Encoding MPEG-2 video batches using a multiprocessor machine

We present a parallel MPEG-2 video encoder on the Intel Paragon parallel computer. Given a video sequence or a set of sequences, the aim of the encoder is to achieve the maximum possible encoding rate. To achieve this aim, the parallel encoder works by a combined scheduling of processors, I/O nodes, and disks, enabling the system to work in a highly balanced fashion through matching of the encoding and I/O rates. An efficient data layout scheme for video frames is also proposed in order for I/O to sustain the desired data transfer rates. Using a small percentage of processors as the I/O nodes, the utilization of the system is also high. More importantly, our encoder is scalable and with an increase in the number of processors will result in a proportional increase in the encoding rate. Given any machine configuration (that is, the number of compute processors, I/O processors, and disks), our propose strategy can logically partition the system and match the I/O and encoding rates to reach the ideal encoding rate. The experimental results indicate about two-fold gain in performance compared to the previous studies. Our approach is useful for compressing a large video sequence or batches of sequences