Building a faster ripping box

[Wicky]

I am currently in the process of ripping all my dvds so that I can place them on my server and can finally get rid of my dvd players. Obviously this requires a lot of space to do at decent quality, to handle that job I am upgrading my server from its current 3.3TB to roughly 7tb. I must make it clear that this is for my private usage so that I can stream the movies from the server into my tv or media center to enable me to view my collection without having to switch between countless remotes and the hassle of storing all those disks so close to my TV.

Thus far I have completed about 20 disks using the guides and help files for the wonderful software I have found as a result of this site. Ripit4me, dvd decrypter, dvd shrink, and gordian knot are wonderful pieces of software that make this a much easier job than I had thought, but it is still very time consuming and as I have so many disks left to do from my collection I am not above upgrading the pc that is handling the load.

Currently the box that handles this tax is running an Intel Core 2 Duo e6300@stock, 1gb DDR400, ECS P4M800-Pro motherboard, and 2x 80gb WD 7200/8 drives in raid 0, with a 100gb maxtor for additional storage.
Can anyone give me any specific aid in fine tuning this machine for this task? The machine is completely clean and has no games or applications on there that are not related to the work that I am doing.
Would a box running 2x dual core processors, or one of the yet to be released quad core processors allow me to cut my ripping and encoding times drastically? What about dvd drives, is there any specific models you would reccomend for this type of work? I am currently using a Sony drive (DVD RW DRU-500A). Is there a point where to quick a rip can effect quality or stability?

I am quite new to this sort of thing, but I have read up on as much as I could find and this forums seems to be the only place that seems to be willing to help. I am experienced with hardware and am able to get some good deals so any realistic hardware specifications are not out of reach, but as with any user, the less I have to spend the happier I am :D

[Blue_MiSfit]

There are two main "bottlenecks" in the modern MPEG-4 encoding workflow: The encoder and avisynth. Both are quite fast compared to commercial solutions, and the quality achieved is well worth the time IMO. However, there are ways to speed up the process.

A relatively small amount of time is spent extracting the VOBs from the source media, demuxing the audio, and making the d2v. This entire process can take as little as 10 or 15 minutes.

Are you taking full advantage of your Core 2 Duo? doing so requires setting up XviD (guessing since you use Gordian Knot) to use 2 threads, and also testing the sweet waters of salvation that are multithreaded avisynth :D

I think that a single quad core is the best way to go (when they actually come out). Dual socket systems make sacrifices and have other problems, and insanely high power requirements. They're also dreadfully expensive.

Your ECS motherboard has a VIA chipset, which does not compare to an Intel 975x, stacked with low latency DDR2 800. You have to pay for this setup, but it can make a difference. It also gives you more overclocking room, which your E6300 is VERY capable of.

Invest in a new board, a gig of overclocking ram (maybe 2 if you have the cash money and are considering Vista), and a really badass heatsink. I recommend Zalman. You should hit over 3 GHz no problem with a decent motherboard and RAM combo. Keep in mind a beefy power supply is a prerequisite for overclocking as well. Antec and Enermax are the industry leaders at sane price points IMO, and PC Power and Cooling for the Ferrari owners out there. 500W-600W is a good number, and you can get an Antec 500W for under $80 these days.

Another thing that can help is big RAID. My uber system at work (MacPro) has a 3 drive SATA RAID 0 for encoding work, and it makes a big difference. Peak transfer rates exceed 200 MB/s. Compare that with under 70 for a single drive. The best performance still comes from SCSI drives, mainly due to their lightning fast seek times and 15k spindle speeds. They are insanely expensive still. Raptors are a happy compromise. Hardware RAID controllers also make a lot of difference, but software RAID / motherboard RAID is remarkably competent.

As far as DVDRW drives go, they're mostly all the same these days. Plextor has usually had a slight edge in speed, and their drives have a SATA option now, which is nice. Still, they cost 4-5x as much as the competition ($120 or so for one that can supposedly do 18x, whereas a LiteOn or NEC is $30 last I checked)

At the least, overclock your processor! At the most, get a new motherboard, ram, power supply and cooler and overclock the SHIT out of your processor. Also, make sure your software is setup correctly and that you are maximizing CPU utilization.

Good luck. Ask questions if you have any!

~MiSfit

[Wicky]

Thank you very much for your reply, it was quite informative.

I have not done any real software optimization but if there are ways to improve upon what I have now then I will have to look into it, is there a simple GUI for setting this up or will I need some aid or tutorial to avoid screwing things up? Any links would help, but perhaps its in a sticky or page here that I have overlooked, I will have to do a search I guess :p

About the system. Originally I had been using a pentium D820 that I bought a while back to do various tasks with video editing such as copying old home movies and such. That type of thing was not very complicated and the bare system was enough. I have just ordered a new 965P based motherboard and 1gb of GSkill DDR2 800. The board is a Biostar p965 deluxe, I know it is not as highly regarded as boards from Asus, DFI, or even intels own badaxe, but untill I see what quad core has to offer I dont really want to drop that much into this knowing its only a month or two away. The biostar reportedly has no trouble reaching 500fsb through the bios, being that the average overclock seems to put the e6300 at 3ghz I would hope this gives me enough leg room. I am a little bit concerned that I may lose stability if I push to far, and being that I live under the hot Texas sun, ambient temps in my room get a fair bit higher than most.
I am currently using an Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 pro, I had bought it for its quiet operation and for fear that anything much larger would not fit on the microATX ECS board. If I find it lacking I suppose I would have to invest in something like the zalman CNPS9500/9700.
Currently I am using an Ultra 400w powersupply, but I will be able to recycle either this OCZ 520w modstream or the Enermax Liberty 620w that I am currently using in my server (which is being replaced by a 720w silverstone because of the expansion in storage) so I should not find myself lacking in the power department :p

I currently run RAID 0 through 2x 80gb WD hard drives, which was the max I could run through the onboard RAID controller on the ECS board, I have no real experience in this area of video work, would the added throughput of 3-4x drives in RAID 0 give me enough of a boost to justify it over 2x drives in RAID 0? At $40 a piece its hardly going to break the bank. I do not wish to go with SCSI, I have used them in past servers but found their space limitations and high cost to be to much of a brick wall. I could go with the raptors, I do run a single 74gb raptor in my main box and $100 for a 36gb raptor isn't to bad but for the same price I could easily run a better RAID 0 array.

For the dvdrw I am simply using one that was left over from another machine that was parted out, I only mentioned it because it is not the newest of drives.There is a $30 SATA Lite-on drive on newegg HERE (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827106040) Would this be a recommendable model? And some search results seem to suggest THIS (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16827151133) samsung is a better alternative. Any comments? It is true like you said that many are the exact same and only differ by the price tag and the sticker on the box, but I am not certain which numbers in the specifications relate most to this type of work. I do not wish to burn dvds once they are ripped, I only want to be able to take them off their disks as efficiently as possible.


I will overclock my chip a bit, shooting for the 3ghz ballpark but it must be 24/7 stable. The ECS would take me to windows at 2.1ghz but I couldnt get a lot of work done before it locked up so I didn't bother.
Thank you for your time misfit, I really appreciate it :thanks:

[Blue_MiSfit]

No problem :)

I've heard really good things about that Biostar T-Force board. HardOCP said they were very impressed with its stability and overclockability.

You should hit 3 GHz no problem whatsoever :) I understand your concerns about ambient air temperatures. Make sure your case is well ventilated!

~MiSfit