[ro_bit]

I edit videos on a hobbyist level (mostly using davinci resolve to edit clips of me dying in video games to upload to a shareX host to show to friends). The big takeaway for me was reading that for quality/efficiency libx264 is better than nvenc for rendering h264 video. All this time I’ve assumed nvenc is better because it used shiny GPU technology! Is libx264 better for recording high quality videos too? I know it will run on CPU unlike NVENC but I doubt that’s an issue for my use case.

Edit: from some googling it looks like encoding is encoding, whether it’s used for recording or rendering footage. In that case the same quality arguments the article is making should apply for recording too. I only did a cursory search though and have not had a chance to test so if anyone knows better feel free to respond

[avidiax]

Yeah, this is a very common misconception. There are hardware encoders that might be distribution quality, but these are (to my knowledge) expensive ASICs that Netflix, Amazon, Google, etc. use to accelerate encode (not necessarily to realtime) and improve power efficiency.

GPU acceleration could be used to accelerate a CPU encode in a quality-neutral way, but NVENC and the various other HW accelerators available to end users are designed for realtime encoding for broadcast or for immediate storage (for example, to an SD card).

For distribution, you can either distribute the original source (if bandwidth and space are no concern), or you can ideally encode in a modern, efficient codec like x265 or AV1. AV1 might be particularly useful if you have a noisy source, since denoising and classification of the noise is part of the algorithm. The reference software encoders are considered the best quality, but often the slowest, options.

GPU is best if you need to temporarily transcode (for Plex), or you want to make a working copy for temporary distribution before a final encode.

[zten]

You might want to try dumping your work from Resolve out in ProRes 422 HQ or DNxHR HQ and then encoding to h264/h265 with Compressor (costs $; it's the encoder part of Final Cut as a separate piece of software) on a Mac or Shutter Encoder. Also, I'm making a big assumption that you're using the paid version of Resolve; disregard otherwise. It might not be worth it if your input material is video game capture but if you have something like a camera that records h264 4:2:2 10bit in a log gamma then it can help preserve some quality.