x264 is so slow i want to cry

[Flexy]

i started to encode a 108mins 1280x736 "hdtv/wmv9 video" (orig size 4.1GB) with X264 (megui, staxrip, whatever) using the "HQ-slow" setting.

I started the encode today at 4:30am....now it's 1:50pm and ETA is another hour. Makes 10+ hrs encoding time.

Geeeeeeeezzzzzzzzzz

And i have a A64 running at 2618mhz 1gb ram and otherwise pretty beefed up system. I just hope the quality is worth it....ugh....

SOrry..just wanted to rant....this IS a long time :(

[Manao]

Well, the settings is called "HQ-slow" for a reason. I don't see why you're complaining.

[Flexy]

Well, the settings is called "HQ-slow" for a reason. I don't see why you're complaining.

i know...thanks god i didnt use "slower" or even "slowest" :)

[lexor]

i know...thanks god i didnt use "slower" or even "slowest" :)
you should try insane and see if it lives up to the name, call mental institution ahead of time, just in case.

wait, is it the first pass you doing now? so you got another like 18 hours of second pass to go?

[Flexy]

well took me a little over 11hrs....shrank it from 4.1GB to 900kb and quality is OUTSTANDING :)

[Dark Eiri]

Then you did a great miracle!
You mean 900 MB right? XD

[Flexy]

Then you did a great miracle!
You mean 900 MB right? XD

oups.... :) Must be wishful thinking on my side...:)
Yeah 900MB of course.

[Dark Eiri]

Hopefully in a few centuries we will be able to compress like that without much loss ._.'

[GmorG McRoth]

Hopefully in a few centuries we will be able to compress like that without much loss ._.'
Then we will have storage space so big, so we will have lossless compression used or even no compression at all. :)

[lexor]

Then we will have storage space so big, so we will have lossless compression used or even no compression at all. :)
but the storage medium will be so big and so expensive that only the 3 richest kings of Europe will be able to afford them. :D

[frodeste]

I am running the HQ-Insane (modified to support 2 threads) on an AMD X2 processor.

1 pass was: encoded 8138 frames, 24.40 fps, 1014.40 kb/s
2 pass is now at 4,45 fps

Is this normal?

[DeeGee]

Yep, first pass is just to get the statistics of the video file, so it's lot faster.

[foxyshadis]

Actually that's pretty fast for insane, for most people. You must have a high-end x2.

[MeteorRain]

@Flexy
encoding at 1280*736 would be much slower than at 848*480 and 704*396

[Flexy]

@Flexy
encoding at 1280*736 would be much slower than at 848*480 and 704*396

yeah sure...thinking about cropping my vids..but then you might never know i might get a big wide-screen TV and then i might regret it :)

[check]

Hopefully in a few centuries we will be able to compress like that without much loss ._.'
You can already! http://mattl.co.uk/mattx/codec/

[n3r0]

I am running the HQ-Insane (modified to support 2 threads) on an AMD X2 processor.

1 pass was: encoded 8138 frames, 24.40 fps, 1014.40 kb/s
2 pass is now at 4,45 fps

Is this normal?
and what's the source, resolution?
i'm trying to convert 1024x768 with HQinsane 4000kb/s and second pass goes 2,8-3,3fps with e6600 @2,7GHz :confused:

edit: sorry it was 1000kb/s

4000kb/s is about 2,3fps

[Sharktooth]

n3r0, welcome to the real world performance...

[Danisan]

How about we setup a distributed computing network för x264 encoding, eh? :p

That number seems normal to me on that system. Even if the new Core 2 Duo is about ??% faster than the AMD X2 it doesn't add that much more fps in the end I think.

