H.265 No GPU Consumption with Hardware Encoding Enabled

I’m on Mac OS Sequoia, and none of the versions from Shotcut (including the latest non-beta build) can export using H.265 actually using the GPU. I check the GPU consumption and it doesn’t do anything. I have an M1 iMac with the upgraded internal GPU (8 cores).

It works. Activity Monitor > % GPU and GPU History is not a way to confirm the hardware encoder is being used. Also, read the FAQ about GPU usage. Basically, if you see
image

…and the export job succeeded and result playable, then it is working. If you turn off hardware encoder, export the same thing, and compare the export times you can see the x265 software encoder is much slower. The first one is hardware encoder

The second one is x265 on M1

Which would you rather use? :laughing:

Apple M1:

  Chipset Model:	Apple M1
  Type:	GPU
  Bus:	Built-In
  Total Number of Cores:	8

When not using the hardware encoder, the export job log includes something like this:

x265 [info]: HEVC encoder version 0.0
x265 [info]: build info [Mac OS X][clang 14.0.0][32 bit][noasm] 8bit
x265 [info]: using cpu capabilities: none!
x265 [info]: Main profile, Level-5 (Main tier)
x265 [info]: Thread pool created using 8 threads
x265 [info]: Slices                              : 1
x265 [info]: frame threads / pool features       : 3 / wpp(34 rows)
x265 [info]: Coding QT: max CU size, min CU size : 64 / 8
x265 [info]: Residual QT: max TU size, max depth : 32 / 1 inter / 1 intra
x265 [info]: ME / range / subpel / merge         : hex / 57 / 2 / 3
x265 [info]: Keyframe min / max / scenecut / bias  : 12 / 125 / 40 / 5.00 
x265 [info]: Lookahead / bframes / badapt        : 20 / 3 / 2
x265 [info]: b-pyramid / weightp / weightb       : 1 / 1 / 0
x265 [info]: References / ref-limit  cu / depth  : 3 / off / on
x265 [info]: AQ: mode / str / qg-size / cu-tree  : 2 / 1.0 / 32 / 1
x265 [info]: Rate Control / qCompress            : CRF-28.0 / 0.60
x265 [info]: tools: rd=3 psy-rd=2.00 early-skip rskip mode=1 signhide tmvp
x265 [info]: tools: b-intra strong-intra-smoothing lslices=8 deblock sao

With hardware encoder, nothing from the Apple Video Toolbox hardware encoder shows in the log.

Ok, will check that; Thanks! Now, I’ve noticed that during export the Melt job doesn’t use GPU but the Shotcut job does, but just a little bit. Around 5%. Does the Shotcut job use GPU when exporting through Melt, or are they completely separated? Maybe what I’m seeing is the H.265 consumption of GPU but just minimally. Is GPU-effects stable enough to use on Mac OS Sequoia, or you wouldn’t recommend it yet? Thank you for your time.

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