Best Hardware for DVDShrink

[Maximus825]

Anyone know of site that shows how different hardware performs with DVDShrink? I'm thinking about putting together a dedicated box for it and so I was wondering what the performance differences are for AMD64 and P4s, and memory size and such.

[Richk50]

A dedicated box for DVDShrink?
I'm just asking out of curiosity, but how many movies a day do you Shrink?

[TheSeeker]

Maximus

I have used dvd shrink both on my computer (Athlon64 3000+, msi k8t neo fisr2 mobo, 1gb micron ddr 400 ram) and on my dad's computer that I built him (p4 3.0 ghz w/ HT, aopen mobo, 1 gb crucial ddr400 ram). I have found that Shrink seems to use the HT technology of the P4 very very well and seems to give a little faster speeds than my athlon64. However this may all change when a stable Windows XP 64 comes out. As much as its blasphemy because i really dont like intel much, I have to say that Shrink runs very very fast on the P4 with HT. I still like my A64 though cause when 64 bit OS and apps start to come out Im really going to see a performance increase. So in that way you might want to get an athlon 64 because in the future say like a year or so you might be wishing that you had a 64 bit processor.

[dannyv]

Originally posted by Maximus825
Anyone know of site that shows how different hardware performs with DVDShrink? I'm thinking about putting together a dedicated box for it and so I was wondering what the performance differences are for AMD64 and P4s, and memory size and such.

Read my signature tag below.

[TheSeeker]

No offense.... But what does your signature have to do with anything? He wants to know what kind of system Shrink performs best on or some performance analsys'.

[Video Dude]

His signature lists the specs of his system

.... which DVD Shrink would perform very well on

[dannyv]

Originally posted by TheSeeker
No offense.... But what does your signature have to do with anything? He wants to know what kind of system Shrink performs best on or some performance analsys'.

I find that shrink will run stable on any PC weather its a p4 or AMD. I particuly like the AMD and windows 2000 server combination because I find it very stable for all video applications. The system I have below works well and is very fast. I also network it with an AMD 2700 across a gigabit network to increase storage capicity and it also allows me to use 2 machines at the same time when I have a lot of movies to do. I've compaired shrink and recode and they both run very well and at about the same speed. My AMD below will do a 2 hour movie in about 35 minutes from rip to burn. You can't ask for much better then that. What is important is when you build your system you go with a good mother board (I like gigabyte)and good name brand memory and lots of it 512 min 1 gig is better. Many people cheap out on memory and that is usually there down fall. Also the faster the hard drive (SCSI) the better. When selecting an IDE hard drive you want at least a 7200 rpm 8mb cache(Western digital). A video card is very subjective because it depends on what your going to do on the PC (Play games, Only use it for video processing etc.) I find for video processing the higher end ATI cards work well. If you have a digital LCD display you should get a card with digital output.

[TheSeeker]

I dont know.... I found that the P4 that I used (has the newest Prescott core) is noticeable faster than my athlon64 in shrink. This is due to the fact that I believe shrink was optimized in version 3.2 to take full advantage of both the real processor and the emulated one that is made when using HT Technology. I dont know how HT works but it really does seem to work quite well. As far as other video editing apps I havent seen nearly so much of a difference in speeds as i did with shrink. As far as the whole server 2000 thing... Why would someone use that when Windows XP Pro is just about the most stable, and most compatible operating system that Microsoft has ever released. At least I personally have found that it does EVERYTHING well. You can use it to play any game out there (unlike Server 2000 or 2000 pro for that matter) not to mention it is as stable as server 2000. It uses memory quite well. GIve it a gig of memory and it will use it all to the fullest. Just all around it is the most friendly, most compatible OS IMO. So I would recommend a P4 (if you want immediate speed, if your patient you may want to invest in the Athlon64 now hoping that the win xp 64 and 64 bit apps come out fairly soon), gigabyte boards are good, so are MSI, Aopen, dannyv is right on this do NOT skimp on the mobo. Get a nice motherboard (go to tomshardware.com), also he was right about memory.. most definately do not skimp on memory modules or i can almost guarantee you will be having to buy new memory when you build your box and find that its not as stable as you would like. Western Digital hard drives rock. I wouldnt really recommend getting a sata hd because the speed difference between that and pata hd's is really not very significant.

