The VideoLAN Forums

I was wondering if vlc is multithreaded or not...
I mean if i am transcoding something would the decoding create a thread and the encoding another one?
I am thinking to buy a dual core if it would benefit from that... now for some heavy format the real time transcoding can be little bit choppy...

thanks

VLC is multithreaded.
But I am not sure you will get a lot of improvement with Dual Core. Maybe someone else could help you.

On a multi core Mac, transcoding can run on multiple CPUs if you set the preference to do so in Stream Output/Sout Stream/Transcode/Number of Threads.

Hello,

Can I have some informations about the gain with the multithread option on ?
(with which proc, etc).

Thanks in advance.

VLC is multi threaded, but most decoders aren't. Which means that the video decoder will only run on one thread. So you won't gain much. (basically you'll have the video decoder on one cpu, and other threads on the other ... if your Video is complex to decode)

Ok, I was more thinking about the ability to multithread during the encoding process (encoding video in one thread, encoding 1st audio track in another, etc.).

Do you know if it is possible ? With which efficiency ?

The issue with decoders is also true of encoders.

Damn it !

Ok, so if I want to earn some time, I have to run as many instances of VLC as there are streams, to encode each stream independtly; and finally mux them with another instance of VLC ...

Thank you all.

Dream on!

I am pretty sure x264 itself support multi-threads (found out on the doom9 forums), however I am using x264 inside vlc for streaming purposes, so is there any way to set the prefs for x264 through vlc? I can't find any conf files for x264 (i installed with yum, so i may need to install from source with --enable-pthreads ?). Also: is there any advanced vlc conf files that i can find? I see the one in ~/.vlc , however most of it is actually commented out (except for the titles)

any help to my poorly phrased questions would be great...

Preferences, Input /Codecs, Video codecs, x264

sorry, i forgot to mention that i was using linux (fc6) and am idealy looking for the conf/text files to edit so I can be sure of what is going on...

thanks, and sorry!

VLC's configuration file should not be edited. Use the command line to alter options or batch file commands.