Question about hardware and compression speeds.

[vudumonkey25]

I will be moving in with a good friend of mine at the end of the month and I'm looking at potentially building a computer with a few specific goals. I own about 500 dvds and he owns well over a 1000dvds. I want to build a computer to store all of these movies on and hook it up to the television in the living room. Also be able to transfer the movies onto "on the go" devices.

My mother has a climate controlled storage unit we can store all the original dvd's in and save a lot of room in our new apartment.

We both have PS3's, iphones, ipods (with video support), and psp's. We are both huge fans of movies and want to create a movie "hub" in our house. Plug the device you want in and transfer movies onto it.

So The goal of this PC would be fast compression from dvd to .mp4 (h264). They are good enough quality to watch on the big tv so I'd like to compress everything. Saves a little room and works on most portable devices.

What i don't know is the type of hardware needed to compress these movies quickly.

I know I need a big hard drive (1TB) to store all of this. Can always add more later that's not a big deal.

Is compression a RAM orientated process? or is it a CPU intensive process?

Do I need dual core? quad core?

Do video cards matter?

I'm pretty sure I need a DVD-Rom with fast read speeds, and a hard drive with higher RPM's

The only software installed on this computer would be compression software, media player, itunes. I don't plan on using this computer for anything but the above. It does not even need access to the internet.

I hope this post makes sense and you guys can give me some advice.

Also looking to do this in a cost effective manner.

Thanks and +rep for helpful answers.

[MATRIX 2]

I will be moving in with a good friend of mine at the end of the month and I'm looking at potentially building a computer with a few specific goals. I own about 500 dvds and he owns well over a 1000dvds. I want to build a computer to store all of these movies on and hook it up to the television in the living room. Also be able to transfer the movies onto "on the go" devices.

My mother has a climate controlled storage unit we can store all the original dvd's in and save a lot of room in our new apartment.

We both have PS3's, iphones, ipods (with video support), and psp's. We are both huge fans of movies and want to create a movie "hub" in our house. Plug the device you want in and transfer movies onto it.

So The goal of this PC would be fast compression from dvd to .mp4 (h264). They are good enough quality to watch on the big tv so I'd like to compress everything. Saves a little room and works on most portable devices.

What i don't know is the type of hardware needed to compress these movies quickly.

I know I need a big hard drive (1TB) to store all of this. Can always add more later that's not a big deal.

Is compression a RAM orientated process? or is it a CPU intensive process?

Do I need dual core? quad core?

Do video cards matter?

I'm pretty sure I need a DVD-Rom with fast read speeds, and a hard drive with higher RPM's

The only software installed on this computer would be compression software, media player, itunes. I don't plan on using this computer for anything but the above. It does not even need access to the internet.

I hope this post makes sense and you guys can give me some advice.

Also looking to do this in a cost effective manner.

Thanks and +rep for helpful answers.

This will be mostly cpu dependent (as long as the ram is up to the task) so you will need a good quad core cpu. Also through Nvidia's cuda, they have a nice program called badaboom which can speed up the tasks compared to a normal cpu by using the gpu to do the work. I'm not sure if this is much better than the latest core i5/i7 processors so I wouldn't worry about it too much.


But for this computer, you would want several things:

Quad core cpu (intel core i5 750 or i7 860)

DDR3 1600 mhz ram

A good dvd burner (pioneer and samsung are pretty good)

Large fast HDD (western digital black series HDD's are a good choice).

since you want this to be cost effective, I'd suggest the core i5 750, with 4 gigs of DDR3 1600Mhz ram (CAS 8 or better) with a good dvd drive and a large western digital black series hdd with the other required components.

This should come out around the $500-$600 range depending on component choices.

[vudumonkey25]

This will be mostly cpu dependent (as long as the ram is up to the task) so you will need a good quad core cpu. Also through Nvidia's cuda, they have a nice program called badaboom which can speed up the tasks compared to a normal cpu by using the gpu to do the work. I'm not sure if this is much better than the latest core i5/i7 processors so I wouldn't worry about it too much.


