13. Encoding Tests

Of course, simultaneous record and playback is only one of an HTPC's multitasking chores. So I also ran a few file encoding tests. The first test had one SD recording going and another SD program watched in time shift mode while encoding a previously recorded program from Microsoft's proprietary DVR-MS file format to WMV (SD). I used an MCE add-on called D-CUT for the encoding and saw no significant anomalies in the resulting recording or encoded video. I didn't record the exact time of this test since I was focused on looking for artifacts, but it took roughly an hour and 20 minutes to encode a one hour show.

The other test encoded a 110-minute DVD to a high quality SD Xvid file, which took two hours 12 minutes, or 1.2 minutes of encoding for every minute of video produced. Figure 26 shows a snapshot of the CPU load during the encode. I used AutoGK for the encoding, which is a really simple and easy to use video encoder that can output DivX or Xvid from DVD and other sources.

Figure 26: CPU Usage high quality SD Xvid encoding