NVIDIA Video Processing features on non-Apple laptops

To my frustration, it seems like I can’t use my GeForce 930M with NVENC. Can you please confirm this is the case, since this would be an outrage if true.

https://trac.ffmpeg.org/ticket/5625

Many thanks,

I’m sorry you’ve been frustrated with your experience.

It doesn’t look like the GPU product page lists nvenc specifically, but it does list ShadowPlay, which uses the encoder. Note that the GeForce GTX mobile parts (950M and above) have ShadowPlay support and the non-GTX ones (945M and below) don’t:
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/notebook-gpus/geforce-gtx-950m/specifications
http://www.geforce.com/hardware/notebook-gpus/geforce-945m/specifications

http://www.geforce.com/hardware/notebook-gpus/geforce-gtx-950m/specifications doesn’t mention there is no NVenc. So I don’t see how on earth I am supposed to make an informed consumer choice.

Look, my use case simple: I need to encode compressed h264 for the Web and live streams from https://obsproject.com/ efficiently. I typically use ffmpeg.

Is “Shadowplay” (stupid name alert) supported by ffmpeg to help with my use case I bought the hardware for? If not, I recommend you fix that or I will swear off nvidia and ensure my colleagues do so too.

Btw I don’t have time to figure out your confusing array of product names & product matrixes. I have a GeForce 930M in my Thinkpad T460s and I bought it for hardware video encoding. What should have I bought?

How come this stuff works on desktop Nvidia and IIUC Apple nvidia but not PC laptops?! Why differentiate & drop a feature on the already lacklustre PC market?

My understanding is that the GeForce GTX 950M and higher have the video encoder, and the GeForce (not GTX) 945M and below don’t. I agree that the specification page should probably spell out more clearly which products have nvenc. I’d suggest using the website feedback form to provide that feedback directly to the web team: http://www.geforce.com/support/feedback

Shadowplay is a Windows feature for game recording, but it uses the nvenc encoder behind the scenes which is why I suggested it as a way to tell which products have nvenc and which don’t. From the specification pages on the website, my understanding is that you need GeForce GTX to get the video encoder.

I’m not personally familiar with Apple products so I don’t know which GPUs they’re using or what features they advertise.

You’ve marked my post as hidden. I’m hopping mad. And now you tell me I should jump hoops and tell your Web team.

Sigh. Never again.

I just found your post on the Linux boards. It’s not hidden.

It got automatically flagged as spam for some reason. I knocked some sense into the spam analyzer and manually un-hid it.

Not sure if I understand correctly… it doesn’t support a feature that’s not mentioned in the card’s specs? If the specs wrongly claimed it supported hardware-accelerated encoding I would understand your frustration.

Does your Intel GPU support Quick Sync? I’ve never tried it but it’s listed as supported by ffmpeg here: HWAccelIntro – FFmpeg

@RPGHiro, every other experience of a nvidia card, NVenc works. On Desktop. On Apple MBP.

So you’re saying I should have

A) Looked up the specs
B) Understood somehow via the omission of ShadowPlay that NVenc is not available on the Nvidia model I bought with my Thinkpad.

Intel QuickSync is not an option.

This page seems to make it more clear: NVIDIA VIDEO CODEC SDK | NVIDIA Developer

  • “Except GM108 in the Maxwell generation of GPUs, which does not contain any video encoder or decoder HW.”

It’s indeed odd NVIDIA omits the feature from the lower specced cards as low spec systems of course benefit the most from hw encoding.

Still I think your conclusion that all NVIDIA cards must work with NVENC because the cards that you’ve previously used did without any spec page supporting it was a bit risky, especially if it involved the main purpose for which you picked up the Thinkpad.