Hey LQ,

I'm trying to get a Ubuntu Webserver of mine on Amazon Web Services to receive uploaded video and convert it into a video format for HTML5 video streaming.

I'm curious about:

1. What kind of processing power does it take to convert 5 minutes of 1080p mp4 footage to OGG

2. I want to stick with open file formats and what not, but I have read mp4 is somewhat superior to ogg. I would use mp4 if I had to, but I think I need to purchase the codec?

3. Follow up on #2, do I have to purchase codecs or license them in some way in order to transcode from them? I don't want to use mp3/mp4 but I'm sure a lot of the videos I'll be receiving will be mp3/mp4 based.

4. Do you think it would be wise to have a dedicated machine for video processing? I could upload the videos to the processing machine, transcode them and then send them back to the webserver. You're thoughts on this?

Thanks guys

1) Theora encoding is not threaded (unlike h264). On an i5 Intel it would take at around 1 min 30 sec of real time per minute of video, but it depends on quality settings. For 5 minutes it would take 7 min 30 sec to convert.

2) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theora#Performance
mpeg4 video would not be better than Theora.

3) No, not unless the patent holders ask for royalty, which none of the popular codecs do (mpeg4, h264).

4) If you are dealing with a lot of videos to transcode, then yeah you might need it.

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