New portable

Both Asus and MSI are about to bring 1.6GHz Atom based 10" notebooks paired to 6-cell battery for 5+ hours of battery life. Both Wind and EEE1000 are about the same with Wind being less advanced (80GB 2.5" HD vs. 40GB SSD, G vs N) and hardware details less known. Both would have Intel 945GSE (GMA950) chipset and thus Leo would have QE and depending on wireless would make working Leo laptop.

Wind should come out at $549 any day now and Amazon already list them. With Wind I should make sure that it has 6-cell battery (2.6lbs vs 2.3lbs listed on Amazon) and Wind Linux version is a rip-off not worth $400 due to 3-cell battery and lack of bluetooth.

EEE1000 would come out probably before fall at $650+??? and depending on its price we may see Wind price drop (I want $50 Amazon rebate) and confirmed price drop on EEE900 when EEE901 comes out. EEE900 being a 900MHz Celeron and GMA900 is not worth it even at $400. If EEE901 Linux version (20GB) would ship for bellow $500 (and I mean $450) it may be worth it for N-wireless, but otherwise (say at $500) Wind's extra inch of keyboard for extra $50 makes all the difference, unless MSI totally don't screw up with hardware details.

So apparently Wind it is, but then again in Q3 Intel should start making 2 core 1.6GHz Atoms. If there would be an announcement of Wind or EEE1000 with dual-core for bellow $700 this is an Atom based computer I want and should wait for looking on how Leo would install on Wind...

AVCHD camcoders

Since "the first real' AVCHD camcoder become available sometimes in May 08 I looked at what would it take to edit and play AVCHD. All Windows software that claims to have AVCHD support is laughable. PowerDirector comes as the winner but it is laughable still - it would cut AVCHD only to export it by transcoding (same with Nero only PowerDirector has at least some timeline), SONY product... well SONY just don't know how to write software period. Since on Windows they still don't get it that transcoding HD is unacceptable (and not so much because generation is lost but more because it would take forever - even 720p to 720p transcode could be done on Q6600 at 12fps = 2.5xT at best and with 1080p we are talking 6xT)... Well since they still don't get it, until Adobe release CS4, the only working solution is still Final Cut on Mac.

Final Cut would chop AVCHD in no time, however any effects are not visible until rendering and that takes forever (25-30 min on MBP for 2 minute material), and since effects would require a transcode Premiere beats FCP for material that requires adjustments. The workflow is to chop AVCHD in FCP and do post in Premiere or otherwise on Windows transcoding with meGUI since Premiere would display effects rightaway and has better picture adjustments.

FCP will open MPEG-1 from SONY, but would be unable to decode audio and ffmpeg would error out on video when I try to rewrap.

On Mac the only way to transcode arbitrary video is ffmpeg. (Handbrake does better job but works only with MPEG-2 MPG wrapped). Instructions are here, but apparently quality suck (still need to further verify). ffmpeg could crop and resize with "-croptop 60 -cropbottom 88 -cropleft 252 -cropright 252 -s 720x480 -aspect 720:480" and could cut with -ss -t .It is slower then Handbrake 21/20 vs 40/25 on 480p even with -threads 2 and needs to be installed with "sudo port install ffmpeg +lame +xvid +x264 +a52 +faac +faad +dts"

The following would crop and resize "Globe Trekker" ffmpeg -i /Users/zander/Globe\ Trekker_Extra_South_England.mpg -an -croptop 60 -cropbottom 88 -cropleft 252 -cropright 252 -s 720x480 -vcodec libx264 -deinterlace -b 900k -partitions all -me umh -subq 6 -trellis 1 -refs 1 -coder 0 -me_range 16 -level 30 -bt 900k -maxrate 10M - threads 2 England.mp4 ffmpeg -i /Users/zander/Globe\ Trekker_Extra_South_England.mpg -acodec libfaac -ab 96k -croptop 60 -cropbottom 88 -cropleft 252 -cropright 252 -s 720x480 -vcodec libx264 -deinterlace -pass 1 -b 900k -partitions 0 -me epzs -subq 1 -trellis 0 -refs 1 -coder 0 -me_range 16 -level 30 -bt 900k -maxrate 10M -threads 2 England.mp4 and the following would do 720p->480p(wide) ffmpeg -i /Users/zander/Movies/720p/Christmas\ Party.mov -an -aspect 1280:720 -s 720x480 -vcodec libx264 -pass 1 -b 900k -partitions 0 -me epzs -subq 1 -trellis 0 -refs 1 -coder 0 -me_range 16 -level 30 -bt 900k -maxrate 10M -threads 2 Christmas-orig.mp4 ffmpeg -i /Users/zander/Movies/720p/Christmas\ Party.mov -acodec libfaac -ab 64k -pass 2 -aspect 1280:720 -s 720x480 -vcodec libx264 -b 900k -partitions all -me umh -subq 6 -trellis 1 -refs 1 -coder 0 -me_range 16 -level 30 -bt 900k -maxrate 10M -threads 2 Christmas-orig.mp4

