nMP Handbrake Expectations

[ThrawnTHX]

While I have true professional need of the new Mac Pro, I also desire it's multicore Xeon E5 from an encoding perspective for personal use.

Right now I encode MKV Blu-Ray rips to Apple TV3 MP4s on a PC with an Intel 3960x Extreme (Sandy Bridge) that has 6 cores running at 3.3GHz. I pull in average movie encodes of about 3 hours.

So, I'm looking primarily at the 3.0GHz 8-core Xeon for my new Mac Pro build. Do you guys think I'll see a solid decrease in time spent encoding per movie or am I running against some serious diminishing returns at this point? My PC is liquid cooled whereas there's a chance for some throttling with the nMP's cooling capabilities. I know that there's a possibility that OpenCL may have a huge benefit in future iterations of Handbrake if it gets out of PC-only beta and utilizes it for more than just deinterlacing. So there's always that, too.

 

[ChrisA]

Handbrake? I bet Apple releases a new version of compressor to go with the new FCPX that is promised for this month. Compressor will likely use OpenCL and be optimized for the nMP.

I think compressor makes nicer output and is with the $50 Apple charges

 

[gmanist1000]

Has anyone here used Handbrake to encode any DVD/BluRays yet? I'm curious what your AVG FPS is.

 

[0x2102]

I am curious to see some HandBrake AVG FPS as well. My current cMP 12c * 2.8Ghz will give me around 42 - 52 FPS from BluRay MKV to aTV3 preset - depending on the movie.

The "MacFormat's Mac Pro 2013 diary - part 3: video encoding, GPU heat tests and a little experiment" video on YouTube shows HandBrake performance of the nMP 8c but I am a bit disappointed if the shown results are the maximum. Not sure what the source material was (BluRay equivalent was mentioned) but the AVG FPS was around 32 - 34 FPS.

 

[rasputin666]

I am curious to see some HandBrake AVG FPS as well. My current cMP 12c * 2.8Ghz will give me around 48 - 52 FPS from BluRay MKV to aTV3 preset - depending on the movie.

The "MacFormat's Mac Pro 2013 diary - part 3: video encoding, GPU heat tests and a little experiment" video on YouTube shows HandBrake performance of the nMP 8c but I am a bit disappointed if the shown results are the maximum. Not sure what the source material was (BluRay equivalent was mentioned) but the AVG FPS was around 32 - 34 FPS.

i have the stock 6-core nMP and encoded a 45 min episode of Justified from MKV to NORMAL setting in Handbrake [i believe usually takes longest, so i wanted to see impact] and frame rate was over 210 throughout the encoding with newest handbrake version.

 

[0x2102]

i have the stock 6-core nMP and encoded a 45 min episode of Justified from MKV to NORMAL setting in Handbrake [i believe usually takes longest, so i wanted to see impact] and frame rate was over 210 throughout the encoding with newest handbrake version.

Could you please post some BluRay MKV to aTV3 (preset) results to compare? I assume "Justified" was DVD source material.

I have a nMP 6c on order with a delivery date of "February" but I think it will be more toward the end of Feb.

Thx.

 

[rasputin666]

i have the stock 6-core nMP and encoded a 45 min episode of Justified from MKV to NORMAL setting in Handbrake [i believe usually takes longest, so i wanted to see impact] and frame rate was over 210 throughout the encoding with newest handbrake version.

OK, attached a pic. i am running Eye TV, watching Bruins game and cloning a 2TB drive via USB 3 at the same time as handbrake. not too shabby.

 

[gmanist1000]

OK, attached a pic. i am running Eye TV, watching Bruins game and cloning a 2TB drive via USB 3 at the same time as handbrake. not too shabby.

Handbrake really takes use of all the cores on your computer. I wonder how a 12-core would fare.

 

[NewbieCanada]

Last week I was trying to transcode some WMV files with Handbrake on my nMP and repeatedly got "Your System has Run out of Application memory" messages. Haven't had them while using any other app, nor did I get them on my rMBP using the same files, same settings.

So right now I'm doing all my encoding in a Windows virtual machine or on the rMBP.

 

[0x2102]

@rasputin666,

could you post some BluRay to aTV3 results.

Thx.

 

[VirtualRain]

Handbrake scales almost perfectly with CPU performance. There's a couple ways you can get a ballpark of the nMP compared to your old one...

