Live streaming takes +50% CPU power and more (with single compression in WME)

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No?l - 22 Mar 2004 17:11 GMT

As soon as I start the Windows Media Encoder to do a live a live broadcast
with a single compression the CPU is at 50% and more!
(When I use more compressions it will hit the 100%)

Windows Media Encoder and Windows Media Server are both running on the same
Windows server 2003!

Not sure why, cause the compression is not set that high, and I'm not using
any sound!

Video encoding mode: CBR
Audience: 75 Kbps
Video codec: WMV V7
Video bit rate: 69 Kbps
Video size: (same as video input) and this is only 352 x 288
Frame rate 20 fps
Key frame: 5 s
Image quality: 50

I'm not doing any fancy stuff like cropping, deinterlacing.....

The CPU used is a P4 1.6GHz with 640 MB of RAM.
The (video) card that I'm using to connect the (Sony DV) cam to for the live
broadcast is a firewire (IEEE1394).

I've been playing with some other codec's V8 and V9, but this is not really
making any change to the CPU use!
When I stop the encoding the CPU will go back to +/- 10%.

Any suggestions what it could be?

Noel

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Joe Chip - 23 Mar 2004 16:17 GMT

Noël wrote:

> As soon as I start the Windows Media Encoder to do a live a live broadcast
> with a single compression the CPU is at 50% and more!

This is quite normal

> (When I use more compressions it will hit the 100%)

This is normal too!

> Windows Media Encoder and Windows Media Server are both running on the same
> Windows server 2003!

ouch!

> Not sure why, cause the compression is not set that high, and I'm not using
> any sound!
[quoted text clipped - 4 lines]
> Video bit rate: 69 Kbps
> Video size: (same as video input) and this is only 352 x 288

"only?" CIF format, bit rate >= 200kbit/sec

> Frame rate 20 fps
> Key frame: 5 s
[quoted text clipped - 3 lines]
>
> The CPU used is a P4 1.6GHz with 640 MB of RAM.

good

> The (video) card that I'm using to connect the (Sony DV) cam to for the live
> broadcast is a firewire (IEEE1394).

?!?

> I've been playing with some other codec's V8 and V9, but this is not really
> making any change to the CPU use!

With the same encoding settings I get (CPU load):
MPEG-4 V.3 "Reference 1"
Video 7 "+30%"
Video8 "+60%"
Video 9 "+100%" !!!
I think you should test your settings with the same capturing hardware
on a machine with Windows XP/2000pro, streaming direct from encoder to WMP.

> When I stop the encoding the CPU will go back to +/- 10%.
>
> Any suggestions what it could be?

You can spend some money and buy a Osprey 500 DV (former WM 500 DV!!!)
with DV hardware decoder.

Ciao

Signature

Joe Chip /*AKA Giuseppe Zedda*/

Die Emailadresse ist wg. SPAM *invalid* !!!
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No?l - 23 Mar 2004 23:56 GMT

| > As soon as I start the Windows Media Encoder to do a live a live broadcast
| > with a single compression the CPU is at 50% and more!
[quoted text clipped - 47 lines]
|
| Ciao

Joe, thank you for your input.

I used to run WME on a Windows XP system, but I was kind of hoping that I
could run it all on one system, and start using the XP system for some other
things!

The video card (not really a video card) I'm referring to is a simple
(cheap) FireWire card (IEEE1394), that I'm using to "grab" the DV stream
with!
This is actually working fine when I transfer DV stuff to the system for
editing, but as you can see it's taking a lot of CPU load when I do the
"live" streaming.

I've been playing a bit more with the size of the stream, and managed to
bring the CPU load down to +/- 30% now, but that's with a 10 FPS in Video 7
and a video size of 320 x 240.

The Osprey 500 DV does look nice, but it's a bit above the budget that I
have for this project!

Noel

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