The ultimate video encoding machine... - GoFuckYourself.com

mb · 06-12-2005, 09:08 PM

what would you put in it?

thanks for any input.

marc

Keev · 06-12-2005, 10:30 PM

inquiring minds want to know... I am building a new video machine as well in the next week or so...

stev0 · 06-12-2005, 10:35 PM

Two big hard drives, lots of ram, and a high end video card.

Dual processors would be good too, go with AMD64's... they beat P4's in video encoding benchmarks. Basically a high end gaming system... with lots of HD space.

stev0 · 06-12-2005, 10:36 PM

dual core amd64 chips are comming out soon too... might want to check into those.

Morgan · 06-12-2005, 10:38 PM

P4 3.6ghz or higher, 2gb ram, 400+ gigs of HD space, 256mb or higher video card.

bigdog · 06-13-2005, 12:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ganjasaurus

P4 3.6ghz or higher, 2gb ram, 400+ gigs of HD space, 256mb or higher video card.

does the acutal amount of memory your graphics card have really matter?

kernelpanic · 06-13-2005, 01:05 AM

2 or 4 way operton

4GB RAM

1TB+ RAID5 SATA array

SinisterStudios · 06-13-2005, 05:07 AM

Dual xeons all the way, 2 gigs of ram, at least a tb of disk space, high end video card.
But its really a better idea to just buy a high end workstation with dual xeons in it already, check your editing softwares recommendation. I had to buy specific workstations to get avid to run properly for us.

webcrawler · 06-13-2005, 05:12 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Ganjasaurus

P4 3.6ghz or higher, 2gb ram, 400+ gigs of HD space, 256mb or higher video card.

Intel processor and a nice mobo is a must for video encoding.

mb · 06-13-2005, 05:19 AM

Is a high end video card necessary for encoding ripped video? I always thought that was only necessary if you were capturing video from a source.

thanks,

marc

rich219content · 06-13-2005, 11:08 AM

lets seperate fact and fiction

the answer depends a lot on what your goal and budget is, the codecs your using, what software your using.

there are a few programs that support multi-cpu, a few, not most.
99% of what your using was not built for 64bit cpu.
HT and Dual Core might not make you any faster.

in some instances amd outperforms intel, in others it does not.

what does matter from my observations:

lots of L2 cache - compare similar machines in the 3ghz range, those with 1mb-2mb L2 can save 5-10% on various apps vs 256-512kb L2.

fast memory = better than more memory. 512mb of 1066mhz rambus is faster than 2gb of ddr/ddr2.

sata hard drives are faster than eide. 8-16mb buffer. personally hot swap racks are the method of choice. i have bays in 5 encode machines and 5 250gb sata's i can move between each and also a internal 250gb installed in each machine, in addition to a small c drive.

video card does not need to meet up to "gaming" standards, unless you have some video your filming that is higher than 29.97fps?? now.. with that being said... dont skimp the budget here either, a 64mb card wont do. a 256 can be had reasonably.

you could just ship your mini-dv's over here =]

Brad Gosse · 06-13-2005, 11:14 AM

A full rack of G5 OSX servers running a clustering system to create a "render farm".

But that's just me

mb · 06-13-2005, 12:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rich219content

lets seperate fact and fiction

the answer depends a lot on what your goal and budget is, the codecs your using, what software your using.

there are a few programs that support multi-cpu, a few, not most.
99% of what your using was not built for 64bit cpu.
HT and Dual Core might not make you any faster.

in some instances amd outperforms intel, in others it does not.

what does matter from my observations:

lots of L2 cache - compare similar machines in the 3ghz range, those with 1mb-2mb L2 can save 5-10% on various apps vs 256-512kb L2.

fast memory = better than more memory. 512mb of 1066mhz rambus is faster than 2gb of ddr/ddr2.

sata hard drives are faster than eide. 8-16mb buffer. personally hot swap racks are the method of choice. i have bays in 5 encode machines and 5 250gb sata's i can move between each and also a internal 250gb installed in each machine, in addition to a small c drive.

video card does not need to meet up to "gaming" standards, unless you have some video your filming that is higher than 29.97fps?? now.. with that being said... dont skimp the budget here either, a 64mb card wont do. a 256 can be had reasonably.

you could just ship your mini-dv's over here =]

Thanks for the input...

