Best bang-for-buck upgrade?

General questions or discussion about HandBrake, Video and/or audio transcoding, trends etc.
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rfg
Posts: 22
Joined: Tue Jan 07, 2014 9:04 am

Best bang-for-buck upgrade?

Post by rfg »

I'm re-doing all of my DVD transcodes (a couple of hundred of them) because I mucked them up the first time around.

It seems to be taking about 1 hour per DVD with my preferred settings (CQ 19, H.264/high, AC3 passthrough). I'd like to know if there is any cheap (i.e. < $50 USD) way for me to get these to run faster.

Current hardware is (yes, it's old, please don't laugh, I'm just a cheapskate):

Intel i3-4130
ASUS B85M-G R2.0
16 GB main memory (DDR3/1600)

Given the above, what is going to be my cheapest upgrade path to get about 2x the handbrake transcode speed I am getting now?

It's a little confusing. I'm not sure if upgrading my CPU, say to an I5-4570 (about $46 on eBay), would even help, because although it has 4 cores instead of 2, like on the i3-4130 that I have, I'm not sure if the Intel QuickSync hardware will be any faster on the i5-4570 versus the i3-4130. (Yes, I have the little Intel hardware assist box checked in Handbrake preferences. It defaulted to checked.)

Alternatively, if I could get some cheap-ish PCIe 3.0 or 2.0 video card off eBay that would be < $50 but give me more bang for the buck when it comes to Handbrake transcoding, then I'll do that instead. (NOTE: I an NOT a gamer, so any old video card that can just output 1080p is fine for me.)

Thanks in advance for any advice.
Woodstock
Veteran User
Posts: 4614
Joined: Tue Aug 27, 2013 6:39 am

Re: Best bang-for-buck upgrade?

Post by Woodstock »

Rip with MakeMKV, queue the MKV files up for handbrake to handle while you do other things. Get all the DVD handling out of the way quickly.
rfg
Posts: 22
Joined: Tue Jan 07, 2014 9:04 am

Re: Best bang-for-buck upgrade?

Post by rfg »

Sorry. I guess that I should have clarified. Yes, I already *do* have all of the DVDs in question pre-ripped to hard disk. So now I just need to know how to make the actual Handbrake transcoding faster.
Woodstock
Veteran User
Posts: 4614
Joined: Tue Aug 27, 2013 6:39 am

Re: Best bang-for-buck upgrade?

Post by Woodstock »

If you are taking advantage of the QSV hardware in your processor, going with more cores may not be that much help; your most likely slow-down is in the CPU-based filters you're using. Providing a log of your typical encode would be helpful to see what filters you're using.

If you're doing CPU-base encoding, more cores means faster. 8 cores (not threads, cores) will make a big difference, assuming the same (or faster) clock speed. Having 12 or more cores would make it reasonable to run multiple copies of handbrake, but that's likely well outside your budget.
rfg
Posts: 22
Joined: Tue Jan 07, 2014 9:04 am

Re: Best bang-for-buck upgrade?

Post by rfg »

Well, thanks for the input. I think I found my answer. Checking on process monitor, it appears that during my encodes, CPU is pegged consistently above 95%. So I guess it's a new CPU for me! Fortunately, the older socket 1150 i5 ones can be had pretty cheaply.
warcraftpeon
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Posts: 1
Joined: Thu Apr 22, 2021 2:44 pm

Re: Best bang-for-buck upgrade?

Post by warcraftpeon »

Yeah, it always comes down to Cpu/Board for faster encoded. You might want to try writing a script to automate the process so it can run 24/7. I have an older system that runs 24/7/365- it's only job is to take x264 files and transcode them to DVD. It takes forever (4-6hrs) to do one transcode, as it's an older P3 500mhz system, but that is that system's only job. I simply set it and forget it. For an I-3, if I were you I would try to jump to a cheaper I7 as that is the sweet spot right now for price/performance.
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