HandBrake performance on 2 Macs plus Mac Pro (Early 2008)

[bxs]

On my PowerMac G5 Dual 2.5 GHz (June 2004 model) with 6.5 GB RAM I run HandBrake 0.9.1 to rip a home DVD. I then use same HandBrake program on my MacBook Core 2 Duo with 2 GB RAM to rip the same DVD and it completes in 1/2 the time it took on the PowerMac.

If I now run this same HandBrake to rip the same DVD on the new Mac Pro 2.8 GHz Dual Quad Xeon with say the same RAM footprint of 6.5 GB, how much faster than the MacBook would you expect this Mac Pro to be ? Would you expect any difference in the HandBrake's wall time on this Mac Pro using 2 GB vs. 6.5 GB ?

All above done on Leopard 10.5.1.

 

[Crawn2003]

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On my MacPro Octo 3.0 with 9GB RAM it takes about 15-30 minutes to rip my DVD's.

~Crawn

 

[bxs]

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On my MacPro Octo 3.0 with 9GB RAM it takes about 15-30 minutes to rip my DVD's.

~Crawn

Hmmmm - I select "Normal" and "iPhone" and default Video settings on MacBook and both run in 1/2 the time it takes on my PM G5. On my G5 a typical 2 hr DVD movie will take almost 3 hrs.

 

[randyhudson]

Ripping a DVD is only limited by the speed of your DVD drive.

 

[pkoch1]

Ripping a DVD is only limited by the speed of your DVD drive.

Wrong. Ripping DVDs has a lot to do with the processor.

 

[timestamp]

Wrong. Ripping DVDs has a lot to do with the processor.

Well he is not wrong. You have to get the data off the DVD first. There are two different parts of "ripping" a DVD.

1: Get the data off the DVD (this is the actual ripping)
2: Re-encode the video in another format

So, if your DVD drive is slower or hard drives for that matter, it will take you long to get the data off, increasing the time of the entire process.

Of course, the processor is what matters once you have the actual data. Going by the word "ripping," it would indeed be the DVD that limits the speed.

 

[Andrmgic]

Well he is not wrong. You have to get the data off the DVD first. There are two different parts of "ripping" a DVD.

1: Get the data off the DVD (this is the actual ripping)
2: Re-encode the video in another format

So, if your DVD drive is slower or hard drives for that matter, it will take you long to get the data off, increasing the time of the entire process.

Of course, the processor is what matters once you have the actual data. Going by the word "ripping," it would indeed be the DVD that limits the speed.

Correct.

The question is, does handbrake support 8 cores or just 2?

 

[mcarnes]

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On my MacPro Octo 3.0 with 9GB RAM it takes about 15-30 minutes to rip my DVD's.

~Crawn

Man that is fast. I remember when DVD rips took *days* in HB.

 

[statikcat]

When I encode in HB all 4 cores in my MP get slammed. If it uses 8 cores wow that would be really fast!

 

[Crawn2003]

I'm at my Mac Pro right now and I popped in "The Rock" to test it.

Mac Pro Octo (March 2007 Edition) with 9GB RAM

"The Rock" AKA "Birdie"
181.56 fps, avg. 166.86 fps, ETA 00h:17m:35s

This is with Normal setting in Hand Brake with a 2:13:23 dvd.

~Crawn

P.S. The CPU Monitor in OS X during the ripping right now hasn't even gone about 50% on all the cores. Just imagine if this utilized ALL the cores!

P.S.S I just turned on InCrease (AKA Folding@Home) running two clients AND working in Photoshop, Mail, Bon Echo, and iTunes open playing music and using HandBrake and I still have about 1/4 unused power on each of the 8 cores.

 

[MovieCutter]

Well he is not wrong. You have to get the data off the DVD first. There are two different parts of "ripping" a DVD.

1: Get the data off the DVD (this is the actual ripping)
2: Re-encode the video in another format

So, if your DVD drive is slower or hard drives for that matter, it will take you long to get the data off, increasing the time of the entire process.

Of course, the processor is what matters once you have the actual data. Going by the word "ripping," it would indeed be the DVD that limits the speed.

Well we agree on something...

 

[pkoch1]

Well he is not wrong. You have to get the data off the DVD first. There are two different parts of "ripping" a DVD.

1: Get the data off the DVD (this is the actual ripping)
2: Re-encode the video in another format

So, if your DVD drive is slower or hard drives for that matter, it will take you long to get the data off, increasing the time of the entire process.

Of course, the processor is what matters once you have the actual data. Going by the word "ripping," it would indeed be the DVD that limits the speed.

you're right. i'm sorry. I wasn't even very nice about it

 

[iSavant]

HB 091 uses my 4 cores well and installed RAM doesn't really matter

iPhone preset rips/encodes take about 30 minutes and end up around 1 GB for a two hour movie.

Cores matter for Handbrake

 

[bxs]

Running HB on both my MB C2D and my PM G5 will cause all CPUs to run at 100%.

I suspect the Intel processor is better than the PPC processor for doing the HB encoding activity.

I would expect from this that 8 cores would also get strained/used by HB.

My real question is given that my lowly MB C2D runs rings around my PM G5 tower for HB work that the new MP 2x quad Xeons will run rings around the MB C2D also and just by how much ?

If as one poster says, HB will not use 100% of the CPU cycles on the quad MP then this would be good for me as today when I'm using HB for several hours I will have to pause it when I want to get other things done quickly.

I'm looking at what productivity gain I can expect going from my PM G5 to the new MP 2x Quad.

If I can get a 4x to 5x then this would be sufficient for me to seriously consider an upgrade to the MP 2x Quad.

 

[Just sayin...]

...I suspect the Intel processor is better than the PPC processor for doing the HB encoding activity...

Just wait 'till Apple optimizes the OS and app vendors re-write their applications to take advantage of the new SSE4 instruction set - then you'll really see some improvement:

"...Applications that will benefit include those involving graphics,
video encoding and processing, 3-D imaging..."

Of course, Nehalem will build on this, but 5400-based Mac Pro's announced today will provide the opportunity for significant performance gains.

 

[Mackilroy]

I can easily rip three or four DVDs with my 4-core Mac Pro in the time it takes my CD MacBook to rip one DVD. And you'll have twice the number of cores with a slightly faster processor speed as well.

 

[AliensAreFuzzy]

The real trick to those mac pros with large numbers of cores is to run multiple instances of Handbrake simultaneously from Mac the Ripper ripped Video_TS folders. Then you can max out all the cores. On my friends quad 2.5 we would have three instances of HB running and each would be running twice as fast as on my 2.0 CD MacBook Pro. Of course the first time when I was doing that I was using a bad build of HB that cropped the video incorrectly.