H.264 Encoding - Faster in the future?

H.264 is great, high quality video, low bitrates. However, one of my main complaints (and one shared by many) is the lengthy encoding times. 35 minutes for 3 minutes of video on a 1.8ghz iMac G5?! It's too long. So, will this get quicker in time with improved software? Or do we just need to wait for the hardware we use to improve. Also, does anyone know any quicker way of encoding h.264. Thanks.
-Michael Carter

I encoded to H.264 from a 1.45GB YUV 4:2:0 file. The new .mov file was just 277MB. This is 500 frames and no sound! I have no problems with encoding times - just wish they were made shorter by using more available CPU!
Like another poster said, the load didnt hit 70%. To improve performance, have you changed your system setting to 'Highest' in the Energy Saver part of system preferences? On my machine it makes a great deal of difference - especially in playback of 1080p trailers from the web! Its enough to make the Quicktime playback constantly full FPS even when doing something else on the machine

Similar Messages

Recording H.264 Live Stream on the Server

I have seen several questions which were close to what I am looking for, but haven't found an answer that worked. I work at a school, and we use a NewTek TriCaster to stream live events through FMS 3.5, which I am hoping to upgrade to AMS 5 to allow HLS. We have been streaming a single H.264 encoded feed through the server as a live stream which works well. They have recently asked if it is possible to archive that recording on the server. I was able to get everything to work correctly when I switched to using the VP6 codec, but as long as we were streaming with H.264, I could not get the server to record it correctly. Here's what I have tried:
This code works for the VP6, but the H.264 doesn't record the video:
application.onPublish = function (clientObj, streamObj)
     var s = new Stream("archive");
     s.record();
     s.play(streamObj.name);
This worked and created an flv file, but caused a few other issues due to the encoding of the VP6 and having to re-encode the video to H.264 before putting the file online.
Based on suggestions I was reading, I tried this with the H.264 stream:
application.onPublish = function (clientObj, streamObj)
     var s = new Stream("mp4:archive.f4v");
     s.record();
     s.play(streamObj.name);
This created an f4v file, but I could not play it. When I tried to open it in Adobe Media Encoder, it gave an error that it did not support the compression type.
Thanks.

You should use a H.264 compitable encoder..
FMS only delivery content, player only player the stream..
Flix Engine, from On2, have the H.264 encoder..

Something faster than the Elgato Turbo?

Hi,
I have a Mac Pro 2.66 and from what I've read on line, there's no point in getting the Elgato Turbo Encoder. Is there something I can get which will encode faster than the Mac Pro 2.66?
Thanks
-Dean

8 core mac pro. i'm going to end of year. probably save 25% more time.

Media Encoder CC exporting the wrong resolution in custom preset h.264

I have two custom presets in Media Encoder CC. The original file is an mov Lossless 720x480 from After Effects. One is h.264 mp4 720x480 and the other is h.264 640x480. When I encode the resolutions are 872x480 and 581x480 respectively. Not sure what I have going on here. The presets worked with the same settings just fine in Media Encoder CS6 on another computer. Any ideas?

Bump

For h.264 encoding, what size does the project need to be to avoid black bars on the top and bottom.

For h.264 encoding, what size does the project need to be to avoid black bars on the top and bottom. I am exporting the mp4 to Brightcove.

Hi there,
Which version of Adobe Captivate (If it is Adobe Captivate) is it and which Operating System is it?
Thanks.

Html5 player connect to FMS via rtmp (H.264). Is it possible in the future?

Hi,
I have a streaming service with FMS4, and I need in the future a html5 player, what play the H.264 videos from the FMS, BUT on the rtmp protocol, because the authetication and control of service is in a main.asc script on the FMS.
Other question is the live streaming from FMS to html5 videoplayer.
Thank's in advance!

I would not expect any browser to support RTMP on the <video> object in the future, and in order to make the transport reliable for html5, all browsers would need to support it. Adobe has no control over this... it is entirely up to the browser vendors to decide what streaming transports to implement in their browsers.
Consider that there is no streaming protocol defined in the HTML5 specification. This means that it is up to each browser vendor to decide what (if any) streaming protocol they want to support. I imagine it will be a good number of years before we can count on any single protocol for streaming working across all browsers.
For now, the only reliable means of delivering video to the browser using an HTML5 <video> tag is progressive download from an HTTP server.

SSD is the future? Not so fast...

The Bleak Future of NAND Flash Memory
I'm clinging to my huge capacity hard drives (3TB externals) for now. I only cold boot once in a while, and to this end, I'm drawn to the hybrid SSD-hard drive approach.
" Conclusion
The technology trends we have described put SSDs in
an unusual position for a cutting-edge technology: SSDs
will continue to improve by some metrics (notably density
and cost per bit), but everything else about them
is poised to get worse. This makes the future of SSDs
cloudy: While the growing capacity of SSDs and high
IOP rates will make them attractive in many applications,
the reduction in performance that is necessary to increase
capacity while keeping costs in check may make it difficult
for SSDs to scale as a viable technology for some
applications. "
Solved!
Go to Solution.

