Hardware for Comskip?

[mr_lore]

I searched around in these forums and the comskip forums as well but any information I found seemed out of date.



What is better, more Ghz or more cores or both to speed up comskip? (H.264 HDPVR .ts files of course)

[MitchSchaft]

Both. Get yourself a quad core and be done with it.

[davephan]

I think the general consensus is that a quad core is better than a dual core, even if some speed is dropped. I switched from a dual core 3.00 gig to a quad core 3.06 gig recently. I selected the 3.06 gig quad since it was half the cost of the 3.3 gig i-7 quad core. The quad core handles the load much better, even with three Comskip jobs running at once.

You'll probably be able to find someone on the forum to confirm what happens when you switch from a faster dual core to a slower quad core. I decided to not sacrifice speed, but I sacrificed extra cash when I went with the quad core.

You'll have to decide between AMD or Intel. I just saw a couple six core Intel i-7 CPUs on the Newegg web site, so even my i-7 950 quad core is starting to become obsolete.

Another option is to offload the Comskip jobs to other computers. At one time, did not run Comskip on my single core SageTV computer I had at the time. I ran Comskip on three separate computers. Each of the three Comskip computers were old, slow, single core, retired clunkers. The end result of offloading the Comskip jobs was very slow Comskip processing and extra electrical power cost. You're much better off to use a single quad core computer for both your SageTV computer and Comskip jobs. You'll have to make the decision how much speed is in the budget.

Dave

[mr_lore]

Both is what I thought, i7 860 or i7 920 is what I was leaning towards, I was planning on putting the 6core i7 beast in my personal rig. thanks.

[sic0048]

I put a quad core in when I rebuilt my server. But you certainly don't need bleeding edge speed or technology for a typical SageTV server. Most people find that once the initial glut of comskip files are processed, there isn't a huge demand for that either. Obviously this depends heavily on the user, but I doubt many users have 3 or more shows recording 24/7. If you did, you certainly couldn't watch it all. So having the fastest quad core available today is really major overkill for a SageTV server (and probably 90% of all other possible uses too).

I run an older Q6600 chip which is 2.40ghz. It runs all my comskip, playon and automation software needs with lots of room to spare. So I would recommend an energy efficient quad core that is a good price/power ratio. I'm not sure where the sweet spot is right now because I haven't kept up with the recent prices.

[SWKerr]

Originally Posted by mr_lore

Both is what I thought, i7 860 or i7 920 is what I was leaning towards, I was planning on putting the 6core i7 beast in my personal rig. thanks.

That is a whole lot of overkill just for Comskip. I have it running on my WHS on an old AMD X2 5400+. I limit it to 1 core and the files are still always ready by the time I am ready to watch them. (I don't try to run it real time.)

There may be other reasons to drop cash on a i7 but Comskip ain't it.

Most real world apps run fine on a cheap dual core Athlon X2. It is only when you get into video editing and the like where you really start seeing the differences. I use x264 HD encoding benchmarks to help me get a grip on the differences.

The $100 Athlon X4 will run x264 at 60 fps while the $280 i7-860 does it at 76fps. the $200 i5-750 does it at 73fps.

AnandTech has some charts that help show the relative differences.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=3641&p=4
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=3777&p=4

I think at $200 the i5 makes the most sense from the lintel side although unless you are running 24-7 (Power Savings) the AMD Athlon X4 is a relative bargain.

[JetreL]

Originally Posted by mr_lore

I was planning on putting the 6core i7 beast in my personal rig. thanks.

Really what do you gain with going with so much processing power? I run Sage on a quad core and at time think it is overkill except for Playon support and Comskip both of which keep the processor busy but never over tax it. My setup has 4 inputs. (2) HD-PVRs and (1) 2 port SiliconDust HDHomerun. Sage itself takes very little processing except Ram. Save the $$s and buy another HD200 would be my recommendation.

[KarylFStein]

I run a Q6600 with SA set up to process shows in real time (up to 4 threads at once). I have 2 1080i OTA tuners and 2 SD tuners, (no HD-PVRs, so not sure if those files are harder to process). I rarely have more than two shows recording at once and one playback, but did do a stress test once to see if the server could keep up. (Also note that the server is WHS and also handles NAS, web server, email server, etc. duties.)

When I fired up 4 recordings (2 HD, 2 SD) with SA running on each, then fired up two playbacks (1 HD100, 1 SageTV client) on the two HD recordings in progress, I *did* get up to a two second pause (spinning circle) when a commercial was hit in the playback. It was noticable only because I'm used to it being instant. I don't recall if I checked the CPU load during all this, (d'oh--maybe the problem was I/O), as I just wanted to see if it would crash and burn under max load. It didn't.

