Is there any video card that can encode/convert video at lightning speed?

[johnharlin]

I'm thinking about getting the new Ivy Bridge processor when it comes out next month and then overclocking it to 5ghz for faster video encoding and conversion but if there is such a thing as a special video card than can encode, convert video even faster, then I would prefer to get that.

I love tinkering with video but the long encoding/conversion wait time is really aggravating.

[edDV]

I'm thinking about getting the new Ivy Bridge processor when it comes out next month and then overclocking it to 5ghz for faster video encoding and conversion but if there is such a thing as a special video card than can encode, convert video even faster, then I would prefer to get that.

I love tinkering with video but the long encoding/conversion wait time is really aggravating.

What source video and what desired format?

A hardware encoder will be real time and not use CPU.

[johnharlin]

All source video especially converting avi or other format to DVD.

[edDV]

All source video especially converting avi or other format to DVD.

AVI is a wrapper. Says nothing about video or audio codec. Do you mean uncompressed YCbCr in an AVI wrapper? That uses no CPU but requires a very fast disk system depending on source format usually a RAID.

If there is a compression codec, please tell us what it is.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audio_Video_Interleave
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_codec <--- choose some.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_video_codecs

[jagabo]

In my experience with an i5 2500K, x264's veryfast or ultrafast presets are faster than quick sync and deliver better quality. GPU based encoding is really only useful if you have a slow CPU. And all the GPU encoders deliver inferior quality. Ivy Bridge's GPU is supposed to be twice as fast as Sandy Bridge's so maybe its encoding will improve. But from what I've seen GPU based encoding doesn't scale well with GPU speed. Ie, there's not much difference in encoding speed between the slowest and fastest GPUs.

http://www.behardware.com/articles/828-1/h-264-encoding-cpu-vs-gpu-nvidia-cuda-amd-str...-and-x264.html

One use here has posted some MPEG 2 encoding of VHS captures using ATI's AVIVO. They were comparable to HcEnc from what I saw. Here's the thread:

https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/340427-Am-I-doing-it-right-Video8-and-VHS-Capture

[pandy]

http://www.satcomresources.com/satcomvsat/MPEG-Encoders

[poisondeathray]

Ivy Bridge's GPU is supposed to be twice as fast as Sandy Bridge's so maybe its encoding will improve.

Looks to be 1.42x faster in this preview (at least for h.264, not DVD MPEG2)

http://www.anandtech.com/show/5626/ivy-bridge-preview-core-i7-3770k/17

No mention about quality, but lets hope they've improved that as well

[edDV]

Check the hardware encoding reports here. There are cards based on the various TI chips. These are mostly used for real time streaming. Typically CPU load is near zero.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H.264/MPEG-4_AVC#Hardware-based_encoding_and_decoding

TI
http://processors.wiki.ti.com/index.php/CategoryaVinci

Chips and Media
http://www.chipsnmedia.com/product/product01.htm

On2 was acquired by Google.
http://investor.google.com/releases/2010/0219.html

[videopoo]

Most of the quality / fast MPEG 2 encoders these days are software based. Systems are fast enough now they dont need outboard processing. At work we get 3.5x RT over a fiber channel with Sonic's Cinevision Encoder.

Feature film done in a half hour....pretty amazing compared to 5 years ago....or worse 15 years ago. Encoding a feature back then took close to a week total

[jagabo]

Most of the quality / fast MPEG 2 encoders these days are software based. Systems are fast enough now they dont need outboard processing. At work we get 3.5x RT over a fiber channel with Sonic's Cinemavision Encoder.

From DV to MPEG 2 with CCE on my i5 2500K I get about 14x realtime.

[videopoo]

Most of the quality / fast MPEG 2 encoders these days are software based. Systems are fast enough now they dont need outboard processing. At work we get 3.5x RT over a fiber channel with Sonic's Cinemavision Encoder.

From DV to MPEG 2 with CCE on my i5 2500K I get about 14x realtime.

Hmmmm.....never seen that....And I work on SP3 daily. Im talking 2 Pass too

[edDV]

We are at the crossover of hardware, next CPU+GPU to software only encoding.

For streaming reliability, hardware rules. But for off-line
(indeterminate render delays aka dropped frames), CPUs are getting fast, just not for real time encoding.

Note: This was my first iPad post and the touch keyboard is near awful.