[MPlayer-users] tv card basics

[Martin Collins]

On Mon, 25 Nov 2002 17:40:43 +0100
Dexter Filmore <Dexter.Filmore at gmx.de> wrote:

> But how much CPU power do you need to fluently encode full PAL in
> mpeg4 with a bt8x8? I guess below 1.5GHz won't be enough?

Does a bt8x8 even provide full PAL? I was under the impression that
if you wanted full PAL you needed a card with hardware compression.

If by "fluently" you mean "in real time" I think 1.5GHz is not enough,
depending on how much pre-processing you do and your encoding
parameters. For example: I have a Marvel G400 that records 720x576 at
25fps to mjpeg using lavrec. Since mplayer cannot read these with a
decent codec I have to convert to yuv then crop to 704xwhatever then
denoise and deinterlace then encode to mpeg4 with a bitrate around
1000 with mencoder. The results are good but it takes over 2 hours per
10 minutes of video! I have a dual Athlon XP 1500+ (1.33GHz) machine
with 512MB RAM and fast SCSI disc.
I'm sure that if mencoder could read lavrec's files the process would be
much quicker but probably not 12 times quicker.

Martin