Fast encoding with AMD XP

[benderman]

Camparing fps is not really easy. If you encode the video with the original resolution and no deinterlacing the fps can be very high. If I use a good deinterlacing- and resizing-filter I only get half the fps than using no filters.
If you only use a simple resizing-filter than you should get about 1.5 fps every 100MHz.
On my old computer with 2 slow hdds it helped to encode from one hdd to the other.

[UncasMS]

i envy you for the speed; i dont, however, for the resolution

[vid1972]

Impo, I don't think anyone mentioned this, but did you use the Divx 4.11 codec, that is enhanced for the SSE instructions in the P4/Athlon XPs? Also did you choose "YUB" versus "RGB" for color space format? In a previous tomshardware article they said they got better fps times by using the "bicubic" filtering over "Bressenham" as well. I recently encoded a 2-hour film, with 5 channel dolby, on a PIII 733 sdram system, and was able to pull of 10-11 fps average. Not blazing, of course, compared to your highend systems, but a huge improvement for me.


Jinsun2000: What motherboard are you using for your dual Athlon xp box? Just wondering. I'm putting together a new pc soon, and have been leaning towards Iwill's xp333-r mobo.

[maximum6]

Divx 4.11 w/ mpeg2avi?

I didn't know it was possible to use divx 4.x with mpeg2avi? How does one go about this? I would like to try some 2-pass encoding with it.

[jinsun2000]

I am using the tyan 2460 dual atthlon with 1 Gig of DDR and ata Raid. This motherboard is solid. No problem so far.

[vid1972]

jinsun2000, thanks!

[Impo]

vid1972> Hi, it is a great improvement you did with your PIII 733 sdram system. I had a PIII 1000 with 512 SDRam and I couldn't get more than 7-8 fps.

I want u to know that I use DivX codec 4.11 and it should be fine for my CPU, but wich iDCT I have t choose to use SSE instrunctions ? In XMPEG I can only use "DVD2AVI SSEMMX" iDCT.
Is this the best one I should use ? I have tested it and it is slower than the Miha's codecs and with much errors.
Xmpeg analysis says that DVD2AVI SSEMMX doen't meet IEEE1180. The worst peek error = to 1.
In truth, I really don't know what does it mean but according to my impression this doesn't sound good. Hope someone could help me on that.

Then, if we talk about format I can use only RGB I think. When I try YUY2 or YV12 XMpeg says " Overlay surface is not available. If a video application is running, try to quit. Conversion will work, but nothing is diplayed " And this isn't normal cause I have a GeForce 2 MX and it should support it. Then if this is a default warning wich one is better ?
Then I use SSE BiCubic filtering and with this one I saw good improvememnt but my fps is still 10-11 like your PIII 733.

I'm really disapointed cause I've spent all my money to get a really high fps and now I can only see a little change.

Thank you

Then for everyone> I have a ECS K7S5A and I get serious problems when I plug-in two SDRAM barrets. ( And I don't think it could be due to my barrets ). If someone had this problem and fixed it, please let me know how to.

[vid1972]

That's very interesting. A friend from the UK, had these same error codes pop up yesterday, he uses a P41.7/256rimm/geforce2Ti. I'm not sure what to say, I run this here on three different platfroms, NT4.0/W2Kpro/Win xp pro(with varies hardware configs) and none of them give me any issues. Encoding times vary of course, but not any configuration error codes. Hmmmm. We'll have to play around some more I guess. I'll have my athlon pc built within a month, so I'll find out if I have similar issues then.....

[vid1972]

I just remembered something. I read somewhere, and since I don't have an athlon pc yet I can't confirm this, but it said that the SSE instructions do not come activated by default in the Athlon XPs. You will need to do this in the bios set-up. You may have already done this, but it's worth checking.....

[Impo]

I went into my bios and didn't find anything talking about SSE. I don't know now if SSE should be mentioned somewhere to activate it.

I found another problem now. This isn't very important but it is still annoying. I converted "Hannibal" today and a calculator told me that if I want the final file size to be 1400 MB with a sound quality of 192 Kbps I should convert with a video quality of 1350 Kbit/s -----> Xmpeg generated a output file of 1930 MB.

I can understand that the values are not correct beacause everything depends on the film but I can't accept a 530 MB of error.

What's amazing is that this happens only with Xmpeg so far. FlaskMPEG never gave me this kind of error. Nevertheless it gives me much more errors like generating an invalid .avi file and making all spent converting hours useless.

