Cinegy's latest Cinecoder SDK update brings H.264 interlace encoding capabilities back to modern NVIDIA GPUs, addressing a critical issue for the broadcast industry. This development allows media professionals to utilize current-generation NVIDIA cards for encoding 1080i HDTV content, a format still widely used in global broadcasting.

Behind the Scenes

• Cinecoder SDK version 4.22 enables interlace H.264 encoding on Turing, Ampere, and Ada Lovelace NVIDIA GPUs

• NVIDIA ended H.264 interlace support with the Turing series GPUs, causing workflow disruptions for many broadcasters

• New NVIDIA cards offer higher performance, increased encoding throughput, and improved energy efficiency

• Benchmarks show Cinecoder's solution matches or exceeds the quality of original NVIDIA Pascal series hardware encoders

• Ada Lovelace-based GPUs can encode around 500 FPS for H.264 1080i per NVENC unit, with dual-unit cards capable of 1000 FPS

Final Take

This development allows broadcasters and media professionals to modernize their encoding workflows while maintaining support for widely-used interlaced formats.

It demonstrates the industry's ability to adapt to technological changes and ensure compatibility with existing broadcast standards, potentially extending the lifespan of 1080i HDTV transmission in the face of emerging progressive formats and newer codecs.