Slow Transcoding what CPU is needed for 1080p

Hi I have been using serviio for a week or so now and think is is a fantastic program. However when my high quality movies require full transcoding to MPEG-2 then my PC can't keep up. Remuxing is fine. I have done a few tests at the commant line to try and tune a bit more performance but expect the the mojority of the problem is the CPU needed for h264 L5.0 and above decoding does not leave sufficient CPU to re encode. Infact with my testing at the command line I get almost the same performance re-encoding in h264 then mpeg.

I got the latest ffmpeg build from http://ffmpeg.zeranoe.com/builds/ with libx264 enabled

  Code:

ffmpeg -i "E:\Media\HD Test Files\Nvidia PureVideo HD_1080p.mkv" -y -threads 2 -vcodec mpeg2video -minrate 0k -maxrate 20000k -bufsize 32768k -f mpegts transcoding-temp-2-MPEG2TS.stf


Gives about 18fps encoding on a 30fps file

  Code:

ffmpeg -i "E:\Media\HD Test Files\Nvidia PureVideo HD_1080p.mkv" -y -threads 2 -vcodec libx264 -preset ultrafast -f mpegts transcoding-temp-2-MPEG2TS.stf


This also gives 18fps on the same file

This is on an Athlon 2x64 3800+ processor. Against a 1080p L5.1 h264 file. see details below

  Code:

General
Unique ID                        : 196492646879733018939188640299291271260 (0x93D31B7496CF521532A4BE5705A0605C)
Complete name                    : E:\Media\HD Test Files\Nvidia PureVideo HD_1080p.mkv
Format                           : Matroska
Format version                   : Version 1
File size                        : 173 MiB
Duration                         : 4mn 16s
Overall bit rate mode            : Variable
Overall bit rate                 : 5 647 Kbps
Encoded date                     : UTC 2008-08-07 21:19:38
Writing application              : mkvmerge v2.2.0 ('Turn It On Again') built on Jul  1 2008 15:44:46
Writing library                  : libebml v0.7.7 + libmatroska v0.8.1
Attachment                       : This video has been downloaded from Vuze.com using Azureus

Video
ID                               : 1
Format                           : AVC
Format/Info                      : Advanced Video Codec
Format profile                   : Main@L5.1
Format settings, CABAC           : Yes
Format settings, ReFrames        : 5 frames
Codec ID                         : V_MPEG4/ISO/AVC
Duration                         : 4mn 16s
Bit rate                         : 5 374 Kbps
Nominal bit rate                 : 5 736 Kbps
Width                            : 1 920 pixels
Height                           : 1 072 pixels
Display aspect ratio             : 16:9
Frame rate                       : 30.000 fps
Color space                      : YUV
Chroma subsampling               : 4:2:0
Bit depth                        : 8 bits
Scan type                        : Progressive
Bits/(Pixel*Frame)               : 0.087
Stream size                      : 165 MiB (95%)
Writing library                  : x264 core 60 r0+892 ad1d7a4
Encoding settings                : cabac=1 / ref=5 / deblock=1:0:0 / analyse=0x1:0x131 / me=umh / subme=7 / brdo=0 / mixed_ref=0 / me_range=32 / chroma_me=1 / trellis=1 / 8x8dct=0 / cqm=0 / deadzone=21,11 / chroma_qp_offset=0 / threads=12 / nr=0 / decimate=1 / mbaff=0 / bframes=3 / b_pyramid=1 / b_adapt=1 / b_bias=0 / direct=3 / wpredb=0 / bime=0 / keyint=250 / keyint_min=25 / scenecut=40(pre) / rc=2pass / bitrate=5736 / ratetol=1.0 / rceq='blurCplx^(1-qComp)' / qcomp=1.00 / qpmin=10 / qpmax=51 / qpstep=4 / cplxblur=20.0 / qblur=0.5 / ip_ratio=1.40 / pb_ratio=1.30 / aq=2:1.00
Default                          : Yes
Forced                           : No

Audio
ID                               : 2
Format                           : Vorbis
Format settings, Floor           : 1
Codec ID                         : A_VORBIS
Duration                         : 4mn 16s
Bit rate mode                    : Variable
Bit rate                         : 160 Kbps
Channel(s)                       : 2 channels
Sampling rate                    : 44.1 KHz
Compression mode                 : Lossy
Delay relative to video          : -667ms
Stream size                      : 4.90 MiB (3%)
Writing library                  : libVorbis 1.2 (UTC 2007-06-22)
Default                          : Yes
Forced                           : No

What processors are you guys running?
Can you do realtime 1080p transcoding?
I guess it should be possible to do realtime x264 transcoding with an FFMPEG build with the enable libx264?
Is there anyway of incorperating hardware acceleration?

[NX3]

AMD Athlon 3800+ is cica 2005 so showing its age a little perhaps and wasn't the strongest at for transcoding video. A good desktop CPU but runs a bit short of 1080p transcoding. I'm only running a Intel Atom dual core but looking up benchmarks its a much faster cpu than a AMD Athlon.

Rather that upgrade your PC etc a cheaper option would be to get a media player where you don't need transcoding. They start from as little as £20 for a basic, not networked player up to 80'ish for a WDTV Live HD which will work well with Serviio but can also play most file format natively.

The Athlon 64x2 is not a bad processor with NVidia 8600GTS it uses <6% CPU for realtime decoding of VC1 and h264 with the MediaCentre Home Edition codecs. Unfortunatley without the H/W support from the GPU it cant quite match this with FFMPEG, or x264.

I do have a media player a Sony BDP-S480 which is great for most content, I was just looking to see what others are doing and what options were out there. Serviio is a great program, and transcoding is great for camera type mpegs where the bit rate is low or remuxing into TS containers for smoother playback.

[zip]

Decoding and Encoding is quite different.