Review: LSI Tarari Encoder Accelerator LCPX-6140

Using the Windows Media Encoder and running the jobs in sequence, it took 30:17 to produce the files without the Tarari card, which dropped to 11:19 with the card—a time savings of about 63%. Next, I opened three instances of the Windows Media Encoder and encoded all three files simultaneously. Without the card, this consumed 11:11, which dropped to 6:28 with the card—a savings of about 42%.

Why did time savings drop so significantly? During the trials without the card, I noticed that when encoding only one file, Windows Media Encoder consumed only 40% of the overall processing power of my eight-core HP test system. With all three programs running simultaneously, CPU utilization often reached 100%, which translates to better efficiency without the card and less time savings from the card on both an absolute and percentage basis.

I produced similar results with Microsoft’s Expression Encoder 2. When running the three encodes in sequence, it took 21:41 without the card and 5:49 with the card—a drop of 73%. With three instances of the Encoder open, rendering time dropped to 10:28 without the card and 6:50 with it—a 35% reduction in time. So even if you’re taking steps to make your Microsoft-based encodings as efficient as possible, Tarari will still deliver a significant benefit.

Outside Testimony
My tests felt rather clinical, so I wanted to supplement my results with some user input. Tarari supplied several very eager and happy customers. One was Darren S. Person, chief technology officer of the CBS Television Stations Digital Media Group. Person’s group is responsible for producing video from CBS’s locally owned and operated stations around the country. He uses the Tarari accelerator in two very distinct roles.

First, his group provides the tools that allow the stations to edit in Windows Media format, so the Tarari cards help to convert video submitted by the stations as well as some user-generated video to Windows Media format. Second, in the more traditional role, the Tarari cards accelerate the group’s final VC-1 encoding with Expression Encoder 2 for UGC Silverlight deployment.

In their second role, the Tarari boards cut encoding times by up to 70%, so encoding that used to take an hour now takes less than 20 minutes. The Tarari card doesn’t affect quality one way or the other; according to Person, it was "fantastic" before they got the Tarari cards and "fantastic" afterward. In his group’s New York offices, Person reports that the key benefit of the cards is that it lets him and his co-workers "scale up, rather than scale out," doing more in less time with one computer rather than investing in space-consuming and power-hungry server farms.

Next, I spoke with Kevin Crumley, a senior video engineer at MSNBC who’s responsible for converting NBC’s satellite-based video feeds into streaming video for web distribution. Crumley noted that he’s used Tarari to accelerate encoding for several years, initially for the video distributed to viewers over the web and now for producing video for archival purposes.

Working with QuickTime reference files produced by Avid editing systems, Crumley uses Telestream FlipFactory, accelerated by Tarari, to produce 500Kbps files at either 448x336 or 592x336 resolutions for archival. Though he hasn’t run recent benchmarks, he recollected that the boards accelerated encoding time by about 30%–40% when initially installed.

Finally, I traded several emails with Jay Naranjo, a media systems engineer with Technicolor Creative Services, who uses the Tarari card with Digital Rapids StreamZ software. In essence, Technicolor bought the cards to enable real-time VC-1 encoding. Working from a number of sources (including uncompressed SD and HD AVI, 30 Mbps–80 Mbps SD, and HD MPEG-2), Naranjo confirmed that the Tarari cards enabled him to meet this goal.

Conclusion
Overall, while your mileage will certainly vary, I was impressed with the results I achieved and the praise I heard from actual users of the card. Tarari seems to be a solid option for any high-volume producer who needs to accelerate his or her VC-1 encoding. It is also affordable compared to the fully burdened cost of buying, housing, and maintaining a separate computer or computers on a server farm to accomplish the same task.