[dannyv]

Maximus825,

Well there you go 2 different recommendations on 2 different systems. The important thing is you need to build what works for you. Eather system discribed are very good for video work. Theseeker as well as me are very knowledgable on this subject and have been doing this a long time. So go out buy your parts and build your system. Report back on your progress.

[voo_doo99]

Originally posted by dannyv
My AMD below will do a 2 hour movie in about 35 minutes from rip to burn.
__________________
AMD XP 3200+ 400fsb on a giga-byte GA-7vt600 1 gig pc3200 ram 660 gb of hard drive space ati radion 9000 pro/pioneer dvr-108 attached to a gigabit network backbone

I assume you referred to DVD Shrink: Deep Analysis + Encoding = 35 mins. That is nice, I can use a system like that.

Originally posted by TheSeeker
I found that the P4 that I used (has the newest Prescott core) is noticeable faster than my athlon64 in shrink.
Can you quote some comparable processing time for P4/HT?. Would help me to plan my hardware options. Thanks. :)

[dannyv]

Originally posted by voo_doo99
I assume you referred to DVD Shrink: Deep Analysis + Encoding = 35 mins. That is nice, I can use a system like that.


Can you quote some comparable processing time for P4/HT?. Would help me to plan my hardware options. Thanks. :)

You are correct I am refering to DVD Shrink: Deep Analysis + Encoding.
I can't speak on the P4/HT because I only use AMD. That would be theseekers department but the AMD 3200 is about 35 minutes. My 2700 is about 40-45. When using DVD rebuilder my 3200 takes about an hour for just the encoding when doing a 2 hour movie which is still more then fast enough. the 2700 about 70 - 75 min.

[danbutter]

I have an athlon (the original) 800 MHz with 384MB of PC133 RAM running 2000 pro and it took me about 40 mins to do a deep analysis of Eternal Sunshine and the yada yada....
another 35 or 40 to encode...

So.. it would seem that you can halve your time by quadrupling your processing power.

Hehehe.

I ducked in to check out this thread as I am going to build a cheapy box...
Gonna try the new AMD SP 2400+, 512 DDR 3200, XP Pro, nvidia 5600.
I don't think it will be a bad box for a little over $200 (I already have some parts to use)

I'll try to remember to let you know how that one does after I get it going.

[voo_doo99]

@dannyv

Your gigabit network, does it cut down the file copy time of those DVD gigafile(VOB) from one pc to another by a factor of 2 or more?. Is the transfer speed fast enough that you can actually shrink or burn backup reliably in comparable time from one pc using gigafiles from the other pc over the network?. That would certainly bring a giga-giggle to my face, thanks. :D

[theReal]

I have an athlon (the original) 800 MHz with 384MB of PC133 RAM running 2000 pro and it took me about 40 mins to do a deep analysis of Eternal Sunshine and the yada yada....
another 35 or 40 to encode...

So.. it would seem that you can halve your time by quadrupling your processing power.

Hehehe.

My XP2700 (TBred), 512MB Corsair XMS 2700, VIA KT333 didn't take noticeably longer than 35 mins for the last 2 hour movie I transcoded :D

We're talking about MINUTES here, not hours!!! Why would you need a dedicated system for Shrink????? Unless, of course, you plan on shrinking 48 DVDs a day... which I wouldn't say too loud... ;) :D

[TheSeeker]

Encoding times for the P4 w/ HT... I would say it was about 8 minutes for deep analysis, and about 15-20 minutes max for encoding the movie. The movie was The Patriot which is a very long movie, but I had all the extras cut out. So probably between 25 and 30 minutes start to finish.

