[Wylug-help] Video Encoding/Transcoding Hardware

[Dave Fisher]

Hi All,

I've recently had the time to tinker around my long-standing interest in
video authoring and editing.

It has been fun, but rendering and transcoding bottlenecks are proving a
bit frustrating.

Mostly, the problem is the time required on fairly basic consumer PCs,
but I am also experiencing occasional errors.

I'm not entirely sure whether the errors are only ocurring when
decoding for display, but one thing is undoubtedly clear: my current kit
doesn't have the umph I would like.

I think I've probably exhausted my options in terms of
scheduling/planning and software configuration, so I'm appealing for
plausible and affordable ideas for buying/deploying better hardware.

Would there be much merit in investigating dedicated hardware encoders?

If so, do you have any recommendations?

What sort of system/components should I be looking at to hit a plausible
price/performance sweetspot for video encoding (I doubt if I can afford
the kind of kit that professional studios use)?

Multi-processor boards?  Dual Core processors?  64-Bit? A cluster of
less powerful (but cheaper) boxes?  Disk speeds/types? Buses/bandwidth?
Memory types/sizes.

Please forgive me if that sounds a bit scatter-gun, but I really don't
know that much about the kind of demands this sort of work puts on
hardware, i.e. where the critical hardware bottlenecks lie and, hence,
where to focus my cash.

Dave