How Does Hardware Acceleration Work to Boost 4K UHD Video Processing

The switch of modern videos towards higher quality resolutions increases the burden on the CPU, which leads to CPU overheating, laptop lagging, high CPU usage, frozen operations, and battery suffering. Hardware acceleration, by exploiting GPU’s massively parallel processing power, turns out to be the most efficient solution to cut time and energy consumption. Particularly, hardware acceleration solutions let 4K ultra HD HEVC H.265, and HD H.264 video processing go far beyond the traditional CPU-in efficiency.

For example, if the computer is equipped with a Maxwell-based NVidia graphics card from the GeForce 900 series or later, the NVidia hardware encoder can take care of the 4K HEVC processing and go 2–3x faster than using Handbrake. The HW accelerated speed hasn’t ended yet. GPU’s high video processing performance is further proven by VideoProc Converter’s unique 3-Level Hardware Acceleration (HWEnc, HWDec & HW processing), which offers a 5x faster speed up over HWEnc-only tools, let alone other SW-based programs. It’s time to look deeper into the role that hardware acceleration plays in HD video processing.

What is Hardware Acceleration

1. Definition

Hardware acceleration in video processing involves upgrading system components, such as replacing hard disks and increasing memory, as well as utilizing more CPU cores to optimize speed. However, a more specialized form of hardware…