We are just encoding ripped DVD movies into WMV format using Windows Media Encoder... the specs we have so far...

Poly 7525i Tyan DualXeon MB+SCSI,2xgLAN,SATA
2xIntel 800FSB Xeon 3.6GHz 1MB Cache Processor
2xDDR2 533MHz 1GB Unbuffered Memory PC4200
2xSeagate 36.7G UL320 15K RPM SCSI HD 8M Cache
On-board AGP Graphics

anything missing?

Can I use 1066mhz rambus with this machine?

thanks,

marc

rich219content · 06-13-2005, 04:44 PM

rambus would be used in a motherboard specifically designed for it, but i think youll be quite fast enough.

its just my personal experience that 2-3 'cheaper' servers are faster than one monster. i can promise you that if you buy another case and motherboard, and put 1gb of ram in each, and one cpu in each, you will be a lot faster than both cpu's in one box.

again a lot is variable, it depends how you work, do you edit 1 video and start it encoding and want to edit the second while the first encodes.... 2 cpu's and lots of ram are nice.. i prefer to work on multiple cpus with a kvm switch, get a job going on one, switch to number 2, get a job going, switch to 3, get a job going.... you get the idea.

i have not encoded on windows media encoder for a while but im betting pro coder is faster plus it batches too nice to not use.

if you need more help/info hit me up on icq 50476697

directfiesta · 06-13-2005, 04:50 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by bigdog

does the acutal amount of memory your graphics card have really matter?

Doesn't. You can use an onboard one . Keep your money for hard drivers ( raid array is nice ).
I use an old 8 meg ATI in one encoding station. Does the job, keeps ressources ( power & heat) to the components that needs it.

Am encoding now from Betacam SP PAL to avi NTSC ( 22 gigs final) with Vegas 6.0 . Then on to DVD , divx and wmf.

bigdog · 06-13-2005, 04:52 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rich219content

rambus would be used in a motherboard specifically designed for it, but i think youll be quite fast enough.

its just my personal experience that 2-3 'cheaper' servers are faster than one monster. i can promise you that if you buy another case and motherboard, and put 1gb of ram in each, and one cpu in each, you will be a lot faster than both cpu's in one box.

again a lot is variable, it depends how you work, do you edit 1 video and start it encoding and want to edit the second while the first encodes.... 2 cpu's and lots of ram are nice.. i prefer to work on multiple cpus with a kvm switch, get a job going on one, switch to number 2, get a job going, switch to 3, get a job going.... you get the idea.

i have not encoded on windows media encoder for a while but im betting pro coder is faster plus it batches too nice to not use.

if you need more help/info hit me up on icq 50476697

i was about to say the same thing that you are proably better off with multiple machines

William-Xfactor · 06-14-2005, 12:23 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rich219content

lets seperate fact and fiction

what does matter from my observations:

lots of L2 cache - compare similar machines in the 3ghz range, those with 1mb-2mb L2 can save 5-10% on various apps vs 256-512kb L2.

=]

You would think so however I found the exact opposite
When comparing P4 Northwood to Prescott chips

The Northwood out performs the faster cached Prescott hands down on video work.

Matt_WildCash · 06-14-2005, 02:02 AM

I wouldn't go multiple CPU waste of money, get 2 machines instead if your going to do that.

We have 12+ video encoding machines and more machines at a reasonable price is better than 6 machines that are tricked out.

We use 3.0 ghz, 2 gig ram, 800 FSB (MUST), we hook them up to 1 terabyte Lacies using Firewire 800. Runs a lot faster than normal harddrives

SGS · 06-14-2005, 02:40 AM

These are the guys to ask and anything else is a toy.

Decadawn · 06-14-2005, 05:55 AM

AMD 64 X2 4800+

although Intel is a bit faster when encoding/decoding stuff.

mb · 06-14-2005, 06:16 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Matt_WC

I wouldn't go multiple CPU waste of money, get 2 machines instead if your going to do that.

We have 12+ video encoding machines and more machines at a reasonable price is better than 6 machines that are tricked out.

