NVIDIA GeForce RTX 50 series adds support for 4:2:2 color format video decoding and e

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Blackwell RTX with improved video encoding and decoding

NVIDIA is announcing improvement to video coding for professional use.



The just-announced GeForce RTX 50 series is not only an upgrade for gamers but also for professional video production, according to NVIDIA.

With the lines between the former Quadro RTX and GeForce series fading, NVIDIA is making it easier to use the RTX 50 series for professional video production.

The RTX 5090, in particular, is equipped with 32GB of memory and is advertised as an ideal solution for generative AI applications, enabling the storage of larger models in video memory. NVIDIA claims that the RTX 5090, with 4-bit floating-point precision, can generate images using Flux1 Dev (open weight AI model) in 4 seconds, while the RTX 5090 with FP16 encoding requires 15 seconds.

Our focus, however, is on video encoding. NVIDIA has confirmed that the RTX 5090 will feature three encoders and two decoders. The RTX 5080 will have two encoders and two decoders, while the RTX 5070 Ti is expected to include two encoders and a single decoder. The RTX 5070 (non-Ti) will only have one encoder and one decoder.
 

Professional-Grade Video for All

GeForce RTX 50 Series GPUs deliver a generational leap in NVIDIA encoders and decoders with support for the 4:2:2 pro-grade color format, multiview-HEVC (MV-HEVC) for 3D and virtual reality (VR) video, and the new AV1 Ultra High Quality mode.

The new series is equipped with the 9th-generation NVENC encoder, which is said to improve video quality by 5% for HEVC and AV1 encoding. The Blackwell gaming cards will also include a 6th-generation decoder with 2x speed for H.264 video decoding.

More importantly, the RTX 50 series now supports the 4:2:2 pro-grade color format. While 4:2:0 is sufficient for everyday video playback and internet use, 4:2:2 caters to professionals who work with raw footage requiring higher color depth. Such files are approximately 1.3x larger in raw size and contain double the color information. The RTX 50 series supports this format through hardware and can decode up to 8x 4K 60 FPS streams per decoder, says the comapny. 

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