[dannyv]

Originally posted by voo_doo99
@dannyv

Your gigabit network, does it cut down the file copy time of those DVD gigafile(VOB) from one pc to another by a factor of 2 or more?. Is the transfer speed fast enough that you can actually shrink or burn backup reliably in comparable time from one pc using gigafiles from the other pc over the network?. That would certainly bring a giga-giggle to my face, thanks. :D

Not quite a factor of 2 but close. I can shrink and burn across the network. Shrinking across the network takes the same amount of time as if it were done on the local machine. The reason I use the gigabit network is to burn across the network. Nero buffers for 2-3 minutes before hand then burns in about 15 mins(4x). I get no buffer under runs like I did on a 100 megabit network.

[happycase]

Wait, am I doing something wrong here? I have an Athlon XP 2800+ (limited to 166mhz FSB), 1 gig of RAM, a Western Digital 7200rpm. hard drive set to DRM), and my analyzis+encoding time, with AEC sharp, it one and a half hours. I check my system resources, and my CPU is always on 100% Does this time seem unusually long to anybody here?

[rail grinder]

Originally posted by happycase
Wait, am I doing something wrong here? I have an Athlon XP 2800+ (limited to 166mhz FSB), 1 gig of RAM, a Western Digital 7200rpm. hard drive set to DRM), and my analyzis+encoding time, with AEC sharp, it one and a half hours. I check my system resources, and my CPU is always on 100% Does this time seem unusually long to anybody here?
i know what u mean ... i've got similar specs and JUST my encoding time is about 1h30min to 1h 45min. i'm running a barton 2500+ @ 2800+/2.09GHZ/166MHz FSB on an msi kt4v-l w/ 1.5gb of samsung cas 2.5 pc2700 ddr ram, maxtor 7200rpm drive and an all in wonder 9700 pro ...

i'm guessing that my system is slower because of:

- pc2700 ram
- kt400 chipset
- no dual channel support on chipset

BUT ...
originally posted by danbutter
I have an athlon (the original) 800 MHz with 384MB of PC133 RAM running 2000 pro and it took me about 40 mins to do a deep analysis of Eternal Sunshine and the yada yada....
another 35 or 40 to encode...

So.. it would seem that you can halve your time by quadrupling your processing power.

Hehehe.

originally posted by theReal
My XP2700 (TBred), 512MB Corsair XMS 2700, VIA KT333 didn't take noticeably longer than 35 mins for the last 2 hour movie I transcoded

We're talking about MINUTES here, not hours!!! Why would you need a dedicated system for Shrink????? Unless, of course, you plan on shrinking 48 DVDs a day... which I wouldn't say too loud...

so why doesn't my box perform as fast as theReal's and danbutter's system? what am i doing wrong?

[voo_doo99]

@happycase
You could do better. You need a second fast HD. The trick is to rip to one drive and shrink it to another drive. :)

[rail grinder]

Originally posted by voo_doo99
@happycase
You could do better. You need a second fast HD. The trick is to rip to one drive and shrink it to another drive. :)

hhmmmmm ... that's what i do as well ... *scratches head*

[dannyv]

Originally posted by happycase
Wait, am I doing something wrong here? I have an Athlon XP 2800+ (limited to 166mhz FSB), 1 gig of RAM, a Western Digital 7200rpm. hard drive set to DRM), and my analyzis+encoding time, with AEC sharp, it one and a half hours. I check my system resources, and my CPU is always on 100% Does this time seem unusually long to anybody here?

It seems you have a lot you need to look at. an xp2800 is a 333fsb processer. Make sure your bus speed is set correctly. Make sure your memory matches your MB. For a 333fsb you need pc2700 ram. but memory is generally dictated by what your MB can handle so look at the MB manual. Are your drives using the correct ata100/133 cables?. Are your drives set up correctly (master/slave? If your dvd-burner is set up on the same bus as the hard drive I would suggest putting it on the secondary and only have hard drives on the primary. One of my machines is a 2700 and I do a 2 hour movie in 35 minutes so you should be doing at least that.

