Video encoding & PC Resources...

Abz Hussain · 2 May 2011 at 21:18

Just a quick question regarding the above. When encoding/transcoding video on a pc, and lets keep things simple and say this is the only task going on, what PC resources are taxed the most? Is it the CPU, the GPU, both, ram etc?
I would be grateful if someone could enlighten me, i want to build a htpc and also use this build to do all the encoding/transcoding on and therefore decide on a suitable specs.
thank you.

Tyrion2 · 2 May 2011 at 22:29

Popular programs like handbrake & megui (both free), which encode into/using the 264 codec (hd) are cpu intensive. Ram & your gpu won't really be an issue.

The better/more appropriate the cpu (members here recommended me the i7 2600k over the i5 because i mentioned i would be video encoding) the quicker the encode will be (higher number of frames per second).

Some more recent programs also use the gpu for encoding, but most people seem to be sticking with the cpu reliant programs for now because i think they give better results.

Abz Hussain · 2 May 2011 at 22:36

Tyrion2 said:
Popular programs like handbrake & megui (both free), which encode into/using the 264 codec (hd) are cpu intensive. Ram & your gpu won't really be an issue.

The better/more appropriate the cpu (members here recommended me the i7 2600k over the i5 because i mentioned i would be video encoding) the quicker the encode will be (higher number of frames per second).

Some more recent programs also use the gpu for encoding, but most people seem to be sticking with the cpu reliant programs for now because i think they give better results.

Thanks for that. I was scratching my head over the i5 v i7 for encoding too. Might go i7 just like you.

Tyrion2 · 2 May 2011 at 22:43

Abz Hussain said:
Thanks for that. I was scratching my head over the i5 v i7 for encoding too. Might go i7 just like you.

haven't purchased just yet (the build's more expensive than i was intially planning so i need to wait a little while & get some more money together

) but video encoding is an important feature for me (the higher fps, the better) so i'll be going the i7 route