SMP-aware & optimized video/audio apps?

[funsoul]

Greets Folks!

Couldn't find a thread on this subject so wanted to pose the question....is there a list somewhere (or can we start one) of all SMP-aware video & audio editors, encoders, etc.?

I know that VirtualDub, Ulead MSPro 7 and TmpgEnc are aware and optimized for things like SSE, MMX and HT (not entirely certain about the hyperthreading). Do you know others?

I've tried Dvd2avi and am not really certain that it's fully optimized (anyone have info? how about dvd2svcd?).

Does anyone know of audio encoders/converters that are optimized? Am looking for something to use as stand-alone as well as a nice plug-in for TmpgEnc.

Anyhoo....I'd very much look forward to finding other applications that my setup can take advantage of (and would also love to hear from others with 'dualie' rigs).

-funsoul

[Lim]

Adobe Softwares and Canopus Procoder, Let's EDIT and Edius 2.0 are all SMP support

[LvR]

Pinnacle Studio 9

Beware - "AWARE" may also simply mean "doesnt crash with it being present" too.



IMHO if you switch on HT etc and find your CPU usage hitting the roof while render times come down, you have things optimized properly - anything less than about 100% means there is still optimization work to be done. Studio sees about 94% CPU usage for "both" CPUs on my 3.2G HT on my Gigabyte 8Ik1100 Intel 875P based motherboard - still not "quite there yet" but its obvious it uses HT when you disable HT in the bios and see render times increase by about 15% and CPU usage drops to only 52% max

Now that Prescott is around this could be interesting too

[funsoul]

Thanks folks....hopefully others will add to the list (as well as adding some of their experiences).

Add ssrc to the list of smp-friendly apps. Nice little proggy for converting audio sampling rates.

In TmpgEnc test runs (dv avi>vcd, best quality)....cpu utilization averages about 82%...clearly some room for improvement. The re-encode runs about 1.05 x cliprunning time.

I've yet to make all the XP tweaks from David Laborde (the last time I tried them....it led to lots of networking problems and application instability). Anyone have any tweak lists that they've successfully applied?

[Brian Ellis]

Mark Dileo's Benchmark test shows that the MSP7 HT/dualie "awareness" does not make an enormous difference between HT on and off. Mark himself has shown that the CPU usage is not optimal during rendering and encoding. Same applies to DVD WS2. I've found that rendering is more reliable with HT off, especially when transcoding (with HT on, I got an occasional spurious frame).

Don't use TMPGEnc now, as the MainConcept system in MSP7 and WS2 is just as good for my work (at least 99% of the time), so can't answer for that.

[funsoul]

Hiya Brian!

Hmmm...I've only been doing testing with tmpgenc so far (for the most part) but in those tests...re-encoding a 1min. dv avi using TmpgEnc (vcd, best quality) without HT enabled took about 2:30, with HT enabled it took roughly 1:04.

I did try one test re-encode of the same dv clip via MSPro7 (also vcd) and, yes, it was very fast (about 0:50 or so) but the quality was dismal...is there a higher-quality way to re-encode to vcd out of msp?

[Brian Ellis]

I don't think I've ever done an MPEG-1 encode with MSP7, so cannot answer. Sorry.

[Hulk]

As Brian said, my experiences have been that HT support is nil when rendering in WS2, but 100% while previewing motion menus and buttons.

TMPGENc is 100% with MPEG-2, cpu usage that is.

MSP7 HT support shows little gains. Moving from a 533fsb to 800fsb system will show a bigger performance gain.

- Mark

[funsoul]

Anyone know a good quality, smp-aware audio conversion (wav>mp2) plug-in for TmpgEnc?

Also....did some tests (dv>vcd) using adobe premiere 7. Althogh the quality doesn't really come close to TmpgEnc, the re-encoding speed is blisteringly (?) fast! It's taking about 15 seconds to re-encode a 1 minute test avi.

[X-Caliber]

it's not what you asked, but if you are ever interested in getting a tv tuner card, the Hauppauge PVR-250/350 are the only dual cpu capable TV tuner cards around. The other cards will cause lockups on dual cpu boards.

[funsoul]

OK....some more testing confirms the following:

- ulead mspro7 utilizes less than 50% of the cpus (closer to 25-30%, actually)

- virtualdub (as someone mentioned previously) is smp-aware but doesn't really take advantage (i.e., 20-30% cpu utilization even with multiple filters being applied) due to it's limited threading (2 threads)

- premiere7 is magnificently optimized but the bundled mpeg1 encoder is horrible (and the videotools premiere plug-in for winXP is not working)

Are any of the modifed versions of virtualdub (like sbc, for example) more optimized for smp than the regular version?

[Flying dutchman]

Have you tried the "pluginpack" frameserver for premiere?

http://www.debugmode.com/pluginpac/frameserver.php

[funsoul]

Thanks Flying Dutchman! Works like a charm!
Premiere>plug-in>TmpgEnc is the fastest method I've found to date (1:01 for 1min test clip). MSPro>plug-in>TmpgEnc takes 1:10 for the same clip.

[funsoul]

ummmm....correction.....scmpx, toolame and BESWEET are non-smp

So...still searching for smp-optimized. multithread audio apps (44.1>48khz conversion, wav>mp2 conversion). It'd be great to find any apps like that to use as plug-ins for tmpgenc.

[funsoul]

sorry to take so long in responding...but everyone who commented along the lines of 'ht is useless for re-encoding' is correct. getting much higher cpu utilization (tmpg, vcd template, best quality) with ht off.

since this will bump the thread up again....anyone found more smp-friendly apps (still looking for the audio stuff).
-funsoul