So I’ve been wanting to start converting my existing .WTV files to HEVC MKV’s for a while and have been doing some test runs. What I’ve run into is that conversions for an hour long show are taking over four hours even with MCE Premium and Donator Comskip. After reading through some postings, I think putting in a video card in my HTPC would make a large difference as the following is my current build:
8GB Ram
I3-3225
512GB SSD
2x 3TB WD Reds
If I was to add a video card, what would everyone recommend? There would be no gaming on the HTPC and so this would basically be just for video conversions.
I’ve got a server with a GTX 1050 2GB and another with a GTX 1050 TI 4GB. Both work well for speeding up HEVC conversions. Looking at the logs for a few of the most recent conversion tasks on both machines I’m not really seeing a lot of difference in the conversion times of the 1050 TI over the plain 1050.
Typical times for a 1-hr program where the job strips commercials, extracts subtitles, and then converts the resulting ~42 minute program take 16-20 minutes, with 6-9 minutes being the actual conversion to HEVC.
I suspect that your overall times would be longer than mine since the 1050 is in a server with an i7-4770 and the 1050 TI is in a server with a Xeon E3-1225, but I know my conversion times went down dramatically once I put the graphics cards into the servers.
I like the 1050 cards because their relatively low power requirements let me install them without needing to beef up the power supplies, It’s not to hard to catch one of the 2GB cards for $100-$120.