Video Encoding - Need Recommendations
 

Hey Everyone,

Was venturing into building 2-3 new Video Encoding Boxes .. need to know what are the recommended specs for Batch Encoding.

CPU ( Is Core2Duo Enough? )
RAM ( Guessing more is always better )
HDD ( Is RAID better? SATA fast enough )
VIDEOCARD ( How much does this factor in?)

Need some good recommendations :pimp

- Terrence

We do encoding for very low cost.... www.CyberProMedia.com .... Hit up Moe at WWC also....

we cant outsource the level of encoding we do .... I need to build some machines :thumbsup

A nice quick Raid is a must imho...

The better your video card, and the more ram you have, the quicker previews and editing will be, you'll open up opengl rendering functions, and you can multiprocess your rendering...

All mac is the most robust and easiest cluster build IMO. Hit me up if you want some personal advice.

We have over 20 macs in our cluster.

hey brad - I'll definately be hitting you up later on today, trying to run some numbers b/c we cant have u process all our content :winkwink:

i dont think you need a raid unless your running more then 4 processors. they cant encode faster then a SATA2 or SAS drive can write(SAS is 3GB per second)

if your only going to build 2 machines, id get 8 core machines. as processing power is your greatest bottle neck.

video card is pretty much not important because the encoding is NOT done on the video card.

if your doing WMV encodes, make sure your software can use more then one processor. otherwise getting more then one is useless. WME doesnt know how to use more then one CPU.

ram is important but you cant use more then 3GB in XP, so dont bother getting any more then that.

we have 50+ cores in our office doing encoding 24/7, our systems can encode for weeks and weeks without being touched, its incredible. we use Rhozet software for encoding. As Brad said... Mac's are nice but retardedly expensive in comparison.

you want to use an osprey video capture card

What he said, yeah. Most powerful processor you can buy. I've heard processors will be dropping after first of the year.

Also, do look at a LOT of disk space. It's good to preserve your original edits.

Anyone have any opinions about Cleaner XL? Good/Bad experiences, etc.

Thanks.

Check out,

http://www.encoding.tv

They have the best available team/product out there.

Ive heard good and bad alot of it is the compressionist,the software is just a tool. All Im reading Im thinking of trying sorensen squeeze.

All Mac get finalcut6 and "flip for mac" for compressing WMV's... That will handle everything you need . EZ AS PIE.. + all of the above posts are pretty on!

hey buddy for encoding we can beat anybodies prices we have over 50 machines encoding

CPU ( Is Core2Duo Enough? ) Quad is way better
RAM ( Guessing more is always better ) yes 4gigs minimum
HDD ( Is RAID better? SATA fast enough ) don't like raid
VIDEOCARD ( How much does this factor in?) get a good video card for sure

If you're looking for speed in the disk system and are stuck with SATA go with Western Digital Raptor drives, they spin at 10,000 RPM and come in 36/74/146GB capacities. To further improve speed in this SATA configuration you could do a hardware RAID 0 but remember that doesn't give you any protection of the data so failure of the disk system is twice as likely. Alternatively, a RAID 10 configuration is fast both fast and redundant.

Brad

http://encoding.tv is a client of TAB's and I highly recommend them if you do outsource :)