <boolean>    E..V.... Rate Control Based Frame Skip (default false)
  -me_half_pel       <boolean>    E..V.... Enable ME Half Pixel (default true)
  -me_quarter_pel    <boolean>    E..V.... Enable ME Quarter Pixel  (default true)
  -aud               <boolean>    E..V.... Inserts AU Delimiter NAL unit (default false)
  -log_to_dbg        <boolean>    E..V.... Enable AMF logging to debug output (default false)

For example, ffmpeg -i input.mkv -c:v hevc_amf -rc cqp -qp_p 0 -qp_i 0 -c:a copy output.mkv would be lossless. Note that while it's much faster, the file sizes will be significantly larger than with libx264 or libx265 for the same quality - that's just how hardware encoders are at present time. You will likely want to record lossless with a hardware encoder for the speed and then later use a software encoder like libx264 or libx265 to reduce the file size.