Video encoder speed

christianl · December 13, 2012, 9:00pm

At my studio we currently use a custom deadline FFMPEG script to encode our shots into Quicktime avid DNX. I did a shootout today with draft encoding a shot sequence into an HD avid DNX and then I encoded the same shot with the FFMPEG script and the FFMPEG is encoding at about 5 frames a second while the draft encoding is doing about 1 frame a second.

Why is draft so much slower? is there a way to tweak settings with the Draft encoder that can make it go just as fast?

Tks.

paul · December 13, 2012, 9:05pm

What platform are you using? (eg, 64-bit Windows)

Are you using the most recent version of Draft?

Would it be possible for you to please send us a copy of your scripts (both your Draft script and FFmpeg command line), and perhaps a video sample? You can send us files using our ticket system. You may need to put all the files in a ZIP file to get them through.

christianl · December 13, 2012, 9:37pm

Thanks, I will put this together for you. How can I tell what version of draft I am running?

andrea.mantler · December 13, 2012, 9:39pm

You can use:

print Draft.LibraryInfo.Version()

Cheers,
Andrea

paul · December 14, 2012, 1:10am

Here are a couple more ways to find your Draft version number.

In newer versions of Draft, you can find the version number in the Draft job’s log report. To find this, open the Deadline Monitor, and find a Draft job. Right-click the job, and choose Job Reports -> View Log Report… Around 25 lines into the report, you should see some STDOUT lines similar to:0: STDOUT: Checking for license at @license-server 0: STDOUT: Draft 1.0.0.49258the second line here is your Draft version number.

Alternatively, if you’re on Windows, you can copy \repository\Draft\Windows\32bit\Draft.pyd to Draft.dll on your Desktop (note the file extension has changed to .dll). Right-click the Draft.dll file, and go to the Details tab. You should see a line similar to:

Product version 1.0.0.49258

christianl · December 14, 2012, 7:43am

Thanks guys, I just submitted a ticket with all the relevant information.

paul · December 20, 2012, 9:00pm

Thank you! I have reproduced the problem.

Sorry, there is nothing you can do to improve this on your end. Unfortunately the performance issues are within Draft.

There are a few things we can do to narrow the performance gap between Draft and FFmpeg. Our next build will include a simple change that improves performance by perhaps 50%, but most of the changes will require much more effort. I will add this to our wish list for future development.