Intel Quick Sync Video is

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...

's brand for its dedicated video encoding and decoding hardware

core Core or cores may refer to: Science and technology * Core (anatomy), everything except the appendages * Core (laboratory), a highly specialized shared research resource * Core (manufacturing), used in casting and molding * Core (optical fiber ...

. Quick Sync was introduced with the

Sandy Bridge Sandy Bridge is the List of Intel codenames, codename for Intel's 32 nm process, 32 nm microarchitecture used in the second generation of the Intel Core, Intel Core processors (Intel Core i7, Core i7, Intel Core i5, i5, Intel Core i3, i3). The Sa ...

CPU microarchitecture on 9 January 2011 and has been found on the die of Intel CPUs ever since. The name "Quick Sync" refers to the use case of quickly

transcoding Transcoding is the direct digital-to-digital conversion of one encoding to another, such as for video data files, audio files (e.g., MP3, WAV), or character encoding (e.g., UTF-8, ISO/IEC 8859). This is usually done in cases where a target ...

("converting") a video from, for example, a

DVD The DVD (common abbreviation for digital video disc or digital versatile disc) is a digital optical disc data storage format. It was invented and developed in 1995 and first released on November 1, 1996, in Japan. The medium can store any ki ...

Blu-ray Disc Blu-ray (Blu-ray Disc or BD) is a Digital media, digital optical disc data storage format designed to supersede the DVD format. It was invented and developed in 2005 and released worldwide on June 20, 2006, capable of storing several hours of ...

to a format appropriate to, for example, a

smartphone A smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing, email, and social media, as well as multi ...

, in situations where speed is more important than the best possible quality. Unlike video encoding on a CPU or a general-purpose GPU, Quick Sync is a dedicated hardware

on the processor die. This allows for much more power-efficient video processing.

Availability

Quick Sync Video is available on Core i3, Core i5, Core i7, and Core i9 and new Core Ultra processors starting with Sandy Bridge, and Celeron & Pentium processors starting with Haswell.

Performance and quality

Like most desktop hardware-accelerated encoders, Quick Sync has been praised for its speed. The eighth annual MPEG-4 AVC/H.264 video codecs comparison showed that Quick Sync was comparable to

x264 x264 is a free and open-source software library and a command-line utility developed by VideoLAN for encoding video streams into the H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video coding format. It is released under the terms of the GNU General Public License. Histo ...

superfast preset in terms of speed, compression ratio and quality (

SSIM The structural similarity index measure (SSIM) is a method for predicting the perceived quality of digital television and cinematic pictures, as well as other kinds of digital images and videos. It is also used for measuring the similarity betwe ...

); tests were performed on an Intel

Core i7 Intel Core is a line of multi-core (with the exception of Core Solo and Core 2 Solo) central processing units (CPUs) for midrange, embedded, workstation, high-end and enthusiast computer markets marketed by Intel Corporation. These processors ...

-3770 ( Ivy Bridge) processor. However, Quick Sync could not be configured to spend more time to achieve higher quality, whereas x264 improved significantly when allowed to use more time using the recommended settings. A 2012 evaluation by

AnandTech ''AnandTech'' was an online computer hardware magazine owned by Future plc. It was founded in April 1997 by then-14-year-old Anand Lal Shimpi, who was CEO and editor-in-chief until August 2014, with Ryan Smith replacing him as editor-in-chief. ...

showed that QuickSync on Intel's Ivy Bridge produced similar image quality compared to the

NVENC NVENC (short for Nvidia Encoder) is a feature in Nvidia graphics cards that performs Data compression, video encoding, offloading this compute-intensive task from the Central processing unit, CPU to a dedicated part of the Graphics processing uni ...

encoder on Nvidia's GTX 680 while performing much better at resolutions lower than 1080p.

Development

Quick Sync was first unveiled at Intel Developer Forum 2010 (September 13) but, according to ''Tom's Hardware'', Quick Sync had been conceptualized five years before that. The older Clarkdale microarchitecture had hardware video decoding support, but no hardware encoding support; it was known as

Intel Clear Video Intel Clear Video is a semiconductor intellectual property core which implements some steps of some video decompression algorithms. The scope is to calculate these on the SIP core rather than on the CPU. Intel Clear Video is paired with integrate ...

