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| Video and Audio Encoding Performance AMD's Dual Core vs, Intel's Core2 Duo | |
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(Review by JoeF, August 28, 2006) |
The Tools
Encoding software is abundant and varies widely in price, quality, and ease of use, but those three factors do not necessarily go together. The best things in life are free, and so are some of the best encoding programs. The ones used here are all free except Nero, which has a free demo available. For the programs to be useful for measuring CPU performance they had to give some sort of time display for how long the encoding takes.
Exact Audio Copy (EAC) is a program designed to accurately extract .wav files from CD audio tracks. It is also able to use external programs to compress the .wav files into other formats. LAME MP3 is a free, high quality encoder that EAC can use easily. When encoding MP3 files with LAME, EAC leaves a display of the required time onscreen. LAME 3.96.1 was used to encode a 192 kbps variable bit rate MP3 file.
Exact Audio Copy (EAC): Click for larger image
Monkey’s Audio is a lossless audio compression codec, meaning that a .wav file can be compressed and restored without loss of any data or sound quality. The cost is size – while an MP3 can discard data and be 1/10 the size of the original .wav file, Monkey’s Audio is capable of cutting the size by ½ at most. Monkey’s Audio produces file sizes comparable to other lossless codecs. What makes is particularly useful for this review is that it, like EAC, leaves the time required for compression onscreen when the job is done. The compression for Monkey’s Audio was set to the highest “Insane” level. The version used was 4.01 beta 2.
Monkey’s Audio: Click for larger image
Dr. DivX OSS uses the free DivX codec to compress video files into an MPEG4 format. The original Dr. DivX was a product from the makers of the DivX codec itself, but Dr. DivX OSS is an open source effort that has just recently been released as a finished program. Dr. DivX OSS does not leave a display onscreen that tells how long a file took to encode, but it does write a log file called “saffron.log” from which the information can be extracted. By calculating the time difference between the line in saffron.log that states “Starting Job” and the line immediately following, it is possible to figure out exactly how long Dr. DivX OSS needed to compress a file. Dr. DivX OSS was set to the default “Home Theater” encoding with “Balanced” compression, which is a 2-pass encoding process. Dr. DivX was used with the latest DivX Community Codec 6.2.5.
Dr. DivX OSS: Click for larger image
Nero 7 is a software suite aiming to be a jack of all multimedia trades, from extracting or capturing, editing, encoding, and burning audio and video files onto CD or DVD to distributing programs from a PC TV tuner card to other systems in the house. Some of the features still need some polishing, but the core CD and DVD functions are solid. Nero Vision was used to compare CPUs by creating a DVD, then digging through the log file to find how long it took to transcode the source video file into the MPEG2 format required for DVD. The DVD was made in the NTSC format with “High Quality 2-pass VBR” encoding and LPCM stereo audio.
Nero Vision4: Click for larger image
The audio source file was a 26:52 CD track that took 271 MB as a .wav file. Monkey’s Audio shrank it to 139 MB, and LAME took it down to a lossy 38.3 MB. The video source file was a 20:54 .avi file captured from a mini-DV camcorder and weighing in at a hefty 4.21 GB. Dr. DivX OSS took it down to 155 MB, while Nero Vision made it into a 1.34 GB DVD.
All times are listed in seconds, so lower numbers are better. All results are the average of three runs. Variability between runs was typically less than 5%. Monkey’s Audio on the AMD platform did tend to give an odd run that took longer than usual, so Monkey’s Audio on AMD was run 4 times with the odd run discarded. LAME on the Intel platform would stutter at the beginning of the first run, then subsequent runs would run smoothly and consistently. LAME was run 4 times in the Intel platform with the first run discarded.
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Athlon64 X2-3800+ (ADA3800DAA5CD) | |
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Core2 Duo E6300 (HH80557PH0362M) |
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