Toying with the idea of a Divx performance DB

[Mercutio]

Subject says it all. I'm trying to figure out what I'd need to create a database for divx encoding performance.

Why?

It seems to be the most stressful thing I can do on a PC, outside of gaming.

I figure I'll need a "standard" video clip. Something that wouldn't take long to download or encode. Not sure how to time the encode process, though.
I'd probably want to use a standard application for encoding, too.

Also I think I'd want a standard, automatic reporting procedure for hardware and software running on the PC. That's harder than it sounds, I think.

Any ideas?

Also, I found a really nifty, modded version of virtualdub with support for MPEG2 last night. How cool is that?

 

[timwhit]

Also I think I'd want a standard, automatic reporting procedure for hardware and software running on the PC. That's harder than it sounds, I think.

Any ideas?

Won't SiSoft Sandra do something like that? Or just use system information, if that gives you enough information.

What type of database are you planning on using? How are you going to code this to work in a sequence? Some type of script?

 

[Mercutio]

Don't know yet. That's why I'm still toying with the idea.

I'm surprised there isn't a shareware app somewhere that'll tell you how long a certain program takes to run.

 

[timwhit]

I'm surprised there isn't a shareware app somewhere that'll tell you how long a certain program takes to run.

Come on Merc that's not hard to write. Will the app exit when it completes? In that case it is even easier.

 

[Mercutio]

Sigh. I suppose I'll have to install Delphi or something so I can play with things.

 

[blakerwry]

virtual dub has a built in scheduling type feature called "job control" that allows you to encode video that you have setup earlier.. it shows the start and end time of each pass you perform... also vdub has the ability to save your settings for vid/audio to a file.

So it would be quite easy to say have a 5 min slow motion and a 5 min fast motion clip and then load the exact pre-configured settings you want... and use the scheduling agent to show you the times it takes for each pass.

The scheduling agent will take as many jobs as you want so you could load up maybe 10 different tests and then process them after you have set things up.... come back in a few hours and get the results.

Only problem is that I think the scheduling agent is only precise to the minute... meaning that you'd want long video clips if you want to use it... maybe there is a log that keep more accurate settings...

 

[NRG = mc²]

I'm surprised there isn't a shareware app somewhere that'll tell you how long a certain program takes to run.

At a pinch, you could use Task Manager to check out the processor time for the particular process.

 

[P5-133XL]

I find it hard to believe that there aren't old MS-DOS programs that dont start and stop a timer. I remember them existing and I've used them: Agreed it was a long time ago. I stoped using them when I started using 4Dos as a command.com replacement because it had that feature built-in

Even without a freeware program there are alternatives using W2k/XP's cmd functions of the OS from inside a batch file.

If you needed to you can use the command-line performance monitor to create a log file, then start and stop the monitoring of specific processes..

You can also create events in event logs from the command line which will time stamp the start and ending times.

The specific syntaxes for the above commands are doccumented within XP's help.