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  1. Member
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    My current system, an i7-4930K is fine for editing, but I want to speed things up for the encoding of the final video x264/x265.

    I'm thinking of building a dual Xeon E5-2697 v2 on a server board. That would give me 2x 12-Cores/24-Threads to work with along with 10+ SATA drives and a large amount of RAM.

    I'm looking for anyone with any experience using a "server" to encode videos. Are there any drawbacks from using such a system as a desktop? What kind of performance would I be looking at?

    From what I see, the numbers, I could expect to see a significant performance gain.

    Encoding a 1080p24 to x264 using MeGUI with my current system I get about 25-30fps

    By significantly increasing core count while slightly decreasing speed, what can/should I expect?
    I plan on doing 4K video in the near future as well.

    I'm wondering whether building a server for encoding would suffice or whether I upgrade to the newer Threadripper CPUs.

    Any ideas/suggestion are appreciated.
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    See https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/384984-x264-limited-by-CPU-cores-threads Past a certain point, using more cores/threads with a single instance of the encoder will decrease the quality of the resulting video. Dividing the video into segments and running multiple instances of the encoder was suggested as a workaround, but it turns out that creating too many segments also has a negative effect on quality. I'm not a video encoding expert, but building either system might not be worth the expense unless you are planning to encode several different video files at once.
    Ignore list: hello_hello, tried, TechLord, Snoopy329
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  3. Mod Neophyte Super Moderator redwudz's Avatar
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    Threadripper may be a bit expensive, but so is a dual Xeon. I've been happy with the PC in my Computer Details.
    It works well for H.264 but I rarely encode to H.265. But other members may have better advice.




    And this thread would probably better posted in our Computer Forum. Moving you.

    Moderator redwudz
    Last edited by redwudz; 19th Sep 2018 at 15:43.
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  4. Member Bernix's Avatar
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    Hi,


    Can in such powerfull machine instead of make segment be better to Parallelize work? Multiple instance of MeGui (I'm not familiar with this soft, nor if is it possible to dedicate how many cores it will use for each video) More videos at once (say 6)? 10+ sata seems there is lot of video conversion needed.
    But parallelize work can be definitely bad idea. I have not experience with it. I own just 4 poor cores...



    Bernix
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  5. Dinosaur Supervisor KarMa's Avatar
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    I often chop up videos and encode them in parallel for AV1 encodings as multicore encoding barely works in this new codec (AOMENC) for this new format. Usually encoding 3 videos at once on my 6 core CPU. For x265/4 there is not much need. Single core encoding is usually the most efficient bitrate wise but adding cores does not hurt the encoding efficiency much until you get into the double digits. How inefficient 24 cores would be? I'm not sure and there is not a lot of information on the subject as those core counts were expensive until recently. Can look at this post and picture to get an idea, https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/378203-Captured-a-60gb-2hr-avi-with-Vdub-Huff-enco...e2#post2442659
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    Originally Posted by Bernix View Post
    10+ sata seems there is lot of video conversion needed.
    Bernix
    10+ SATA isn't really all that much. 6x 3TB for data, mirrored is only about 9TB usable, and 4x 1TB in RAID arrays for editing; however, that's considering using one system as a do-it-all; PC and server duties.

    Nonetheless, I've decided to split it into 2 PC's; one workstation, one NAS.
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    Originally Posted by ziggy1971 View Post
    Originally Posted by Bernix View Post
    10+ sata seems there is lot of video conversion needed.
    Bernix
    10+ SATA isn't really all that much. 6x 3TB for data, mirrored is only about 9TB usable, and 4x 1TB in RAID arrays for editing; however, that's considering using one system as a do-it-all; PC and server duties.

    Nonetheless, I've decided to split it into 2 PC's; one workstation, one NAS.
    Just curious, are you really running just mirrored RAID or are you just counting the data drives?
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    Originally Posted by lingyi View Post
    Originally Posted by ziggy1971 View Post
    Originally Posted by Bernix View Post
    10+ sata seems there is lot of video conversion needed.
    Bernix
    10+ SATA isn't really all that much. 6x 3TB for data, mirrored is only about 9TB usable, and 4x 1TB in RAID arrays for editing; however, that's considering using one system as a do-it-all; PC and server duties.

    Nonetheless, I've decided to split it into 2 PC's; one workstation, one NAS.
    Just curious, are you really running just mirrored RAID or are you just counting the data drives?
    Actually, I don't use any real RAID (mirrored) system for various reasons; hardware, if it fails, complete rebuild required among other things, software, similar to hardware. Any real-time RAID, well, if you accidentally delete something it's gone from both (or all drives in the RAID). I occasionally run some software that scans specific folders for any changes and updates drives as needed.

    Not sure what the difference would be 6 HDD's at 3TB each = 18TB and since everything is duplicated, 18TB / 2 = 9TB. It's probably less since really important things are on at least 3 different drives.

