Anyone doing alot of BluRay transcoding for HTPC use ?

Anyone else here doing alot of BluRay transcoding and archiving ?

I would be interested to hear about your setup and what you use primarily for software/hardware, as although I have my own setup streamlined to the point where it works well for me, I am always looking to improve, as I know I can get it working better (ie. multi-threaded/faster etc).

My biggest problem is, it seems that regardless of what I try, I can barely get the software that I use to utilize more than 50% of available 'horsepower'....
(with the exception of RipBot264 that is...but it's SLOW).

As for my primary hardware, I currently use:

- Dual Quad Core Xeon 5550 (16 threads w/hyperthreading) 2.67 Ghz (similar to running a pair of LGA1366 i920 CPUs)
- Supermicro X8DTi-F Dual CPU LGA1366 Mainboard.
- 24 GB ECC REG Samsung PC3-8500 (6x 4GB Sticks)
- Quadro FX3700 512MB PCIe (although I do not use CUDA to enhance transcoding, it's just a card in the rig at the moment)
- LG BluRay/HDDVD Combo Drive
- 3x 40GB Intel X25-V in 120GB RAID0 Boot/Program Volume on Intel ICHr.
- 2x 150GB WD VelociRaptor in RAID0 300GB Working Volume on Areca PCIe.
- Win7 x64 OS.

The software I use:

- MKVmerge package, MKVcleaver, TSmuxer (mux and re-muxing etc).
- Handbrake (for lazy ripping/transcoding where absolute video quality doesn't matter, most times single pass).
- RipBot264 (for higher quality video work)
- MediaCoder x64 (for audio transcoding only, usually DTS 1500kbps down to AC3 384 kbps)

I currently have approx 2500+ BluRay 1080p titles archived mostly with 384kbps audio on my primary media server.

For those that are simply downloads, rather than disc rips, I always clean them up, removing un-needed subtitles, audio tracks and almost always transcode video.

I use the following bitrates for 1080p h264 Video, for archiving purposes:

- 4096 kbps (crap movies, normally the wife's horror movies or something just good enough to save).
- 5120 kbps (average bitrate for most).
- 6144 kbps (good action movies).
- 7168-8192++ kbps (reserved for stuff like 'The Fifth Element' etc)

Like I said, the software that I use on a regular basis works great, but I am always looking to get quicker results without sacrificing quality.

Anyone care to share what they are using for software ?

Cheers,
bitlane