Dual or Triple VirtualDub (concurrent)?

[WeenBoy]

This should be fairly simple to say yes or no too....
I'm using VirtualDub and am having no problems, but i was wondering is there any way to run 2 or 3 of them? I don't like having to wait couple of hours (Divx 5.0.2 @ 720x480 high frame rate, then playing on TV through video card for best viewing rate) for it compress, then the next movie. So I was wondering is there a way to run 2 or 3 of them so it can be doing several movies at the same time consecutively, rather than concurrently, one after another (ie compressing Matrix, Office Space, Seven at same time; not Matrix, then Office Space, then Seven?

P.S. I know I can run then to run consecutively in the the job control script, but can run 2 or 3 versions of VD or something at the same time? Thanks.

[Ozymandias]

Hello,

I'm pretty sure the answer is no : first, when encoding two different movies, there is no same operation that both sessions perform, that you could have performed only once. And more, even if there was such a thing, VirtualDub doesn't have a "smart parallel processing" option.
Also, I think that having VirtualDub process 2 or more files via the job list is more efficient than lauching several VirtualDubs, because the system doesn't have to cycle between each process, but that's just a feeling.

Ozymandias

[khp]

There is absolut nothing wrong with running multiple instances of vdub concurruntly, except that you need a huge amount of ram, each enstance can easily use 100 MB. If you also want to be able to use batch job processing, each instance must be launced from seperate instances of virtualdub.exe on the HD, so that each instance has it's own virtualdub.jobs file.

But of course unless you, have multiprocessor system, there will be no speed gain from this, acctually quite the opposite.
Instead of waiting 2 hours for the first movie, four hours for the second and 6 hours for the third. You will have to wait 6 hours for all three to finish.

[WeenBoy]

What do you mean the time?

thanks khp, but i'm a tad confused about the time issue:

vob files "a" = 2 hours to compress for a movie
vob files "b" = 2 hours to compress for a movie

if I run 1 virtualdub it will take 4 hours to compress "a" and "b"
(this I know by doing)

if I run 2 virtualdubs (different places on hard drive) will it take then 2 hours to compress "a" and "b" or what?

[benderman]

1 VirtualDub (with joblist): 4 h
2 VirtualDubs: 4 h and 5 minutes

[Enchanter]

I do exactly that with nandub. I run 3 conversions in tow. The first one (the one I want to finish first) will be running in normal priority and the subsequent ones will be running in lower priority modes (No two instances of nandub will have the same priority). As khp pointed out, it does require a lot of RAM. My 512MB of RAM manages just fine anyway.

[UncasMS]

gordianknot as well as nandub/virtualdub let you create joblists und thus enable multifile processing one after another.

no need to run three versions of vd/nandub parallel!