We use 3.0 ghz, 2 gig ram, 800 FSB (MUST), we hook them up to 1 terabyte Lacies using Firewire 800. Runs a lot faster than normal harddrives

Ever had any trouble with the Lacies? I've heard they weren't super reliable. I do love the option of using firewire800 with all that storage space though.

notjoe · 06-14-2005, 06:38 AM

Lacies's are basically a striped array of drives in a housing and one single drive.

rich219content is 1000% correct.

Fact is that very few apps have SMP support and thus wont hit the 2nd processor, ever. If you're planning on using the machine while it is encoding then you might want to consider the multi-cpu thing.

besides getting the fastest FSB MOBO/RAM you can find you'll want sata drives as they're the best bang for the buck.

You'll also notice a huge difference in encoding speed by reading the video from one drive and writing it to a different drive. You basically want to reduce all the bottlenecks you'll encounter.

SixNine · 06-14-2005, 08:00 AM

The answer is a mix of both on a 1G network. It doesn't take much to digitize video (or edit it for that matter). You want the monster system for encoding to multiple web ready formats.

We've got 3 average systems digitizing, then our main editor running Premiere is 3GHz with 2G RAM, 500GB RAID ARRAY plus 16 300GB Maxtor Firewire drives.

Our latest machine is dual Xeon 3.4GHz w/ 2GB RAM exclusively for running ProEncoder batches. The first thing we did was run a batch with the performance window open to watch both CPU's maxed out! If you've got the coin this is the way to go for encoding.

If our production schedule allows it, we welcome Seattle wm's to stop by and give our systems a spin with their content.

L8R SK8R,

SixNine
SoulCash.com

mb · 06-14-2005, 08:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by notjoe

Lacies's are basically a striped array of drives in a housing and one single drive.

rich219content is 1000% correct.

Fact is that very few apps have SMP support and thus wont hit the 2nd processor, ever. If you're planning on using the machine while it is encoding then you might want to consider the multi-cpu thing.

besides getting the fastest FSB MOBO/RAM you can find you'll want sata drives as they're the best bang for the buck.

You'll also notice a huge difference in encoding speed by reading the video from one drive and writing it to a different drive. You basically want to reduce all the bottlenecks you'll encounter.

Yes, my plan was actually to have 3 drives per machine. One for the OS, one for the ripped video and a 3rd to encode the video to.

I assumed SCSI would be the best for keeping consistant quality while encoding because of it's speed.

rich219content · 06-14-2005, 01:23 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by William-Xfactor

You would think so however I found the exact opposite
When comparing P4 Northwood to Prescott chips

The Northwood out performs the faster cached Prescott hands down on video work.

really? on what apps and from what format to what output?

1mb is faster for me with procoder avi to wmv/mpg, with virtualdub, with premiere

ProjectNaked · 06-14-2005, 01:32 PM

Trail Marker --->

Vitasoy · 06-14-2005, 01:34 PM

Something along the lines like this

Dual AMD Opteron 242AMD
Tyan Tiger K8W (S2875) S2875ANRF
4 sticks of 1024MB DDR (Must be ECC registed)
Matrox Millennium P750 (P75-MDDA8X64) 64MB
M-Audio Revolution 7.1

rich219content · 06-14-2005, 01:35 PM

i have a lacie also but i am impatient as hell! firewire is too fucking slow for me. sata mobile racks kick ass! transfer 400gb out of one machine and into another as fast as i can walk across the room.

eamedia · 06-14-2005, 01:36 PM

would you rather have a fast machine or sotware that can batch and run overnight or for days.... currently doing the latter.

rich219content · 06-14-2005, 01:45 PM

im a hardware junkie... id almost pay some of you to let me encode on these machines ;p

keyboard warrior · 06-14-2005, 03:21 PM

P-12 56 gigs ram

06-12-2005, 09:08 PM	#1
mb Confirmed User Join Date: May 2001 Location: San Diego Posts: 1,550	The ultimate video encoding machine... what would you put in it? thanks for any input. marc

06-12-2005, 10:30 PM	#2
Keev Confirmed User Join Date: May 2001 Posts: 5,335	inquiring minds want to know... I am building a new video machine as well in the next week or so... __________________ ReliableServers.com - NO REF LINK!

