Importance of frameserver speed

Anything related to video and my tools that is not a support request.
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agressiv
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Joined: Sun Aug 17, 2014 9:33 am

Importance of frameserver speed

Post by agressiv »

I've been doing movie encodes via frameserving for a long time, but I've always wanted to ask what I would consider a noobish question -

What's the importance of a faster frameserver (better video card with dgdecnv, for example) if you are simply encoding video with x264 and a veryslow as the preset parameter? Wouldn't that be the limiting factor? I'd don't really a large speed benefit on dgdecnv vs dgdecode when doing x264 encodes.

Assuming that's the case, what are people using frameservers for where a fast video card greatly helps them with their task at hand? Streaming?

I saw the benchmark thread over on doom9 and it just made me scratch my head, but I'm guessing I'm just missing something.

FWIW, I have a GeForce 770GTX.
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admin
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Joined: Thu Sep 09, 2010 3:08 pm

Re: Importance of frameserver speed

Post by admin »

There are of course some use cases where significant speed improvements are obtained. You've correctly noted too that there are use cases where the speedup is minimal. CPU bandwidth is recovered for encoding by offloading the decoding to the GPU. How much bandwidth is recovered depends on many factors. Also bear in mind that you can save significant time by deinterlacing on the GPU if that is part of your work flow.

But it's not all about speed. It's also about having correct decoding for all three video formats, supporting proper handling of interlaced encoding, pulldown, etc., in a consistent manner, supporting all the common containers, a consistent workflow for all video types, GPU deinterlacing, cropping/resizing, some useful stream analysis capabilities, etc. The deinterlacer got wicked fast on VP6.

If those things are not important to you then I suppose you can be perfectly happy with available SW decoders. It seems though that these things are important to DGDecNV's large user base.

Finally, maybe you will get better answers regarding people's specific motivations/experiences by asking about it in the benchmark thread you cited.
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agressiv
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Joined: Sun Aug 17, 2014 9:33 am

Re: Importance of frameserver speed

Post by agressiv »

For me, it's only to make sure I wasn't doing something wrong, an example being:

"Oh, if you are using dgdecNV, a 2 hour 1080p movie at x264 preset veryslow should be encoding in 2 hours!" I just wanted to make sure that wasn't the case.

I have a multitude of computers, but only 3 of them have nVidia chips which are capable of running DGDecNV. Of course, I wish there was a "software-only" version of DgdecNV, which handles MKV containers, VC1, h264 and the like, but one can only wish :)

I tend to use RipBot264 for "simple" blu-ray encoding, (were I can simply set CRF 18, crop and be done with it) and I use DGDecNV when I need to apply special avisynth filters or work with DVD's.

Thanks for all of your work!
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admin
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Re: Importance of frameserver speed

Post by admin »

agressiv wrote:"Oh, if you are using dgdecNV, a 2 hour 1080p movie at x264 preset veryslow should be encoding in 2 hours!" I just wanted to make sure that wasn't the case.
It's pretty simple I think. The greater your encoding load (slower x264 settings) the less contribution fast decoding makes to overall time consumption. It would be easy to beat real time with less demanding encoding settings, and then you'd want the decoder to be able to feed frames as fast as possible.
I have a multitude of computers, but only 3 of them have nVidia chips which are capable of running DGDecNV. Of course, I wish there was a "software-only" version of DgdecNV, which handles MKV containers, VC1, h264 and the like, but one can only wish :)
If you have a QuickSync processor, maybe DGDecIM could be useful for you.
I tend to use RipBot264 for "simple" blu-ray encoding, (were I can simply set CRF 18, crop and be done with it)
Yes, the available SW decoders are adequate for many operations.
and I use DGDecNV when I need to apply special avisynth filters or work with DVD's.
It's always great to have robust options in difficult situations.
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