My neighbor is building a system to convert a large pile of home videos into DVDs. They will be using the Canopus ADVC55 to get the analog video into raw DV and will then use the Canopus Pro Coder (express) to encode to MPEG-2. They are buying a new computer before they embark on this process and are wondering which (Intel only) processor would be ideal for the task. Will the Pentium D (two seperate cores) work better than a Pentium 4 w. HT (2 virtual cores) assuming similar clock speeds? In other words, is the Canopus SW built to recognize the dual processors and send work to both or does it rely on the peak performance of one core? Thanks for any tips that you can provide.
Well I Know that Procoder (Non-Express) is optimized for HyperThreading , that being either 2 Logical Cores or Physical cores but From what I have read about the new Dual Core P-4"s is that they have 2 Physical Cores but have 4 Logical Cores so Both Cores are HyperThreaded which In theory should Give better performance than Just 2 Logical Cores..... The New Dual Core Athlon 64"s actually Perform up to 60% faster than the Dual core P-4"s when useing Non-Hyperthreaded Optimized software but the DC P-4 is better with hyperthreading Optimized apps..... I have a P-4 at 3.2ghz with HT (Overclocked from 2.6ghz) and I generally Encode at about 0.6 real time when useing "Canopus Procoder v2.04.02" on "Mastering Quality" but when useing "CinemaCraft Encoder SP 2.70" I can encode at more than 2x real time when encodeing to Full resolution Mpeg-2 with Simular Quality(Actually with better quality on Progressive Material but not quite as Good with Interlaced material)..... Good luck
Thanks Minion. I'll run a job on my home machine (Pentium D) and see how it compares to your 0.6 real time metric from a HT machine. Only the Pentium D 'extreme edition' (840EE) has the HT feature turned on. The standard Pentium Ds (840/830/820) do not and thus show up as 2 cores in the task manager.
