Very slow x264 encoding using Avidemux in 10.04

[orionds]

I have been using Avidemux to encode edited video using x264 and the mp4 container for most of my videos. My PCs are not new, using single-core AMD Athlon processors.

In 9.04 and 9.10 (Linux Mint), encoding speeds ranged from 7 to 10 frames per second. In 10.04 these dropped down to less than 2 frames per second.

I booted back into Linux Mint 8 (9.10) and the same video encoded at the previous 7 to 10 fps.

I tried with other videos in different formats (mpeg2 and VOB). The results were the same - 10.04 was extremely slow encoding x264 but Mint 8 was "normal" at 7 to 10 fps.

With a dual-core notebook, however, the encoding speeds ran at 8 to 14 fps in 10.04.

Anyone had the same problem? Was 10.04 optimized for dual and multi-core at the expense of single-core? If so, is there a way to restore "single-core optimization"?

Thanks in advance for any suggestions or ideas.

[no2498]

as long as you have 264
try tragtor
read and install what the page tells you to do

http://mein-neues-blog.de/tragtor-gui-for-ffmpeg/

hope you can install it

and enjoy a faster speed

[orionds]

Thanks for the reply. I tried Tragtor. The encoding is faster but to get a smaller file size the video becomes very blocky especially when there is fast motion.

Avidemux was faster in 9.04 and 9.10 but in 10.04 it became very slow. Something has changed in 10.04 and Avidemux is not behaving as it used to and the speed for encoding x264 has dropped from about 8 or 9 fps to as low as 1 fps.

[no2498]

dont know if changing the plugin in gstreamer-properties may help

you should have cheese loaded
in sound&video open it look in its help file faq's

it tells you how to change it

[@H.264]

Do u have "Yasm" ?

[FakeOutdoorsman]

Anyone had the same problem?

I can't duplicate the slowness. I tried 32-bit Karmic and 64-bit Lucid (both virtual machines) on an Intel i7-860. Avidemux took 1:15 minutes in Karmic and Lucid took 1:32 with both using the same clip and both exporting to MPEG-4 AVC (x264)/Audio copy in MP4.

As for x264 itself. I opened two terminals and in one:

wget http://mirror05.x264.nl/Dark/x264clips/IronMan.mkv
sudo apt-get install mplayer
mkfifo video.y4m
mplayer input.foo -vo yuv4mpeg:file=video.y4m -nosound -ao null -noframedrop -ni

In the other terminal:

time x264 --threads auto --crf 26 video.y4m -o output.264

Karmic took 1:48 minutes and Lucid took 1:54 minutes to encode. I guess that the time difference is due to Karmic's x264 being older and the default settings between the two x264 versions probably vary.

Update: More numbers, but this time comparing today's x264 that I compiled. Karmic 2:19 minutes and Lucid 1:56 minutes.

[orionds]

I tried using Arista transcoder on the Ironman mkv clip on a dual core notebook.

The encoding speed in 10.04 has half that of 9.10.

I have posted this as a bug in Launchpad. Hope they can fix it or provide a solution.

Thanks for the suggestions but they haven't worked so far.

[FakeOutdoorsman]

Are you experiencing slowness in Avidemux, x264, or Arista? Did you test x264 as I did in my previous post? What is the link to your bug report?

[emarkay]

Also, another Avidemux issue with more recent updates of it, in Karmic and Lucid - may be related?
http://ubuntu-ky.ubuntuforums.org/sh....php?p=9327772

[fig_wright]

Think I'm having this problem also. x264 encoding ridiculously long - 20x slower than Xvid for example!