Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

zubro · 05:09 PM

hi all and happy new year.
I am wondering if I should not save a lotof $ by buying a dual 1.8 and drop in it 4 GB of RAM + a very good video card... is the 2.5 real SO MUCH faster.
I do DVD authoring and menus, I think that a good RAM a a lot of it is more important than CPUs... right?

OK, forget about it. After I checked the 2 machines, the difference in price is only 10% for a decent setup, not worth bother...

UnixMac · Jan 2, 2005, 10:13 PM

You are right, the RAM and Card can make up the difference... but the best bet is to do both.... a 2.5 and the RAM and Card!

good luck, and let us know what you do.

bartman00 · 07:36 PM

Lol.. DVD encoding is all about cpu speed.. don't matter what video card you have and Compressor only uses about 50-100mb of ram.. so even 512 should be fine.... We have 3 sp1.8's at the library where I work and patrons do a lot of DVD encoding with iDVD4, same engine as Compressor, and it does take hours to encode a DVD. I would really like to have some faster machines! A 2 hour movie, just to encode it ties up one machine for like 4 hours!

Do you know if dual cpu's would cut the time in half? Is iDVD3 smp aware and does it use both cpu's to encode the DV stream? Being smp aware wouldn't meen that much if it can't use both cpu's to do the heavy lifting of encoding that 2 hour DV stream.

Any way, tell us what you get and how you like it.

Bart

Edit:oopes.. I ment iDVD4.. as iDVD3 does not use the same engine as Compressor...

Chito · Jan 5, 2005, 09:03 AM

My DP 2.0 with 1.5 GB ram will encode a 2 hour DVD using iDVD 4 in 1:45 minutes. Before I got it I was using a G4 933 with 1 GB ram and it was taking 5-6 hours to encode the same video.

Big Mac · Jan 6, 2005, 04:35 AM

Wow, that is a dramatic improvement, Chito.

Chito · Jan 6, 2005, 07:45 AM

It was the kind of increase I was "hoping" for but didn't think I'd really get. I was importing/editing/encoding a ton of vhs tapes to dvd right before christmas so it saved me a lot of time. So far I'm really impressed with the G5.

bartman00 · Jan 6, 2005, 02:15 PM

god it's really killing me we didn't have to buy the G5's when we had to... Lease thing... They basically sat in the basement for 5 months and then I deployed them. It was almost 1 month after we recieved them they came out with the dual 1.8's.. DOOH! So many patrons are doing VHS to DVD transfers and the long encode times can get in the way.. but all in all it's ok... but man.. dual 1.8's for the same price makes me cry.

Bart

zubro · Jan 7, 2005, 06:10 AM

Originally posted by bartman00:
...and it does take hours to encode a DVD. I would really like to have some faster machines! A 2 hour movie, just to encode it ties up one machine for like 4 hours!

Hi Bart,

Buy a mediapress card if you cant stand the waiting time. It does an amasing job!

http://wiredinc.com/mediapressinfo.html

zubro · Jan 7, 2005, 06:17 AM

Originally posted by Chito:
My DP 2.0 with 1.5 GB ram will encode a 2 hour DVD using iDVD 4 in 1:45 minutes. Before I got it I was using a G4 933 with 1 GB ram and it was taking 5-6 hours to encode the same video.

WOW Chito!
That is some GREAT news!
It means "real time"?!?
As I said, there is the mediapress card that does an stunning job in real time for the price, but it costs the price of a dual G5, so if the machine itself can do the job...

http://wiredinc.com/mediapressinfo.html
We also have a G4 dual 1GHz here but it takes 6 times to encode in 2 pass to the best settings... Actually, my iBook 1GHz has the same speed so I doubt that Compressor is using the second processor at all...

I need some more work/$ done so I can go for a Dual G5, but it sounds promissing to me!

Chito · Jan 7, 2005, 07:36 AM

I was spending about 9 hours on a two hour tape just to make one dvd. I'd import in real time = 2 hours, do some editing and set up my title page & chapters = 1 hour or so, and the 5-6 hours to render, encode and burn. The same two hours now takes import = 2 hours (again in real time), the same hour or so to edit and set up title and chapters and 1:45 to render, encode and burn. So now my total time is 4:45 start to finish.
The dvd's I did for christmas were all of our old family movies converted from 8mm and many vhs tapes. I had to make seven sets of each dvd to give to each of my kids and other family members. I was afraid my kids wouldn't appreciate them yet because they're all in their 20's....but 2 of them cried when they saw what they were. All in all a very good project that I was worried about getting done till I cut my time in half with the G5. and iDVD 4. Now I want to learn to use Final Cut Express and DVD Studio Pro.

zubro · Jan 7, 2005, 08:26 AM

DVD studio pro ROCKS!

I have been working on Sonic Solutions work stations for years and they were as flexible as QuarkXPress was a few years ago = NOT!

DVD SP was already brillant from the 1.5
The 2.0 is to die for when you are coming from Sonic!

Enjoy yourself with this stuff! Apple is really doing some good there...

bartman00 · Jan 7, 2005, 09:52 AM

Dosn't look like that card was ment for iDVD4

and is ment to encode a real time signal driectly to mpeg. Actually because iDVD4 is doing 2 pass vbr encoding a 2 hour movie in about 4 hours is real time.... It's not that big of a deal.. it just erks me that we couldn't wait to buy the Macs untill we where ready to deploy them, if we could have we would have gotten dual 1.8's..

Bart