Fast enough CPU?

[jpc82]

I'm planing on taking one of my old PC's and making it into a MythTV ( or windows alternative) tv recording system.

Will a Athlon 1.1GHZ PC with 256MB of ram be enough to capture straight to Xvid/DivX?

[redwudz]

Probably, but you won't really know until you try it. It's freeware, so you have little to lose but the time involved.

Besides CPU speed, the program would be very dependent on your capture board, your harddrive speed and condition and somewhat your motherboard. It may also help to increase you system memory to 512MB.

Since you don't give your system information, there's little other advice to give.

[lordsmurf]

I doubt it.

[CrumCon]

Not fast enough.

sorry

[edsmith77]

First, let me give you the "I aint the expert statement" and I have never captured to DIVX or XVID but I used to have an 800MHz CPU with 512 RAM and I could capture into AVI or MPEG2 at 1/2 D1 resolution without any problems at all. However, if I tried to get to full D1 resolution I would drop lots of frames.

I know this flies in contrast to what others have said but my old 800 MHz CPU worked for pretty good.

[wwjd]

Just something to consider and that is where are you going to play stuff you record. If you think that you will never play it on a big screen TV then 1/2 D1 is ok but if you think you may then you may want to be sure capture at full D1.

I am not an expert either but my guess is that your cpu will not cut it unless the capture board has full on board hardware encoding.

wwjd

[trossin]

I can capture and playback and time slip on my 0.6 GHz machine using a PVR-250. It works great as the card converts to MPEG2 using a hardware encoder. I think MythTV works with this card. If it does not, the Hauppauge software works good enough.

I was thinking of GB-PVR which does support the PVR-250. It is free:

http://www.gbpvr.com/index.html

[yoda313]

I can capture and playback and time slip on my 0.6 GHz machine using a PVR-250. It works great as the card converts to MPEG2 using a hardware encoder. I think MythTV works with this card. If it does not, the Hauppauge software works good enough.

I was thinking of GB-PVR which does support the PVR-250. It is free:

http://www.gbpvr.com/index.html

Hello,

Sorry jcp82 wants to capture directly to xvid/divx. The pvr250 is MPEG ONLY. I know I have one. I love it too but it will not record in AVI.

Kevin

[lordsmurf]

I can capture and playback and time slip on my 0.6 GHz machine using a PVR-250. It works great as the card converts to MPEG2 using a hardware encoder. I think MythTV works with this card. If it does not, the Hauppauge software works good enough.

I was thinking of GB-PVR which does support the PVR-250. It is free:

http://www.gbpvr.com/index.html

Doesn't count. It's a hardware card.

[trossin]

Why not? A new capture card is much cheaper than a new PC. Also, it is better to reuse than to throw in the landfill. I'm a damn tree hugger!

[junkmalle]

Plextor ConvertX -- hardware Divx.

http://www.plextor.com/english/products/ConvertX.html

[zzyzzx]

Exactly how much computing power does one need to capture at DVD quality without hardware encoding?

[babyboo]

On the fly DIVX or XVID capturing requires quite a bit of CPU. My old 600MHz wasn't up to the challenge when I used to use DIVX and XVID. It might work OK on a 1.1 but I wouldn't go over Half D1 and I wouldn't use the computer for anything else while capturing...I wouldn't even look in the direction of the computer! Good luck

[edsmith77]

zzyzzx,
see there now you have gone an done it. Stand back and watch all of the "exactly's" come out of the woodwork.

[zzyzzx]

I'm in the process of building a new computer. The CPU is the only thing I haven't ordered yet. Everything else is on the way. I'm wondering about how good an AMD Athalon XP ~2600 with 333 fsb might do with 512MB RAM and 7200 8MB cache HD....

[winifreid]

I can't capture to xvid with my box and I assume it is faster than the one you have (but I am not running linux). I suspect that those who say they can capture to avi with slow machines are using picvideo or huffyuv, not divx. If you think about, it takes 7 hours to do a autogk conversion of a 90 minute movie on my machine . Granted, it is 2 passes, but that's what it takes to get great quality.

[jpc82]

Thanks for all the input. I know that the best way to find out if it will work is to try it out, but I was just wondering if anyone with similiar hardware had tried. If it was completly out of the question I wouldn't even try.

Another option that I saw was with BeyondTV to have it capture at MPEG2, and then during off time convert to XviD/DivX. Hopefully, MythTV also support this feature, or at least I can create a script that will do it.


Does MPEG2 caputring use less CPU power? would this PC be enough for that?

[johns0]

I'm in the process of building a new computer. The CPU is the only thing I haven't ordered yet. Everything else is on the way. I'm wondering about how good an AMD Athalon XP ~2600 with 333 fsb might do with 512MB RAM and 7200 8MB cache HD....

I had that same computer and captured at 720x480 without dropping frames on good video sources.

[lordsmurf]

Does MPEG2 caputring use less CPU power? would this PC be enough for that?

No and no.
Not unless it's a hardware card, not a hybrid or pure software.

[babyboo]

As I said earlier, I wasn't able to capture on the fly to DIVX/XVID with my old 600Mhz...however, I was able to capture to MPEG2 1/2 D1 with my hybrid ATI AIW 7500. I couldn't do it at full D1, but half D1 was OK. I would drop about 50 frames an hour.

[ulapines]

I wasn't able to capture on the fly to DIVX/XVID with my P4 1.7 Ghz
7200 rpm hdd at 720x576 and 25 fps