How to possibly speed up CCE (not using 100% cpu?)

[Stereodude]

I don't know if everyone else know about this or not. I've not seen any mention of it so, so I thought I'd post it.

I've found that CCE runs faster if it is the selected foreground application.

I do my compression on a P4 2.4b running at 2970. If I open up the task manager (to monitor CPU usage) and have it selected as the active window CCE will only use about 80% of the processor and the encode drops below 1x, but if I click on the encoding window (making it selected and the active window) CCE will jump back up and stick at 100%. I've tried this on several clips and it seems to be consistently repeatable. I even tried altering the priority of CCE to High and even real time and I found if it's not the active, selected window it will not use 100% of the CPU.

This may only be the case on P4 machines, or only on machines that run in excess of a certain Mhz value. YMMV

Stereodude

[auenf]

thats a windows process 'feature'. it can be setup to allocate more resources to either foreground or background applications, the default is foreground, and is probably the best if you want to use your computer while ANYTHING is very processor intense.

Enf...

[Stereodude]

I really am having all sorts of problems trying to keep the CPU usage up (at 100%) on my CPU. It's now running at 3.06gHz and it just doesn't want to use 100% of the CPU. I'm using a WD2000JB (fastest IDE HD around) for the source files and am saving to another HD. The machine is doing nothing else while encoding either. On 29.97fps video I have a lot of problems getting past 1x.

Stereodude

[Stereodude]

I did some additional testing. It seems that CCE is not written to scale much beyond a 2.4 Ghz P4 CPU. The issue seems to be related to AVI file reading. I'm running a 3.06Ghz (2.4b with FSB of 170Mhz)

I put a partition on the very front of my WD2000JB. I put the AVI file (HuffYUV compression) that I'm encoding in this partition and it is the only file in that partition so there is no fragmentation. The drive can sustain 56.5MBytes/sec. That is at least 5x what's needed to play it real time. I can encode to the tune about 1.05x or so. CPU usage averages about 82%. If I put the file on the end of a slower HD (WD800JB) where sustained performance is lower (29.2Mbyte/sec) it encode slower (about .9x) and the CPU usage is proportionately lower.

I've been using the performance monitor to watch disk utilization and other performance variables. Neither of the two drives are really being stressed. They still have over 75% idle time.

Now to eliminate HuffYUV as the problem I output a uncompressed 24 bit AVI at the same resolution (720x480) to the WD2000JB and the performance is abysmal at .25x or so. The HD is fast enough to easily play the file in real time, but still the lack of compression was very detrimental to CCE's speed.

I performed another test. My machine has 1 gig of RAM in it. I trimmed down my test file to about 500 meg (so the entire file could/would be cached). CCE then tears through file using 100% CPU the entire time it reports speed above 1.2x. It's still climbing at the end of the clip.

Final Analysis: CCE's AVI reading setup is poorly optimized for extremely fast CPUs.

Stereodude

[Adder_78]

Originally posted by Stereodude
I did some additional testing. It seems that CCE is not written to scale much beyond a 2.4 Ghz P4 CPU. The issue seems to be related to AVI file reading. I'm running a 3.06Ghz (2.4b with FSB of 170Mhz)

I put a partition on the very front of my WD2000JB. I put the AVI file (HuffYUV compression) that I'm encoding in this partition and it is the only file in that partition so there is no fragmentation. The drive can sustain 56.5MBytes/sec. That is at least 5x what's needed to play it real time. I can encode to the tune about 1.05x or so. CPU usage averages about 82%. If I put the file on the end of a slower HD (WD800JB) where sustained performance is lower (29.2Mbyte/sec) it encode slower (about .9x) and the CPU usage is proportionately lower.

I've been using the performance monitor to watch disk utilization and other performance variables. Neither of the two drives are really being stressed. They still have over 75% idle time.

Now to eliminate HuffYUV as the problem I output a uncompressed 24 bit AVI at the same resolution (720x480) to the WD2000JB and the performance is abysmal at .25x or so. The HD is fast enough to easily play the file in real time, but still the lack of compression was very detrimental to CCE's speed.

I performed another test. My machine has 1 gig of RAM in it. I trimmed down my test file to about 500 meg (so the entire file could/would be cached). CCE then tears through file using 100% CPU the entire time it reports speed above 1.2x. It's still climbing at the end of the clip.

