mpeg2 hardware encoder/decoder, worth it?

[substance]

I recently got a dvdrw and i have been encoding movies alot lately, and as everyone knows it takes quite a while to encode a dvd. I was wondering if I got a mpeg decoder/encoder card, if that would noticeably speed up my encodes. If so, what is the best, reasonably affordable card to get?
Is that sigma designs Real Magic Xcard any good, or just for viewing Video?
Any TV tuner cards act as decent mpeg decoders/encoders?
Thanx..

 

[magomago]

I would say no...from what i remember mpeg2 decoders were the thing back with 233mhz/266mhz that era machines where DVD players were becoming common...meaning people would want to watch dvds on their pc (or so people though but I would b/c my tv is 13inches and my moniter is 17)

and a 300mhz machine is too slow to software decode a movie so they had hardware decoders....now that is a m00t point at best and I doubt you'd see benefits


Though if you have a radeon9500 or 9700 ATI/Divx is releasing a codec that WILL incrase DIVX encoding/decoding

 

[human2k]

Just get a real FAST CPU! Like tbred B 1700 or 2100 and overclock the crap out of it!



On another note:

Originally posted by: magomago

Though if you have a radeon9500 or 9700 ATI/Divx is releasing a codec that WILL incrase DIVX encoding/decoding

Man this just makes me even happier that i got the 9500!!!!

 

[Bovinicus]

Software decoders not only eat up CPU cycles, but they also output a lower quality image in the end. ATi offers some MPEG2 decoding capabilities on all of their cards the past few years. The GF4 also has some MPEG2 decoding capabilities I beleive. If you have nothing else, software decoding will do the job, but hardware decoders do make a difference.

 

[vegetation]

Keep in mind the quality hardware encoders are expensive stuff. You can find cheaper encoding mpeg2 boards but they only encode at a lower bitrate and thus may not give optimal results if you're transfering from minidv or a production dvd. But if you have your heart set on mpeg2 then I suppose it's worth it if you do a lot of transfers. By the way, look at alternative codecs like divx before jumping solely to mpeg2 -- divx can save a huge amount of disk space, but for now there are no divx hardware encoders, so a powerful cpu is the only way to go.

 

[substance]

what are examples of hardware quality encoders, and are they aimed at home consumers or business? If i decided to get say the MSI TV anywhere card (I need a tv tuner anyway) would that help speed up any mpeg 2 decoding?

1 more question. Dual Processors, Would that Double the Speed of operations such as encoding? Or would it be wiser to wait for multithreading processors and 64 bit processors to come down in price/Available?

 

[tart666]

what are examples of hardware quality encoders, and are they aimed at home consumers or business?

There are two that are reasonable: Dazzle or adaptec.

Depending on your needs: DV or analog in/out, internal or USB2, you will have some choices. Most of them are directed towards people that want to archive tapes, either VHS or DV. For about $200 you get full DVD-compliant MPEG2 at 1:1 encoding time.

 

[Goosemaster]

If you want a quality encoder check out Matrox.

Mostly they excel at calculating transitions but they should be very cood for plain encoding

 

[Krye]

So far only 1 person has directly answered his question. (EDIT:GAH, took to long to answer, ignore my ramblings) I believe he's asking if it's worth getting a hardware mpeg2 encoder. I would agree with vegetation that if you absolutely must have an mpeg2 encoder that you should go for a higher end model. For that however, you'll have to do some research on what's constitutes a higher quality card. I would also further agree with vegetation that you should consider another codec such as divx as it really will save you lots of space. Just buy yourself another cheap PC (Athlon 1800+ perhaps?) that you can dedicate to encoding exclusively. That's what I did so keep my main machine open those days that I was encoding.

 

[substance]

i dont need anything aimed at being able to hook an external device (digital camcorder, vcr) to my computer. I already have all the files i need on my harddrive that i am trying to encode to dvd compliant mpeg 2 files. I backup all my dvds and it takes about 3-4 hours using CCE @VBR 2pass. All i want to do is be able to speed up this process.

 

[magomago]

I'm talking about actual encoding to speed up the process with the 9-5/700

Substance, what are your system specs?

Because CCE is the fastest (also costs a few grand Thank god for TMPGEnc) encoder out there....

 

[substance]

amd 2200 xp
512md ddr 400mhz
120 gb WD SE 8mb cache buffer
geforce 4 ti4200 128 mb
gigabyte ga-7vaxp
sony dru-500a dvdrw combo
optorite 48x cdrw
toshiba 16x dvd-rom
i have a raid controller, just havent gotten another drive, think that would help speed it up?

 

[yellowperil]

I think if you got a hardware encoder you wouldn't be able to use CCE which is software-based. I haven't seen anything that looks better than CCE so image quality might suffer a bit.

 

[Goosemaster]

I apoligize if I wasn't specific...

an old friend of mine had a Matrox tr250 and I experienced its quality first-hand

It definitely helps when rendering effects, so I assume compression is in the same ballpark

 

[Duvie]

Ok....In theory the hardware encoder is supposed to take the majority of the encoding off of the cpus hand and thus save cycles....Will it speed it up??? Who knows for sure/ I doubt it....About all it is going to do is allow you to multitask a bit while encoding.

It excels in apps like capturing to mpeg2 real time. When you are post processing a file already captured onto the harddrive the card may be able to do much more then real time speed but it generally takes all of the cpu cycle to do it. If it offloads to the encoder chip maybe in fact this may slow the process down...

I asked same question a week ago and most think that software encoding is quite good and with a machine spec'd like mine I already have no need to offload the encoding and still do things.

Remember microsucks new requirement for certification as winxp media version is for hardware encoder. This was do in fact the concern that when using PVR functions and PAUSE LIVE tv that if the computer was running other apps in the background the quality of the pvr or pause TV would suffer greatly in quality or performance. I run ATI AIW Radeon 8500DV and I can capture at dvd high settings (720res 8mbit/sec) and only use 50% cpu utlization...I dont need to offload it and still multitask...

 

[paperfist]

So a card like this Hauppauge isn't really worth the money for it's hardware encoding?

 

[Duvie]

Originally posted by: paperfist
So a card like this Hauppauge isn't really worth the money for it's hardware encoding?

- Watch TV in a resizeable window on your PC screen. While watching TV, WinTV-PVR takes up no system resources, so you can surf the net without any loss of performance
- Record your TV shows to disk using MPEG compression. The built-in hardware MPEG encoder allows you to continue to use your computer while recording. Surf the net or answer e-mail while electronically recording your TV shows to your PC's hard disk!

Taken from the link....In this lies the true worth of the encoder...If you have a 2ghz plu p4 system or 2000+ pr rated system software encoders do just fine and allow you to run the system still...


The card listed may be a waste if you think it will make the video look rally look any better or get done any faster. tha card offers a lot of other features which you may or may not use...Tv tuner...live tv modes....vcr like functionality...video capture ability and with software and software editors, etc...