Just noticed in the Render Menu, Format section there is a box labelled Hardware Video Encoder. I've never ticked this and can find no reference to it in the manual. Does anyone know what it is for?
Cheers,
Tony

Some GPUs support hardware encoding of video formats such as MP4. So presumably it would save some render time. I have it usually checked, but I have never done a comparison.

---

Thanks I'll test it out and report back.

How long should we wait? Lol. But seriously, did you try it out?

Whoa even RL don't ignore a problem for two years....oh wait...the worrying thing is I have no recollection of making that post...I still have no idea what its for...no results in a search of IC7 manual...google search suggests it could be to do with streaming or video cameras. I have a vague recollection that I have read something in Windows 10 along the lines of Animagic's explanation. Suffice it to say I've never used it, but would like confirmation of whether it is actually beneficial in the current version.
Cheers,
Tony 

Would be quite easy to take a short project, render it both ways, and time it.

---

I did that a while ago, dont remember seeing any difference in rendering times, if there is any it is quite small

OK I'm coming into this pretty late and I'm guessing someone's probably figured it somewhere else but what the heck.
What it did for me:
I was unable to render an mp4 (for whatever reason I don't know) BUT when I checked the box I could render the mp4 ok. I have a 2060s (GTX)