x264 is so slow i want to cry

[hvatum]

You can already! http://mattl.co.uk/mattx/codec/

Go for MATTX for teh win!

The other day I completed transcoding a 2 byte MATTX file to MPEG4 and it filled up my whole terrabyte array before it was even zero percent done. No compression ratio is more amazing or compare even to MATTX.

[Prettz]

So I've got an Athlon 64 3500 and I'm encoding The Matrix at 704x288. I didn't choose a profile, but with the settings I chose I've got ~5.2fps, 11 hours per pass (I didn't choose Turbo 1st pass cause I'm hardcore like that).

I'm glad to know that I paid all this money for this CPU and I can actually take full advantage of it (by bringing it to its knees).

[Flexy]

I'm glad to know that I paid all this money for this CPU and I can actually take full advantage of it (by bringing it to its knees).

Well..in my case the encoding brings*me* to my knees praying and waitiing desperately for the encode to finish :)

(Mind you my A64 runs at 2608 Mhz)

or: "Why the *** did i pay ALL THIS MONEY and it STILL takes 13 hrs for an encode ?? :)

Maybe we need multi-threading...a la "for each pixel it's own CPU :))..that would certanly fly :)

[Adub]

I'm glad to know that I paid all this money for this CPU and I can actually take full advantage of it (by bringing it to its knees).

All this money?

[fight2win]

hey, now i am used to long-time encoding, it gives so much better quality than mp4asp...takes me around 12hrs. to encode dvd to mp4 using x264-megui, but hey, as long as we get quality, no sweat, right...:)

[Prettz]

I'm glad to know that I paid all this money for this CPU and I can actually take full advantage of it (by bringing it to its knees).

All this money?
I'm poor. I actually had to save up to buy a $100 CPU and motherboard for it.

And my encode finally just finished, and I have to say all that time paid off. This 1 CD rip of The Matrix looks frigging spectacular. :D

[Shinjite]

Well..in my case the encoding brings*me* to my knees praying and waitiing desperately for the encode to finish :)

(Mind you my A64 runs at 2608 Mhz)

or: "Why the *** did i pay ALL THIS MONEY and it STILL takes 13 hrs for an encode ?? :)

Maybe we need multi-threading...a la "for each pixel it's own CPU :))..that would certanly fly :)

You're on AMD64 and you're complaining?
I am still using the old 2.4B@3.24Ghz and I encode FF7 AC with HQ-Insane and it took me 3 days to complete it at 0.67fps. Imagine.....

But the output is spectacular as expected :)

[Sharktooth]

It's always the same story... you guys cant pretend to use insane settings and get good speeds, even with the fastest CPU.
Also the quality difference between the ultra-super-insane settings and a more moderate setup is not mind blowing...
You should also understand the more compression means the more data removed and in some cases (high bitrate/non constrained bitrate, hi-def etc) it may hurt quality.

[shirohamada]

640x336 using asp q2 eq on barton 2500+ got ~4fps, woohoo :(

[BlackSharkfr]

I've just noticed a little glitch in the HQ profiles.
It looks like the profiles are named incorrectly :
for example :
HQ insane only uses main profile options (subme5, hexagon search, no b frames, 1 ref, etc..) while HQ slow uses some of the highests available options (sumbe7 ! multihex search, trellis2, lots of b & ref frames etc...)
So Insane is pretty quick, while slow is... well.. slower than slowest.

I don't know whether it comes from megui or x264 but these two profiles should be switched with each other.

[foxyshadis]

You'd better re-import the profiles, it sounds like you might have undone it while tweaking options at some point. Or somehow swapped a bunch.

It's not so easy to force a re-download, but if you look in AutoUpdate.xml, you can find <iUpgradeable xsi:type="ProfilesFile">, lower the revision # just under that to 28 or so and it'll redownload the new ones. Before that maybe you should delete your x264 profiles folder.

