Does more RAM improve encoding ?

[iparout]

Hi there,
I just wanted to know if increasing my Ram (SDRAM-PC133) from 160 MB to 416 MB will decrease the time needed to encode from AVI to SVCD or DVD (Mpeg-1 or Mpeg-2).

If yes how much gain (in time) will I have ?

Thx in advance.

[iant]

Sorry mate but it makes hang-all difference unless you only had about 64meg to start with and were paging like crazy. The upgrade you're making will do very little in the way of a speed increase. However, you may find the machine is a bit more stable because things will have a bit more 'elbow room'.
It's certainly still worth doing, especially with RAM so darn cheap at the moment.

[iparout]

well, maybe encoding times won't improve much but one thing I know for sure :

My 200 MB Windows swap file will be much relieved..

[mball]

Adding more RAM on my system made a HUGE difference in encoding times. I have a PIII 550 with 128 MB. I added 256 MB RAM and saw encoding time decrease dramatically. I use CCE and went from a speed of .05 to .40 just by adding RAM. It cut 20 to 30 hours off encoding time. Maybe even more.

[iparout]

What capture card \ codec were you using ?

Also what type of file where you encoding from/to ?

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: iparout on 2001-08-21 11:35:49 ]</font>

[mball]

I go from DVD to SVCD using DVD2SVCD. That program uses the CCE Encoder and DVD2AVI. CCE likes a lot of RAM. I imagine the same holds true with the other encoders. When I tried encoding "The Contender" with 128 MB, CCE was running at a speed of .05 and was telling me it would take 40 hours just to encode the .vaf file. After I added 256 MB RAM, my encoding time for the .vaf file dropped to 5 1/2 hours and my speed jumped up to .39. As a test, I added another 256 MB RAM after the initial upgrade to 384 MB bringing my total to 640 MB. The second upgrade did little to improve my performance. If you are using your swap file heavily during encoding then you will notice a big increase in performance when you upgrade.

[Vejita-sama]

Hey mball not that I doubt your results but to go from 0.05 to 0.40 with ram alone is just odd (but then we've all seen a lot of odd things).

Several people have noticed that DVD2SVCD/CCE runs much faster if the ripped dvd source is in a different dir then the MPEG file being encoded (I have a Tbird 1.2Ghz and using seperate dirs I went from 0.835 to 1.115).

Maybe it was the ram and some other settings, again I believe you, but the CPU should make more of a difference than the ram.

[mball]

Vejita-sama, I'll try that on my next DVD and see if that helps. Thanks for the tip. I agree with you on the CPU as well. Right now my CPU is pegged and I'm only seeing anywhere from .36 to .40 on most DVD's. Your Tbird is 2 to 3 times as fast with a more powerful processor so I would say the CPU has a major impact no doubt. I think I'm getting everything I can get out of my tired little computer right now pulling a .40. But, I will stand by my statement regarding the RAM. I made no other changes to the settings and simply added more RAM. Paging was greatly reduced giving me a big increase in performance.

[lin(o:]

This may be a little off-topic here but here goes. I have a TBIrd 1.2G (OCed@1.35G) with 512Mb DDR running win2k. When I:
1. Frameserve using AViSynth to CCE, encoding is 1.5-1.8.
2. Frameserve using Vdub to CCE with vobsub and smartresize, encoding speed decreases to 0.5-0.8. So just 2 filters with VDub already halved my encoding speed. This normal?
Also, both scenarios uses 99% of my CPU and very little of my RAM. My CPU is so used up that it takes a long time just to open windows explorer it almost seem that my pc is already freezing. Is this normal or is there any tweaks that could help me improve my pc's performance?
Thanks.

[KingJohn]

Don't know what's happening, but a friend uses Vdub and TEMPEnc all the time, 128Mb on a PIII 450. He just upgraded his Ram to 256Mb and it made "NO" difference at all encoding or decoding. I asked if it had made a difference to anything at all, answer was "Well ummm, perhaps, maybe"

What makes me not think about buying more, is the fact that PIII memory is now obsolete, so Ill wait to upgrade to a P4 before buying any. £20 128Mb at the moment is cheap though.

[lin(o:]

bump

[RFontenot]

More RAM usually won't make much difference, but faster RAM will. By faster, I'm not talking about the difference between 60ns and 70ns. I'm talking about using PC800 vs. PC100 or 133.

There is a whole lot of data moving back between main memory and the CPU during MPEG encoding. Without a fast memory subsystem, the memory bus becomes a bottle neck. I've seen several posts from people with 1+GHz system with PC133 memory who have problems with dropped frames during encoding. However, people with PC800 memory usually don't have problems.

RF

[KingJohn]

All very well if your motherboard supports the new ram, if it does not your stuck until the next upgrade.