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Encoding

S

Spies

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 21, 2006
108
0
United Kingdom
What is the video encoding performance like on Intel Duo's under OSX?

Under windows I would benchmark using virtualdub but no idea what to suggest on OSX, can anyone provide some figures?
 
M

Merom MacBook

macrumors newbie
Jan 11, 2006
8
0
California
I am currently encoding my Seinfeld DVDs to an iPod compatible but still nice resolution so I have smaller files to be available in Front Row all the time. I have it set to 544x416 with Deinterlace unchecked. This is a 2 GHz with 2 GB RAM and 256 VRAM. I rip them to the HD, then batch encode. Here we are with 100 fps average. The average can fluctuate between 65 and 105, but most often I see it about 90.
 

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Chundles

Chundles

macrumors G5
Jul 4, 2005
12,037
493
Merom MacBook said:
I am currently encoding my Seinfeld DVDs to an iPod compatible but still nice resolution so I have smaller files to be available in Front Row all the time. I have it set to 544x416 with Deinterlace unchecked. This is a 2 GHz with 2 GB RAM and 256 VRAM. I rip them to the HD, then batch encode. Here we are with 100 fps average. The average can fluctuate between 65 and 105, but most often I see it about 90.
Click to expand...

Mother of god.....:eek:

I gotta get me one of them new fangled iMacs. My iBook is doing well at 18fps...
 
S

Spies

macrumors regular
Original poster
Feb 21, 2006
108
0
United Kingdom
I see you mention VRAM, is that significant because I didn't think encoders could utilise the GPU for processing?

Do you have any other machines for reference to compare?
 
Chundles

Chundles

macrumors G5
Jul 4, 2005
12,037
493
Spies said:
I see you mention VRAM, is that significant because I didn't think encoders could utilise the GPU for processing?

Do you have any other machines for reference to compare?
Click to expand...

He's just giving you the specs of the Mac so you can get the full picture. I saw the 17" iMac at the AppleCentre encoding a video in Handbrake at around 50fps - didn't have a look at the settings but that's 2.5x faster then my iBook can do it and the 20" example above is over 5x faster.

Depending on the encoding (I've found I get much faster results at 320x240 than at 576xwhatever) settings you could really make that iMac hum. Ripping a DVD episode in what? 8, 10 minutes? Would be sweet!!
 
BornAgainMac

BornAgainMac

macrumors 604
Feb 4, 2004
7,281
5,250
Florida Resident
The encoding speeds convinced me to get a MBP with this rev rather than waiting for next year. I am also looking forward to hooking up my 30 inch display and trying a few games. My Powermac G5 will be disconnected from the monitor and I'll remotely login using my MBP. It will be dedicated to doing the boring encoding with Handbrake during the day. Both the MPB and Powermac will be encoding while I sleep.
 
powerbook911

powerbook911

macrumors 68040
Mar 15, 2005
3,999
379
I encode 640x in handbrake into H264, and it gets about 19FPS. Very nice, for H264 at that high resolution. I just have it work at night, when I sleep, and it is all done in the morning. :)
 
M

MacHarne

macrumors 6502
Mar 3, 2005
321
0
Virginia, U.S.A.
Merom MacBook said:
Here we are with 100 fps average.
Click to expand...

It's way too early in the morning for me to be having heart palpitations with only one cup of coffee in my stomach. Those numbers nearly sent me to the emergency room.

My PowerBook gets about 19 fps average on highest processor mode. However, on one occasion, I had a fan blow underneath my PowerBook (sitting on an iCurve) during the night while it encoded two DVDs to very high quality mp4s, and in the morning I saw that the average fps was 29.9x. I had a hard time believing it.

Thanks for those HandBrake numbers, Merom MacBook. And thank you HandBrake for being a Universal Binary.
 
adk

adk

macrumors 68000
Nov 11, 2005
1,937
21
Stuck in the middle with you
Holy Speed Batman!!


My 1.67 powerbook is embarrassingly slow compared to that. So very jealous! Also, does ripping the DVD onto the harddrive first make a noticeable difference? I would think that the time saved by encoding from the hard drive would be less than the time spent ripping the DVD.
 
CubeHacker

CubeHacker

macrumors 65816
Apr 22, 2003
1,243
251
Just a small tip - if you're encoding to MPEG4 (like you are in that picture), you should do 2 things:

1.) Use Xvid as the encoder, NOT ffmpeg. The quality of ffmpeg is poor compared to Xvid.

2.) Use AVI as the container format, not MP4. Handbrake currently has a bug where MP4's encode darker than they should be. AVI is the correct brightness. Its also just more compatible with everything out there.

Also I wanted to note that I attempted to encode into H264, and I didn't notice any vast difference between it and MPEG4 using the same bitrate. As H264 encodes noticibly slower, I don't see the point of using it.
 
Texas04

Texas04

macrumors 6502a
Jul 2, 2005
886
1
Texas
DOACleric said:
Just a small tip - if you're encoding to MPEG4 (like you are in that picture), you should do 2 things:

1.) Use Xvid as the encoder, NOT ffmpeg. The quality of ffmpeg is poor compared to Xvid.

2.) Use AVI as the container format, not MP4. Handbrake currently has a bug where MP4's encode darker than they should be. AVI is the correct brightness. Its also just more compatible with everything out there.

Also I wanted to note that I attempted to encode into H264, and I didn't notice any vast difference between it and MPEG4 using the same bitrate. As H264 encodes noticibly slower, I don't see the point of using it.
Click to expand...

True but if hes encoding to the ipod it has to be on certain settings, search the threads for the setup... but I know it has to be at a certain amount.
 
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