Run software on GPU to compress images?

[nickodemos]

I compress PNG images with GitHub - fhanau/Efficient-Compression-Tool: Fast and effective C++ file optimizer as this is the best compressor I have found. As with any software that compresses a file, it takes time. I was wondering if there was a way to offload the compressing to the GPU to see if there is an increase in speed.

[4wd]

You'd probably have to find a program that uses OpenCL.

ECT doesn't seem to cause much CPU load, typically less than %20 on my machine so you could speed things up by running concurrent tasks.

Example:

Code: Text [Select]

1. .\timeit.exe .\ect.exe -9 .\20221224-topaz-denoise.png
2. Processed 1 file
3. Saved 1.95MB out of 12.34MB (15.7650%)
4.  
5. Version Number:   Windows NT 6.2 (Build 9200)
6. Exit Time:        12:32 am, Wednesday, January 11 2023
7. Elapsed Time:     0:01:28.952
8. Process Time:     0:01:28.937

Five concurrent processes on the same file, (five different names):

Code: Text [Select]

1. .\timeit.exe .\ect.exe -9 .\20221224-topaz-denoise(x).png
2. Processed 1 file
3. Saved 1.95MB out of 12.34MB (15.7650%)
4.  
5. Version Number:   Windows NT 6.2 (Build 9200)
6. Exit Time:        12:39 am, Wednesday, January 11 2023
7. Elapsed Time:     0:01:42.891
8. Process Time:     0:01:42.703

Time to process increased by 14 seconds, (this was the same for all processes give or take a few ms), CPU utilization was still under 60% so still plenty left for doing other things.

So for the cost of an extra 14 seconds I got a 5 fold increase in files processed, files had the same properties of course but it should still scale similarly.

[nickodemos]

The issue is that I can not script so if you are willing to help with a script to process all png files in the current directory with ECT then it would be appreciated.

[4wd]

The below tested ok on my machine, there's a lot of comments which should make it easy to understand.

Basically:

• Grabs list of PNGs in directory
• Splits list into number of cmd files along with formatting for ect.exe
• Executes cmd files

NOTES:

• Edit in the full path to ect.exe - see comments
• Edit in your ect.exe options - see comments
• I only run PowerShell 7+ so that's what I tested it on

You'll see a CLI window open for each cmd file running along with output from ect.exe in each, they close as each cmd file finishes.

Code: PowerShell [Select]

1. <#
2. RunEct.ps1
3.  
4. Open a PowerShell console:
5.  
6. path\to\RunEct.ps1 <path of PNG files> [-Threads <x>]
7.  
8. Default number of threads is 4
9.  
10. Examples:
11.  
12. .\RunEct.ps1 d:\png-images
13. d:\RunEct.ps1 "f:\png images" -Threads 8
14.  
15. #>
16.  
17. param(
18.   [Parameter(Mandatory=$true)][string]$Path,
19.   [int]$Threads = 4
20. )
21.  
22. # Full path to ect.exe
23. $ectPath = "R:\ect.exe"
24. # Options for ect.exe
25. $ectOpts = "-9"
26.  
27. # Get the system TEMP path
28. $tempPath = [System.IO.Path]::GetTempPath()
29.  
30. # Get all PNG files within the directory
31. $files = (Get-ChildItem "$($Path)/*" -Include *.png)
32.  
33. # Collect the file names into a list
34. $fileNames = $files.Name
35. # Get the number of files
36. $numberOfFiles = $fileNames.Count
37. # Set the number of cmd files to the number of required threads to run
38. # and set number of files per list
39. $numberOfLists = $Threads
40. $filesPerList = [Math]::Ceiling($numberOfFiles / $numberOfLists)
41.  
42. # Create a list to hold the cmd file names
43. $cmdFiles = @()
44. # Split the number of files between the number of lists
45. for ($i = 0; $i -lt $numberOfLists; $i++) {
46.   $startIndex = $i * $filesPerList
47.   $endIndex = $startIndex + $filesPerList - 1
48.   $list = $fileNames[$startIndex..$endIndex]
49. # Create a temp cmd file
50.   $filePath = [System.IO.Path]::Combine($tempPath, "ectTempFile$($i).cmd")
51.   New-Item -Path $filePath -ItemType File -Force
52. # Add it to the cmd file list
53.   $cmdFiles += $filePath
54. # Output that list of files to the cmd file with formatting to run ect.exe on each
55.   $list | ForEach-Object {
56.     "$($ectPath) $($ectOpts) `"$($_)`""
57.   } | Set-Content -Path $filePath
58. }
59.  
60. # Change current location to input path
61. Push-Location $Path
62.  
63. # Execute each cmd file
64. $cmdFiles | ForEach-Object {
65. # Remove the hash (#) in the line below to have all output to the PowerShell console
66.     Start-Process cmd.exe -ArgumentList "/c $($_)" #-NoNewWindow
67. }
68.  
69. # Jump back to original path
70. Pop-Location

Each ECT process causes ~10% CPU load on my Ryzen 5 5600X.
Run software on GPU to compress images?