Upgrades (all the way to Nehalem)

My GA-G31MX-S2 is dying. At better times it could be overclocked upto 3.0GHz (333FSB=1333) vs. 2.4GHz (266FSB=1068) stock or 25% boost yielding 15fps vs. 12fps on 2nd pass 1080i->720p. I wouldn't mind buying a new mobo (with native 1333FSB support) to be more stable at 3.0GHz, but they still don't make anything interesting. Cheapo starts at $40 (ESC P945 100Mbps is $49.99 - $10 = $39.99, 1 year warranty) with $65+ buying nForce 630i chipset with GEForce 7100 (EVGA or ECS) and toping out at $100 with same intel G33 (I have G31 but it is a minor upgrade to support more memory 8GB vs 4GB). GEForce 7 serries is still not DirectShow 10 accelerated, but may or may not bring QE support on OSX (video editing). Unfortunately, GMA3100 is different from X3100 (on Apple portables) so QE would not work and thus OSX would require video card. So to get back my "fastest computer ever" it is 50/50 to either get new mobo or RMA GIGABYTE (phone 626-854-9338 select option 4) and getting $50 small factor video card (from X1550 DX 9, 256MB, DVI-I $36 to 8840GS DX10, 256MB, Dual-DVI $55, better get 8400GS) to later reuse in HP.

45nm Q9450 (2.67GHz at 1333MT, 2x6MB L2) at $316 is not worth it unless I get Penryn (T8xxx, T9xxx) processor and it would show more that 25% performance increase. (Should be just 10-15% clock for clock). Since Q6600 is known to run all the way to 3.6GHz (400FSB) clearly I am hitting mobo FSB limitations and that calls for new mobo and pushing it past 3.0 GHz. So if QE would work on HP, new GeForce 7 mobo it is (while GIGABYTE is RMA to decide to keep it or not) like this one (Firewire, DVI, S/PDIF, RAID 5) for $65 after $20 rebate. Running at 3.6GHz would boost Q6600 performance 50% vs. stock or I should see 18fps on 2nd pass 1080i->720p.

Rumors have it that Nehalem is upto 50% faster then Penrym for h264 encodes. Yorkfield at 2.5GHz is 10% faster then Q6600 at 2.4GHz that would make Nehalem based Quad at 2.6+GHz 1.65 times faster then Q6600 or 720p encodes should go 13*1.65=22 fps or not quite real time yet. At 3.6GHz Nehalem Quad (being say 50% faster then Q6600 at the same clock) would make it 27 fps. so even with Nehalem (overclocked) we will not see RT for 1080i->720p, but would be getting closer. Nehalem would use LGA 1366 or LGA 1160 socket, so it would be new mobo etc. again.

According to this forum sticking a Phenom into HP Slimline will not work because they are 95-125W and slimline's mobo max out on 65W. So absolutely no upgrade path for Slimline apart from sticking a video-card with dual-DVI-out and hope it would work (it might not because of the same power issues).

The bottom line is I need to push Q6600 above 3GHz (with QE on OSX or probably GeForce integrated) to get 1080i->720p closer to theoretical 60/18=0.5+1.66=2.17xT at 3.6GHz and that would be the end of "desktop upgrades" story until Nehalem comes with 8 cores.... So may be new mobo and 8840GS/RMA and that's it...

OSX won't work on Toshiba because of Radeon X200 video and won't work on Lenovo because of Intel Pro 3945 wireless... Laptop they sell are not much different - same 667FSB top and still T2xxx (or may be T5xx) Core Duos. So when it comes to portables Penryn MacBook is the best value with $200 rebate for $1099 (X3100, 2.4GHz, 800FSB, 2GB, 160GB, 13.3-inch), unless they start selling 13" Penryn PC for bellow $700 with 802.11N and giggy weighting less then 5lbs.

And still they don't sell 22" monitors with DVI for bellow $200 capable of 1080p... nor 802.11N routers with giggy for less then $110... nor giggy switches for $20 (D-Link is $30 after rebate together with N-access point for $40) makes it $70 vs. $110)

So I am stuck with

• for 1080i->720p on Q: 40/12=0.75+2.5=3.25xT after extra 1xT to transfer from A to Q at 10-25Mbps that sometimes (but rarely) go all the way to 40Mbps (when I am using samba) or on A 13/5=8xT.
• for 1080i->480p on Q: 75-80/48-54=0.4+0.6-0.37+0.55=0.92 to 1xT after 1xT to transfer vs. 40/21=0.75+1.42=2.17xT on A or 40/25=0.75+1.20=1.95xT on MacBook
• for DVD (with deint) 140/63=0.21+0.46=0.67xT on Q.

and above are the best times...