[akelley]

Anyone use hardware encoders for faster H.264 transcoding? Mac users have the Elgato products but I haven't seen anything comparable for Windows. Looking for a way to speed up my DVD rips. Would be great to use it with Handbrake.

I've tried software (badaboomit.com) that uses CUDA which did improve speed a good bit, but the output wasn't all good at all...

[poofyhairguy]

If you want it to work with handbrake there is only one sure fire solution:

Get a better CPU.

Sorry, that sucks, but its true. Anything less than a quad equals painful transcoding.

[akelley]

No one uses any hardware encoders?

Poofy, sure, if I had a couple grand laying around, I would buy myself a nice i7 which would do much more than encode... Was hoping I could find something for about a tenth of that, though

[Starstream]

Those transcoders like Badaboom sacrifice quality for speed, the developers of x264 (what Handbrake uses) have stated that if you match the poor quality output of Badaboom with x264 it can be as fast as the GPU.

As poofyhairguy said the solution is get a better CPU. My now old Core 2 Quad 9550 can on average convert a DVD using x264 in about 2hrs and thats with good quality.

The only other consumer hardware encoder I know of was based off the Spurs Engine which is a cut down Cell CPU but they are hard to come by and the quality output was only okay (inferior to x264) from the samples posted on Doom9 forum.

Someone is working (allegedly) on some CUDA extensions to x264 as only parts of the H.264 format are suitable for encoding on a GPU but there is no ETA.

[Riffmaker]

Those transcoders like Badaboom sacrifice quality for speed, the developers of x264 (what Handbrake uses) have stated that if you match the poor quality output of Badaboom with x264 it can be as fast as the GPU.

As poofyhairguy said the solution is get a better CPU. My now old Core 2 Quad 9550 can on average convert a DVD using x264 in about 2hrs and thats with good quality.

The only other consumer hardware encoder I know of was based off the Spurs Engine which is a cut down Cell CPU but they are hard to come by and the quality output was only okay (inferior to x264) from the samples posted on Doom9 forum.

Someone is working (allegedly) on some CUDA extensions to x264 as only parts of the H.264 format are suitable for encoding on a GPU but there is no ETA.

Mediacoder uses(or can use) CUDA to encode x264. It uses the GPU instead of cpu for encoding(You have to have a CUDA enabled Nvidia card). Its also free. For some reason the CUDA encoding is not included with the 64bit release so download the 32bit. I use it alot to re-encode m2ts's that XBMC doesn't handle the best(at least seeking wise) Its really fast(I have a gt260) and using identical bitrate and other settings it detects from the original file I can't see abit of difference on a 46" LCD.
http://www.mediacoderhq.com/