How much difference in video output would there be in hardware encoding between different hardware devices?
I am using an Intel ARC A380 and also testing a AMD Radeon 780M that is built into a mini computer running a Ryzen 9 7940HS.
The AMD (with the same settings) will produce AV1 files that are 2 or 3 times larger than the Intel hardware.
Even if I reduce the slider on the AMD to be reduced to only 5% (the lowest I can go) it will still produce video that is 2x what the Intel does.
Are you using FFMPEG or Handbrake for the encoding? It may make a difference. You can change the priority/ordering for a profile in the /Program Files/MCEBuddy2x/config/profiles.conf file. Look for the setting “order=handbrake,ffmpeg” or “order=ffmpeg,handbrake” and swap them.
For the individual encoder settings, look for these options:
ffmpeg-video= ... -preset 6 -crf 37 ...
and
handbrake-video= ... -encoder-preset 6 -q 37 ...
The “-crf” and “-q” options are the CQ (Constant Quality) slider values in the GUI.
The “-preset” and “-encoder-preset” options are the “performance” slider setting in handbrake’s Video settings.
I’m running MCEBuddy right now, so I can’t view the GUI to point to the preset settings.
Roughly, they correspond to the values “Fastest”, “Faster”, “Fast”, “Medium”, “Slow”, “Slower”, and “Slowest”. I’m assuming a 0-7 numeric mapping, since 0, being the obvious default for a missing parameter, would imply the “Fastest” setting by default. Then again, perhaps I am overthinking “obvious” default behavior.
I did notice that the AV1 codec presets in my MCEBuddy profiles.conf for my AV1 profile were numeric (i.e. “6”) and not the words (e.g. “Slower”) like they were in the other profiles using other encodings (HEVC/H.265 and H.264). Not sure if that is meaningful or whether both FFMPEG and Handbrake parse the two equivalently, or neither or just one of them does, or it is just for the AV1 codec, and I can’t tell. If you are out of options and test it to find it makes a difference, well, then we will know.