H.264 to ProRes conversion time?
 

How long has it been taking you to convert 7D video from H.264 to ProRes?

Encoding TO H.264 has always choked my workstation, even at way less than 1080p resolution, so I'm picturing hours upon hours of conversion time per hour of video. What's your ratio?

My system is a Mac Pro Quad 1st generation w/ maxed out RAM.

Please of course include your system details, frame rate, and flavor of ProRes.

Couldn't find a thread with conversion time examples so if there is one, please do point my in the right direction.

On our 2.4ghz mbp (4gb RAM), the conversion from h.264 to prores (Standard) takes about 5x footage time. So 10 minutes of footage takes about 50 minutes to convert. I think it's been faster after switching to ProRes LT and getting new MBPs but I haven't kept track.

So far on my quad 2.66 mac pro the H.264 to ProRes LT conversion is taking a bit less than realtime, but each clip isn't super long so it's hard to tell. The files end up being roughly 1.7x larger than the original clips that way.

That's a good result, I'm seeing much slower speeds on my quad 2.66, closer to double the run time.

Transcoding – the truth! | Paul Joy

Paul: I think Evan's results of 1.7x refers to file size; not the time it's taking.

I did a simple test and it seemed to be about 3x (time) on my 2.53GHz MacBook Pro, though that may have been slowed by the drive I was using, and it was to ProRes 444

If we're going to compile results, other variables needed include; speed of the card reader (if using one) speed of the hard drive and compressor settings...

What we really need is some kind of hardware acceleration that will take H.264 and recompress it to ProRes. The Matrox Max compresses to H.264, but I don't think it helps taking H.264 to ProRes. The KiPro box will take an HDMI signal and compress it to ProRes, but it's expensive, and I think you can only use it to capture the HDMI signal to ProRes (you can't connect it to your computer and send it H.264 files.)

@Evan, is your quad 2.66 a Nehalem? Also, how much ram?

@Paul, same for you.

I started a post yesterday without seeing this one, but more curious about the i7 Quad iMacs. I'm going to test a few towers this morning.

I was referring to the "a bit less than real time".

No, mine's getting old now, it's a quad 2.66 Xeon with 8GB 667 MHz Ram.

Real time
 

About real time on an 8 Core. Much faster in Quicktime player if doing more than one. Each movie goes in a different core. Alan

@Alan,

Hey, which 8-core do you have and how much ram?

Are you using QT player to transcode everything vs MPEG Streamclip?

Cptr
 

10.0.2
2 x 2.8 quad
10 GB ram

Movie Player
 

I used the old Player in Snow Leopard.

I like QT because of the ability do many clips at once.

Ach! I totally missed that! Clearly I need to buy new hardware.