I'm currently still staying away from SSD for my work stuff. The capacity is just not there.
Using a Scorpio Black 750GB and Caviar Black 2TB on the external.

I'm going to save my old Hi8 tapes on a hard disk using final cut pro x, to save it for the future. But how shall I export it, and in what will be the best quality to save it in?

I'm going to save my old Hi8 tapes on a hard disk using final cut pro x, to save it for the future. But how shall I export it, and in what will be the best quality to save it in?

Hi Carsten...good luck with your project.. I had just about as many Video8 & Hi8 tapes as
you that I digitized and eventually brought into FCPX..took me many months not weeks
to do so,BTW, as each tape was 60-90 minutes in lenght...and many hundreds of
gigab ytes of storage ( uncompressed AVI files)..it's tedious work unless you plan to farm
it out to a processing house...also regarding eventual storage format...remember
Hi8 is 400 lines or about 540X480 in todays resoultion metrics..you can't make hi-def out
of source that starts out as 400 lines...in my case I rewrapped the avi files into .mov
containers and imported the mov files into FCPX where I got rid of the hundreds of
minutes of Colorado mountain landscapes to get to that one minute shot of the kids
on horseback ( late 80's for most of my archives)..so its a job..scouring thru 30X90 min
of source to not miss those precious memories takes diligence and hard work but its worth
it; eventually I encode the uncompressed video I want to save in H.264 format Staandard
Def not HiDef

Please clarify availability of H 264 encoding in AIR for iOS/Android

Hello,
I've written an app to send a live camera stream via RTMP in H 264/Nellymoser from mobile devices. The app works fine on AIR when tested on my Win7 desktop, but when I publish to AIR 3.2 for Android or AIR for iOS, it seems that the H264VideoStreamSettings are simply ignored and the video ends up in Sorenson. Is H264 supported for encoding/publishing on AIR for mobile devices? If not, is this planned for the future?
Thanks!

Unfortunately, the release notes say H.264 encoding from AIR is for the desktop version only:
http://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/multi/release-notes-flash-player-11.html
H.264/AVC Software Encoding for Cameras (desktop) — Stream high-quality video from your computer's camera with higher compression efficiency and industry stanard support, enabling both immersive real-time communications such as video chat/conferencing and live video broadcasts.

Any way to encode faster ?

Hi
I have a Macbook Pro 2.5Ghz 4gb memory OSX 10.6.6
I encode a lot of EyeTVHD video clips.
It is a slow laborious process. I mean it takes 6 to 12 hours for some.
EyeTV tells me that even its own hardware driven Turbo264 would not enhance encode times with my setup.
My question is what is out there currently that speeds up encoding and burning dvd disks?
Will the new multi core processors speed things up?
Is the only way to buy a new $4000 Mac machine?
*And is it more important to have more GHz or more cores ?*
From what I've read the software has to be able to incorporate these new processors.
And one more question - why does iMovie not import Quicktime h.264 video format but will import h.264 files ?

Hi jonsondonson-
The only way to get it to encode faster is to buy a faster machine.
No matter what speed the burner runs at, the Mac can only encode the video based on its processor speed. The more complicated the movie is with special effects and transitions the longer it will take to encode.
Luck-
-DP

H.264 encoding tremendously slow. Any advice.

I've got some DV footage I want to put online using he H.264 codec, but compressor is treachorously slow. It took 41 hours to compress a 25 minute video.
I am tempted to just go to mp4 compression, but I prefer H.264.
Here's the compressor 2 settings I used:
Name: H.264 700Kbps Streaming @.50
Description: H.264 for high-bandwidth streaming
File Extension: mov
Audio Encoder
AAC, Stereo (L R), 48.000 kHz
Video Encoder
Format: QT
Width: 320
Height: 240
Pixel aspect ratio: square
Crop: None
Frame rate: (100% of source)
Frame Controls:
Retiming: Nearest Frame
Resize Filter: Linear Filter
Deinterlace Filter: Motion Adaptive
Adaptive Details: On
Antialias: 0
Detail Level: 0
Field Output: Same as Source
Codec Type: H.264
Multi-pass: On, frame reorder: On
Pixel depth: 24
Spatial quality: 75
Min. Spatial quality: 50
Key frame interval: 150
Temporal quality: 50
Min. temporal quality: 50
Data rate: 0.586 (Mbps)
Fast Start: on
Compressed header
requires QuickTime 3 Minimum
I am using:
G5 Dual 2/ 4 GB RAM/ Compressor 2// ATI Radeon 9600 XT

Yes, H.264 is very slow to encode. That's how they get the great quality out of it.
The preset you have is fine, but as was mentioned, the frame controls for resizing, deinterlacing and retiming will slow things down exponentially if you increase them.
Only advice to give. Get a faster Mac.