06-12-2005, 10:38 PM	#5
Morgan Too lazy to set a custom title Industry Role: Join Date: May 2002 Location: Corona Del Mar, CA Posts: 10,520	P4 3.6ghz or higher, 2gb ram, 400+ gigs of HD space, 256mb or higher video card. __________________ PornstarPlatinum.com \| TransErotica.com

06-13-2005, 01:05 AM	#7
kernelpanic Too lazy to set a custom title Join Date: Jan 2005 Posts: 2,961	2 or 4 way operton 4GB RAM 1TB+ RAID5 SATA array __________________ ZangoCash - Turn Your Traffic Into Ca$h. $.40 Per Install - No Tier

06-13-2005, 05:07 AM	#8
SinisterStudios Confirmed User Join Date: Nov 2003 Location: New Joisey Posts: 3,087	Dual xeons all the way, 2 gigs of ram, at least a tb of disk space, high end video card. But its really a better idea to just buy a high end workstation with dual xeons in it already, check your editing softwares recommendation. I had to buy specific workstations to get avid to run properly for us. __________________ SEOIP.com Multiple IP Webhosting Shared and Dedicated IP's - Multiple Class A's - From $1.99/ip

06-12-2005, 10:35 PM	#3
stev0 Confirmed User Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Calgary, Alberta Posts: 6,801	Two big hard drives, lots of ram, and a high end video card. Dual processors would be good too, go with AMD64's... they beat P4's in video encoding benchmarks. Basically a high end gaming system... with lots of HD space.

06-12-2005, 10:36 PM	#4
stev0 Confirmed User Join Date: Aug 2003 Location: Calgary, Alberta Posts: 6,801	dual core amd64 chips are comming out soon too... might want to check into those.

06-13-2005, 05:19 AM	#10
mb Confirmed User Join Date: May 2001 Location: San Diego Posts: 1,550	Is a high end video card necessary for encoding ripped video? I always thought that was only necessary if you were capturing video from a source. thanks, marc

06-13-2005, 11:08 AM	#11
rich219content Registered User Join Date: Jan 2004 Posts: 80	lets seperate fact and fiction the answer depends a lot on what your goal and budget is, the codecs your using, what software your using. there are a few programs that support multi-cpu, a few, not most. 99% of what your using was not built for 64bit cpu. HT and Dual Core might not make you any faster. in some instances amd outperforms intel, in others it does not. what does matter from my observations: lots of L2 cache - compare similar machines in the 3ghz range, those with 1mb-2mb L2 can save 5-10% on various apps vs 256-512kb L2. fast memory = better than more memory. 512mb of 1066mhz rambus is faster than 2gb of ddr/ddr2. sata hard drives are faster than eide. 8-16mb buffer. personally hot swap racks are the method of choice. i have bays in 5 encode machines and 5 250gb sata's i can move between each and also a internal 250gb installed in each machine, in addition to a small c drive. video card does not need to meet up to "gaming" standards, unless you have some video your filming that is higher than 29.97fps?? now.. with that being said... dont skimp the budget here either, a 64mb card wont do. a 256 can be had reasonably. you could just ship your mini-dv's over here =] __________________ Skin Traffic Nasty Dollars!

06-13-2005, 11:14 AM	#12
Brad Gosse Confirmed User Join Date: Jan 2002 Location: Carpal Tunnel Posts: 2,616	A full rack of G5 OSX servers running a clustering system to create a "render farm". But that's just me __________________ Free Clipart

06-13-2005, 04:44 PM	#14
rich219content Registered User Join Date: Jan 2004 Posts: 80	rambus would be used in a motherboard specifically designed for it, but i think youll be quite fast enough. its just my personal experience that 2-3 'cheaper' servers are faster than one monster. i can promise you that if you buy another case and motherboard, and put 1gb of ram in each, and one cpu in each, you will be a lot faster than both cpu's in one box. again a lot is variable, it depends how you work, do you edit 1 video and start it encoding and want to edit the second while the first encodes.... 2 cpu's and lots of ram are nice.. i prefer to work on multiple cpus with a kvm switch, get a job going on one, switch to number 2, get a job going, switch to 3, get a job going.... you get the idea. i have not encoded on windows media encoder for a while but im betting pro coder is faster plus it batches too nice to not use. if you need more help/info hit me up on icq 50476697 __________________ Skin Traffic Nasty Dollars!

