Takes 24 hours to make a .MPG

[Gibson]

Doest it seem right that encoding can take as long as 24 hours?? I'm on a Pent 4 system with 256Megs of Memory using DVDx 1.6? Thanks for any replies!

[moviemadness]

you have pent 4 well i dont know i only have 450 and it dont take that long unless your doing giant movies or your running other stuff on your computer e.g downloading movies wilst encoding movies, or watching one wilst encoding or it may be that you are having the preview output option on and have the film going frame by frame on your encoder and watching it.

press ctrl, alt and del together you are probable running all sorts and this uses your mear 256 megs memory

[jphoenix]

There are better programs out ther, or more steps, but quicker times.

Have Athlon1.4
256SDRam
40GB7200RPM WD
Average time from DVD to 2xCDR's for a 2Hr movie is
approx 5~6Hrs

[ShortyMan]

Hmmm.

What program do you use to convert in only 4~6hrs?
I am using TMPGEnc and i have a Thunderbird 1.2 ghz w/385mb RAM & ibm deskstar 60gb and doing 75 min. VCD of (anime) Vampire Hunter D, it took about 58 hrs to encode straight from dvd to vcd. (Using automatic 2-pass vbr @ avg. 1150k/sec) The movie does look very, very good. Maybe i'm just sacrificing encoding time for quality. Or maybe the encoder i use just sucks, but so far TMPGEnc is my favorite.

[jphoenix]

Hey Shortyman
R U makin VCD or SVCD?

I'm only converting to VCD which If I understand doesn't allow for anything else except for CBR @1150.

Doing 2-Pass VBR is for SVCD. Correct me if I'm wrong.

SVCD's on CQ@75 normally takes 1hr45 - 2hr per segment (I always split my files as I make them, less HD space used) of 35 - 40Min. This works out at average of 6-7hrs of encoding for SVCD.

Also u mentioned "straight from DVD to VCD"? you don't rip to HD first?

I other thing. Have 256Mb but I've found that during encoding only 85% of resources are used. Anyone else second this finding?

[ShortyMan]

Actually, i didn't start using 2-pass vbr for vcd (not svcd) and my findings are exciting (for me anyways). I used to use cq_vbr @ 100 and noticed whenever the background scrolls, it gets slightly jumpy. Maybe from lack of bitrate (cuz i try to stay in vcd-compliance). But when i up the bitrate a little and use 2-pass vbr, i get a smooth, beautiful vcd (of course, we're talking about 1/2 dvd resolution and maybe 1/4 to 1/10 of dvd bitrate on average). I havent had any problems with 2-pass vbr and i like to get the BEST quality possible and just leave my computer crunching numbers while i sleep and while i'm at work. but ALL of my findings are a result of trial-and-error. (well, most of them).

[ShortyMan]

Oh yeah... I'm ripping my dvd's usually with smartripper but i found you can just play your dvd with a software dvd player and just straight copy the .vob's to yur HD. And abour your computer using only 85% of it's resources, i have no clue, but a quick guess is that maybe your encoder isn't using all or any of thw correct optimizers (i.e. mmx, 3dnow, etc...). And i think i forgot to say earlier, but the reason my computer takes so long encoding is cuz i'm encoding almost nothing but Anime, and in TMPGEnc i put the noise reduction usually to the max, (100Still, 2 or 4 range, and 100motion {w/high quality checked}).

[jphoenix]

that's cool.

Pretty much I've been sticking with Normal VCD template in TMPG, only adjusting "Motion Picture Search" option and the usual "Aspect Ratio".
My process is:
Smartrip->DVD2AVI (save Project)->TMPG (where I break up the encoding per CDR needed) -> Nero 5.5.7.2

Works Everytime, Z1 or Z4.

Pretty much everythings been O.K. noticed blocks in Jurassic3 but everything else is pretty good.

Am trying to get the best quality vs file size from SVCD so that's the next project. Still, happy my stand-alone allows CDRW's, good for trial and error testing.

[ShortyMan]

jphoenix,
I totally agree with the process you're using. It's extremely easy, too. It may not be on the same subject as this thread, but have you tried reducing the block noise? I think its the bottom of the page in TMPGEnc under the Quantiza Matrix tab. I haven't used that option much, but what i've seen with the new anime i'm enoding, using 0 then 8 on the block noise reduction seems to help get rid of the blockiness during the very high motion scenes. Of course, i havent had ANY experience encoding Movies, just anime. Some say it's harder, but it seems pretty easy to adapt to every new anime to get beautiful vcd picture & motion. I'll try a movie and see for myself.

[jphoenix]

Thanks for the hint.

I'll give it a go next time.