Hardware compression mpeg2 to mpeg4 any good routes yet?

[newschapmj1]

I have Sage 5.x and it works fine.
(I have bought 6 but not got around to upgrading yet).

I record a few programs a week on my dedicated SageTV computer.
Often I strip out the ads with Video Redo & compress it using AutoGK into DivX format.
I'm not interested in HDTV for at least 12 months.

I was checking to see if hardware compression has not taken off yet.
Plextor does not seem to get great reviews.

ATI referred to Avivo and software using their newest cards
but again this software seems poor and unreliable compared to Xvid
(http://forum.doom9.org/archive/index.php/t-114994.html)

Are there any good products out there or is the consensus to buy the fastest CPU you can afford/be patient with what you have?

[davephan]

Originally Posted by newschapmj1

I have Sage 5.x and it works fine.
(I have bought 6 but not got around to upgrading yet).

I record a few programs a week on my dedicated SageTV computer.
Often I strip out the ads with Video Redo & compress it using AutoGK into DivX format.
I'm not interested in HDTV for at least 12 months.

I was checking to see if hardware compression has not taken off yet.
Plextor does not seem to get great reviews.

ATI referred to Avivo and software using their newest cards
but again this software seems poor and unreliable compared to Xvid
(http://forum.doom9.org/archive/index.php/t-114994.html)

Are there any good products out there or is the consensus to buy the fastest CPU you can afford/be patient with what you have?

I tried AutoGK transcoding, and I think the Roxy99 system is a far better video transcoding solution.

Have you tried the Roxy99 1200-bit high quality Xvid batch files / programs? The standard definition quality is virtually the same as Mpeg2 as far as I can tell on a 60 inch SD rear projection TV. The main problem is the CPU load to transcode the Xvid AVI back to Mpeg2 during the MVP playback process. The CPU is sustained near or at 100% with an Athlon XP 2100+ CPU - it just does not have enough processing power. The same CPU takes about 1 hour to transcode each hour of Mpeg files.I remark out the comskip portion in the Roxy99 batch files, since I use VideoReDo to edit out commericials. Lower-end CPU based systems take several hours to transcode each hour of Mpeg2 files into high quality Xvid AVI files using the two-pass process. During most of the transcoding process, the CPU load will be sustained at 100%, for many hours!

Another benefit to using the Roxy99 transcoding process is that you can easily offload the high CPU transcoding jobs to several secondary computers. The file sizes compress to about 20% of the original size.

The main problem is compressing and decompressing the video files requires very intensive CPU utilization, so the CPU cost is higher to reduce your disk space cost.


Dave

[traker1001]

Nero Recode, Is an Awesome, Easy, solution that requires very few steps to use. Unfortunatly it costs a few bucks, However in the space saved by converting my dvd's to mp4, I have more than easily made up the money.


The great thing about it is its a one thing to install package, And you can try before you buy.

[dvd_maniac]

I use Staxrip to encode my Sage recordings and Nero Recode to encode my DVDs.
Staxrip uses a better compression codec(X264) than Nero(Ateme) does. Staxrip is a little faster and gives better quality at lower bitrates.
I myself find that 1-pass encodes using Staxrip is more than sufficient, meaning that with my AMD X2 4400+ I can encode a 42 minute show (after comm cutting) in about 40 minutes and the filesize is between 90-175MB.
The reason I use Nero for DVDs is that it's a little easier to cut out the end credits and include subtitles into the .mp4 container, otherwise I would use X264 for them too.

[traker1001]

I tried staxrip for my MP4's, It seemed abit slower than nero on my system, and I can't seem to get the audio to sync with the video in the output file, Also I am dumb, For some reason I don't like going in and selecting the actual vob files, I rather point to a folder and have it automatically pull the main movie out.

OTOH, Nero has done flawless mp4 compression of my dvd's, Audio and video have always synced perfectly, I can't tell a difference in the video between the DVD and the MP4 file and the resulting AC3 in the MP4 sounds absolutely outstanding.

All this from taking a full DVD and recompressing it to an on average a 700 to 800mb file. It takes me at about 2.5 hours to compress a 1.5 hour movie on my server, and I average about 40 to 60 FPS, And thats with sage service and comskip also running in the background.

Staxrip took me around 4 hours for the same movie, And the resulting movie didn't even sync up, However I have to admit it didn't look or sound to horrible either, It just didn't sync.

[bcjenkins]

http://www.engadget.com/2007/01/15/a...-video-conver/

[traker1001]

See that is nice and all, But the only reason I compress is to make it smaller so I can put more on my hdd, I don't cut, crop, resize or zoom any of my videos. I wonder if that solution would take that into consideration, or if it forces you to downres or modify the dvd for the sole purpose of using the video on you pmp.

[bcjenkins]

Originally Posted by traker1001

See that is nice and all, But the only reason I compress is to make it smaller so I can put more on my hdd, I don't cut, crop, resize or zoom any of my videos. I wonder if that solution would take that into consideration, or if it forces you to downres or modify the dvd for the sole purpose of using the video on you pmp.

I stumbled upon it going through my rss reader yesterday. I am hoping you don't get locked in to using it only through their software. In fact if it had a dshow filter, you could specify it in properties, right?

[Bigbird999]

Have a look at
avi.net . Fast, xvid or divx, batch mode encodes while you sleep, keep ac3 audio, dial in target file size, and best of all, its idiot proof. I know, cuz I can use it.

BB

[dvd_maniac]

All this from taking a full DVD and recompressing it to an on average a 700 to 800mb file. It takes me at about 2.5 hours to compress a 1.5 hour movie on my server, and I average about 40 to 60 FPS, And thats with sage service and comskip also running in the background.

Those speeds sound like you are using ASP mpeg-4.
Staxrip uses AVC mpeg-4 which would account for the speed difference.
I used to use Nero Digital ASP but found that AVC looks the same at almost half the bitrate. My movies tend to be about 475-650MB and I can not tell the difference between it and the original DVD on my 57" 1080i HDTV.
But I agree about using Nero for DVDs which is why I stated I still use it.
If you are using ASP version, you might want to try AVC at a lower filesize and see if you see any difference. I have over 1500 movies on HHD, some earlier ones in ASP and others in AVC and I can definitely tell the difference between them.

But for recordings from Sage,
you might want to try Staxrip using X264(Video) and HE-AAC(Audio)

[traker1001]

Originally Posted by dvd_maniac

Those speeds sound like you are using ASP mpeg-4.
Staxrip uses AVC mpeg-4 which would account for the speed difference.
I used to use Nero Digital ASP but found that AVC looks the same at almost half the bitrate. My movies tend to be about 475-650MB and I can not tell the difference between it and the original DVD on my 57" 1080i HDTV.
But I agree about using Nero for DVDs which is why I stated I still use it.
If you are using ASP version, you might want to try AVC at a lower filesize and see if you see any difference. I have over 1500 movies on HHD, some earlier ones in ASP and others in AVC and I can definitely tell the difference between them.

But for recordings from Sage,
you might want to try Staxrip using X264(Video) and HE-AAC(Audio)

All my DVD's get encoded in Nero Cinema AVC mode, Ive actually never tried any of the other modes in nero. I may try stax rip for my sage recordings, just to see if I actually get a Synced audio.

Originally Posted by Bigbird999

Have a look at
avi.net . Fast, xvid or divx, batch mode encodes while you sleep, keep ac3 audio, dial in target file size, and best of all, its idiot proof. I know, cuz I can use it.

BB

Problem is H264 is alot better and smaller than xvid or divx encoding, Infact its a shame sage doesnt just plop out mp4 files by default.
.