DVD encoding

[halionman]

Hi,
I am just in the process of building a new PC with an Intel 950D CPU on an Asus P5W-DH Deluxe mobo, 2Gb OCZ DDR2-800 Platinum XTC RAM and an Asus EN6600 Silent 512Mb graphics card.

Nice PC I think.

Anyway, as well as using my PC as a Music Studio, I also burn the odd DVD from my digital camera. I have the software which came with the camera to convert the mpeg4 files into a DVD I can play downstairs on my TV.
At the moment, the conversion/burning process takes ages - maybe 2 hours for a complete DVD, but I have an old P4 2.8GHz CPU (533 FSB) and an even older nVidia Vanta 16Mb graphics card. HUH

My question is this - when creating DVD's, is the encoding done completely in the CPU or does the graphics card's GPU take over some of the work. In other words, would upgrading to a 7900 card yield any benefits for creating/encoding DVD's?

Regards,

Neil.

 

[TheGreatGrapeApe]

My question is this - when creating DVD's, is the encoding done completely in the CPU or does the graphics card's GPU take over some of the work. In other words, would upgrading to a 7900 card yield any benefits for creating/encoding DVD's?

For you the benefit would mostly be in the transcoding department going from MP4 to DVD Mpeg2 VOB, but also this is for encoding too.

nVidia has a GPU assisted transcoder, but you still have to pay extra for it.

ATi's VPU assisted tanscoder is a little more mature, faster, and FREE.

It's very quick compared to just CPU based transcoding, but there can be a slight reduction in quaity in some formats according to some of the earlier reviews. Supposedly this has been fixed, but I haven't seen anyone do a comparison recently (*cough* CLEEVE *cough*).

Here's a link to the converter;
http://www.ati.com/technology/avivo/technology.html

And the biggest/(best at the time) review I've seen;
http://www.digit-life.com/articles2/video/avivo_1.html

 

[mpjesse]

Yeah in your case, you're going to be stuck with a transcoder that solely uses the CPU. As GGA said, nVidia's costs money and it's not all that great (yet). But if you... ummm... scour the bit torrent sites you'll surely find the tool for umm... free.

At any rate, the vast majority of encoding programs use the CPU to do all the work.

 

[FITCamaro]

Yeah I just bought Seasons 1-4 of Stargate SG1 and am transferring the files to my computer because I like to just stream it to my TV over the network (also saves wear and tear on the disc). I'm using DVD Decrypter and a script I found online to rip the episodes off the DVD and I bought Divx Pro (don't mind supporting the guys) to do the encoding.

On the first two hour episode it took 6 hours and 45 minutes on a dual Pentium III 1.1GHz rig with 1.25GB of SDRAM. I thought about Nvidias tool afterwards cause the system has a 256MB 6200 AGP card in it. Whats it called again?