Speeding up video conversions

marlowe · #1 (**permalink**) 01-13-2005, 10:39 PM

Hi everyone - I'd appreciate any help with this: I do a lot of video
editing and am looking for the best way to speed up the conversion of
the videos from full capture .avi to mpg 2. I have a Windows Operating
System with a Pentium 4 processor (1.50 GHz) and 320 MB of Ram. I use
Pinnacle Studio 9 to convert the videos to mpg 2 files.

1) Is there a better editing program that would speed up the
conversions without having to upgrade my computer?

2) Would simply upgrading the processor really speed up the
conversions the most?

3) Do I need to change my Video card to something like a Real Time
Video Editing Card?

4) How much a part does RAM make in speeding up video conversion?

5) How much a part does hard drive space make in speeding up video
conversion?

Any help with these questions would be much appreciated.

Marlowe

Alan Mills · #2 (**permalink**) 01-14-2005, 09:38 AM

A good question, but you have not given us any timings. How long are things staking at the moment?

But my stab at answering the questions is that if you have a DV AVI file and want to convert it straight to MPEG2 then the best speed I've seen is realtime. I achieve this by use of the Matrox RT.X100 realtime card. It also allows capture straight to MPEG2 in realtime as well as realtime export from Premiere Pro.

The MPEG2 export is only one job the card does. It offers realtime transitions and effects, saving hours in editing time on every project.

So there you are. Not sure what timings you are seeing but the best I've seen adn achieved is realtime using the Matrox card. Note though that (from memory) the RT.X100 offers realtime MPEG2, the RT.X10 doe not.

Hope this helps

Marc Peters · #3 (**permalink**) 01-14-2005, 09:50 AM

Mr Mills > Does the real time include allowance for two pass encoding?

Alan Mills · #4 (**permalink**) 01-14-2005, 10:25 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Marc Peters

Mr Mills > Does the real time include allowance for two pass encoding?

Dunno offhand. Will check next time I put my PC on at home and remember to look.

marlowe · #5 (**permalink**) 01-15-2005, 11:32 AM

Thanks for you help. I've done some reasearch on this for a few hours and I know a lot more now.

It takes 8 minutes to convert a 1 minute full capture .av file to an mpg 2 file. This is a big problem for me as I have to convert lots and lots of new video each week.

Real Time conversion is a very attractive soloution. I've done some research and the Matrox RT.X100 card you recommend has excellent reviews and I'm sure this is what I really need to buy. It's quite expensive but it will be worth the investment.

To get the best performance out of the Matrox RT.X100 I would have to get a faster processor and more RAM. Though I'm sure the Matrox RT.X100 would still speed up the conversions even if I didn't change my processor and add more RAM.

I think I will add a faster processor and more RAM first. It will be intersting to see how much this speeds up the conversions. I'll also buy a dedicated hardrive as this will be convenient for editing and may possibly speed things up a little. Then if I'm still not satisfied with the speed of the video conversions I'll invest in the Matrox RT.X100.

Thanks again for your advice.

Marlowe

Marc Peters · #6 (**permalink**) 01-15-2005, 11:42 AM

It's the speed of the processor that dictates how qickly the video encodes. My PC converts AVI to MPEG in more or less realtime.