[DarkZell666]

@check: I only have 1 thing to say : dtsroflmmx :D

[bkman]

and what's the source, resolution?
i'm trying to convert 1024x768 with HQinsane 4000kb/s and second pass goes 2,8-3,3fps with e6600 @2,7GHz :confused:

edit: sorry it was 1000kb/s

4000kb/s is about 2,3fps

If that is too slow for you, then maybe you should not use HQ-Insane. It is named that for a reason. :sly:

[n3r0]

If that is too slow for you, then maybe you should not use HQ-Insane. It is named that for a reason. :sly:
i don't use it :p
was just curious about this 4,45fps X2 muscle :D

[Eleo]

Meh, I expected HQ-Slower to be slow, but not THIS slow. The first pass took about 4 hours. I figured the second pass would take 4 hours as well; maybe slightly longer. I wake up today and see that 5 hours have elapsed for second pass and 10 hours are remaining!!! I immediately stopped the process. It's okay when this is taking place while I'm asleep but I don't want my cpu getting buggered all during the day time, too :(

Is there a way to get good results without taking this much time? Even rebuilding DVDs wit DVD Rebuilder and CCE + 3 passes only took me about 4 hours total. I've got like 25 movies I still want to reencode.

P.S. this is on a Pentium 4 2.4GHz; 512MB of RAM. Not the fastest computer in the world, but still. I figured if CCE could do it in 4 hours with excellent quality then x264 could do it in about that time.

[GodofaGap]

Use a faster profile. x264 doesn't need --subme 7 --me umh --b-rdo -r 16 to look good. ;)

Comparing MPEG2 with H264 concerning speed is useless. Of course any normal MPEG2 encoder will be much faster. There's about 10 years difference in technology. (Remember what kind of CPU you had 10 years ago :) )

[Eleo]

Ten years ago... Maybe a Pentium 2 233MHz.

"Faster profile" well I just see so many. I'm going for the best compromise between quality and my sanity; ie the best looking video I can get for under 8 hours of encoding time. Do you have a suggestion?

But then again obviously if the profiles I use don't do me much better than xvid then there's no reason to be using x264 and trying to be hip and stuff. I was just very keen on x264 because the result looks damn near like the DVD; at least the sample I got from a friend did.

[Flexy]

problem is...well...15hrs etc. encoding time i could MAYBE live with....if there were a proper way to PAUSE an encoding.
But there is not. Which is a problem :)

[Flexy]

Use a faster profile. x264 doesn't need --subme 7 --me umh --b-rdo -r 16 to look good. ;)


CE-highprofile ?

Which one ? Not that fast either....

People always also say "do two passes...maybe more".....so what would be a good profile for every-day use/viewing of NON HDTV movies ?

[Eleo]

problem is...well...15hrs etc. encoding time i could MAYBE live with....if there were a proper way to PAUSE an encoding.
But there is not. Which is a problem :)
That would certainly help; especially if there was a safe way to do it like pause it and close MeGUI and come back to it whenever.

[Dreassica]

4fps eh, try 0.5fps for size.... On a athlon 64 3000+ s754.

[Eleo]

(Why would you even bother, then?)

[unmei]

For using the computer while you encode, just set the x264 priority to below normal or even lower if that is not enough. If for some reason you really need to pause it, even tho i never tried it, i think SysInternals PSSuspend (http://www.sysinternals.com/Utilities/PsSuspend.html) is made for that. However, since i doubt you can turn off the computer and still resume, there is no real gain over simply lowering the process priority.

[GodofaGap]

Faster profile" well I just see so many. I'm going for the best compromise between quality and my sanity; ie the best looking video I can get for under 8 hours of encoding time. Do you have a suggestion?
I don't know the profiles that MeGUI uses well enough. I'm sorry. It always puzzles me that someone picks the profile that is called slow or slower and than is amazed it actually is slow. :) Is there nothing called XX-fast? Or perhaps even XX-normal? (And if not, why not?)

Of course for the higher bitrate range, XviD is a valid alternative too.

[Sharktooth]

Coz if you want a fast encoding you should use xvid instead :P
Also if you want faster profiles, just dont use HQ ones...
speed and quality are opposite words...

[n3r0]

HQslow profile has got quite good speed in my opinion
coming from tbred system :D
2 hours first pass (24fps) + 9fps is about 6 hours of second pass
but the default should give quite balanced result in terms of quality and speed

[Eleo]

I don't know the profiles that MeGUI uses well enough. I'm sorry. It always puzzles me that someone picks the profile that is called slow or slower and than is amazed it actually is slow. :)
Well, "slow" is rather arbitrary. 8 hours encoding is slow, but 20+ hours is just... Ridiculous.

