Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

The power of a Quad G5

eyoungren

eyoungren

macrumors Nehalem
Original poster
Aug 31, 2011
30,010
29,111
Took three days to encode and burn a DVD movie file using Toast.

As compared to my old G4 (when stable) taking a week.

I might mention that during those three days my G5 was completely usable for everything else. Video watching, web browsing, email and so on. My G4 would just have had to been left alone.

:rolleyes:
 
eyoungren said:
Took three days to encode and burn a DVD movie file using Toast.

As compared to my old G4 (when stable) taking a week.

I might mention that during those three days my G5 was completely usable for everything else. Video watching, web browsing, email and so on. My G4 would just have had to been left alone.

:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Did you mention the light-bulbs flicker all over the place in your neighborhood... ;)
 
  • Like
Reactions: amagichnich, MagicBoy, keysofanxiety and 1 other person
eyoungren said:
Took three days to encode and burn a DVD movie file using Toast.

As compared to my old G4 (when stable) taking a week.

I might mention that during those three days my G5 was completely usable for everything else. Video watching, web browsing, email and so on. My G4 would just have had to been left alone.

:rolleyes:
Click to expand...
What format were you encoding the DVD to?
I used to use a Turbo .264 USB dongle (Elgato I think - still have it somewhere) which made encoding to x264 much quicker (about the length of the film)
 
It's been a long time since I've burnt a film to DVD but I'm sure it normally completed overnight, using iDVD on a dual 1.25 G4 MDD.
But that was leaving it alone to do that one task.
 
Are you talking about encoding an H264/MPEG4 film to DVD and then burning it? That took 3 days on a Quad 2.5GHz G5? Software is probably a tad un optimised because with a 2.93GHz C2D, it's done in about an hour I think..
 
Not quite sure about the encoding.

In Toast 10 Titanium I set it to "Best" quality. The movies it's encoding and burning have been 1080p to a standard DVD disc.
 
So converting a 1080p, h.264(?) movie to a 480p MPEG2, with related DVD menu structure? Sounds like it's chugging away on all that hi-res h.264 data. Perhaps there's something faster than Toast for transcoding the video to SD MPEG2 first? VLC? If the Quad is perfectly usable whilst converting, it doesn't sound like Toast is loading all the cores.
 
mode11 said:
So converting a 1080p, h.264(?) movie to a 480p MPEG2, with related DVD menu structure? Sounds like it's chugging away on all that hi-res h.264 data. Perhaps there's something faster than Toast for transcoding the video to SD MPEG2 first? VLC? If the Quad is perfectly usable whilst converting, it doesn't sound like Toast is loading all the cores.
Click to expand...
I'll have to take a look at something else. My goto was just Toast since it's something I'm familiar with (I've used it since 1999 but not for this kind of thing).

Thanks!
 
VLC or Quicktime may be better to use for something like this. If you've got Compressor, it can also run these conversions in batch, and I believe Apple built settings for it. Handbrake may also do it.

In terms of Intels doing this stuff faster, it's really just because they're faster computers. It wasn't until like Haswell or so (2013) that Intel started building purpose-built accelerators for h264 video into their chips. It's not that video software is "optimized" for Intel chips, it really is that Intel chips are just that much faster.

But I think once you figure out a better way to transcode the video, the DVD portion should only take a few hours. Toast 7 and iDVD back in the day only ever took a few hours on my PPC system, and that was a 1GHz TiBook with the slow stock disk.
 
Cory5412 said:
In terms of Intels doing this stuff faster, it's really just because they're faster computers. It wasn't until like Haswell or so (2013) that Intel started building purpose-built accelerators for h264 video into their chips. It's not that video software is "optimized" for Intel chips, it really is that Intel chips are just that much faster.
Click to expand...

You do realize that Nvida GPUs have had h264 codices back in, oh idk, 2008...
 
Okay, I wouldn't say that I had a specific "realization" that nVidia GPUs have had h264 assist in hardware since 2008 specifically. I know around 2009-2010 or so nVidia and Adobe started working together a lot, building products like the Quadro CX. (Apple started working on GPGPU stuff more heavily with GCD and OpenCL in 10.6.)

I suppose it had slipped my mind in particular that Geforces and/or Quadros had h.264 acceleration hardware.

Was it ever usable by Mac OS X or is this more of a generic reference to CUDA and OpenCL?

And, what were results like? One of the things discussed about with Intel QuickSync is that the results are sometimes less good than just using a software codec.
 
I've used handbrake to re-encode video before. Is toast a similar piece of software? I've been sort of looking for a way to convert an 8GB DVD folder into a single movie file that's smaller. I can convert each .VOB but I don't have a good way to stitch them together.
 
flyrod said:
I've used handbrake to re-encode video before. Is toast a similar piece of software? I've been sort of looking for a way to convert an 8GB DVD folder into a single movie file that's smaller. I can convert each .VOB but I don't have a good way to stitch them together.
Click to expand...
Toast is primarily a burn program. It's the burn app I've used since 1999 so I am just used to it.

At some point they added burning media. I use Toast 10 Titanium, which is the last Universal build.

Here's a screenshot of the video panel. It's pretty simple. I just drop my video file, usually an MP4 or AVI, and it makes a DVD playable via DVD Player. Probably if used the Custom button I'd be able to answer more about the encodings.

Toast 10 Titanium.png
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back