Hardware - Setup For Success

[jfsecure]

We are setting up a test station to start our testing with h264 and have three requirements.

1.) Single pass high quality capture
2.) Reasonable File Size
3.) Hardware based capture from sVideo source (don't ask - outside our control)

The video footage is high motion sports video from a long distance away.

I have been testing the x264 software with mixed results and realize it is time to throw some hardware at this to increase the performance.

While I don't mind testing software settings, hardware can get expensive if we decide to make changes.

Here is what I am thinking,

AMD 64Bit processor
1GB ram
SATA drives
ATI x1600 video card with h264 assisted encoding - we would have to use the ATI software which makes me nervous but the transcoding speeds if needed in the future and the hardware assistance will hopefully make up for it.

From my research this hardware should give us a good base to setup our capture system but I thought I would sound off to hear what other people think.

[foxyshadis]

ATI hardware decoding might be worthwhile, but given the pitiful results of its encoder I can't imagine it would be that useful unless they seriously upgrade it in the near future. It is fast enough to use for real-time streaming, but so is xvid for even higher quality.

For software encoding:
Make sure you get an X2. Doubling software encoding speed for another $100 is nothing to sniff at. Being on a 64-bit OS with fully 64-bit workflow will add even more speed, but it can limit your options somewhat.

For x264, find a --crf value that meets your size/quality needs and you'll be all set.

[bobololo]

We are setting up a test station to start our testing with h264 and have three requirements.

1.) Single pass high quality capture
2.) Reasonable File Size
3.) Hardware based capture from sVideo source (don't ask - outside our control)

The video footage is high motion sports video from a long distance away.

I have been testing the x264 software with mixed results and realize it is time to throw some hardware at this to increase the performance.

Does your hw capture requirement imply real-time encoding ? If so and if you intend full resolution (D1) live encoding with a good quality, a bi AMD opteron 275/280 won't be too much imho.

ps: regarding your y/c source and high motion sport, x264 doesn't support interlaced encoding, hence you'll have to deinterlace the source. Depending on the quality of the deinterlacing you're expecting, it could take some significant cpu load as well. The GPU could be helpful for that purpose though, but I would definitely not rely on the GPU for speeding up the encoding.