I intend to organise a table of facts and figures for those who are interested on vcd encoding using the various encoders available (such as Panasonic, Xing, LSX etc.) with the different computer set ups. Please email me your contribution and I will include them in the table for the benefit of all.

Some time and effort will be required from you. No guess work or figures from the mind please.

For ease in tabulation, please use the following format: 1. Your name and email (indicate if you would like this included in the table), 2. PC / Mac 3. CPU Type (Pentium III, AMD etc.), 4. RAM (64MB, 128MB etc.), 5. Capture Card, 6. MPEG Hardware Encoding Card, 7. MPEG Software Encoder Used, 8. Encoding Speed for 1 min of AVI source to MPEG-1 file.

Looking forward to your contribution.

Cheers, NT

-- NT (i1x@nightmail.com), July 11, 2000

Answers

A good deal of this work has already been done. Check out the following link:

http://www.vcdhelper.com/

Tygrus

-- Tygrus (tygrus2000@hotmail.com), July 11, 2000.

i have checked the site you mentioned. the site is very well documented but does not have the data which i intend to gather with this survey.

my intent is to list the different configurations and the encoding speeds achieved with these setups as well as the software encoder used.

THE FOLLOWING IS AN EXAMPLE OF WHAT I WANT TO DO. THE CONFIGURATIONS AND ENCODING SPEEDS HERE ARE TO ILLUSTRATE WHAT MY SURVEY WILL ACCOMPLISH. IT IS BY NO MEANS RELATED TO THE REAL WORLD.

mr a use a p3 500 with 64MB and can achieve 12mins/1min of avi using panasonic.

mr b use a p3 500 with 128MB and achieves 10mins/1min of avi using panasonic.

from these contributions we can see straightaway, adding more ram to a p3 500 can cut off 2mins encoding minutes for each minute of source footage using panasonic.

mr c has a p3 500 with 64MB, he feels that he wants to upgrade his pc so that his encoding can run faster. with these results, mr c can see for himself that by adding another 64MB to his pc, he can run faster instead of shelling out another thousand or so dollars for a new pc.

then

mr d says that he has a amd athon 500 (overclocked to 600) with 64MB and achieves 10mins/1min of avi.

what does that tell you?

to continue further

mr e says that he has a p3 700 with 64MB and achieves 10mins/1min of avi.

so how does this information tell mr c. he has many choices now. he can add another 64MB to his system for the time being. he can also wait on the computer upgrade to see if the amd athon 700 chip will outperform the p3 700 chip vesus the price he has to pay when the info comes in.

the information i intend to gather is very much different from what is available from the site you mentioned. that site, it is a very good site - i agree, but it is based on a celeron 366 with 128MB system.

some use amd, while others use intel, and a very few, cyrix. this collection is to provide comparisons from different setups to encode one minute of mpeg video so that we can make an informed decision in our next upgrade.

cheers, NT

-- NT (i1x@nightmail.com), July 12, 2000.

Goodluck NT here is mine:

1 - Ross McLennan, rmclenna@esc.net.au 2 - PC 3 - Pentium 233 mmx 4 - 96 Sdram 5 - Capture card - DV firewire, ADS Pyro 6 - none 7 - Panasonic v2.5 standalone + others

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), July 12, 2000.

Sorry hit the wrong button:

8- Standard VCD with full DV frame resizing in the encode - 22 minutes default settings, slightly longer with "filtering" - 23.5 minutes.

(These times are higher because the frame is resized in the encode, that information must also be stated or the reader will get a false impression).

HVCD & certainly XVCD times are different and I would not even print the SVCD times with bbMPEG in interlaced mode.

I think you could combine a couple of your items such as 2, 3 ,4 in one.

Your also assuming nothing in between capture and encoding which if your editing home movies is effected by cpu speed etc as well. For example to render my intermediate file after editing is either 6 minutes or 25.5 minutes depending on how its done and must be added to the authoring times for a complete picture!

I have also tested the Pansonic plugin, TPMGEnc and bbMPEG with a variation of times, where do you want to stop?

As an example TPMGEnc resizing from full DV frame, default settings 42 minutes, with gamma correction applied - 53 minutes

Finally the content of the encode will effect times as well, sharper details will take longer. If anyone has used bbMPEG and actually read the printout to get the peak and minimum data rates will understand that statement. So you can see for the information to be on a common base more information is required about the actual encode - its inaccurate to just quote a time without the details, some one using no resizing and poor quality captures will get a totally different result.

Cheers

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), July 12, 2000.

NT,

Software encoders depend greatly on how many "advance functions" you are doing during encoding as much as it depends on how your hardwares are setup. I've found that by the time the CPU reached 550MHz, the time pretty much stable out at 4min encoding per 1min of video/audio, if you do a straight conversion from 352x240 frame size. If you do any of the cropping/cutting/re-frame size, then the time is double. As far as memories are concerned 128Mb is recommended for video processing anyway, anything below that will slow it down by 1/2 the encoding speed due to Microsoft greatest gift to the PC world, WINDOW. Anyway...here is my setup(s).

1. AMD K7 Athlon 550MHz/ 128Mb PC100 SDRAM / ATI AIW128 2xAGP 32Mb. Encoding speed is approximately 4min/1min using 352x240 Mpeg1 3200Kb/s video bitrate/ same with ATI VCR1/VCR2 AVI format using Panasonic 2.3 standalone encoder. 2. AMD K7 Athlon 600MHz/ 256Mb PC100 SDRAM / ATI AIW128 2xAGP 32Mb. Same as one. 3. AMD K7 Athlon 700MHz/ 256Mb PC100 SDRAM / ATI AIW128 2xAGP 16Mb. Same as one. 4. Same setup as 2, added RT6 & M-filter...VCD compliant mpeg in real time. 5. Same setup as 3, added Optibase Xpress...VCD compliant mpeg in realtime.

-- lnguyen (wingstarzz@hotmail.com), July 12, 2000.

1. Romeo rrjuan@hotmail.com 2. PC 3. Pentium 200 MHz with MMX 4. 64MB 5. Firewire 6. 7. Panasonic 2.5 8. 26 minutes / 1 minute of video

-- Romeo (rrjuan@hotmail.com), July 18, 2000.

1 Darryl darryl_1965@yahoo.com 2 pc 3 533mhz 4 128 rdram 5 Pyro 6 - 7 Panasonic 2.21 8 9 minutes per 1 minute of source with no filtering

-- Darryl Schmidt (darryl_1965@yahoo.com), July 19, 2000.