[Eleo]

I got a question: Is bitrate significant to the speed? I was trying to encode with a bitrate of 1700~ kbps (3CD); is that what slowed me down so much?

[akupenguin]

It depends on the options, but 800kbps might be 25% faster than 1600kbps.

[Inventive Software]

You lot are wingers, really! I've got a Celeron 800 MHz, and I do a regular encode of some games footage. It's not longer than about 1500 to 2000 frames usually, and it takes 2 hours to do 2 passes in x264, at 1500 kbps. 1500 to 2000 frames is anywhere between 70 and 90 seconds. In XviD, I can have both passes done within 20-30 minutes. That's with all the high quality settings too in both codecs, yet x264 looks miles better, even with XviD or ffdshow's post-processing!

[Sseink]

I am running the HQ-Insane (modified to support 2 threads) on an AMD X2 processor.

1 pass was: encoded 8138 frames, 24.40 fps, 1014.40 kb/s
2 pass is now at 4,45 fps

Is this normal?

and what's the source, resolution?
i'm trying to convert 1024x768 with HQinsane 4000kb/s and second pass goes 2,8-3,3fps with e6600 @2,7GHz :confused:

edit: sorry it was 1000kb/s

4000kb/s is about 2,3fps

n3r0, welcome to the real world performance...

What do you mean ? Do you say, that the Conroe CPU sucks for x264 encoding ?

Does the integrated memory controller of the AMD X2 CPU make a big difference here ?

[Sharktooth]

No, it doesnt suck, it's a monster CPU, but the AMD multicore implementation just shines with x264 partially because of faster MMX but also coz of the architecture (the Conroe shared cache is good but not as good as the crossbar switch).
Maybe optimizing the code for Conroe will just make it faster.

[Sseink]

Ah I see, thank you for the explanation. I am just in the progress of building a new system and decided that it should be based on Conroe.

[bkman]

What do you mean ? Do you say, that the Conroe CPU sucks for x264 encoding ?

Not at all. See: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=849968#post849968

The slower speed of n3r0 is probably because of the higher resolution he is encoding.

[nfm]

@Sseink

Get a good board, dfi x975, intel x975 or asus and you should have no problem overclocking conroe to 3.8Ghz fully stable on air cooling, throw in tight latencies, tweak the hell out of your ram and you should be good to go.

[Sseink]

Very interesting, thank you, bkman :)

@nfm

Yeah, a good mainboard is important. I think I will get the Asus P5W DH Deluxe, heard good things about the new Professional series from Asus too, the P5W64 WS Professional (i975X) in particular. Some guy achieved an FSB of 472 MHz.

But the P5W DH Deluxe will be more than enough for an FSB of ~ 420 to get 3800 MHz (x 9 = E6600 multiplier).

[n3r0]

well i must add that my system is based on a Asrock 775dual-vsta budget mainboard with 1GB pc3200 :D

[hkl8324]

However, since i doubt you can turn off the computer and still resume, there is no real gain over simply lowering the process priority.

Windows Hibernate or Suspend can do that:D

[n3r0]

tried to encode a DVD to x264
704x384 with TomsMoComp 1474kb/s
and it came 1st pass 54,4fps and 2nd pass 4,7-5,1fps
HQinsane modified to 2 threads

now the conroe is quite easy to OC, so 3,5GHz would do much better

[MeteorRain]

i'd hope x264 encoder can dump it's variables into disk on pausing and later resume in another running :o

[frodeste]

Actually that's pretty fast for insane, for most people. You must have a high-end x2.

True. I do, and I am running 64 bit Vista... (Which is quite faster then XP on the same machine believe it or not)

[n3r0]

True. I do, and I am running 64 bit Vista... (Which is quite faster then XP on the same machine believe it or not)
and what was the output resolution, HD or regular PAL/NTSC?