[mythtv-users] Minimum Requirements for real-time MPEG-4 encoding

Ray Olszewski ray at comarre.com
Thu Sep 25 15:58:00 EDT 2003


At 09:44 AM 9/25/2003 -0700, Todd Greene wrote:

>Dell was selling re-stocked P4 2200 Mhz with a 400 Mhz front-side bus 
>yesterday for < $400 (not a Celeron).  Any thoughts as to whether a system 
>like this can do MPEG-4 encoding in real-time?  My P3 450 Mhz doesn t even 
>come close&

As posed, your question is meaningless, because it does not specify a 
resolution or a frame rate. I bet your P-3 450 would capture just fine at 
320x240x 15 frames per second (not as silly as it sounds; it's a fine frame 
rate for capturing animated stuff like the Simpsons, becaue that's about 
the frame rate of the animation itself, as distinct from the broadcast). If 
not, it surely would capture 160x120x15fps ... unsatisfactory capture 
settings to my eye, but endurable for some purposes.

Assuming a more normal 320x240 at NTSC frame rate, about the minimum for 
serious work, it should be way more than enough ... I capture straight to 
DivX at that resolution and frame rate all the time on a P-3 1 GHz, for 
example. It's a good bet that the system would be able to capture 640x480 
at NTSC frame rate ... I have a 1.8 GHz Celeron that can usually do it, 
though CPU load is always over 85% and hits 100% too often to consider this 
reliable.

I cannot actually speak to the performance of a specific system, of course, 
so I'm just really responding with respect to the CPU and clock speed, not 
some specific but imprecisely identified Dell system.





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