1. Compare Geekbench multi core scores
2. Compare clock x cores (and give the new Ivy Bridge an additional 6-8% advantage for core improvements)

Done.

 

[NewbieCanada]

@rasputin666,

could you post some BluRay to aTV3 results.

Thx.

This is 1080p, DTS-HD, so both the video and audio need conversion.

 

[Einz]

At 24FPS

 

[Anim]

Isn't there a version of Handbrake that has OpenCL Acceleration?

 

[nathan43082]

I see you using the default RF of 20. Have you tried moving that to 21, 22 or 23… or even 24? With my Apple TV and HD television, which typically has mild noise reduction enabled, 23 looks as good as 20. (Yes, this is just a test, but I wanted to point out the possibility of veering from the default with actual content.)

 

[CptSky]

Isn't there a version of Handbrake that has OpenCL Acceleration?

Windows-only and in beta. There is a QuickSync beta too on Windows.

 

[haravikk]

Isn't there a version of Handbrake that has OpenCL Acceleration?

As CptSky says it's not available for OS X yet. I believe it's the x264 encoder version that adds it, but it only currently accelerates certain things, it'll probably be quite a while before we can expect fully OpenCL accelerated encoding.

So you won't see much (if any) benefit on a 4-core new Mac Pro, but the 6-core and up will definitely improve in speed as Handbrake does use multiple cores really well. Though for the cost of the 8-core and 12-core upgrades it's hard to say if it's worth it for the speed increase

 

[Einz]

Handbrake uses all the core to the max.

It's odd that EyeTv doesn't seems to use all the core when exporting to Apple TV. It maxed all the cores in my 3.1, but not the nMP.

 

[rasputin666]

i just used Handbrake on a 2 hour 720p AVI movie to convert to mp4 on Normal settings and achieved over 700 fps and finished in 3 minutes on my stock 6-core nMP. i may not be thrilled with my thunderbolt transfer performance with mechanical drives but Handbrake? wow.

 

[Anim]

i just used Handbrake on a 2 hour 720p AVI movie to convert to mp4 on Normal settings and achieved over 700 fps and finished in 3 minutes on my stock 6-core nMP. i may not be thrilled with my thunderbolt transfer performance with mechanical drives but Handbrake? wow.

3 minutes?? thats great news.

 

[rasputin666]

3 minutes?? thats great news.

i've been seeing 200-300 fps from mkv and avi transcodes however, i did find something to slow my handbrake/nMP combo. a 13GB 1080p eyetv file from tonights Beatles celebration. i edited the commercials out then i just point Handbrake to the .eyetv file. image attached.

 

[rasputin666]

i've been seeing 200-300 fps from mkv and avi transcodes however, i did find something to slow my handbrake/nMP combo. a 13GB 1080p eyetv file from tonights Beatles celebration. i edited the commercials out then i just point Handbrake to the .eyetv file. image attached.

after all that, i forgot to click the Large File size option and had to run it again. interestingly, it is faster this time

 

[rasputin666]

after all that, i forgot to click the Large File size option and had to run it again. interestingly, it is faster this time

Sorry for the multiple updates but i was just shocked at what i just saw. granted it is a SD 2 hour movie, so nothing close to 1080p but i never saw those numbers on handbrake.

 

[ActionableMango]

Handbrake? I bet Apple releases a new version of compressor to go with the new FCPX that is promised for this month. Compressor will likely use OpenCL and be optimized for the nMP.

I think compressor makes nicer output and is with the $50 Apple charges

Does Compressor accept all video formats as input? I've read it won't accept transport streams for example, so I wouldn't be able to use it for my ATSC recordings (.ts files) even though it lists MPEG2 support.

I've been curious to try it out because it has OpenCL acceleration, but I don't want to drop $50 only to find out it's not compatible with half of my input files.

Handbrake has accepted everything I've ever thrown at it, including corrupt H.264 recordings I made that would play in VLC but not Quicktime.

 

[chfilm]

I recently ran some tests on my late 2012 imac regarding quicksync and cuda acceleration.

I'm curious if anyone with a nMP would want to do some benchmarks too. I uploaded a file and specified what parameters I used.

https://forums.macrumors.com/posts/18744105/

Especially Handbrake seemed to be kinda slow since I thought it would use quicksync but it seemed not to, or I chose the wrong setting or something, but compared to quicktime x it was slow.