h264 encoding times on OSx86

[680i-osx]

Does anyone here edit and compress HDV to H.264 videos on an OSx86?

I found that my encode times are too long, so please tell me if it's normal:

 

Source footage:

- Video: HDV video captured from the camcorder and then compressed to 1280x720@7000kbps using H.264 codec with best settings.

- Audio: Regular 2ch audio at 48kHz, using AAC codec at 256kbps and best settings.

 

Software: Final Cut Pro 6 and Compressor 3

 

It takes about 15 hours to encode a 18 minutes video!

I wasn't running other apps during the encode, and the hardware is as described in the signature.

 

Is it normal for this task on that hardware? Is there any tweak I can do to shorten the enconde time?

[Ranguvar]

I really don't know. But I recommend trying x264 (www.x264.nl, forum.doom9.org): It's by _far_ the fastest H.264 encoder, and the best quality too. It's also extremely SMP, I see you have a Core 2 Duo.

 

Here's a QuickTime component of x264: http://www003.upp.so-net.ne.jp/mycometg3/

[680i-osx]

I really don't know. But I recommend trying x264 (www.x264.nl, forum.doom9.org): It's by _far_ the fastest H.264 encoder, and the best quality too. It's also extremely SMP, I see you have a Core 2 Duo.

 

Here's a QuickTime component of x264: http://www003.upp.so-net.ne.jp/mycometg3/

 

Thanks!

I'll try that.

Actually I found that downclocking the CPU a bit, from 3.37 to 3.15GHz, did make the encoding faster and more stable... Never had crashes again, as I did when running at 3.37GHz.

Maybe OSX is more sensitive to overclocking than Windows.

 

Anyways thanks for your tip, I'll try the x264 and see which is better to my videos.