Are existing video apps multi-threaded?

[man8user]

Hello,

I am not quite sure if this is the right forum for my question but...

 

Having spent enough frustrating hours trying to do video processing with a a 32-bit Sempron, I want to upgrade to a much much faster cpu/motherboard combo. But before I take a leap into Phenoms/Denebs or Core 2 Duo E8600 or Core2 Q9550, it would be nice to know the level of multi-threading used by existing Linux video applications and utilities. It would serve little purpose to go for Core2 Extreme series if I can get by with a Core 2 Duo for example. I am not into games but not afraid to overclock if required to get the extra performance out of a system.

 

I use Cinelerra (at novice level), need ffmpeg frequently, use QDVDAuthor or ManDVD. The Cinelerra rendering to raw video takes 2.3 hour for a 1.5 hour DVD. Rendering to MPEG needs about 4.5 hours. ffmpeg easily eats up 1.5 hour for the same footage. ManDvd or QDVDAuthor takes about 1hr before the DVD structure appears on the hard disk. One mistake at an earlier stage of the workflow and I am back at Cinelerra redoing the editing! This is way too much for my patience.

 

So, any suggestions about what type of cpu/mobo combo would be effective for the typical software available at this time on Linux?

 

Thanks.

[tyme]

Get a Core 2 Duo. No need for the Extreme. The Duo will handle everything you need, your current problem is the Sempron as it's a low-end CPU.

 

Most apps in Linux should be multi-threaded, IIRC, especially apps like Cinelerra.

[ianw1974]

On my laptop and x86_64 distro, encoding an avi/mpeg from a DVD takes about 1 hour for a 2 hour movie. To encode a movie to DVD I did about 1hr 30 mins of avi/mpeg clips to DVD format (including creating the ISO to burn to DVD later) in around 45 minutes.

[theYinYeti]

The only disapointment I have is with mplayer. It is not multi-threaded unfortunately. I still use it though, as it is so powerfull.

However, to get some profit from my dual-core, I simply run two mencoder processes at once :) (that is: I encode two TV recordings to Mpeg4 at once)

 

Yves.

[man8user]

Ok... I get the picture.

 

That is a nice trick by Yves! You probably break up the input to encoder in two parts first.

 

Thanks to you all. I would probably shoot for Intel Q9550 to make me a little bit future-proof but the trend is clear. There needs to be more multi-threaded apps to extract benefits of quad cores and in future, of those 4,8,16 cores of i7.