what encode speed can i expect?

[lloydp]

I have dual 1.8 xeon system with 512mb ram on an iwill dpl533 motherboard, dell perc 2 with with 2 oldish scsi drives in RAID 0. A simple read only hd test reports them giving 35Mb/s.
Encoding 720x576 pal dv (quicktimes) at vbr max 7500, av 6500, min 5500 is giving an encode speed of 0.78 (ie about 23 frames/sec).
I was reading other posts where people are getting 3x realtime, but I'm not sure with what media.
Can anyone say whether my results are reasonable for this setup/encode type, or should I be looking for problems with my hardware? CCE is 2.67.

[DDogg]

People would need more information to help you. What is the method you are using? You say "quicktimes" so I guess you are just loading the AVI into CCE?

As to what times to expect, you will find a *huge* amount of nonsense from people who post CCE speed results without specifying the source and methods. Don't put much stock in those reports as they can be very misleading and generally come from people who do not have any understanding of how to benchmark different systems with CCE.

The only comparison results of any validity are those that use the same method, and very importantly, the same source style and same aspect ratio. Another thing that is very important is the settings and version of CCE itself. Some of the filters in the CCE quality tab radically effect speed.

Uncheck all in the quality tab, *except* "alternate" for interlaced source like most DV, or "zigzag" and "progressive frame flag" for progressive source. In the video tab uncheck all and set matrix to "standard".

Although I am NTSC, perhaps I can at least give you an example of what you need to look for when doing a valid comparison. Obviously you could not do a valid comparison to mine below as you are PAL and encoding many more pixels.

Example #1
Source - NTSC DV.AVI
Aspect Ration 4:3 (very important to compare like AR's with 4:3 suggested as source)
DV Codec - Panasonic
CCE version 2.67.00.13
Template - Rb's interlaced settings
Audio - No audio checked in CCE
VAF - No VAF checked in CCE
Speed - Stabilized speed results after 100,000 frames - 1.84 real time

This has got me thinking about this subject again so going to start a new thread to try to propose a common method of CCE benchmarking that will give valid results. Off hand, I would think transcoding any 4:3 source to Huffy and then loading the resulting AVI into CCE with a specified template or settings would do a decent job, but I have not thought it out yet. Getting a common number for PAL and NTSC folks would either require separated comparisons (PAL to PAL or NTSC to NTSC) or some common source easily available to all as we are only doing benchmarking.


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[lloydp]

Thanks for your comprehensive reply.
I'm using 720x576 interlaced quicktime (ie .mov), 4:3, pal/dv codec,BFF, and I'm encoding direct from CCE. I am using a VAF file, which I think I have to have for more than single pass.
I have all the other options set as you suggest.
Any wisdom you could pass my way would be appreciated!

[SiXXGuNNZ]

200 gigaflops

[lloydp]

OK, just for anyone that's interested, I ran a quick test using a 1700 frame quicktime, spec as above.
I put this through CCE and got a rate of about 1.02 on the encode passes (the VAF was slower).
I then exported from quicktime to AVI, same codec, and re-encoded. This time I got a rate of 2.73.
I think I'll be using avi in the future...

[DDogg]

I then exported from quicktime to AVI What format AVI? Huffy? Also, what method did you use to export/create the new AVI?

[lloydp]

Quicktime (pro) allows export in several formats, including AVI. The codec was pal/dv, 100% quality 25fps. The original quicktime came out of a Mac Avid Media Composer suite.