But for this computer, you would want several things:

Quad core cpu (intel core i5 750 or i7 860)

DDR3 1600 mhz ram

A good dvd burner (pioneer and samsung are pretty good)

Large fast HDD (western digital black series HDD's are a good choice).

since you want this to be cost effective, I'd suggest the core i5 750, with 4 gigs of DDR3 1600Mhz ram (CAS 8 or better) with a good dvd drive and a large western digital black series hdd with the other required components.

This should come out around the $500-$600 range depending on component choices.

+rep, Thanks, I'll have to look into the things you mentioned tomorrow....for now it's bed time

Any other ideas as well guys?

[Xelios]

I agree with the Core i7 choice. Hyperthreading would definitely give it a boost over the i5. And if you overclock it, you get it done that much faster.

But you can go ATI as well, not just Nvidia. They both have GPU computing to speed up those tasks. MediaShow Espresso is a pretty good Stream/CUDA program. Just depends on what you'd rather buy, as both cards perform pretty equally.

[QQ~]

I would get the i7 860 over the i5 750, its not that much more and have HT. And the HT on the i7 Doesn't suck like when Intel did it on the P4. You will also need a larger Hard drive then the 1TB one.

With 1500 DVDs at 700mb Each. You are looking at 1025GB. I would just get a 1.5 or 2TB drive for now. As you will want to encode them at the Highest Quality.

[HaTriX]

I would get the i7 860 over the i5 750, its not that much more and have HT. And the HT on the i7 Doesn't suck like when Intel did it on the P4. You will also need a larger Hard drive then the 1TB one.

With 1500 DVDs at 700mb Each. You are looking at 1025GB. I would just get a 1.5 or 2TB drive for now. As you will want to encode them at the Highest Quality.

Agree with everything you said.

You are going to need a lot of space.

[vudumonkey25]

Thanks guys. Going to the local computer store later and see what the got. They usually have some really good prices. If not I guess newegg.com unless anyone knows a better site.

[QQ~]

Thanks guys. Going to the local computer store later and see what the got. They usually have some really good prices. If not I guess newegg.com unless anyone knows a better site.

Newegg pretty much has the best all around prices but you can find some things cheaper at like buy.com or zipzoomfly. Just be sure to take in the price of shipping. Some times free shipping is the difference in price.

You might want to really plan ahead in this project. So that you don't lock yourself into a system that can't do what you need in a year.

[keefy]

You both have a PS3 you could simply rip the DVD into .vob using DVD shrink that way no quality is lost and PS3 plays them natively and it takes alot less time to do maybe 10 mins per DVD the downside is it takes up more space.
Then use PS3 media server to tream directly to all your PS3 on the network.

With th cost of hard drives so cheap these days I feel it is worth while buying more space than spending 2 or 3 hours converting per DVD.

[QQ~]

You both have a PS3 you could simply rip the DVD into .vob using DVD shrink that way no quality is lost and PS3 plays them natively and it takes alot less time to do maybe 10 mins per DVD the downside is it takes up more space.
Then use PS3 media server to tream directly to all your PS3 on the network.

With th cost of hard drives so cheap these days I feel it is worth while buying more space than spending 2 or 3 hours converting per DVD.

It takes up a lot more space. 4.7GB per. At that size you might as well just download 720p Rips.

[keefy]

It takes up a lot more space. 4.7GB per. At that size you might as well just download 720p Rips.

I still think the less time it takes to rip far outwieghs the space it needs as the guy says he can add more space later and to rip 1000+ is going to take a lot of time either way.

[elfonzerio]

I did exactly what you are explaining. Get the fastest quad you can afford and overclock it as much as possible. It is mostly all cpu intensive. I use a q6600 oc'ed to 3.6. It uses all cores heavily. Gonna upgrade once the 6 core gulftowns are released and oc that to the hilt.

[vudumonkey25]

I did exactly what you are explaining. Get the fastest quad you can afford and overclock it as much as possible. It is mostly all cpu intensive. I use a q6600 oc'ed to 3.6. It uses all cores heavily. Gonna upgrade once the 6 core gulftowns are released and oc that to the hilt.

Thanks, going to look into that cpu as well as the others.

[QQ~]

Thanks, going to look into that cpu as well as the others.

I was just wondering what you choose to do.

[=Tac=]

Also, you may wanna look at getting a second hard drive to mirror the first. I'd hate to have 1.5 tb's of movies gone if the HD crashes.