Handbrake 0.9.3

Handbrake video encoding utility is small, free, easy to use and works great when encoding DVDs to MKV files. For this test the first three chapters of the "U2 Go Home" DVD are encoded to MKV format using the Film preset. It uses x264 codec with AC3 audio. Needed time in seconds is measured, how long it takes the CPU to encode the video. Measurements include both passes. As you can see from the graphs it scales almost perfectly with multithreaded CPUs.

Heavily multithreaded Handbrake favors more cores when it comes to video encoding. Sempron does here quite well compared to Celeron 430 but still needs 16 minutes more than Celeron E1600 to do the same job.

Xilisoft Video Converter Ultimate 5.1

Xilisoft Video Converter Ultimate is great when you need to do a lot of day to day small video encoding from one format to another. It has an extremely wide range of encoding presets and supports almost every known video format. For this test the MPEG-4 preset is used to encode a 1080p high definition trailer.

Surprisingly commercial versions of video encoders seem to be stuck with using just two cores fully, while load on the third and fourth core varies from 15-25%. Higher clock frequencies do make a difference in this test.

DivX Converter 7.0

A long time ago DivX was the format almost everyone used every day and now, finally it’s getting the x264 codec with its 7.0 version. Too little, too late and with bad multithreading support, but still used by wide range of users.

From bad to worst, as far as multithreading performance goes, DivX shows mixed results with slower clocked models lined at the back of the grid.