H.264/x264 encoder for Distributed Parallel Conversion with GUI

[Adrenaline-rush]

Hello All,

Guess the topic heading says it all. I can be considered a novice to the world of digital video conversion/editing and so on. Whatever I have learned is all courtesy of this website , it certainly is an awesome site where experts are kind enough to share thier guides/tips/tutorials/advices.

Have been pretty successful in my ventures till today, mainly concerned with digital video formats and ability to render on Upnp/DLNA devices like PS3. As from all reviews and technical info available its established that AVC/H.264 is a much greater improvement in video encoding at reasonable file sizes, especially for the rips of HD-DVD or Blu-Ray discs.

While encoding some of my own DVDs to Mp4 having H.264/x264 video codec, a considerable amount of time was required if the quality settings were kept high to avoid any loss of video/quality. It even took a day and a half for my Pentium 4 HT 3.2 GHZ, 2gb RAM to run continually and finally do the job. Tried doing is using various programes like FairUse Wizard and XVID4PSP. The XVID conversion is pretty much what I use mainly due to its reasonable encoding times.

The only thing I wanted to ask, and it maybe a silly question is that I have another Pentium 4 2.0 Ghz desktop lying idle. Is their a way to connect both PCs lin parallel/gird formation and then run a video conversion program which can split the encoding job onto 2 interconnected PCs and can run in a distributed computing environment thus balancing load and doing the job efficiently. This can certainly reduce the encoding time the amount of load on each processor.

I can across a program for distributed farm encoding at

http://omion.dyndns.org/x264farm/x264farm.html

which is an old project and not actively developed.

Does some one knows of a much better application with easy to use GUI for this task. Maybe even for the files I already have in AVI/XVID formats.

Regards,
Myself.

[Adub]

There is a MeGUI extension being worked on (supposedly) at the moment, and maybe the author will be so inclined as to post here.

[Adrenaline-rush]

Well,

I would appreciate if the Gurus from MEGUI can post about any new developments being considered for it and the ability to distribute the encoding jobs onto multiple processors/PCs. This would certainly be a big help for people like me who want to maintain a digital media library while having efficient storage capacity utilization and quality outputs.

Although i did some tests myself and discovered that at high bit rates (2000Kbps and above), the difference between XVID and x264 needs a very critical eye to be highlighted and only are of negligible visual effect. Both codecs show excellent results at high bit rates provided the input source video is in master resolutions and details.

However x264 wins in the final file size thus achieving maximum capacity utilization.

Anyways would keep my fingers crossed for a working solution and its real world applications. Guess Sony VEGAS or Apple Final Cut Pro can do it too, but they are highly commercial applications for large scale media productions houses and not mainly for a home user.

Any more ideas....

Regards,
Myself

[smok3]

easy to use GUI for this task

A moot point, basic thing with this stuff (renderfarm) is correctly setup lan, with nicely patched paths, easy way is to apply some disk letter to unc paths and start thinkering from there (Then basic/dumb app would be watch-folder based, say watching for incoming avs scripts...)

Sony VEGAS or Apple Final Cut Pro can do it too
Sony Vegas can act as a renderfarm? edit: yes, i see it can actually do some distributed encoding....

The XVID conversion is pretty much what I use mainly due to its reasonable encoding times.
This was discussed to death, do some searching (x264 is/can be very fast).

[RunningSkittle]

after effects can do that too

[Sharktooth]

http://megui.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/megui/megui/branches/x264farm/

[Adrenaline-rush]

Thanks,

A moot point, basic thing with this stuff (renderfarm) is correctly setup lan, with nicely patched paths, easy way is to apply some disk letter to unc paths and start thinkering from there (Then basic/dumb app would be watch-folder based, say watching for incoming avs scripts...)


Sony Vegas can act as a renderfarm? edit: yes, i see it can actually do some distributed encoding....


This was discussed to death, do some searching (x264 is/can be very fast).

Well i guess I have my LAN pretty much figured out , just looking for an application to work on it.

