Slow encoding speed, <20 fps on P4 2.13

[The Daishi]

Hi,

I've nosed around the forum and read various FPS benches.
I reckons I'm going horribly wrong somehwere.

Following the GKnot + DivX 5(.0.5) guide pound for pound I'm getting this

512x272, sharp bicubic, toms mocomp, ~950 kbit, first pass, WinXP SP1

running on

P4 1.6A @ 2.13 over a 133Mhz bus.
256Mb DDR @ 133

~16-18 fps.

...

That's slow, right?

All the benches I've read are a few generations on from mine, but rough calcs show I'm lagging I think, expecially at that res'

Anybody know of a good speed FAQ?

Ta,

Jim.

[Acaila]

The best FAQ I can give is
1) check your settings
2) check your background applications

Many people overlook that certain settings can really slow encoding down. Every codec has tough settings that do this. There's XviD's QPel and VHQ, RV9's EHQ, and DivX 5 has QPel and B-frames as the slowest.
Besides codec settings Avisynth filters also slow things down quite a bit compared to a lite encode.

If you're using DivX Tahanea instead of the normal version, then don't use the extra search functions. Those are only for testing purposes for the moment and decrease speed by a lot.

If you are using none of the above, then check for programs that suck either cpu power or memory during encoding as a depletion of either seriously hampers encoding.

So as you could guess by now there's no easy way to judge if your own speed is correct by comparing it to other people because there are so many possible variables that can influence speed. Hardware is hardly ever a reason why people get low speeds, most of the time it's a setting/filter that people didn't know would slow things down.

So to test your own speed I would suggest you run an encode with the minimal of extras as possible. That is no B-frames, no GMC, no QPel, no preprocessing, no deinterlacing, bicubicresize instead of lanczos, etc. If that speed is high enough (like >40 fps judging from your cpu specs) then your speed is normal.

[The Daishi]

B-frames and GMC
Just DivX 5.0.5 Pro

Nothing else uses the CPU.
Not enough to make that amount of difference.
DC++ uses about 2%
Memory is fine, very low page rate.

And surely everybody uses Bicubic and Deinterlace?

probably time to re-install windows again.. :\

I know I've had it faster than this...

Ta,

Jim.

[Dark-Cracker]

the encoding speed also depend of the resolution of your material. and of course use yv12 support (and check for vdubmod P4 version).

i think the search button will answer your other questions :)

Ps: if u prefer speed perhaps mpeg2avi will be more usefull for you.

Bye

[The Daishi]

anamorphic PAL, 720x576.
Resized and clipped obiously.

YUV 422 is DVD2AVI, but I'm not up on colour spaces.

I know YUV is better that RGB in DVD2AVI, that's it.

What's YV12 then?

Vdubmod P4 version eh? Didn't know to check that either.

cheers mate!

Jim.

PS vdub is running at the mo' Reports it's 1.5.1.1a
I guess I can't check the about box until after my dub is done.

[Acaila]

What's YV12 then?YV12 is a a colorspace in the family of YUV colorspaces. It's the native colorspace of MPEG-2 (DVD) and MPEG-4 (DivX). Many people have switched from the old Avisynth to the new version that's capable of using YV12 because it's both faster (roughly up to +25%, but again certain settings/filters can obscure this) and more accurate. You can find it through www.avisynth.org or visit the Avisynth section on this forum for more info.

If you're using B-frames, GMC and Deinterlacing then your speed sounds just fine by me. Unless you've got evidence that someone with those same settings gets a higher speed than yourself. But usually people don't mention all the relevant settings when they talk about their speed or quality, which makes it quite unreliable to compare unfortunately.

[The Daishi]

From a PAL DVD.
I'm running at least AVS2.5
Although I wonder if GKnot mucks that up with an earlier version :\

OK, this is what gets generated by GKnot

LoadPlugin("C:\PROGRA~1\GORDIA~1\mpeg2dec3.dll")

# SOURCE
mpeg2source("Something.d2v")

And DVD2AVI is set to YUV.

Do I have to convert this with:
ConvertToYV12(mpeg2source("Something.d2v"), interlaced=true)

That runs in wmplayer fine.
I can't find the syntax for mpeg2dec3 though.
mpeg2source("bob.d2v", pixel_type=YV12)

Am I even close? ;)

Ta Loads,

Jim.

[Acaila]

LoadPlugin("C:\PROGRA~1\GORDIA~1\mpeg2dec3.dll")This line already proves that you are using the YV12 version of Avisynth (= version 2.5). You don't have to do anything else, it gets used by default. We weren't sure if you already used this, so that's why it was mentioned in the first place. Just keep it the way GKnot creates it, no need to change anything.

Have you tested the speed already with all heavy settings disabled in the way I mentioned earlier? That's the only real way to know if you're slow, anything else is just guessing.

[Hiro2k]

Originally posted by The Daishi

And surely everybody uses Bicubic and Deinterlace?


Deinterlace really slows it down. I don't hardly ever have to, since I use NTSC material, just IVTC. In DVD2AVI if you use ForceFilm, that IVTC is much faster than using the IVTC filters in Gknot.

[Nel]

I think your deinterlacing is slowing it down too. If you put it to no field operation it would go a lot faster. You might be able to IVTC. I went through the same dilemma on my thread toward the bottom. I thought it was pure interlaced but it could actually be telecined. Look for the 2 interlaced then 3 progressive frames which will tell you it can be telecined. It's still going to go slower than if you did nothing but if you're working with interlaced material then you have no choice if you want a good looking video.

I just recently finished encoding all of the Lexx discs available and telecined them all but at the original framerate of 29.97. The motion isn't perfectly fluid but it's the best I could get. If I did a mode0 decimate then it would be smooth except on CGI parts like the opening credits and it jerked around in odd places. So it was a tossup but I went with the first method even though it's probably wrong for it.

As a compare though, I have an AMD Barton 2500+ overclocked to 2800+ speed (2.08ghz) and I get around 20fps with telecine on and 25-40+ with it off.