[vid1972]

I'll need to investigate the SSE stuff alittle more. Since I'm putting together an athlon box, I really need to know this. It could be chipset to chipset and I was just reading about a particular one.

Your calculations seem fine. I encoded "Blade" 2-hour movie. At 29.97 fps/720x480 resolution/192kps audio, 1-pass, and I received a file that was 1.5gigs. I was off by alittle more than I thought, but this was due the resolution size that I chose. I usually do something in the 640x480. I'm at a loss as to why xmpeg is giving you so much trouble.

By the way, my friend in the UK, managed to get the divx 4.11 codec recognized without any errors, he didn't mentioned how, just magically began to work. But, now he's having an issue with xmpeg seeing the radium mp3 codec that he installed. I guess you're not alone. But, he tested the encoding without audio, and was getting 32fps, on his P41.7/256rimm winxp system. So it has helped him out somewhat....

[CGreenlawMD]

Are you running the dual processor with Win 98?

[Impo]

Does anyone know why encoding with Xmpeg gives a really different file size than the one mentioned in Gordian Knot Calculator ?

FlaskMPEG works fine for this but very slow.
Xmpeg is much faster but gives larger files than expected.

Ex: quality 980 kbps ( DivX 4.11 )
Sound quality: 128 kbps .MP3
projected file size: 172Mb ( for 21:55 minutes )

---> I've got 266Mb with Xmpeg

does OGG sound better and smaller than MP3 ?

Thank you everyone.

[a13antichrist]

Originally posted by vid1972
I just remembered something. I read somewhere, and since I don't have an athlon pc yet I can't confirm this, but it said that the SSE instructions do not come activated by default in the Athlon XPs. You will need to do this in the bios set-up. You may have already done this, but it's worth checking.....

They are activated; it's simply that the method used by Windows Media Encoder to identify SSE-capable chips ignores the Atlhon. Any other application has no problems whatsoever. There is a patch but it's a Windows Media patch, not a system one. However that will make no difference at all to DivX.

P.S: T'he Tyan is a great board, and very solid. Asus have just releasd a dual Athlon board as well, which may be more suitable as it doens't require ECC DIMMs like the Tyan does. Also it's likely to be moderately faster, as well as having a number of overclocking features that the Tyan lacks. The Tyan is definitely an awesome board but look in to the Asus A7M266-D before you choose either.

Originally posted by Impo
Does anyone know why encoding with Xmpeg gives a really different file size than the one mentioned in Gordian Knot Calculator ?

I've NEVER got a bit-rate calculator to give me an accurate predicted size. I've stopped using them because they just don't help me in the slightest.

I'm using a T-Bird @ 1.5Ghz and like you, I bought it solely for DivX. I get 10-13 fps using Flask and 4.12, with HQ-BiCubic. A friend of mine has dual 1700s and gets 27fps.

THe way I see it, you may save lots of time by using MPG2AVI during the actually encoding, but the extra time you'll need to spend setting up the right filters for resizing, and then the audio processing & synching probab;y eliminates that gain anyway. I like Flask beause it pretty much does everything for you, without having to run the file through 4 or 5 different programs before it's done. I flask, then chop with Vdub, then burn to CD. Couldn't be easier.

[Impo]

a13antichrist >

I know that a bit-rate calculator never gives an accurate file size.

Anyway with FlaskMPEG I can get a file size near to the one predicted by Gordian Knot and never been disapointed.

With Xmpeg this is quite different.
I configured the program in the same way I did with Flask.
Film: Friends # Season 3 - ep 13
codec: 4.12
video quality: 980 kbps
audio quality: 128 kbps ( MP3 )
filter: RGB

Flask gave me a file wich size was 171 Mb ( well predicted )

Film: Friends # Season 3 - ep 13
codec: 4.12
video quality: 980 kbps
audio quality: 128 kbps ( MP3 )
filter: YUV2

Xmpeg gave me a file wich size was 266 Mb ( really bad prediction )

This is only an example. The only movie that Xmpeg converted and gave me a comparable file size than the one predicted by the bit calculator was "The 5th Element" and I'm still wondering how I did it.

If I insist continue Xmpeg is because it's much faster than FlaskMPEG.

speed in FLASK : 11-14
speed in Xmpeg : ( with YUV2 ) first pass : 25 - 30
second pass : 21 - 24