NVIDIA Encode (NVENC) SDK 2.0 Beta Available

NVENC Hardware Capabilities in Kepler

NVIDIA has published on its developer zone a beta version of the NVENC SDK. NVIDIA’s latest generation of GPUs, Kepler, contains a dedicated hardware-based H.264 video encoder that does not use the 3D hardware and then uses much less power compared to the CUDA-based encoder. The NVENC SDK allows to take advantage of this H.264 hardware video encoder.

This is release 2.0 beta of NV Encode SDK. This SDK release is provided “as is” for evaluation purposes, without any guarantees of backward compatibiilty with future NVIDIA drivers. Since this is an beta release of the SDK, NVIDIA may make changes to the SDK and the API functions/structures before final release. Applications based on this SDK may need to change in that case, when final SDK is released with NVIDIA driver version 310.xx.

This NVENC SDK will work with NVIDIA display driver version 310.80 or higher.

You can download the NVENC SDK from this page.

Source: Geeks3D forum

6 thoughts on “NVIDIA Encode (NVENC) SDK 2.0 Beta Available”

  3. tried_it_cant_use_it

    Got the SDK, it’s not for public release — most of the PDFs say “NDA”.

    Furthermore, if you actually try to compile the included nvEncoder sample project, it won’t run because you need a special license-key file that “unlocks” the NVENC API for you. (Without the key, the NvEncOpenEncodeSession() returns an error stating that you don’t have rights to use the NVENC. (Which is funny, because I thought the hardware was included on every Kepler GPU sold — so why does NVidia want to charge $$$ just so developers can use it?)

  4. Name

    Actually, it works if you change one line in the code. At first I thought that one need the 310.80 driver (as told in the docs). So, go to the CNVEncoder.cpp and uncomment the line 1190 and comment out the line 1191, compile and the sample is working, i.e. no more message about requiring a license key.

    It should be:
    GUID clientKey = NV_ENC_CLIENT_FREE_TRIAL;
    //GUID clientKey = NV_ENC_CLIENT_PRO_TRIAL;

    and by default it is:
    //GUID clientKey = NV_ENC_CLIENT_FREE_TRIAL;
    GUID clientKey = NV_ENC_CLIENT_PRO_TRIAL;

    I guess there’s difference between free and pro client and nVidia will have to clarify that in the future.

  5. no_longer_available

    ^^^good find! Yeah, I fooled around with the SDK and noticed that the GUIDs were actually inside one of the *.h files.

    Also, the download-link in the article no longer works. NVIDIA must have taken down the public link to the zipfile.

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