how encode bitmap with H264 video encoder MFT in w

Question

My application do encoding of captured frame from GDI or DXGI method. currently i am doing encoding with help x264 library.
AFAIK x264 is software based library, i want to do encoding with help of GPU, so it can save CPU cycles and hope speed also will be faster.
After searching, I found a H.264 Video Encoder MFT which is doing h264 encoding.
But couple of questions are answered for me.
1) is It faster than x264 encoding library?
2) can bitmap frame be encoded with help this MFT?
- i have seen only MFVideoFormat_I420, MFVideoFormat_IYUV, MFVideoFormat_NV12, MFVideoFormat_YUY2, MFVideoFormat_YV12 these formats are supported
3) is it hardware accelerated(mean it's using CPU or GPU)?
- Initially my understanding was it uses GPU but i get confused after reading this post MFT Encoder (h264) High CPU utilization.
4) can H.264 Video Encoder MFT be used stand alone without using sink writer, as i have to sent data on network?
5) is there any other alternative in windows?

It might be some questions are very silly, please feel free to edit.

Answer 1

Media Foundation H.264 Video Encoder is software encoder. From my [subjective] experience it slower than x264 and, perhaps more important, x264 offers wider range of settings, specifically when it comes to choose modes on the speed over quality end of the range. Either way, stock MS encoder is not hardware accelerated.

However, there might be other MFTs available (typically installed with respective hardware drivers) that do hardware accelerated H.264 encoding. You can discover them by enumerating MFTs, perhaps most popular is Intel Quick Sync Video (QSV) Encoder.

HardwareVideoEncoderTransform app does the enumeration and provides you with relevant details:

Typical input is NV12, some offer other input choices (such as e.g. 32-bit RGB). If you need other formats, you will have to pre-convert the input.

Hardware backed encoders CPU consumption is low, and their efficiency depends on the hardware implementation. Yes, you can use them standalone, entirely standalone or wrapped as DirectShow filter and included in normal DirectShow pipeline.

Alternate H.264 encoders are typically SDK based, or wrappers over those SDKs in DirectShow/MFT form factors because vendors package their implementation in well-known forms already familiar to multimedia developers.