Intel Quick Sync Video Benchmark

Runs an FFmpeg benchmark to measure Average Speed, FPS, and Power consumption for Intel Quick Sync Video hardware encoding.

Overview

The purpose of this script is to benchmark Intel Quick Sync Video performance in integrated GPUs using standardized test videos. More information and rationale is available at blog.ktz.me.

Some conclusions and analysis has now been performed (May 2024), you can read about it at blog.ktz.me.

Interactive Results

View and explore all benchmark results at: quicksync.ktz.me

The website provides:

• Interactive charts comparing performance across CPU generations
• Filtering by CPU architecture, test type, power usage, and more
• Efficiency metrics (FPS per Watt)
• Searchable results table

Requirements

• Docker
• Intel CPU with Quick Sync support
• intel-gpu-tools package (for power measurement)
• jq (for JSON parsing)
• bc (for calculations)

Designed for Linux. Tested on Proxmox 9 and Ubuntu 24.04 LTS.

This should be run as root with no other applications/containers running that would utilize Quick Sync. This includes Desktop Environments.

Results Plot

Here's a plot of all results run to date from the results Gist - thanks to u/Alicimo for this. It's updated weekly via an automated action.

How to Use

Full instructions available at blog.ktz.me.

# Connect to the system you want to benchmark (likely via ssh)
# This assume that this user has permissions to execute a privileged docker container
ssh user@hostname

# Install dependencies (tested on Proxmox 8 + Ubuntu 22.04)
apt install docker.io jq bc intel-gpu-tools git curl

# Clone the repository
git clone https://github.com/ironicbadger/quicksync_calc.git
cd quicksync_calc

# Run the benchmark
./quicksync-benchmark.sh

Submitting Results

You can automatically submit your results to the online database:

# Run benchmark and submit results
./quicksync-benchmark.sh

# Submit with your own identifier (for filtering your results later)
QUICKSYNC_ID="my_homelab" ./quicksync-benchmark.sh

deprecated Alternatively, you can still manually copy results to the GitHub Gist.

Sample Output

CPU      TEST            FILE                        BITRATE     TIME      AVG_FPS  AVG_SPEED  AVG_WATTS
i5-9500  h264_1080p_cpu  ribblehead_1080p_h264       18952 kb/s  59.665s   58.03    2.05x      N/A
i5-9500  h264_1080p      ribblehead_1080p_h264       18952 kb/s  15.759s   232.03   7.63x      7.66
i5-9500  h264_4k         ribblehead_4k_h264          46881 kb/s  58.667s   59.21    2.09x      7.49
i5-9500  hevc_8bit       ribblehead_1080p_hevc_8bit  14947 kb/s  45.369s   76.10    2.66x      9.09
i5-9500  hevc_4k_10bit   ribblehead_4k_hevc_10bit    44617 kb/s  176.932s  19.71    .68x       10.12

CPU       TEST            FILE                        BITRATE     TIME      AVG_FPS  AVG_SPEED  AVG_WATTS
i5-8500T  h264_1080p_cpu  ribblehead_1080p_h264       18952 kb/s  87.080s   42.86    1.46x      N/A
i5-8500T  h264_1080p      ribblehead_1080p_h264       18952 kb/s  18.928s   182.45   6.31x      9.09
i5-8500T  h264_4k         ribblehead_4k_h264          46881 kb/s  69.238s   49.52    1.75x      9.04
i5-8500T  hevc_8bit       ribblehead_1080p_hevc_8bit  14947 kb/s  45.061s   76.42    2.67x      11.93
i5-8500T  hevc_4k_10bit   ribblehead_4k_hevc_10bit    44617 kb/s  185.816s  18.85    .65x       13.13