190 hours to transfer from Blu Ray!!

[Norwich]

We're currently using a G5 with OSX 10.7 which ripped a Blu Ray to MKV files fairly quickly. However on our first attempt using DCP o Matic its taking 190 hours to transfer a 90 minute feature! Can anyone help? Encode servers will speed it up no doubt (which we'll sort out soon if we can) but is there anything we are missing? Thanks for any help in advance...

[carl]

I'm afraid that sounds roughly right for a computer of that vintage. JPEG2000 encoding (especially with the open-source encoder) is a slow business!

There are some benchmarks here which show the encoding rates in frames per second for various machines. I can't find a passmark result for the PowerPC G5 but the slowest machine on the list is a Intel Core 2 Duo, released in 2006, which gets 0.71 fps. If your G5 is the one that was released in 2003, 3 years earlier, Moore's Law would put your machine at about 0.18 fps, which is roughly what you are seeing.

I'm afraid you need to get hold of some faster computer(s) to encode features, unless you are very patient!
Carl

[Carsten]

When I use old Wintels, I get similiar results. 4-5 days is 'normal' for a full length feature. With a fast, yet moderate expensive modern machine (e.g. i7-4770), this can get down to 6-8 hrs. Even with a lot of encoding servers, it is hard to get close to realtime.

- Carsten

[andreades]

I have a similar problem: I have a pc with amd x4 9550 2.2ghz with 5gb of ram and a ssd of 240gb but the maximum speed is 0.5 frame per second.
There is something I can do?

[carl]

I would expect a bit better than that from your CPU. What is the setting of "threads to use for encoding on this host" in preferences? Try setting to 8 if it's not there already.

[Carsten]

My extensive benchmark list shows 1fps doing the Bunny Benchmark on an AMD Athlon 2 X2-250/3GHz CPU. That CPU has a CPU passmark of 1.855, while your Phenom X4 9550 is listed at 2564, so should be faster. But if you are not doing the Bunny benchmark, but some complicated, maybe even 4k stuff, it may be right, because it is clocked somewhat lower. And yes, as Carl wrote, try higher thread settings, let it crunch through bunny, and decide for the best setting. Do not overdo it, though, it will get slower again if you set it too high. 6-12 is probably the range to choose from.

This is certainly not the fastest machine to do J2k.


- Carsten