Speeding up H.264 encoding

Hello,
I'm looking for your current thoughts on speeding up H.264 encoding. I'm currently using FCE HD 3. Last night I made a 560x315, hour-and-twenty-minute web video for a client--it took over 14 hours to encode. Not the end of the world--usually I do 10-minute videos, but still...
I'm running a new G4 ibook (slow, I know) but am considering a MacBook Pro.
1) Any system settings or RAM issues that might speed things up?
2) Any thoughts on the open source x264 (just downloaded and will test this weekend)?
3) It is really possible to distrubte the work amongst multiple computers (I'm using an Airport network with two other (older) Macs. Worth it?
Also, I've read that H.264 encoding is slower on the MacBook Pro as compared to the G5, apparently due to non-optimized code in Quicktime. Any experiences with this or rumors of when/if the software will be made to run faster? Is there a real hardware solution out there?
Thanks!
--Darin

Thanks for the replies. I went to the Apple store and purchased one, since there's no restocking fee. But playing with it last night, it definitely won't do what I want it to do. So, it's going back.
But, your note on upping processor performance has noticeably helped when I'm scrubbing video on my MB. It's more responsive now. Also, the encoding time improved. I had a sample 720p clip I am have testing against. After upping the processor (choosing "performance" over the default "normal") improved the encoding time from 65 to 48 minutes. That's a nice little boost. Thanks.

AIR h.264 encoding support

Is h.264 encoding in AIR at the roadmap of Adobe? I know Adobe is working hard on delivering the requested features, and thanks for the Echo Cancellation. It works great. H264 is now in flash player, but can we expect classes H264VideoStreamSettings, H264Profile, H264Level be available on the AIR in the future as well? I can't think of any technical issues regarding this, but is there any legal issues? It would be very important for us to know, to make a business decisions now.
Thank you.

I'll ask around and see if I can find any info about this, in the mean time, if you haven't voted already I'd like to encourage you to cast your vote for this feature request over at ideas.adobe.com
H.264/AAC encoding from AIR/Flash player
Thanks,
Chris

H.264 Encoding Questions...???

I am now starting to convert different video files to my iTunes for my AppleTV and have some questions...
BTW, I am using VisualHub and using H.264 - high quality setting for encoding on a G5 iMac with 1GB RAM.
1. Approx. how long should it take to encode a 700MB .avi file to .mp4, using H.264?
I am transferring all these TV shows I have that are around 700MB .avi files and they are taking anywhere from 400-600 minutes per file!!! That seems very long to me.
2. Do .VOB files typically take even longer to encode using H.264?
The few .VOB files I have tried are taking 800 or so minutes for a 2-3GB .vob file.
Is there something else I should be doing? Are these times normal?
Any tips or suggestions for encoding?
Thanks in advance.

Don't use VisualHub myself, but do know that h.264 encoding is extremely processor intensive and time consuming. The actual source material probably won't matter too much unless it's high definition or uses a particularly computationally intensive algorithm to decode (and for most decoding is miles faster than encoding).
For example, on my iMac (2.16GHz Intel core 2 duo) converting a 2-3GB '.rec' TV recording from a Topfield PVR (which in essence produces MPEG2 transport streams), via MPEG Streamclip can take 3-4 hours for say a 90-120 minute program, and that's without using 2 pass encoding.
VisualHub is regarded as one of the faster converters, but High Quality setting will take longer than 'Standard' and the 'Go nuts' option will take even longer.
Hopefully (though it may not be what you want to hear) someone with a G5 and VisualHub will reply to confirm the sort of encoding times you're experiencing - I say hopefully as if their times are much faster it points to some other factor than VisualHub.
Elgato make a hardware USB h.264 encoder which is supposed to speed up encoding considerably but it only accelerates specific applicatiosn (eg iMovie) or their own conversion application (so far - the latest MPEG Streamclip release suggests they will add an option to harness it if possible/feasible - it may not be).
There are mixed reports on the Elgato device - biggest gripes being lack of customisable settings and an 800x600 resolution maximum. I've got one on order - for some older stuff recorded off a PVR it'll probably be more than adequate but for newer things software encoding is likely to be better. Time vs quality trade off really.
Best h.264 encoding results for most at the present time will almost certainly be achieved in customisable converter software - there are probably professional high quality h264 hardware converters available but these would be prohibitively costly for most of us.
AC

H.264 encoding hardware

We're cranking these things out now, and the render times are killing us.
Any suggestions for quality hardware for H.264 encoding?
Budgets aren't what they used to be around here, so I'd like to keep the cost somewhere between an arm or a leg - not both.

Typically I export a QT Movie, and uncheck SELF CONTAINED. This makes a reference movie, that is a clip that points to the existing media on the media drive, and not a self contained movie containing footage within. This export is way faster than exporting a self contained movie.
Then I take that into Compressor or into the Elgato software and let it encode. Then I can go back to work in FCP. You CAN, if you want, choose QUICKTIME CONVERSION, and I think the Elgato options pop up there, but then you are stuck while FCP is busy encoding. And I don't think it is any faster.
Shane

H.264 Encoding - Faster in the future?

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for