Ahh, I was under the impression that VideoToolbox was T1-only.
Also note that if you have a MP7,1 (Mac Pro 2019), you have a T2 chip not a T1. Then the T2 chip does relatively well at encoding H.264 as discussed in this thread:
While the discussion started about Apple Silicon, it was in comparison to what the poster was experiencing relative to their Intel-based Mac. Basically T2 Macs remain surprisingly competitive for some things even after all these years because the T2 includes a lot of the functions from the Apple Silicon Ax chips and macOS seamlessly invokes those when it can.
That said, 35 fps sounds a little low for your hardware based on what others have gotten from lower-end Macs with T2 chips. What I have noticed is that these video encoding workflows involve a lot of moving parts with a lot of parameters that have non-linear impact on performance and therefore finding the "right" combination of tools and settings can be a lot of trial and error.
In addition to the above thread, check the documentation
I'm noticing it disables the Constant Quality slider, and you have only the average bitrate option.
This is a limitation of VideoToolbox, as per Galad:
Some info regarding HandBrake (I am the maintainer of the Mac version and the one who added VideoToolbox encoding support):
- Decoding is always done on the CPU. Hardware decoding is not supported right now.
- VideoToolbox will automatically select the device with better quality/performance, you can check in ioreg the quality rating of each encoder (VTQualityRating, VTRating keys). It's possible to specify which eGPU to use but this function is not implemented yet.
- VideoToolbox supports only average bitrate, so that's all HandBrake can let you change.
- Hardware encoders are a separate ASIC, that could be placed on a GPU, so it's not technically "GPU encoding".
- Bitrate in the resulting video is quite variable, check with a bitrate viewer.
Maybe not but the file isn't very demanding. I've a lowly Haswell Core i7 with 264 videotool box it was like a 1 minute with 265 software was 2:40 sec's // chip doesn't support 265 videotool box. Try something 4K with 265. Ok then. Let's try the official Handbrake forum test...
arstechnica.com
In general hardware video encoding has tradeoffs -- especially for archival purposes -- as discussed in this thread:
If you had the time, you might compare encoding the same video on your Mac across these workflows:
-From macOS, Apple VideoToolbox encode at acceptable quality
-From macOS, x264/265 encode (on the CPU, using 6-8 cores) on at visual quality matching the above
-From Windows, AMD VCE encode at visual quality matching above
My guess is that the Apple's VideoToolbox (VTB) is selecting the T2 and will be significantly faster than the other two but the resulting files will be larger for comparable visual quality. AMD VCE will be somewhere in between the software encode and VTB in speed while still generating files substantially larger than the software encode.
