The perfect video editing system ??

[blank_dog]

Now I know that this is a HUGE topic, but ley me qualify my question.

I am starting to do a lot of video editing / rendering. Both from DV and from DVD. I currently have 2 systems. One based around a PIII 933, and one based around a P4 1.8Ghz.

But I am wanting more horsepower, and so it's time to upgrade one of the machines. I am thinking that dual processor is the way to go, so I think that I have 3 options.

1. Dual PIII
2. Dual P4
3. Dual Xeon
4. Dual Athlon

Option 1 is feasible, but would it gain me anything over my current P4 system ?

Option 2. I have not found a M/B that can do this !

Option 3 is going to be too expensive I think.

Option 3 would seem like the way to go based on what I've read, apart from one thing. My system CANNOT be noisy. I have a quiet CPU fan, quiet PSU, and quiet case fans. The problem I keep hearing with the Athlon's is that they run hot. Which is going to mean pretty heavy CPU fans, and upgraded PSU to handle the amount of juice 2 Athlon's is going to need.

What do you think about my options ?
Dual CPU vs Single (as far as video rendering is concerned)

Any help would be appreciated.

bd.

[tenders]

well....if it was me.....

i would just use the machines i already have. a little patience is a good thing. why spend the extra$$ to gain an hour or two of encoding time?

[TemporalVariance]

if only you could get a Dual P4 mobo.. #Non-Exsistant

if your on budget, then get a Dual Athlon MP.. but if you have the $$/££ then get a Dual Xeon Setup.

im very much thinkin of gettin a Dual Xeon setup next year, i worked it out that Xeon's would cost me an extra £150/250 extra over MP's. that is with 2Gb of DDR

but before making ya mind up, look around at some bench marks:
http://www.hardwareanalysis.com/action/printarticle/1272/
http://www.padtinc.com/support/benchmark/bm03/
http://www.anandtech.com/chipsets/showdoc.html?i=1483&p=13
http://www.supermicro.com/benchmark.htm
http://qcdhome.fnal.gov/benchmarks/amd_xeon.html
http://users.pandora.be/geert.deleu/benchmark.html

[blank_dog]

I'm just trying to get a feel for the amount of time I'm going to save. I would only do it if I would save more than a couple of hours.

e.g. I just finished re-encoding a Divx 2 hour movie to to SVCD with 4 pass CCE and it took 30 hours with the slower machine. If I could halve that or more going dual processor, I'd be a happy man

bd.

[tenders]

I'm just trying to get a feel for the amount of time I'm going to save. I would only do it if I would save more than a couple of hours.

e.g. I just finished re-encoding a Divx 2 hour movie to to SVCD with 4 pass CCE and it took 30 hours with the slower machine. If I could halve that or more going dual processor, I'd be a happy man

bd.

if you put CCE aside for a moment,and try this: http://www.vcdhelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=119210&highlight=


you maybe a "happy man" sooner.

good luck

[blank_dog]

Thanks Tenders. I have always used TMPGEnc up to now with the CQ settings. But decided to try CCE to see what all the fuss was about. I must admit that the quality is a little better with CCE.

The problem with CQ is that it is quicker, however, you end up doing at least 2 encodes to get the size right. Which means that the time factor is going to increase to where you are up at CCE times.

My bigger problem right now is getting an audio stream to multiplex with the video out of CCE. I've tried TooLame, which blows up with my wav file, and TMPGEnc seems to do a terrible job of stripping a mp2 file from the AVI itself. At this rate I may well be back using TMPGEnc

bd.