06-14-2005, 02:02 AM	#18
Matt_WildCash Confirmed User Join Date: Jan 2003 Posts: 1,699	I wouldn't go multiple CPU waste of money, get 2 machines instead if your going to do that. We have 12+ video encoding machines and more machines at a reasonable price is better than 6 machines that are tricked out. We use 3.0 ghz, 2 gig ram, 800 FSB (MUST), we hook them up to 1 terabyte Lacies using Firewire 800. Runs a lot faster than normal harddrives

06-14-2005, 02:40 AM	#19
SGS Confirmed User Industry Role: Join Date: Dec 2002 Location: Mallorca - Nottingham Posts: 5,176	These are the guys to ask and anything else is a toy. __________________ See sig...

06-14-2005, 05:55 AM	#20
Decadawn Confirmed User Industry Role: Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: Montreal Posts: 1,286	AMD 64 X2 4800+ although Intel is a bit faster when encoding/decoding stuff.

06-14-2005, 06:38 AM	#22
notjoe Confirmed User Industry Role: Join Date: May 2002 Location: Toronto, Canada Posts: 5,599	Lacies's are basically a striped array of drives in a housing and one single drive. rich219content is 1000% correct. Fact is that very few apps have SMP support and thus wont hit the 2nd processor, ever. If you're planning on using the machine while it is encoding then you might want to consider the multi-cpu thing. besides getting the fastest FSB MOBO/RAM you can find you'll want sata drives as they're the best bang for the buck. You'll also notice a huge difference in encoding speed by reading the video from one drive and writing it to a different drive. You basically want to reduce all the bottlenecks you'll encounter.

06-14-2005, 08:00 AM	#23
SixNine Confirmed User Industry Role: Join Date: Jan 2001 Location: The Sea Town Posts: 1,357	The answer is a mix of both on a 1G network. It doesn't take much to digitize video (or edit it for that matter). You want the monster system for encoding to multiple web ready formats. We've got 3 average systems digitizing, then our main editor running Premiere is 3GHz with 2G RAM, 500GB RAID ARRAY plus 16 300GB Maxtor Firewire drives. Our latest machine is dual Xeon 3.4GHz w/ 2GB RAM exclusively for running ProEncoder batches. The first thing we did was run a batch with the performance window open to watch both CPU's maxed out! If you've got the coin this is the way to go for encoding. If our production schedule allows it, we welcome Seattle wm's to stop by and give our systems a spin with their content. L8R SK8R, SixNine SoulCash.com

06-14-2005, 01:32 PM	#26
ProjectNaked Confirmed User Join Date: Jul 2004 Location: Detroit Areola Posts: 4,309	Trail Marker --->

06-14-2005, 01:34 PM	#27
Vitasoy GFY HALL OF FAME DAMMIT!!! Join Date: Oct 2003 Posts: 58,202	Something along the lines like this Dual AMD Opteron 242AMD Tyan Tiger K8W (S2875) S2875ANRF 4 sticks of 1024MB DDR (Must be ECC registed) Matrox Millennium P750 (P75-MDDA8X64) 64MB M-Audio Revolution 7.1 __________________ [email protected]

06-14-2005, 01:35 PM	#28
rich219content Registered User Join Date: Jan 2004 Posts: 80	i have a lacie also but i am impatient as hell! firewire is too fucking slow for me. sata mobile racks kick ass! transfer 400gb out of one machine and into another as fast as i can walk across the room. __________________ Skin Traffic Nasty Dollars!

06-14-2005, 01:36 PM	#29
eamedia Confirmed User Join Date: Feb 2005 Location: norcal Posts: 1,456	would you rather have a fast machine or sotware that can batch and run overnight or for days.... currently doing the latter. __________________

06-14-2005, 01:45 PM	#30
rich219content Registered User Join Date: Jan 2004 Posts: 80	im a hardware junkie... id almost pay some of you to let me encode on these machines ;p __________________ Skin Traffic Nasty Dollars!

06-14-2005, 03:21 PM	#31
keyboard warrior Confirmed User Join Date: Jul 2004 Posts: 1,435	P-12 56 gigs ram __________________ - nothing here -