Fastest H.264 Computer/Software/Method
 

Hey guys, general question. Couldn't find a good answer from searching

In your experience what is the "fastest means" of encoding h.264 today
This means computer (pc vs. mac - certain video acceleration options) software (compressor/sorenson etc). This would be for use with bluray/hd-dvd in the near futre. Source footage is HDV

I work in Final Cut Studio (5.1) and typically compress using compressor for mpeg2 - but in the limited tests i've done on a G5 (SP 1.8) mpeg 4 h.264 takes quite long (well known info).

Naturally a faster Quad Mac would be simple solution - but what are the alternatives?

Anyone compressing h.264 in a "PC" while editing on a MAC FCP5 or using some other software aside from compressor to do this?

Any hardware acceleration options available today?

Anything on the horizon that you have heard of ?

Many thanks
Paul

Canopus Firecoder
 

Is this kind of what you are searching for:

http://www.justedit.com/products/FireCoder/index.php

AC

On the PC side I've heard that Power Encoder MPEG-4 AVC Edition is a good solution. The quality is supposed to be as good as Apple's H.264 codec, yet it encodes very fast (nearly real-time on an Intel D820). Mind you this information is second hand; I haven't tried it myself. But a free trial download is available for anyone who's interested.