[rail grinder]

Originally posted by dannyv
It seems you have a lot you need to look at. an xp2800 is a 333fsb processer. Make sure your bus speed is set correctly. Make sure your memory matches your MB. For a 333fsb you need pc2700 ram. but memory is generally dictated by what your MB can handle so look at the MB manual. Are your drives using the correct ata100/133 cables?. Are your drives set up correctly (master/slave? If your dvd-burner is set up on the same bus as the hard drive I would suggest putting it on the secondary and only have hard drives on the primary. One of my machines is a 2700 and I do a 2 hour movie in 35 minutes so you should be doing at least that.

you have to set the fsb in the bios to 166MHz ... as far as i'm conerned, athlon fsb's are doubled so, 166MHz*2=~333MHz, 200MHz*2=400MHz, etc ... my hard drives are setup right and my drivers are up to date as well ... hhmmmmm

[TheSeeker]

To those not getting the performance they think they should be getting out of their machines in Shrink.

Do you either of you guys have VIA chipset boards? If so you do have the newest Hyperion 4 in 1 drivers correct? Those make a big difference i think. Also I would seriously see if one of your HD's isnt setup to run in PIO mode instead of what it should be (UDMA Mode 5 or 6). I know one time I had some serious issues with copying to one of my hd's. Everything was taking so much longer, i thought it was going bad or something. But it seems it was just set to run in PIO mode instead of UDMA mode. I know I certainly didnt set it up that way so maybe yours also just randomly set itself up in the wrong transfer mode. Also, keep in mind that the times your seeing (1.5 hours), really isnt horrible. Thats like 30 min deep analysis, and 1 hour encode time yes? That encode time may be spot on if you take into account the amount of compression being used. They way shrink works (anyone correct me if im wrong here) is that if you have it set up to use AEC this does not necessarily mean it always uses it. AEC only kicks in when it is needed. So the times that others are quoting may be from movies where it mostly just used the older and faster engine to encode because it really didnt need the extra quality of the AEC mode. I know some movies take like 20 minutes start to finish for me (this is a movie where almost no compression is needed) and some movies take like 40 or 50 minutes (movies where the compression is like 60% or so.).

[happycase]

I thank all of you for your help so far. It is much appreciated.

My hard drive is set on primary, and my dvd drives are set as secondary and slave. I can "rip" an 8gig movie onto my hard drive in 15 minutes easy, so, I wouldn't think that there is any barrier preventing the CPU from communicating with the hard disk as fast as it could. The "dual hard drive" theory makes sense, in that it might make encoding easier on the CPU and the hard drives. My RAM is all PC2700, single channel, unbuffered, Kingston Value RAM, so it's not necessarily cheap stuff.

It might be worth noting that, my most recent test of "speed" was a backup of Spiderman, down to 48.4%, which took 1 hour and 38 minutes.

And also, how exactly do I check my chipset to see if it is VIA? This explaination might be looking into... seeing as to how it doesn't cost any money upfront. ;)

[TheSeeker]

Well what kind of motherboard do you have? The exact name... LIke I have an MSI K8T Neo FISR2. What kind of board do you have and i will look it up and see if it uses a via chipset.

EDIT: Oh and like I said the movie you were testing on was compressed at 48 percent.. at these compression levels you are going to see the longest times that are possible pretty much. Im sure if you were to take a movie that requires alot less compression (Say 70 percent) you would see much faster encode times.

[happycase]

My motherboard is the FIC AU31, contained within an eMachine T2858. It's a Circuit City exclusive model, so I'm not sure how much actually knowing what model computer it is I have.

Later tody I'll try a different movie under DVD Shrink that doesn't need as much compression and see how much that speeds things up.

