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Intel Quick Sync

Intel Quick Sync Video (QSV) is built into most Intel CPUs with integrated graphics (6th gen Skylake and newer). If you're running on an Intel NUC, a mini PC, or a server with an Intel CPU, you probably have it.

What you get​

  • QSV encoding: h264_qsv, hevc_qsv. Hardware-accelerated encoding on the integrated GPU.
  • QSV scaling: scale_qsv resizes frames on the GPU.
  • Face detection: falls back to CPU (OpenCV Haar cascades). Intel GPUs don't have a dedicated neural accelerator exposed for this.

Requirements​

  • Intel CPU with integrated graphics (6th gen+)
  • Intel media drivers installed
  • FFmpeg built with QSV support

On Linux, you'll need the intel-media-va-driver (or intel-media-va-driver-non-free for newer chips) and libmfx or libvpl.

Check availability:

immich-memories hardware

Configuration​

hardware:
  enabled: true
  encoder_preset: "balanced"   # fast | balanced | quality

QSV is picked automatically when no NVIDIA GPU is present and the QSV encoders work.

In Docker​

Pass the render device through and make sure the container user can open it (it is usually owned by the render group):

services:
  immich-memories:
    devices:
      - /dev/dri:/dev/dri
    group_add:
      - "video"
      - "render"     # use the numeric GID from `getent group render` if the name is not resolvable

Good for headless servers​

QSV is common in home server setups: Intel NUCs, older desktops repurposed as media servers. It takes the encode off the CPU cores without needing a discrete graphics card. The encode is the smaller half of a run, though — see CPU-Only Mode. The larger win on such a box is usually the titles: install the gpu extra and Taichi will try the Vulkan backend on the integrated GPU.