Final Analysis: CCE's AVI reading setup is poorly optimized for extremely fast CPUs.

Stereodude

With my P4 2.53 I can get 1.5X speed with avisynt-files the CPU usage 100%...

the direct avi->CCE I can get speeds 2.5-3X

Zzzzzzzzz

[Stereodude]

Originally posted by Adder_78
With my P4 2.53 I can get 1.5X speed with avisynt-files the CPU usage 100%...

the direct avi->CCE I can get speeds 2.5-3X

Zzzzzzzzz With what size video? What settings are you using in CCE? What compression is on the AVI file?

There are a lot of different factors at play. If I'm saturating a 3.06 and the machine is 20% faster than yours it should encode 20% faster under identical settings.

Stereodude

[Adder_78]

Originally posted by Stereodude
With what size video? What settings are you using in CCE? What compression is on the AVI file?

There are a lot of different factors at play. If I'm saturating a 3.06 and the machine is 20% faster than yours it should encode 20% faster under identical settings.

Stereodude

with CCE 2.50

4-pass vbr, 720 X 576, Huffyuv-avi...
(anti noise filter=off)

Zzzzzzzzzz

[Stereodude]

Originally posted by Adder_78
with CCE 2.50

4-pass vbr, 720 X 576, Huffyuv-avi...
(anti noise filter=off)

Zzzzzzzzzz Well we're not using the same version of CCE for starters. PAL will also encode faster than NTSC.

Stereodude

[Adder_78]

Originally posted by Stereodude
Well we're not using the same version of CCE for starters. PAL will also encode faster than NTSC.

Stereodude

NTSC should encode faster because it has 96 lines less to encode? :cool:

Zzzzzzzzz

[Arkay]

Edit: Scrap this post... Just read the other thread...

[Stereodude]

Originally posted by Adder_78
NTSC should encode faster because it has 96 lines less to encode? :cool:

Zzzzzzzzz Well... Lets say CCE can encode 50 frames per second on your P4-2.5 and it can encode 60 frames per second on mine (20% more). Your machine would report it was encoding at 2x mine would also report it was encoding at 2x. Which machine is faster?

Stereodude

[Adder_78]

Originally posted by Stereodude
Well... Lets say CCE can encode 50 frames per second on your P4-2.5 and it can encode 60 frames per second on mine (20% more). Your machine would report it was encoding at 2x mine would also report it was encoding at 2x. Which machine is faster?

Stereodude

Nope... CCE would encode faster NTSC material... it's not the framerate it's the resolution that really matters...

I have been encoded PAL and NTSC movies and allways the NTSC material will get better encoding speed...

Zzzzzzzzz

[Stereodude]

Originally posted by Adder_78
Nope... CCE would encode faster NTSC material... it's not the framerate it's the resolution that really matters...

I have been encoded PAL and NTSC movies and allways the NTSC material will get better encoding speed...

Zzzzzzzzz Resolution is virtually irrelevant. You're comparing Film to PAL (23.976 vs. 25). Try it.

Say my machine can encode 60fps and yours can do 50fps.

My Machine:
Film: 2.5x
NTSC: 2x
PAL: 2.4x

Your Machine
Film: 2.083x
NTSC: 1.666x
PAL: 2x

Stereodude

[Adder_78]

buy PAL dvd and NTSC dvd and compare those speed then...

I Have NTSC and PAL dvd's and I know what I'm saying... CCE will encode faster with NTSC dvd's...

Zzzzzzzz

[Stereodude]

Originally posted by Adder_78
buy PAL dvd and NTSC dvd and compare those speed then...

I Have NTSC and PAL dvd's and I know what I'm saying... CCE will encode faster with NTSC dvd's...

Zzzzzzzz I never said they wouldn't. In fact if you look at the post right above yours you'll see that I show they do. PAL DVDs are at 25FPS. NTSC ones are at 24FPS. Of course they encode faster. There are less frames to encode.

Stereodude

[auenf]

Originally posted by Stereodude
I never said they wouldn't. In fact if you look at the post right above yours you'll see that I show they do. PAL DVDs are at 25FPS. NTSC ones are at 24FPS. Of course they encode faster. There are less frames to encode.

Stereodude

and less frame size too ;)

Enf...