I *do* recommend a quad core at least for my setup as when I upgraded to quad over dual is erased the "circle of death" problems I was having at the time...I think the speeds were similar, but can't remember. I know L2 cache was increased.

[JetreL]

Originally Posted by KarylFStein

I *do* recommend a quad core at least for my setup

I have used Show Analyzer in the past and finally settled on Comskip. SA seemed to be *much* more processor intensive with basically the same results.
Both work well just my $.02.

[KarylFStein]

Originally Posted by JetreL

I have used Show Analyzer in the past and finally settled on Comskip. SA seemed to be *much* more processor intensive with basically the same results.
Both work well just my $.02.

A few weeks ago I started playing with Comskip and SJQ vs. SA and DirMon2, (hey, since I moved to Jetty, I had to try out some other apps other than nielm's "necessary" web server--that should be core SageTV functionality IMHO). Anyway, today both look to be quality solutions and it's always good to have options. I haven't put a lot of time into it as there hasn't been a real need other than to play around, but right now I feel that SA+DirMon2 is easier to use, (granted, I've been using SA/DirMon2 for a bit), while Comskip+SJQ is more flexible and appears to be more supported. No performance comparisons since I'm not having trouble there now. But kudos to all of these development efforts. Donate if they accept it and you haven't already .

[thomaszoo]

How much processing power you need depends on what type of files you are trying to Comskip. I have a dual core Intel Atom based system that acts like a quad core. I can easily run two instances of Comskip simultaneously and it runs very smoothly since each instance is limited to 25% CPU. For SD files and for files from my HDHR it processes them all in real time (this was a pleasant surprise for me). However, for files created by my HD-PVR it takes 3+ hours to process each file. I try to not watch those programs until the next day.

It seems that I read someplace that the best thing to speed up Comskip was more onboard cache.

Wayne

[mr_lore]

Originally Posted by JetreL

Really what do you gain with going with so much processing power? I run Sage on a quad core and at time think it is overkill except for Playon support and Comskip both of which keep the processor busy but never over tax it. My setup has 4 inputs. (2) HD-PVRs and (1) 2 port SiliconDust HDHomerun. Sage itself takes very little processing except Ram. Save the $$s and buy another HD200 would be my recommendation.

I meant my primary gaming desktop that has nothing to do with sage.

[mr_lore]

Originally Posted by SWKerr

That is a whole lot of overkill just for Comskip. I have it running on my WHS on an old AMD X2 5400+. I limit it to 1 core and the files are still always ready by the time I am ready to watch them. (I don't try to run it real time.)

There may be other reasons to drop cash on a i7 but Comskip ain't it.

Most real world apps run fine on a cheap dual core Athlon X2. It is only when you get into video editing and the like where you really start seeing the differences. I use x264 HD encoding benchmarks to help me get a grip on the differences.

The $100 Athlon X4 will run x264 at 60 fps while the $280 i7-860 does it at 76fps. the $200 i5-750 does it at 73fps.

AnandTech has some charts that help show the relative differences.
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=3641&p=4
http://www.anandtech.com/cpuchipsets...spx?i=3777&p=4

I think at $200 the i5 makes the most sense from the lintel side although unless you are running 24-7 (Power Savings) the AMD Athlon X4 is a relative bargain.

The extra h.264 'oompf' a i7 provides is exactly what I'm after since my current bargan box AMD sage server can comskip ota stuff seemingly instantly but takes hours on hd-pvr files. Besides I've seen a 920 on sale locally for $220, pair that with a barebones x58 for ~$140, and thats a nice $400 upgrade out the door, I have access to all the other parts lying around.



Also, right now I have playon on my desktop since I feel my current sage box is CPU limited, I want some extra wiggle room for that too.

[ericscottf]

I may be doing something wrong, but comskip only runs on one core on my machine.

Granted, i have two tuners, and my system is frequently comskipping two shows at once, but that never occupies more than all of two cores.

I went quad-core so i could feel comfortable that the system wouldn't have a problem recording 2 shows while comskipping two shows. turns out that recording two shows takes almost nothing from the processor with the HD-PVR, so my system is way overpowered.

Also consider that if you're going with an intel core i7, you've got hyperthreading on top of up to 4 cores; you've got two threads per core, which means if a core is waiting for something else to happen, it'll swap threads and make it seem like you have 8 cores.

My system is doing great, was relatively cheap, and I don't anticipate an upgrade any time soon. I just put in an SSD, and for the money, i'd skip a high end $400 processor and instead go for a cheaper proc and an ssd...

[AJ Bertelson]

the general rule with comskip

More mhz can process the file faster
More cores cam process more shows faster

[Djc208]

I thought someone released a multicore version of comskip monitor a little while back. It basically just let you run multiple instances of comskip, won't process a single file faster though. Search should help turn it up.

I also seem to remember Eric talking about a setting for number of threads to spawn for multi-core processors.