I encode plenty of files. The files include family photos to files for work presentations and of course, web work. Leveraging a GPU (Graphics Card) can significantly decrease decode time.
The only problem is that all of the GPU assisted applications cost money! or do they?
Well.. I use two applications exclusively.
One is free, but one is pay.
The Free version (If you’re lucky enough to have an Nvidia GPU) is mediacoder. You can get it from mediacoderhq.com
The other is Cyberlink’s Media Espresso. Both do a phenomenal job, but I’m more partial to the Nvidia Chipsets and Cuda. ATI support on transcoders has a long way to go. As in there is very limited support for it today.
If you’re on an Apple Box running bootcamp, I would suggest upgrading the drivers to something reasonable that is outside of what Bootcamp provides. (What I did). This of course enables the APP (GPU) for encoding.
Apple once again has crippled the user for absolutely no reason just because they’re running windows.
**sigh**
There are ways around it. I’m working on a fix to upgrade the chipset drivers to allow the Intel GPU on the motherboard to be recognized for encoding purposes. Yet another Apple thing.
In the meantime, use mediacoder and upgrade your GPU drivers to recent and all will be fine. You’ll get the full functionality of the GPU. Apple cripples it in Bootcamp for no reason.
If all goes well, the chipset setup will be available soon to activate the secondary GPU.