G4 Mini v C2D for Video encoding.

[CHAOS STEP]

Ok,

I have a G4 Mac Mini (1.5Ghz with 1GB RAM) and I do a lot of ripping from my own DVD's, so I can watch my films on my iPhone, albeit in the best quality available.

At present if I rip a DVD using handbrake, even if I have already extracted the film via MactheRipper, it can take over 10 hours for a best quality Conversion, or about 3-5 Hours for a smaller Rez iPod quality file.

Obviously I want to cut the time down and was wondering if the newer Intel Mac Minis would do the task a lot quicker.

Has anyone got experience with one of the current Gen Minis - what sort of time scales do you get?

 

[Cave Man]

Well, without question, an upgrade to a current mini will dramatically improve your transcoding rates. On my 1.66 Mini it's about 1:1; thus, a 2 hour movie takes about 2 hours to encode (using one-pass H.264 into an MPEG4 container with AAC audio).

 

[CHAOS STEP]

Thanks for the response.

My mini can do 1:1 provided that it is one step and I don't use H.264.

It seems that using H.264 seems to cause the delays, but obviously I get better quality movie files using this process.

Worst thing for me would be to buy the Top Line Mini fully loaded and then find out that it still takes ages to encode!

 

[Cave Man]

I usually queue up 5 or 6 MTR'd movies and let it run overnight and the next day (while I'm at work).

 

[Eidorian]

I can confirm the 1:1 speed on my Mac mini Core Duo 1.66 GHz as well.

You'd be well off waiting for an update on them. You'd get a big boost from a refurbished Core 2 Duo Mac mini.