h264 encoding does not use all system resources

[sharkbite]

Howdy - just wondering if anyone else has this problem...

I have a Phenom 1090T processor and GTS250 video card that i run either mediacoder or freemake to convert
DVB-T streams to mp4s for viewing on i-pad. (using CUDA) OS is win7 and there is 4gb RAM.

I am happy with the quality and almost happy with the speed of both apps -

except...

neither use anywhere near the full potential of the system...

a single encode uses about 35% cpu (according to perfmon) and about 20% GPU (according to GPU-Z). RAM usage is less than 1G.
the disk drives are barely ticking over, and there is no activity at all in the swap file.


If i run 2 or more jobs in parallel - the system usage goes up proportionally (ie 2 encodes uses 70% cpu 20%GPU).


This tells me that the S/W must have some artificial throttle inside it to limit resource hogging - which is nice -
but since i don't often have 2 or more files to encode, i would prefer that 100% resources were used, and encoded a single file much faster.

Anybody have a similar experience, and perhaps a solution?

cheers,

[bat999]

...i run either mediacoder or freemake to convert DVB-T streams to mp4s for viewing on i-pad....

neither use anywhere near the full potential of the system...

...perhaps a solution?

Hi
x264 encoder has an option:-
"--threads <integer> Force a specific number of threads"

With 'default' settings, the latest versions of x264 use maximum available threads.

Maybe the mediacoder and freemake software aren't using this option properly.
Or maybe they aren't using latest version of x264.


You could run a test.
Use latest FFmpeg from zeranoe.com.
Run a short (60 second) test. Monitor the cpu usage. See if it shows an increase.
Try a command like this:-

 ffmpeg -i <filename> -t 60 -an -c:v libx264 output.mp4

[Hoser Rob]

Try VidCoder, which is based on the excellent Handbrake. The latter is a little less accessible at first but functionally they're interchangeable.

It has excellent Apple presets and it's much better than what you're using. It doesn't have problems with multithreading support.

It'd also be easier to try than using command level ffmpeg.

Try vidcoder/handbrake on 1 pass constant quality mode.

[sharkbite]

thanks guys - much appreciated.

I have used handbrake - and a number of others that utiliese ffmpeg - but they are all slower than mediacoder or freemake on my setup

In mediacoder - the CPU is used for decoding - and the fastest option is to use Mencoder to feed h264enc that uses
the gpu to encode... this nets me about 150 fps.

the supplied ffmpeg doesn't work at all with my files (crashes mediacoder)
i copied in the version suggested by bat999 (just copy ffmpeg.exe into the relevant mediacoder folder)
it converts ok but at a rate of 3fps is very slow.