. ; Version 1 (

) : Quick Sync was initially built into some

CPUs, but not into Sandy Bridge Pentiums or Celerons. It adds H.264/AVC encoding and

VC-1 SMPTE 421, informally known as VC-1, is a video coding format. Most of it was initially developed as Microsoft's proprietary video format Windows Media Video 9 in 2003. With some enhancements including the development of a new Advanced Profile, ...

decoding acceleration. ; Version 2 ( Ivy Bridge, Bay Trail) : The Ivy Bridge microarchitecture included a "next-generation" implementation of Quick Sync. ; Version 3 ( Haswell) : The Haswell microarchitecture implementation adds H.262/MPEG-2 Part 2 encoding acceleration. An open-source hybrid driver was developed which supports partial

VP8 VP8 is an open format, open and royalty-free Video coding format, video compression format released by On2 Technologies in 2008. Initially released as a Proprietary software, proprietary successor to On2's previous VP7 format, VP8 was released a ...

encoding and VP9 decoding acceleration under Linux by utilizing both the integrated GPU and CPU. Started from Haswell, Pentiums and Celerons have included QSV technology. ; Version 4 ( Broadwell) : The Broadwell microarchitecture implementation adds VP8 hardware decoding. Also, it has two independent bit stream decoder (BSD) rings to process video commands on GT3 GPUs; this allows one BSD ring to process decoding and the other BSD ring to process encoding at the same time. ; Version 5 (

Skylake Skylake or Sky Lake may refer to: * Skylake (microarchitecture) Skylake is Intel's codename for its sixth generation Core microprocessor family that was launched on August 5, 2015, succeeding the Broadwell microarchitecture. Skylake is a mic ...

) : The

microarchitecture implementation adds a full fixed-function H.265/HEVC 8-bit 4:2:0 decoding and encoding acceleration, hybrid and partial HEVC 10-bit decoding acceleration,

JPEG JPEG ( , short for Joint Photographic Experts Group and sometimes retroactively referred to as JPEG 1) is a commonly used method of lossy compression for digital images, particularly for those images produced by digital photography. The degr ...

encoding acceleration for resolutions up to 16,000×16,000 pixels, and partial VP9 decoding and encoding acceleration. ; Version 6 (

Kaby Lake Kaby Lake is Intel's codename for its seventh generation Core microprocessor family announced on August 30, 2016. Like the preceding Skylake, Kaby Lake is produced using a 14 nanometer manufacturing process technology. Breaking with Intel's p ...

Coffee Lake Coffee Lake is Intel's codename for its eighth-generation Core microprocessor family, announced on September 25, 2017. It is manufactured using Intel's second 14 nm process node refinement. Desktop Coffee Lake processors introduced i5 and i7 CP ...

, Whiskey Lake, Comet Lake) : The

, Whiskey Lake and Comet Lake microarchitectures implementation adds full fixed-function H.265/HEVC 10-bit 4:2:0 decoding and encoding acceleration, and full fixed-function VP9 8-bit and 10-bit decoding acceleration and 8-bit encoding acceleration. ; Version 7 ( Ice Lake) : The Ice Lake microarchitecture implementation adds VP9 8-bit and 10-bit decoding and encoding acceleration, H.265/HEVC 8-bit and 10-bit decoding and encoding acceleration with 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 chroma subsampling, HDR10 Tone Mapping and Open Source Media Shaders. HEVC hardware encoding quality has also been improved. ; Version 8 (

Tiger Lake Tiger Lake is Intel's codename for the 11th generation Intel Core mobile processors based on the Willow Cove Core microarchitecture, manufactured using Intel's third-generation 10 nm process node known as 10SF ("10 nm SuperFin"). Tiger L ...

Rocket Lake Rocket Lake is Intel's codename for its 11th generation Core microprocessors. Released on March 30, 2021, it is based on the new Cypress Cove microarchitecture, a variant of Sunny Cove (used by Intel's Ice Lake mobile processors) backporte ...

Alder Lake Alder Lake is Intel's codename for the 12th generation of Intel Core processors based on a hybrid architecture utilizing Golden Cove performance cores and Gracemont efficient cores. It is fabricated using Intel's Intel 7 process, previously ...

Raptor Lake Raptor Lake is Intel's List of Intel codenames, codename for the 13th and 14th generations of Intel Core processors based on a Heterogeneous computing, hybrid architecture, utilizing Raptor Cove performance cores and Gracemont (microarchitecture ...

) : The

microarchitectures implementation adds VP9 12-bit & 12-bit 4:4:4 hardware decoding and HEVC 12-bit 4:2:0, 4:2:2 and 4:4:4 hardware decoding. Gen12 Xe will also support native AV1 decode, which includes 10-bit 4:2:0 16K stills and 10-bit 4:2:0 8K, 4K and 2K video. Hardware encoding for VP8 was dropped and hardware decoding is only available on Tiger Lake. ; Version 9 (

Intel Arc Intel Arc is a brand of graphics processing units designed by Intel. These are discrete GPUs mostly marketed for the high-margin gaming PC market. The brand also covers Intel's consumer graphics software and services. Arc competes with Nvidia' ...

