XPMCE Looking for testers for MCE video conversion assistant (MCEBuddy free GPL) - Page 3

dgaust · **14th September 2007, 12:02 PM**

I have 4 cores too!!!!

Actually even just optimised for the two cores I am finding it much slower than expected. Around 3 hours of recorded TV took around 12 hours to recode as XVID (1920 wide).

Not have done much encoding I wouldn't expect it to take that long.

phredeaux · **14th September 2007, 04:41 PM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by dgaust

I have 4 cores too!!!!

Actually even just optimised for the two cores I am finding it much slower than expected. Around 3 hours of recorded TV took around 12 hours to recode as XVID (1920 wide).

Not have done much encoding I wouldn't expect it to take that long.

Well, the configuration you've specified there is the highest resolution available (1920) using the highest quality and two passes (the default DivX HQ profile). It doesn't get any more system intensive than that. If you want to speed things up, choose a lower quality (FAST) profile. If you have one already then you can use it yourself by adding it to your profile and share it with me. Right now I'm focusing on what most people have and getting that bedded down and out the door. Then perhaps I'll indulge myself looking at a 4 core profile. Remember, that developing and testing these encodes is an extremely time intensive process.

Cheers

Derek

dgaust · **14th September 2007, 04:53 PM**

Cheers Derek

I'm just kidding around....

I realise that it is the most intensive, and the lower quality conversion took significantly less time, but left black borders up and down the left hand side of the video. Which is why I tried the higher quality version.

It's an issue really as I won't be doing much of it. Just doing testing as the previous h.264 encodes were having mencoder.exe crashes.

This beta version works fine though.

But if I do make some profiles (I have no idea how to so I probably won't) I will definitely share them with you.

I could probably modify the profiles that MCEBuddy currently uses and do some testing though. Can I easily access those profiles?

Astrotoy7 · **15th September 2007, 12:09 AM**

your persistent toil must be applauded Derek

Great stuff !!

Just starting to play with x64 beta 4 now. Will keep you informed

I was quite chuffed to see my name on beta test page....my mum always told me I'd be famous....one day!!

lolz

astro

vlad · **15th September 2007, 09:02 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by phredeaux

Later I'll get to optimised 4 core profiles.

Cool, thanks.

vlad · **15th September 2007, 09:07 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by Astrotoy7

my mum always told me I'd be famous....one day!!

lolz

astro

Dreams come true astro

Can I have an autograph ?

psyklops · **15th September 2007, 09:20 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by dgaust

I could probably modify the profiles that MCEBuddy currently uses and do some testing though. Can I easily access those profiles?

You can. The profiles are located here: C:\Program Files\Tyrell\MCE Buddy\mplayer

You'll need to know your way around mencoder/mplayer to get a feeling of the format.

For multi-core systems you can try tweaking the 'threads' parameter. However I suspect mileage will vary based on the format you encode, the complexity of the content your trying to encode and the value you enter in the threads parameter.

phredeaux · **15th September 2007, 11:45 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by psyklops

You can. The profiles are located here: C:\Program Files\Tyrell\MCE Buddy\mplayer

You'll need to know your way around mencoder/mplayer to get a feeling of the format.

For multi-core systems you can try tweaking the 'threads' parameter. However I suspect mileage will vary based on the format you encode, the complexity of the content your trying to encode and the value you enter in the threads parameter.

psyklops has it right. Though I've been tinkering a bit and I'm finding it difficult to get any improvement past two cores even setting the thread count high. Also, the first XVid pass always only uses 1 thread irrespective of how many you specify. Anyway, if anyone else has any joy getting more out of 4 processors let me know.

stewy99 · **16th September 2007, 01:02 AM**

Hi phredeaux.
I downloaded and tried 1.0.5 only two days ago and it is great. However, in the last 12 hours it has stopped working. Whenever I say start service, it goes for about 3 seconds and stops itself. It's been working and converted about 5 files, but now won't go past the 3 second mark. Have you had this before?
Two things, one, I'm willing to try the latest beta (1.0.6 is it?) and two, where will I find the error info that might help you look into this problem.

Cheers,
stewy99

vlad · **16th September 2007, 01:10 AM**

Quote:

Originally Posted by stewy99

Two things, one, I'm willing to try the latest beta (1.0.6 is it?)

Send Derek a PM, and he will send you a link

phredeaux · **16th September 2007, 10:14 PM**

MCEBuddy Beta Testers - MCEBuddy 1.0.6 BETA 5 is available

Beta 5 is hopefully the wrap-up for MCEBuddy 1.0x versions. The last remaining bits of functionality in scope for this release are now in, so it's just bug fixing until version 1.1. Key areas are:
- Connect as credentials for putting your encoded files on other systems, servers and NAS devices.
- The new generic encodes. The earlier beta encodes have been backed off as they were too optimised and either produced good results or crashed.
- Better suspend and resume. Should work well now.
- Critical errors displayed in configuration console as well as instead of just event log
- Automatic conversion of mapped drives to UNC paths
- The Microsoft hotfix for Vista 64 file browsing is now included
- ShowAnalyzer is not used under Vista64 as it does not interact correctly with MCEBuddy on that platform. Comskip is still supported on all platforms. ShowAnalyzer is supported on 32 bit platforms.

After running numerous encodes over a few days I got a number of surprises. Fortunately they have actually made the simplification process of MCEBuddy even easier.
H.264. Changing the resolution size of the resulting file for the H.264 encode to something smaller actually made absolutely no significant difference to the final file size , though it did speed things up a little. So there is now only one H.264 encode. It's now not quite as effective as the BETA4 version, but it is more robust (ie. no mencoder crashes in my tests). However, commercial skipping is still not supported with H.264. There is only one encode and it keeps the original resolution.
DivX. Changing the resolution size of the resulting file for the DivX encode to something smaller made some difference to the final file size, but the gains were not good enough to justify the loss of quality. So the DivX encode has gone the same way as the H.264 encode. There is only one encode and it keeps the original resolution. The new encode is MUCH faster than the BETA4 one.
WMV is huge and not as optimised so reducing the size does make a difference. As such the smaller resolution options are available.

By popular request, all the encodes now utilise 4 core systems as well as dual and single core. Don't expect 100% CPU utilisation on all though.

phredeaux · **17th September 2007, 10:00 PM**

Beta testing guys and gals, Beta 1.0.6 BETA 5, Encode Update 1 is available. Apologies it wasn't in BETA5 but free time has been negligible lately. Essentially this is the set of final encodes for 1.0x (hopefully). What I'm looking for is some tests to see if they can break the encode with different people's source recordings, especially the new H.264 encode.

Cheers

Derek