Can you please refer to a thread or a link where I can see how the x264 can be configured to perform fast encoding at good quality comparable to XVID. I did my search but was in vain with too many links.

Sharktooth,

I will appreciate if you can guide me to some sort of 'How-to' guide for using this farm encoding version of MEGUI for which you have posted the link. I went over but there are just project files uploaded. Do i have to compile them, how should i proceed setting it up.

Thanks in advance for your help,
Adrenaline-Rush.

[Adrenaline-rush]

Hi ,

Well just got my hands on Adobe After Effects. Can anybody guide me to a novice "How-to" to let me start any adventures with it.

Again the help for MEGUI distributed version is awaited.

Thanks,
Myself.

[smok3]

after effects can't do encoding with x264 if that is what you are after?

really short guide on renderfarming (only one slave is considered) with ae can be found on my blog (again this is not really for encoding);

http://blog.somestuff.org/index.php?entry=entry060627-103937

[Adrenaline-rush]

after effects can't do encoding with x264 if that is what you are after?

really short guide on renderfarming (only one slave is considered) with ae can be found on my blog (again this is not really for encoding);

http://blog.somestuff.org/index.php?entry=entry060627-103937


Well yeah all this while I am only after distributed render farm for x264 encoding. Rest of the encodings are pretty fine on a single powerful PC as well.

So if not after effects then what is the other solution besides MEGUI (for which I have no clue how to compile and user since there is no guide).

I have heard and downloaded this program called "ProCoder 3" from Thomson Grass Valley, which is supposed to support multiple grid PCs for H.264 encoding. Have you got any idea about it.

Regards,
Myself.

[Adub]

You know, ani-x264 used to support it. You might try that.

[fib0by]

The discussion seems to be still alive (just slow), with the author participating:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=117889

[Adrenaline-rush]

Hello,

I did try out the ani-x264 , without much clue on how to set it up for a distributed encoding 'herculean task'. So untill now I dont really have a success story to share. Well i guess the idea is not very ambitious or unrealistic, it might already be in applied use in the industry and media studios/production houses and channels via expensive proprietary software.

I just wanted to try it out on a home/SOHO prosumer level mainly using the open source software which are jointly developed via collaboration and some of it are the brainchild of this very forum of DOOM. The downside with it i guess sometimes is that not much of detailed info is available to cut the engineering details and get a novice user right on the track to the usability side of such utilities. Of course a minimum level of knowledge with audio/video/compression/encoding/decoding is a must for such adventures.

Still i am hopeful that some body will come up with an intuitive GUI interface to such an application which is relatively easier to setup. The most likely contender for this race according to me is MEGUI, which already might be doing the job, just that there is no reference information available about how to make it work.

Any clues are always welcome.

Regards,
Adrenaline-Rush.

[Sharktooth]

Sharktooth,

I will appreciate if you can guide me to some sort of 'How-to' guide for using this farm encoding version of MEGUI for which you have posted the link. I went over but there are just project files uploaded. Do i have to compile them, how should i proceed setting it up.

Thanks in advance for your help,
Adrenaline-Rush.
yes, those are the souces. they need to be compiled with visual studio (2008 or 2005 express edition - free - should do the job).

[quantum5uicid3]

Anwering to the original post/poster on this thread, if you are looking for an application that can perform parallel or distributed video encoding you could probably try the following app. Its for windows so will not work any other platform.

( google for xCode parallel encoder )
xCode Parallel / Distributed DVD/video encoder.
link : http://superscalar.pbworks.com/

The application lets you create your own dvd/video encoding grid. Its pretty scalable. I have a setup with around 10 ghz of combined processing power, mostly old dual core machines, and the time it takes to convert a single DVD ( ps3 profile ( fastest ) ) is around 30 mins ( for a 90 min run length dvd ).

Give it a try,


an eula for an "x.264 encoded video" encoder?

this a gpl violation

edit: added quote so no confusion on whether i'm talking about op.