HEVC/H265 Encoding

[Fant0men]

I'm not saying that running a PC with proper maintenance and due care will wear it (even if it will, in millenia, centuries or decades, depending on quality), just that there's thermodynamics in play.
Btw, the most common problems are the power supply, motherboard entry points (capacitors and diodes), voltage regulators, and the motherboard itself (tracks and solderings), wich are not solid state.
Also the cooling will degrade due their rotors being mechanical and the dust build-up, both factors seriously reducing the air flow and thermal transfer capacity. Oh, and there's the thermal paste, too.

Now this I can agree with. I'm not an electrician, but this echoes what I've learned from various electronics channels on YouTube, where they pick apart old video game consoles etc. Of course there are components on a motherboard that can break, but as we've now agreed, it's usually not the CPU that's the issue when old hardware breaks.

Fans can break, that's true. But if they do you can always just buy a new one. I checked the thermal specs of my specific CPU, and it said 65°C case temperature and 100°C core temperature, IIRC. So it will shut down on its own once that temperature is reached, should the fan suddenly fail. And then you can just replace the fan.

[waregim]

I'm not saying that running a PC with proper maintenance and due care will wear it (even if it will, in millenia, centuries or decades, depending on quality), just that there's thermodynamics in play.
Btw, the most common problems are the power supply, motherboard entry points (capacitors and diodes), voltage regulators, and the motherboard itself (tracks and solderings), wich are not solid state.
Also the cooling will degrade due their rotors being mechanical and the dust build-up, both factors seriously reducing the air flow and thermal transfer capacity. Oh, and there's the thermal paste, too.

Perhaps OT to this thread, but concerning components:

Capacitors: From Mobos to power supplies, the capacitors are a problem only if there are quality issues. If made with real tantalum they should last indefinitely. But many are not due to the expense of rare earths. (ePC's poster child of this problem) These can cause transient problems that can play hell with the entire system (esp hard drives) and be very difficult to troubleshoot. Even complete system failure over time.

Power Supply: Dual fans best - *must* be cleaned out avery few months. Air tanks work well. Heat will degrade. Their capacitors are usually electrolytic that can degrade with high heat. Overheating the switching transistors.regulators seems to be a more common problem, in my experience.

Diodes: Should be rated to at least 80c (Mil Spec), and typically they will last indefinitely, though a power surge (transient) can take them out.
Not just in PSU but also controller boards.

Fans: Often they will slow down before failing. But the biggest problem is that they will attract dust and cover the CPU/GPU heat sinks, rendering them useless. Fans and heat sinks *must* be cleaned on a regular basis , or systems will slowly fail. Air tank, 60PSI is great, but even a paperclip and tweezers can help in a jam.

Also: Recommend every HD have a fan, or extremely good ventilation.
Under 110F for optimum lifetime.

Cheap fans can be stacked (in a cardboard tube) but adjust distances for maximum effect. Can run off 12v PSU supply, or a 12V wall wart.

On Linux use sensors/hddtemp, on Win SpeedFan to monitor.

Oh - probably noting more important for s system is an Uninterruptiple Power Supply. And plug that into one of more surge suppressors (I use dead UPSs as surge suppressors here. The electric companies are unreliable, and I have lost systems to spikes from not taking my own advice.

Hope this helps....

[stormium]

so, RobertX... maybe try out a small segment of a video to test out the codec first? that way you save yourself some time and those precious little electrons?

[RobertX]

Actually, I did. The results were not promising. It says that it will take two days to encode a three-hour x264 WWE PPV.

Now you know what I mean.

[Fant0men]

Actually, I did. The results were not promising. It says that it will take two days to encode a three-hour x264 WWE PPV.

Now you know what I mean.

HEVC encoding takes a long time using the preset I've set in the script. I'm all about quality so I don't mind wasting a few days encoding, as that stuff will run in the background and not hinder me from using my PC for other things. Also, I keep my PC on 24/7 anyways so it might as well be utilized during that time.

What's your CPU spec? I have a budget CPU. I think if I had an AMD Threadripper or the like, things would look a lot different, even if I'm using the 'slow' preset in x265.

Re-posting the script, as I've updated it to prevent people from encoding other resolutions than 1080p, since that's what the HandBrake settings are intended for.

You could make x265 go a lot faster, using one of the weaker presets. But then quality won't be as good and the difference between x264 and x265 will seem smaller.

Here are the presets for x265

[Moe]

I think if I had an AMD Threadripper or the like, things would look a lot different

Probably not as much as you'd expect. Handbrake really won't use more than 6-8 threads to encode, and TR trades individual core speed for count. That said, if you were sporting a Threadripper, you could do 2 or 3 encodes in parallel with multiple instances of Handbrake.

Ryzen 9 or Core i9 would happily drain your bank account to give you a toasty fast encode.

[Fant0men]

Probably not as much as you'd expect.  Handbrake really won't use more than 6-8 threads to encode, and TR trades individual core speed for count.  That said, if you were sporting a Threadripper, you could do 2 or 3 encodes in parallel with multiple instances of Handbrake.

Ryzen 9 or Core i9 would happily drain your bank account to give you a toasty fast encode.

Hmmm... interesting. Sadly, I only have 2 cores in this so there's no way for me to test. Is this a limitation in HandBrake or in the specific encoder used? Most people still use x264, and x265 is done by a completely different group of people. The only thing in common is the similarity in naming. Maybe x264 and x265 handles multiple cores differently. At least x265 is making full use of my 2 cores, as they're both running on over 90%.

As soon as my economic situation improves I'll buy components for a new build, and that one will be AMD for sure, the most expensive of their APUs that I can afford. I think most, if not all, of their CPUs have integrated graphics now, like the way Intel does it? AMD's graphics is vastly superior, so perhaps I could even game proficiently on a build like that.

I looked past AMD when I bought this CPU, because I wanted open source graphics drivers and I don't think AMD's Linux drivers were open at that point in time, though they were released shortly afterwards.

[Moe]

Thread limitations are indeed related to codec, resolution, and settings. There are two issues - one is diminishing performance returns in adding threads, and the other is quality. The more threads you throw at an encode, the greater the quality loss. At 6-8 threads, it is barely noticeable, but let's say you did get a Threadripper and spread a single encode across every core vs a single core, the difference would be quite visible. So there is no hard limit imposed by the software, but more of soft limit determined by a few different factors.

On the APU side of things, AMD does make them. The 3400G will be the best one you can buy right now. Intel does have a wider range of APUs. AMDs are limited to their lower end processors. But if you are on a budget, you aren't looking at i7 or i9 performance.

Zen 3 does play nice with Linux, so I think you will be quite happy with an APU of that generation.