    At this very moment I have 8 SATA HDD's and 1 M.2 installed in my system and that's without any expansion cards. I'm still building my new system so I haven't posted any updated specs. Thus far I have upgraded to the AMD Threadripper 2950X 16 core/32 thread CPU, a Gigabyte X399 AORUS Gaming 7 some Corsair DDR4 Vengeance RGB Pro RAM and more to come.

    Maybe I'll change my way of doing things once I find a reliable way and fast way of doing backups. Ideally a complete backup on another location would be great.

    If you've ever had a HDD failure and lost all that data with no way of getting it back you'll understand.
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    Originally Posted by ziggy1971 View Post

    If you've ever had a HDD failure and lost all that data with no way of getting it back you'll understand.
    Good to know you're not using RAID. I'm fully aware of the dangers of it (in any configuration) and that's why I asked.

    As far as losing data, been there, done that. Here's my thread about the most recent (and unfortunately probably not the last) goof-up with 6TB of data gone in a literal second! https://forum.videohelp.com/threads/391000-A-tale-of-the-importance-of-backups . But that's why we have backups!

    When I built my new PC this year, I was planning to install up 11 HDDs + an M.2 internally (using removable drive bays), but I realized I didn't need to have all the drives available at once. So I switched to using 4 & 8 bay Mediasonic Probox(s) https://www.amazon.com/Mediasonic-ProBox-HF2-SU3S2-SATA-Enclosure/dp/B003X26VV4/ref=sr...diasonic+4+bay My oldest box is just over 4 years and the only thing I've had to do was change the fan because it was noisy.

    I get up 140/160MB/S transfer speeds on large files using USB 3.0 and Teracopy.
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    The RAID 0's I use for editing are solely for the speed/cost (SSD's are still too expensive), nothing more, and the data is easily replaceable. I thought about getting some NAS bays like the ones you're using but I figured for the same cost I could build a small Intel Core i3 or AMD Ryzen 3 system for the same price (or less) and still be able to use it as a second PC.

    I weighed many options about buying/building a used dual Xeon system vs. building a new Intel Socket 2066 or AMD Threadripper system. I finally figured I'd rather spend the extra money on a new system than spend it on import/customs fees that would likely be incurred by building a used Xeon system. I think anyone from Canada who's imported from the US knows what I'm talking about. Just one purchase on eBay made me rethink any ideas I have of purchasing from the US again.

    An example: I purchased an item on eBay for a great price and once I actually got the item in my possession I'd spent a few dollars less than the original NEW cost of the item. Those extra costs weren't even from shipping/handling; they were for brokerage fees and the like, etc. Like really $100's of dollars for someone to fill out a form in 2 minutes and paste it on the box... Had the item been available anywhere in Canada I'd never have bought it in the US.

    Anyway, I digress from the topic at hand...

    Now I gotta find some info on the issues/limits of using multiple threads for x264 encoding. Some of the info seems somewhat outdated, for instance, I noticed this hasn't been updated in nearly 8 years even though x264 has been modified many times during that time. Before anyone screams, I looked at the "This page was last modified on..." at the bottom of the page.

    So, my question is: do those same setting still apply or have things changed since then? Would it be better to run a couple of instances of x264 encoding with limited thread usage or just run one instance with all threads available?

    Also, I'm looking for the best ways to compare clips; like the original vs. encoded? Like using split screens, weaving, subtracting encoded clip from originals. I'm just looking for additional options.
    Last edited by ziggy1971; 18th Dec 2018 at 02:53.
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  11. Personally, I wouldn't even consider building a new pc until I see what AMD announces in January and what Intel releases, unless I was getting a tupid good deal.


    DDR5 is nearly here, AMD is rumored to be readying 12C/24T mainstream CPUs, Intel is said to be readying 10C/20T mainstream CPUs, Optane DIMMs should arrive in 2019, everything I have seen indicates some great things coming in 2019/
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  12. Member
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    Originally Posted by sophisticles View Post
    Personally, I wouldn't even consider building a new pc until I see what AMD announces in January and what Intel releases, unless I was getting a tupid good deal.


    DDR5 is nearly here, AMD is rumored to be readying 12C/24T mainstream CPUs, Intel is said to be readying 10C/20T mainstream CPUs, Optane DIMMs should arrive in 2019, everything I have seen indicates some great things coming in 2019/
    Yeah, I've seen/heard the rumors as well.

    Intel has squeezed 14nm to it's limits and then some, has a limited supply, and trouble developing 10nm & 7nm products.
    AMD has shook up the market some as of late and it's unlikely that they'll suddenly come up with 12-16 core parts for the mainstream along with the rumored 5 GHz+ clock speed boost and 15%+ IPC gains.

    I would believe IPC gains and perhaps some frequency boosts, but all the changes mentioned/rumored in the next few months is highly unlikely.
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