[BlackSharkfr]

better now
Thanks

[Eleo]

x264 has made me seriously consider Intel Core 2 Duo. I'm currently very willing to spend $250 on a new processor if it cuts down on the 8-24hr encoding time.

[Kostarum Rex Persia]

Well, you should consider Core 2 Duo 6600 (cost around 325 $).

You can very easy overclock him from default 2.4 GHz to 3 GHz without fear.

[jigc]

yes, it is slow with 2 passes.
may be u should try EQ to shorten the encoding time.

btw, can feature "hibernate when finish" be added?
current feature "shut down when finish" is useless for me :(
(i seldom shut down my pc)

[Eleo]

I read tht an E6300 can be overclocked to just over 3.0GHz using the stock cooling. I thought about getting an E6400 but was told that the E6300 had a better price/overclocking ratio. The 6600 is too expensive for me. At this point I'm hoping I could pull off HQ-Slower on a 90-120min feature film in, I don't know, five hours total. Or am I expecting too much?

Right now I am encoding The Incredibles on a Pentium D 820; I got ~25FPS on the first pass and am getting ~6.2FPS on the second, first pass took about 2hrs, the elapsed time plus remaining time on the second pass is 7.5hrs. This is a big step up from when I was using a Pentium 4 2.4, where it would take about 20hrs for both passes combined. I'm hoping that the E6300 overclocked (or even not overclocked) will give me very good encoding times, otherwise I will be very disappointed that I spent so much money.

Are there any benchmarks on this?

[check]

sounds like you've changed your profiles around - this is what HQ-Insane output is:
--ref 16 --mixed-refs --no-fast-pskip --bframes 3 --b-pyramid --b-rdo --bime --weightb --direct auto --filter -2,-1 --subme 7 --trellis 2 --analyse all --8x8dct --vbv-maxrate 25000 --me umh --thread-input --progress --no-psnr
And this is HQ-Slow:
--ref 3 --bframes 3 --b-pyramid --weightb --direct auto --filter -2,-1 --subme 6 --trellis 1 --analyse all --8x8dct --vbv-maxrate 25000 --me umh --merange 12 --thread-input --progress --no-psnr

[Eleo]

What would make you think I changed my profiles around? I haven't really touched anything.

[Bh4i]

Im on a E6600 @ 2,4 Ghz and get this with HQ-Slow:

1st pass: 50-60 fps
2nd pass: ~30 fps

With HQ-Insane i get:

1st pass: ~60 fps
2nd pass: 9-10 fps

[Eleo]

9-10FPS isn't bad I guess for HQ-Insane. 30FPS is pretty fast for for HQ-Slow; I'd estimate 30FPS would be less than 1.5hrs on most films; incredibly fast for a standard-def TV episode.

Can you give me a stat on HQ-Slower? That's usually what I use, and I don't want to assume that it's the average between 30 and 10 FPS (which it very well could be).

If you get that those speeds at 2.4 then I'm interested in seeing what someone gets with an overclocked Conroe at 3.0GHz or beyond.

[Bh4i]

My next movie will be HQ-Slower :)

Im currently busy with a HQ-Insane encode, it will take a few hours.

PS: Are these profiles from Sharktooth???

[Sirber]

from Sharktooth yeah.

[Dreassica]

I know a comparison is a bit unfair, but encoding using vfw version of x264 with almost all options same, and the ones that aren't in vfw version disabled, i found that it was alost 8x faster, getting 7-8 fps with vfw and just over 1 with CLI version, using same lossless file through avisynth, and that on a c2d E6300

[nm]

Did you check that the options the encoder actually used were about the same in both cases (by fetching the x264 option info from the encoded file)?

[Sharktooth]

VFW has a lot less options than CLI and different defaults.

[Dreassica]

I altered cli settings so it would match the vfw ones by looking at the headers of the encoded files, so they would match, and after that it was practically same speed on both.options. Oddly though, when i set deblocking to 1:2, cli file will have option "deblock=1:1:1" in teh header, but for the vfw its 1:1:2