Re: What hardware makes the most difference in Trans coding performance?

Carl Karsten wrote:
> On Wed, Jan 20, 2010 at 9:51 AM, I put the Who? in Mishehu
> <[email protected]> wrote:
>   
>> Senectus . wrote:
>>     
>>> I'm rigging up a box just for ripping our entire DVD collection (300+
>>> DVD's) to a digital format so my DLNA capable box can play anything without
>>> worrying about the 2yr old destroying discs etc.
>>> I'd like to know what the low hanging fruit is in terms of quick hardware
>>> for trans-coding...
>>>
>>> Any advice out there? I'll be using Ubuntu.
>>> Would 64 bit be better than 32bit?
>>>       
>> 64bit would definitely be preferred over 32bit, if for nothing more than the
>> memory addressing (and you're likely to be working with large files when it
>> comes to transcoding).
>>     
>
> I doubt that matters.
> I would be very surprised to see that it reads the file more than
> once, either in chunks or start to finish.  My guess is it will have a
> queue that's maybe a few 100 meg, and move the file though that.
>   

Whether or not this is the case is irrelevent - I've never heard anybody 
successfully use "well you just don't need 64 bits" as a compelling 
argument to justify *not* getting x86_64 hardware and installing an 
x86_64 OS.  The underlying issue is that your system is more usable in 
64 bit mode than in 32 bit mode, and the OS can access more memory - and 
without the performance  hit of PAE.

The only real downside that I've encountered with x86_64 linux distros 
in the several years that I've been running Slamd64/Slackware64 is a 
purely software issue - gcc needs -fPIC when compiling library code.

>>  My recommendation is that however much memory you
>> would get in 32bit, double it for 64bit.
>>     
>
> My recommendation is get a good price on a few gig, and maybe leave
> slots open for expansion.  I have trouble justifying a gig on an
> average single user system.  (average user does not run 4 VMs and
> such)
>   

It's a guideline.  If he would get 2GB of RAM in 32bit, I'd recommend 
4GB in 64 bit mode.  If he gets 8GB in 32, he really probably does not 
need 16 GB in 64.

> This reminds me of swap formulas.  They made sense when ram and disk
> was expensive, but now it's hardly worth the effort - it doesn't take
> much thought or cost to  allocate a big hunk of disk, even if you
> never need it given you have huge amounts or ram.
>
>   

Again, it was always only ever a guideline.  The old adage still applies 
- YMMV.  I have a lousy 2GB swap on my system, and I've got 6GB of RAM, 
and the swap rarely gets touched unless I open up like 100 tabs in 
Firefox...

>> I don't really see a significant difference between current day Intel Core
>> 2/Xeon and Athlon64 procs in my usage scenario.  But I've up to now mostly
>> been doing mpeg2 to xvid conversions.  What I wish was supported (but I
>> don't think the prospects are very good) is for ATI Avivo support since I
>> have ATI cards...  when I did tests in windows, it transcoded in 1/6 the
>> time as it took for Pinnacle Studio to transcode the same type of file...
>> no special filters or effects.
>>     
>
> Nvidia's cuda(?) is also looking promising, but I am not aware of any
> code for transcoding.
>
>   

I *think* ffmpeg might be able to support this to some extent.  I only 
have one piece of nvidia vidcard hardware here, and I really don't think 
it's recent enough to support those functions.

-Mishehu