The ultimate video encoding machine...
 

what would you put in it?

thanks for any input.

marc

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

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.

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

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?

2 or 4 way operton

4GB RAM

1TB+ RAID5 SATA array

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.

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

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

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 =]

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

But that's just me :)

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

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

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.

:2 cents:

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

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.

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

These are the guys to ask and anything else is a toy. :2 cents:

AMD 64 X2 4800+

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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

Trail Marker ---> :warning

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

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.

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

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

P-12 56 gigs ram