Audio and video transcoding much faster on Windows 8

16 Aug 12 19:12 by in category Software

ZDnet editor Adrian Kingsley-Hughes has benchmarked Windows 8 RTM against Windows 7 and found some interesting results. While the general performance of Microsoft’s latest OS isn’t a big improvement over Windows 7, when it comes to transcoding of audio and video Windows 8 beats Windows 7 big time.

Where an audio transcoding process took Window 7 49.3 seconds, it took only 41.2 seconds on the Windows 8 installation. When a video was transcoded, Windows 8 was more than 30 seconds faster. The Windows 8 RTM versions are also quicker than e.g. the Customer Preview release.

As Windows 8 is only just out, it’s expected that graphic card manufacturers will continue to tweak their drivers which might increase performance even more. Both AMD and Intel currently have Windows 8 WHQL drivers out.

9 Comments on Audio and video transcoding much faster on Windows 8

Zzyzxroad
Posts: 269
Posted on: 17 Aug 12 00:13
8 seconds faster is "big time"?

Also, 30 seconds faster is also not a huge difference for a 4 minute video. So it might drop 18 minutes on a 2 hour encode. Call me when it cuts times in half, then I might share the enthusiasm.
BradWright
Posts: 225
Posted on: 17 Aug 12 00:31
Quote:
Originally Posted by Zzyzxroad View Post
8 seconds faster is "big time"?

Also, 30 seconds faster is also not a huge difference for a 4 minute video. So it might drop 18 minutes on a 2 hour encode. Call me when it cuts times in half, then I might share the enthusiasm.
Sure, in actual time, eight seconds isn't all that much, but this is a 16.4 percent increase in speed. That's pretty good.
DukeNukem
Posts: 1606
Posted on: 17 Aug 12 18:37
If this is true, then I'm man enough to give Win 8 some credit. For those of us who batch convert MANY audio or video files, any time saved is welcome. That being said, I'd rather just keep Win 7 and buy a faster PC (which is what I'm going to do in two months).
olddancer
Posts: 285
Posted on: 18 Aug 12 21:33
Whoopee! Any time saved on processing is more than offset by the time wasted finding the Icon for your software on the Metro Desktop.
Shudder to think of how many pages of Icons I'd have to scroll through just to find my video rendering software.
olyteddy
Posts: 6564
Posted on: 19 Aug 12 01:14
Quick Sync and CUDA also accelerate transcoding. I can't see why the operating system itself would speed things up. Transcoding isn't very I/O bound and a well written program should run the same regardless who or what is doing the I/O. Maybe W8 has more efficient codecs?
audollar
Posts: 2
Posted on: 19 Aug 12 06:53
very useful post, thank you
SubZero
Posts: 543
Posted on: 19 Aug 12 08:57
I believe .265 will help far more and built-in Intel graphics on Ivy gives better result than Cuda.

Windows 7 optimized drivers for transcoding should be well established.

I feel Windows 8 drivers will be lacking for some time.

My computer spends more time waiting for me than I do for it and find a few seconds to not be much of concerning.
staringatthesky
Posts: 18
Posted on: 26 Aug 12 15:12
Quote:
Originally Posted by olddancer View Post
Whoopee! Any time saved on processing is more than offset by the time wasted finding the Icon for your software on the Metro Desktop.
Shudder to think of how many pages of Icons I'd have to scroll through just to find my video rendering software.
Right click on the Metro desktop. A large bar will pop up at the bottom. At the right hand side of that bar is an "All Apps" button.
When you click that you get tiles for all of your apps in alphabetical order.
PJay-Z
Posts: 8
Posted on: 28 Aug 12 12:18
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Audio and video transcoding much faster on Windows 8

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