Alchemist,

Meteor Lake Meteor Lake is the codename for Core Ultra Series 1 mobile processors, designed by Intel and officially released on December 14, 2023. It is the first generation of Intel mobile processors to use a chiplet architecture which means that the proce ...

, Arrow Lake) : Intel Arc Alchemist (discrete GPUs) adds 8K 10-bit AV1 hardware encoding. It removed

hardware decoding. ;Version 10 (Intel

Lunar Lake Lunar Lake is the codename for Core Ultra 200V Series mobile processors designed by Intel, released in September 2024. It is a successor to Meteor Lake which saw Intel move from monolithic silicon to a disaggregated MCM design. Background O ...

) : Adds VVC hardware decoding in Xe2 GPU.

Operating system support

The Quick Sync Video SIP core needs to be supported by the

device driver In the context of an operating system, a device driver is a computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device that is attached to a computer or automaton. A driver provides a software interface to hardware devices, enabli ...

. The device driver provides one or more

interfaces Interface or interfacing may refer to: Academic journals * ''Interface'' (journal), by the Electrochemical Society * '' Interface, Journal of Applied Linguistics'', now merged with ''ITL International Journal of Applied Linguistics'' * '' Inter ...

, for example VDPAU,

Video Acceleration API Video Acceleration API (VA-API) is an open source application programming interface that allows applications such as VLC media player or GStreamer to use hardware video acceleration capabilities, usually provided by the graphics processing unit ...

(VA-API) or

DXVA DirectX Video Acceleration (DXVA) is a Microsoft API specification for the Microsoft Windows and Xbox 360 platforms that allows video decoding to be hardware-accelerated. The pipeline allows certain CPU-intensive operations such as iDCT, motion ...

for video decoding, and OpenMAX IL or VA API for video encoding. One of these interfaces is then used by end-user software, for example

VLC media player VLC media player (previously the VideoLAN Client) is a free and open-source software, free and open-source, software portability, portable, cross-platform media player software and streaming media Server (computing), server developed by the Vide ...

GStreamer GStreamer is a Pipeline (computing), pipeline-based multimedia framework that links together a wide variety of media processing systems to complete complex workflows. For instance, GStreamer can be used to build a system that reads files in one f ...

, to access the Quick Sync Video hardware and make use of it.

Linux

Quick Sync support on

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

is available by both Intel VAAPI Driver (legacy, pre-Broadwell) and Intel Media Driver (Broadwell and newer) which also uses VA-API, and through the Intel Media SDK.

Windows

Microsoft offers support for Quick Sync in Windows (in

Windows Vista Windows Vista is a major release of the Windows NT operating system developed by Microsoft. It was the direct successor to Windows XP, released five years earlier, which was then the longest time span between successive releases of Microsoft W ...

and later) based on supporting driver software from Intel and support through both

DirectX Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with "Direct" ...

as well as WMF ( Windows Media Foundation). A wide range of applications are based upon this base support for the technology in Windows.

macOS

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

added Quick Sync support in

OS X Mountain Lion OS X Mountain Lion (version 10.8) is the ninth major release of macOS, Apple Inc.'s desktop and server operating system for Macintosh computers. OS X Mountain Lion was released on July 25, 2012, for purchase and download through the Mac App S ...

for

AirPlay Airplay is how frequently a song is being played through broadcasting on radio stations. A song which is being played several times every day (spins) would have a significant amount of airplay. Music which became very popular on jukeboxes, in n ...

FaceTime FaceTime is a proprietary videotelephony product developed by Apple. FaceTime is available on supported iOS mobile devices running iOS 4 and later and Mac computers that run and later. FaceTime supports any iOS device with a forward-facin ...

iTunes iTunes is a media player, media library, and mobile device management (MDM) utility developed by Apple. It is used to purchase, play, download and organize digital multimedia on personal computers running the macOS and Windows operating s ...

Safari A safari (; originally ) is an overland journey to observe wildlife, wild animals, especially in East Africa. The so-called big five game, "Big Five" game animals of Africa – lion, African leopard, leopard, rhinoceros, African elephant, elep ...

QuickTime X QuickTime (or QuickTime Player) is an extensible multimedia architecture created by Apple, which supports playing, streaming, encoding, and transcoding a variety of digital media formats. The term ''QuickTime'' also refers to the QuickTime Play ...

iMovie iMovie is a free video editing software, video editing application made by Apple Inc., Apple for the Mac (computer), Mac, the iPhone, and the iPad. It includes a range of video effects and tools like color correction and image stabilization, b ...

Final Cut Pro X Final Cut Pro (often abbreviated FCP or FCPX) is a professional non-linear video-editing application initially developed by Macromedia, and, since 1998, by Apple as part of its pro apps collection. Final Cut Pro allows users to import, edit, a ...

