which is the fastest encoder no matter output format

[pandy]

P4 should be capable to decode 1080i30 MPEG-2 in real time ie it is sufficient to home HD editing )

No. Not even close.
A single core CPU is really quite weak for HD playback, and especially encoding.

CS3 is a resource hog on an old system.
On a modern system (2007 or newer, era of CS3), meaning dual or quad cores, 4GB+, it works nice.

MainConcept is faster than TMPGEnc.

With respect lord smurf i disagree - AFAIR it is capable - i will try not forget to check in home CPU utilization for 1080i30 decoding - completely forgot check this yesterday.
Meantime http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1393469#post1393469


I've test yesterday on my PC - MPEG-2 video (+AC3 audio), 1920x1080i29.97 smoothly played by ffdshow with approx 35% CPU utilization (no GPU decoding), P4 3GHz, HT On, 3GB RAM, Win XP, i915G.
IMHO You can perform basic HD editing on P4. maybe not very fast but still acceptable.