Video Coding Engine (VCE, sometimes incorrectly referred to as Video Codec Engine) is AMD's video encoding ASIC implementing the video codec H.264/MPEG-4 AVC. Since 2012 it is integrated into all of their GPUs and APUs.
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Video Coding Engine was introduced with the Radeon HD 7900 on 22 December 2011. VCE occupies a considerable amount of the die surface and is not to be confused with AMD's Unified Video Decoder (UVD).
Overview
The handling of video data involves computation of data compression algorithms and possibly of video processing algorithms. As the template Compression methods shows, lossy video compression algorithms involve the steps: Motion estimation (ME), Discrete cosine transform (DCT), and entropy encoding (EC).
AMD Video Codec Engine (VCE) is a full hardware implementation of the video codec H.264/MPEG-4 AVC. The ASIC is capable of delivering 1080p at 60 frames/sec. Because its entropy encoding block is also separately accessible Video Codec Engine can be operated in two modes: full-fixed mode and hybrid mode.
By employing AMD APP SDK, available for Linux and Microsoft Windows, developers can create hybrid encoders that pair custom motion estimation, inverse discrete cosine transform and motion compensation with the hardware entropy encoding to achieve faster than real-time encoding. In hybrid mode, only the entropy encoding block of the VCE unit is used, while the remaining computation is offloaded to the 3D engine (GCN) of the GPU, so the computing scales with the number of available compute units (CUs).
VCE 1.0
As of April 2014, there are two versions of VCE. Version 1.0 supports H.264 YUV420 (I & P frames), H.264 SVC Temporal Encode VCE, and Display Encode Mode (DEM).
It can be found on
VCE 2.0
Compared to the first version, VCE 2.0 adds H.264 YUV444 (I-Frames), B-frames for H.264 YUV420, and improvements to the DEM (Display Encode Mode), which results in a better encoding quality.
It can be found on
VCE 3.0
Video Coding Engine 3.0 (VCE 3.0) technology features a new high-quality video scaling., and will also support for High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC, H.265, but As of May 2015, there are no announcements about VP9 video codec support.
It, together with UVD 6.0, can be found on 3rd generation of Graphics Core Next (GCN 1.2) with "Tonga", "Fiji", "Iceland", and "Carrizo" (VCE 3.1) based graphics controller hardware, which is now used AMD Radeon Rx 300 Series (Pirate Islands GPU family) and VCE 3.4 by actual AMD Radeon Rx 400 Series (Arctic Islands GPU family).
VCE 4.0
The Video Coding Engine 4.0 encoder and UVD 7.0 decoder are reported to be included in the upcoming Vega based GPUs.
Operating system support
The VCE SIP core needs to be supported by the device driver. The device driver provides one or multiple interfaces, like e.g. OpenMAX IL. One of this interfaces is then used by end-user software, like e.g. GStreamer or HandBrake, to access the VCE hardware and make use of it.
AMD's proprietary device driver AMD Catalyst is available for multiple operating systems and support for VCE has been added to it. Additionally, a free device driver is available. This driver also supports the VCE hardware.
Linux
Windows
The software "MediaShow Espresso Video Transcoding" seems to utilize VCE and UVD to the fullest extent possible.
XSplit Broadcaster supports VCE from version 1.3.
Open Broadcaster Software (OBS Studio) supports VCE for recording and streaming. The original Open Broadcaster Software (OBS) requires a fork build in order to enable VCE.
AMD Radeon Software Crimson supports VCE with built in game capture and use AMD AMF/VCE on APU or Radeon Graphics card to reduce FPS drop, when capture game or video content.