Video editing and encoding w/ Sandy Bridge

One of the things I'd like to use my laptop for is editing and encoding/decoding HD video (800p and 1080p) for personal (non-professional) purposes. A few questions to that end...

1) Will a quad core be ~2x faster than a dual core? Does it matter on the application used?

2) Sandy bridge has "built-in" video coding. Apparently, that functionality is in the "media processor." From the above link, it sounds like this media engine is something that software vendors need to provide support for. Any idea if any of them have? I'm thinking of non-pro apps like basic movie/media player, the free Microsoft movie creator, Apple's iMovie, etc. Also, any idea how we or software will be able to choose where to do video coding (CPU, media processor, IGP, dGPU)?

Thanks for any info!

 

1) Yes.
2) Currently, if you have a discrete GPU, you loose all the new functions offered. In the near future, you will be able to pick which gpu does what - at least on the Windows side.

For transcoding video, the SB gpu can offer up to 12x faster processing.

For video editing, a quadcore with enough RAM (8GB+) can be twenty times faster than a dual core with 'just enough' (4GB or less) RAM.

Since this is for personal use, do you want to edit the whole night... or do you want to do anything else with your free time too?

Good luck.

 

Thanks for the info! I'm afraid I'm being dense, though, and will have to ask some clarifying questions...

Is this "Yes, 2x faster" and "Yes, not all applications take advantage of all cores" or just the former?

I'm inferring, then, that the "media processor" is considered part of the Intel GPU and not part of the CPU? Is it disabled even for dGPU systems w/ Optimus or some other GPU switching functionality?

Wow, so the difference between quad core and dual core is ~2x, but the difference between 8GB and 4GB is ~10x! I think I'll max the RAM...

If you mean, do I want a computer fast enough that I don't waste much time sitting around waiting for videos to encode, then yes! I was asking these questions because I'm trying to do a cost/benefit analysis of various options. Since one of the benefits of waiting for SB seems to be this accelerated video en/decoding, I wanted to see if there were any apps that actually took advantage of it.

 

See:
The Sandy Bridge Review: Intel Core i7-2600K, i5-2500K and Core i3-2100 Tested - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News


See:
Lucid's Virtu Enables Simultaneous Integrated/Discrete GPU on Sandy Bridge Platforms - AnandTech :: Your Source for Hardware Analysis and News


1) It's your question - re-read it if you have to, but Yes it matters what application we're speaking about and you will see ~2x the performance if not more.


For your other questions, the links above have the answers.


As far as RAM goes; you can see greater than 10x performance boost (just as you can see greater than 2x performance boost over 2 cores vs. 4 cores) in real world use where there are other things that need to happen at the same time (which in 'benchmarks', are greatly simplified scenarios that try to focus on a single variable).

To maximize/optimize a system for video editing (in order):

Get the fastest CPU with the most cores you can afford.

Get the fastest GPU you can afford.

Buy a system with at least two HDD bays (and the cages/connectors for it too).

Run Win7x64 Professional or above.

Max out the RAM.

Get the best video editing software you can afford.

Replace one HDD with an SSD - like the Intel 510.

Replace both HDD's with SSD's - don't RAID them.


Hope this helped?

 

Thank you very much for the links, especially the one about Virtu. I'll have to do some asking around to see if any vendors are using it.

Apparently, wisdom not only listens quietly but also responds snarkily... I don't think I was being overly dense asking for clarification given that I asked 2 questions and the generally accepted response would be "Yes and yes" if one intended an affirmative response to both.

I am 99% sure that this statement is incorrect - all else being equal. There will always be overhead communicating and data sharing betw cores, so the theoretical limit to improvement is the ratio of the number of cores.

Thanks for the ranked list of recommendations for faster video editing. I'll certainly take those into consideration.

 

Okay, sorry for being snarky!

But in real world use, all else is not equal.

 

a same series cpu at the same clock speed and one is dual core and one is quad core can get almost perfectly 2x faster encoding speeds.

If:

1.) The encoding program is multi threaded
2.) There is no other system bottleneck (like HDD write/read speed)

x264 is the best, it always puts all 4 of my cores to 100% load for the entire duration of the encode. All my tests have shown basically perfectly linear encoding times based on clock speed and number of cores.

However I usually encode with very high quailty settings so its a lot of cpu work, so the HDD bottleneck issue does not come into play. I try also to read from one HDD and write to another when possible.

I also do not use too many AVISynth filters that may slow things down because they are not all multithreaded and it must pass my filters before its encoded.

 

Note that this doesn't apply to notebooks with switchable graphics, obviously. (Well, Optimus might interfere still.)

 

Optimus prob WILL interfere, it is a pain for pro apps.

 

Wait, so the new Alienware m17x r3d that uses the nvidia card and has optimus turned off since the gpu is hardwired straight to the screen, does that mean it will be terrible at video editing? I have a two year old that I was looking forward to the power of the new processor for faster video edits, but it sounds like the 3d is gimped in terms of video editing, since it bypasses the integrated CPU.

 

This is almost precisely my question right down to the bit about having a 2 yr old. Based on the bottom of this page, it appears you are correct. I do think there's a distinction to be made between video editing and encoding though. It might be that for the editing part the speed of the CPU and GPU is such that it's blazing fast but then when it comes to encoding the final product it might slower and lower quality than the Quick Sync on the Intel IGP if the top part of the linked page is to be believed.

I wonder who is right about the Quick Sync w/ Optimus question. It doesn't sound like many apps support Quick Sync yet, though, so perhaps no one has run them on a laptop w/ Optimus.