Hardware Encoders

[joy]

Does anybody use a hardware encoder to convert avi files to mpeg1 or mpeg2 format? If so, can you tell us if it's faster than the software method and by how much.

What brand do you think can you recommend?

And do you know of any other forums where hardware encoders are mostly the topics?

Please help us frustrated hobbyists!!

[BJ_M]

well i can speak for mpeg2 only and for really good real time hardware encoder it will run you starting about 20,000$ .. right now the Minerva is very popular - used you can get for about 15k$ .
I have a Optibase setup myself and use software encoding for finer control..

but there are cards in the 300$ - 1000$ range also that work - depends on what you want to do .. see this site section on capture cards that do real time encoding .

[Anonymous65]

Get a 2.4Ghz P4 PC with a huge hard drive, or perhaps even two CPU's for real-time software encoding. With my P4 running at 1.5GHz it takes Tmpgenc 2.5x to do DVD video encoding. With 2x 2.4Ghz P4's you should be able to do it in real time or even faster.

[BJ_M]

i have to agree with skittelsen - a really fast system can do (a little way each side) real time software encoding .. the older TMPGEnc versions could use all 4 of my cpu's - newer version only use 2 cpu's. ligos will do much faster than real time (though not as good quality) ..

we use hardware encoders for use with d-beta and beta sp input (tape formats) where speed is most importaint .. though good hardware encoders will do realtime 3pass .. generally for this I would just do a very high bit rate all I frame encode (i encode a lot of mpeg2 at 50meg/s - 100meg/s bit rate for use in High Def) - that can be re-encoded to a lower bit rate later. but for the finest most pefect work - nothing beats a software encode.

[joy]

thank you guys for the input!