[AzraelsCurse]

happycase, I'd say spiderman at 48% compression taking 1hr 38min is probably pretty close to what you should be getting. compression level has a lot to do with the time, as well as if you keep extras, and if you're including burn time in your number, the burning speed makes a difference. Like railgrinder said, 166fsb IS 333fsb(ddr), there's more to the low times that dannyv is stating, your numbers and his numbers are not apples to apples despite similar hardware.
I'll agree with TheSeeker in that P4's with Hyperthreading seem to perform slightly faster than AMD CPU's, simply because DVDShrink is multithreaded.
Dual Xeon times vs. dual Opteron times would be intresting. Anybody have a dual opteron system they shrink on?

[happycase]

Ok, I tried another movie at 68.8% compression, and got the time down to fifty minutes. That is acceptable, as far as I'm concerned.

[dannyv]

Originally posted by happycase
Ok, I tried another movie at 68.8% compression, and got the time down to fifty minutes. That is acceptable, as far as I'm concerned.

50 Minutes for 68% compression is pretty decent. I would say your system is OK. At 48% compression I would consider using dvd rebuilder. I think the quality with shrink at such a high compression rate would not be as good as with rebuilder. I generally use shrink for anything above 60% and rebuilder for below 60%. Read the rebuilder threads for more info. The encoding will be slower but the results much better. Rebuilder is free as well as the additional components needed. It's also very easy to use. The best encoder for rebuilder is CCE but it is not free although you can get a trial version. The basic CCE I beleave is around $70us. There are also free encoders you can use with rebuilder and from what I've read there very good. Because I have not tried any of them other then CCE I will not make a recommendation on which to use. But with a little reading in the rebuilder thread you will easly be able to deside which is best.

[TheSeeker]

I have heard some pretty good things about Quenc. and that is probably the best free option for an encoder. Otherwise you can spend 60 on cce basic or 2000 on cce sp.

[theReal]

To clear things up a little more, I'm transcoding the main movie only, without menus and stuff, also I didn't consider burning time in the last post plus the highest compression I ever used was 67% (usually higher than 70%).

With that config (and going from one 7200rpm HD to another, both single master drives) I'd say 40-50 minutes is what I get mostly.

[Maximus825]

Thanks for all the replies. I don't check this forum often enough. I have a P4 2.6C that I'm using right now and it takes about 2 hours for Deep Analysis, Encode and Burn using the Smooth setting with 50% compression. I'd say that's pretty normal considering I'm using the PC at the same time for other stuff like gaming. I've decided to buy a Shuttle system to use for gaming, taking to LANs, and ripping DVDs. I'll get a 3.0C prolly for it and a gig of ram. After a bit of an OC and Highest Priority settings, that should be able to rip quickly...

[ux-3]

Just one observation (sorry if I missed it above): It makes a big difference what hard disk you have. I don't mean size or revolutions or ATA100 vs. ATA133. You can take two data-wise identical HDs, both 80 gigs, 7200, 2Mb Cache, both brand names. When you start streaming from the hard disk to itself (as in shrink), you are in for a surprise! I found this out in the good old days of SVCD creation, when it came to remuxing the streams. One PC took 10 minutes, the other took just ONE! (it was dramatic, perhaps not 10x) Both had the above specs, but one was Samsung the other IBM. The IBM was way faster at this task! Fortunately, I was able to swap my Samsungs against IBMs. At that time, the "IBM HD heatfailure trouble" was well known, and my buddies figured it to be a good idea to swap with me for my samsungs. They argued that 10 Minutes in an encode are less than 5% of the total time. In a DVD, it would spell near half an hour extra time. So perhaps your HD causes the trouble. Try with two HDs for Disk to Disk and see how long this most efficient setting takes.

PS: My three 80GB IBMs are still running fine in swap frames with regular case airflow cooling. One Samsung went "belly-up" since...