Motion In physics, motion is when an object changes its position with respect to a reference point in a given time. Motion is mathematically described in terms of displacement, distance, velocity, acceleration, speed, and frame of reference to an o ...

and

Compressor A compressor is a mechanical device that increases the pressure of a gas by reducing its volume. An air compressor is a specific type of gas compressor. Many compressors can be staged, that is, the gas is compressed several times in steps o ...

. Third-party software includes

Adobe Premiere Pro Adobe Premiere Pro is a video editing application developed by Adobe Inc. and is distributed as part of the Adobe Creative Cloud suite. It is primarily used for producing high-quality videos across various industries. History Original A ...

, Adobe Media Encoder,

DaVinci Resolve DaVinci Resolve is a proprietary color grading, color correction, visual effects, and audio post-production video editing application for macOS, Windows, and Linux, developed by Australian company Blackmagic Design. It was originally deve ...

and others.

Hardware decoding and encoding

Support for Quick Sync hardware accelerated decoding of H.264, MPEG-2, and VC-1 video is widely available. One common way to gain access to the technology on Microsoft Windows is by use of the free

ffdshow ffdshow is an open-source unmaintained codec library that is mainly used for decoding of video in the MPEG-4 ASP (e.g. encoded with DivX or Xvid) and H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video formats, but it supports numerous other video and audio formats as well. ...

filter. Some other free software like

(since version 2.1.0 "Rincewind") supports Quick Sync as well. Many commercial applications also benefit from the technology today, including CyberLink

PowerDVD PowerDVD is a media player software for Microsoft Windows created by CyberLink, for DVD movie discs, Blu-ray movie discs, and digital video files, photos and music. PowerDVD is offered in various versions, which vary greatly in terms of fun ...

, CyberLink PowerDirector and MacroMotion Bogart "gold" edition. According to the

documentation, Quick Sync has very low CPU utilization while being about twice as fast as

libavcodec libavcodec is a free and open-source library of codecs for encoding and decoding video and audio data. libavcodec is an integral part of many open-source multimedia applications and frameworks. The popular MPV, xine and VLC media players use ...

. Support for hardware-assisted media encoding tailored for Quick Sync is widely available. Examples of such software with Quick Sync support during encoding processes are

Jellyfin Jellyfin is a free and open-source media server and suite of multimedia applications designed to organize, manage, and share digital media files to networked devices. Jellyfin consists of a server application installed on a machine running Lin ...

Emby Media Server
Plex Media Server, Badaboom Media Converter, CyberLink MediaShow, CyberLink MediaEspresso, ArcSoft MediaConverter,

MAGIX Magix (or MAGIX Software) is a German software company specializing in video editing, audio editing, DAW and photo slideshow software. The company is based in Berlin, with locations in Madison, Wisconsin, Dresden and Lübbecke, as well as Hui ...

Video Pro X,

Pinnacle Studio Pinnacle Studio is a video editing program originally developed by Pinnacle Systems as consumer-level software. Upon Pinnacle System's acquisition of Munich-based FAST Multimedia, Pinnacle integrated the professional code base of FAST's editing ...

(since version 18),

Roxio Toast Toast is an optical disc authoring and media conversion software application for macOS. Its name is a play on the word ''burn'', a term used for the writing of information onto a disc through the use of a laser. Discs can be burned directly th ...

, Roxio Creator, XSplit Broadcaster, XSplit Gamecaster (all commercial) and projects like

HandBrake HandBrake is a free and open-source transcoder for digital video files. It was originally developed in 2003 by Eric Petit to make ripping DVDs to a data storage device easier. HandBrake's backend contains comparatively little original code; t ...

Open Broadcaster Software OBS Studio (also Open Broadcaster Software or OBS, for short) is a free and open-source, cross-platform screencasting and live streaming app. It is available for Windows, macOS, Linux distributions, and BSD. The OBS Project raises funds on Open ...

or applications for operation with a video content entering in Adobe CC2018. The following table shows fixed-function encode/decode support for various Intel platforms. Support for hybrid and/or partial decode/encode are not detailed. Certain low-end and high-end parts (including multi-socket

Xeon Xeon (; ) is a brand of x86 microprocessors designed, manufactured, and marketed by Intel, targeted at the non-consumer workstation, server, and embedded markets. It was introduced in June 1998. Xeon processors are based on the same archite ...

s and some Extreme Edition CPUs expected to be used with a dedicated GPU) do not contain the hardware core to support Quick Sync.

References

External links

* {{Intel Quick Sync Video Video conversion software Video acceleration Video compression and decompression ASIC

Availability

Performance and quality

Development

Operating system support

Linux

Windows

macOS

Hardware decoding and encoding

See also

Video Hardware Technologies

AMD

Intel

Nvidia

Others

References

External links