Performance Video encoding | Transcoding

Transcoding with MediaShow Espresso

We recently added another benchmark to the test-suite. It's MediaShow Espresso. The fun thing about this video transcoder is that it can utilize the GPU to assist it with the transcoding process. However, you can also solely use the CPU, making this a very interesting benchmark as you can check out behavior of CPU transcoding AND GPU transcoding all in one test.

Above, you can find the results of this new test. In this test we transcode a 200 MB AVCHD 1920x1080i media file to a 1280x720P MP4 binary (YouTube format). This measurement is in seconds needed for the process, thus lower = better.

However you can use QuickSync as well, hardware acceleration matters and not a slight bit. We where impressed when we activated the GeForce GTX 680's core logic on this, but look at the 3770K/3570 with QuickSync enabled ... dang ! Twice as fast as Core i7 2600 BTW.

The problem with this function is, the software application needs to support it. But when it does ... man ...

Video Transcoding H.264 (DTS5.1) to x.264 AC3 5.1

Video transcoding is well suited for systems that have more CPU cores. Encoding/transcoding to x.264 format is one of the most intensive tasks a processor can perform. As such this is one of the better tests in the entire review. 

We encode an h.264 DTS 1080P trailer of 150 MB to Matroska x.264 with 5.1 channels AC3. It's compressed in such a way that you can play it back with Haali media splitter and/or FFDSHOW codecs. We use the Handbrake software suite which is multi-core aware... the more processor cores it sees, the faster it can and will transcode. This software is also a wonderful benchmark for CPU and memory testing.

The displayed number is the number of frames rendered per second averaged out over the encoding process. The higher the number, the faster the performance is. It's exactly in applications like these where processors with more cores really shine as they are all utilized to the maximum.