It can be used to decode, encode and transcode ("sync") video streams, for example, a DVD or Blu-ray Disc to a format appropriate to, for example, a smartphone.
[5] VCN 3.0 implements H.264 B-frames, which was present in Video Coding Engine 2.0 but taken out with VCE 3.0.
[7] H.264 quality is higher with VCN 4.0 (as part of RDNA 3) compared to previous generations, but still lags behind Intel and Nvidia hardware codecs.
There is no support for encoding or decoding in YUV422 and YUV444 in H.264 and H.265.color depth AMD VCN has lower overall quality (VMAF) compared to offerings from Intel and Nvidia.
[9] Despite a lack of B-frame support, H.265 provides better quality (VMAF) and near-identical speed for the same bitrate compared to H.264 on VCN 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0.