[MPlayer-users] mencoder on slow CPU

[Jukka Tastula]

On Friday 07 February 2003 11:25, DEBERT Jean-Louis wrote:
> [Automatic answer: RTFM (read DOCS, FAQ), also read DOCS/bugreports.html]

> Since the CPU is slow, you had better restrict yourself
> to "light" compression, i.e. mpeg1 or possibly mpeg2,
> but definitely not any of the mpeg4 variants, which are
> much more cpu-intensive. The resultant file will be
> somewaht bigger, but will be created faster ...

Since when did mpeg2 become "light"? Can you please tell me the encoder you 
are using? I remember encoding one ~45min clip for 8 hours on a 700MHz duron 
and getting not-so-good quality from mpeg2enc. Sorry. Certainly not for real 
time encoding on a 466MHz celeron. Actually not even on this 1.666GHz athlon 
(which works just fine for real time full pal resolution mpeg4 encoding with 
mencoder).

> Better yet, _if_ you have disk space, why not capture
> your TV programs without encoding (using mplayer -dumpstream)
> and encode later. This way is best, because mplayer -dumpstream
> doesn't consume much cpu, and for the later encoding pass
> you can use the best options, you have all the time you want.

You'll need some really nice hdd for this job, preferrably one that can do 
something like 20M/s write sustained. Otherwise forget it. You could run it 
through huffyuv and get it to go under 10M/s or so, but still its pretty damn 
big. I'm of course assuming full pal resolution here, which is probably 
completely wrong and not what you're after anyway.

Nvrec could be worth a try, too. I'm not sure about the quality and resolution 
you'll get out of it with that hardware but I'm afraid its either that or 
back to windows.