[theReal]

ux-3, I have IBM drives as well and they are fine. Mine are Deskstar 120GB, 7200rpm - everybody told me not to buy IBM but they were cheap at the time (because nobody wanted them). Since then I had a WD drive die on me but the IBMs never had a problem at all :) :cool:

After a bit of an OC and Highest Priority settings, that should be able to rip quickly...Don't use high priority settings for encoding. You might block system tasks (like HD access and such). Normal priority or below is best - the encoding task will use 99,9% of the cpu anyways but it won't block the system.

[TheSeeker]

I dont know... I have had a bad experience with a Deskstar 60 gb that I had purchased about 3 years ago. It experienced a major hardware failure just 2 months after I got it. I trashed it and bought a Western Digital 80 gb HD and Im still using it as one of my main storage drives. I also still have the original western digital hd that was in a macintosh I bought about 7 years ago and that still works. I just find WD to be very reliable and long lasting. Not to mention that there new ide drives with the 8 mb cache are some of the fastest ide drives around.

[theReal]

Before the Deskstar 60GB IBM had the reputation of being the most reliable harddisk manufacturer - then the early Deskstar series had major problems but I always believed IBM is going to fix that (and I think they did).
However, the other one of my WD drives is still working fine as well - I didn't want to say they're bad

[RedBeard]

With the system described below in my sig, my backup times are as follows:

Full movie, menus, complete disk <4.7gig ...... 20 minutes

Movie 60% compression......... 50-60 Minutes

these times are from clicking the backup button to a finalized dvd getting kicked out of my burner.

[TheSeeker]

@redbeard

So add another 20 -30 minutes with deep analysis?

[ux-3]

Originally posted by RedBeard
50-60 Minutes

these times are from clicking the backup button to a finalized dvd getting kicked out of my burner.

Just clarify: This is from a regular DVD in your drive, then swapped against the recordable?

[theReal]

Just clarify: This is from a regular DVD in your drive, then swapped against the recordable?The time I mentioned was without ripping, btw (because I rip with DVDDecrypter)

[Maximus825]

I'm ripping to a Western Digital 120GB SE right now. I will prolly put an SATA drive in the Shuttle.

[RedBeard]

Seeker, those times are with analysis

Ux3 the process I use is from the original in dvd drive straight to backup in dvd burner (well it hits the hard dive long enough to be a temp file) but I have 2 drives so I dont have to sit there and swap them out.

there is nothing on my burn box except a bare bones windows XP install. dvd43, dvd shrink, one click copy dvd, and copy to dvd. nothing else installed, not connected to the net.

only problem is I have to keep the side panel off the computer because the processor gets so hot. will eventally cut another 3 case fan holes in the side panel, but for now just leaving it off works, It was a cheap little soyo case, but I will probably just build a custom plexiglass on in the future with adequate ventilation.

[snek_one]

i do a shrink (encoding only) to 85% in 20 minutes using:

Intel 530 3Ghz socket775
Asus P5GDC-V Intel 415G chipset
2x256 A-DATA Vdata DDR2700 CAS2.5
1x 120GB 8Mb Cache Maxtor UDMA133
1x 80GB 8Mb Cache Maxtor UDMA133
1x 40GB 2Mb Cache Maxtor UDMA100
1x NEC 2510A with .16 firmware by TDB

in an Antec 1000AMG fileserver case with 5 fans..
cpu always at 43 degrees C
hds always at 27 degrees C *

* yes that's right, tested with CoolerMaster fan controller & temperature readers, 2 fans blowing through them :)

and stop laughing at my ram!! hehehe...
no money yet for the 4x512MB TwinMos TwiSter 400 to 500MHz ram i want,
then i finally do some serious overclocking! :)

but what i'm saying is that it's not necesarily the speed of the ram
that makes the difference...

it's almost as fast as a friend's 3500+ amd64
and i'm guessing that's because of the HT and maybe
my new chipset based mobo

i will test this theory with a dvd that i will encode
on both systems...