A 1st. botched trial of AVStoDVD

[Seeker47]

O.K., so I've been hearing about the alleged superiority of this 2-pass approach vs. ConvertX for some time now, and decided to give it a try. None of the Guide topics listed here sounded appropriate. I'll have to check to see if the program install included any documentation, but I thought I'd try to plow ahead regardless. (Perhaps a mistake.) The settings did not look all that complicated. Here's what's happened, so far.

The first test file is a 45 min. .WMV. The computer is single-core P4 2.8G, running W2K-SP4, with 1G of Ram. I set the project running yesterday evening at 6:30, letting it run through the night. It started out showing about 10 fps (or was it 15 ?), with an estimate of about 8 hours. This morning, about 10 hours later, fps has dropped to 1.43, with the time estimate up to 29 hours and change. So far, AVStoDVD has made a small log file, plus an .AVS file of nearly 3G in size. Admittedly, there is a very good chance I screwed up somewhere, but if not this is really not practical or acceptable: I'm not prepared to tie up a main computer for this kind of time period. It might be different with a much faster multi-core box (?), or if I had multiple computers.

I'd still like to do some test comparisons to see just how much better a result can be obtained vs. ConvertX. I thought of drastically cutting down the .WMV file first, so that it is maybe only 10 minutes long, and would not take so very long to process, but the only program I see listed here for direct editing of WMV seems to be WMEncoder, which is described as being command line only and requiring much familiarity in order to use. I did not want to convert or transcode the WMV, because I thought that might compromise the value of this test.

AVStoDVD (the QuEnc portion being up now) shows two buttons: STOP and QUIT. The distinction is lost on me, unless STOP really means Pause, but I've chosen Stop and will now bail on this first trial because I need to use the computer for other things. I note that the QuEnc is an alpha version, in this latest drop of AVStoDVD. Generally speaking, I steer clear of alpha versions, and even most betas. I thought it also installed HCenc, and would like to know if I can set that as a preference instead.

[MysticE]

MrC has set some defaults that can be overridden. If Quenc pops up it means he feels the bitrate is high enough that there is no advantage to a 2 pass HCenc encode, a 45 min.WMV will obviously max out the bitrate.. Click through the Setup Video Profiles and you will see what he has chosen. To use 2 pass HCenc it's 4500 or lower. Quenc is ffmpeg based as is ConvertX. Alpha or not, it is a good encoder but hasn't been updated.

You can set it to HCenc. The program can be very difficult to navigate. Hit the View/edit icon under the '+'. The go to the Video tab and untick Auto Video Setup. Now choose HCenc 2 pass and hit OK.

I like the program but have never used it with WMV, it seems to work well with ffdshow installed.

[Seeker47]

MrC has set some defaults that can be overridden. If Quenc pops up it means he feels the bitrate is high enough that there is no advantage to a 2 pass HCenc encode, a 45 min.WMV will obviously max out the bitrate.. Click through the Setup Video Profiles and you will see what he has chosen. To use 2 pass HCenc it's 4500 or lower. Quenc is ffmpeg based as is ConvertX. Alpha or not, it is a good encoder but hasn't been updated.

You can set it to HCenc. The program can be very difficult to navigate. Hit the View/edit icon under the '+'. The go to the Video tab and untick Auto Video Setup. Now choose HCenc 2 pass and hit OK.

I like the program but have never used it with WMV, it seems to work well with ffdshow installed.

Thanks for your reply. I now have some reason to think that the QuEnc alpha hung, which may have accounted for the whole process stalling out. I'll look into your suggestions, and would definitely like to find some guide that covers the possible settings in more detail. I don't think I had ffdshow installed, but my first impression was that it had more to do with playback options.

I also have some concern that installing AVStoDVD may have conflicted with or in some way undermined the installed ConvertX, perhaps because of some components they have in common ? I did start to get failures in some ConvertX jobs, where this had been more of a rarity in the past. In one, ConvertX just quit mysteriously, leaving no trace of itself running, and an unburned blank disc. In another, there was a mid-burn failure, with a fatal Exception involving AVFORMAT.DLL. But I'll need to replicate that a few more times before I can say it's a pattern.

[MysticE]

Well I have both installed with no problems (but that doesn't mean you won't). If you actually mean the burn to disc option I always save to a folder (for doing a quick check). I burn all output with ImgBurn.

And do note using a 45 min. file to test 2 pass VBR encoding is useless unless you set your output size to about 1.5GB.

You can post here to ask your questions:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=126647

[_MrC_]

Hi Seeker47 and thanks for your trial and report.

Let me do some considerations to help you in using AVStoDVD with satisfaction.

The first test file is a 45 min. .WMV. The computer is single-core P4 2.8G, running W2K-SP4, with 1G of Ram. I set the project running yesterday evening at 6:30, letting it run through the night. It started out showing about 10 fps (or was it 15 ?), with an estimate of about 8 hours. This morning, about 10 hours later, fps has dropped to 1.43, with the time estimate up to 29 hours and change. So far, AVStoDVD has made a small log file, plus an .AVS file of nearly 3G in size. Admittedly, there is a very good chance I screwed up somewhere, but if not this is really not practical or acceptable: I'm not prepared to tie up a main computer for this kind of time period. It might be different with a much faster multi-core box (?), or if I had multiple computers.

With your system, if the wmv file is a standard definition clip (i.e. 640x480) and if you do not have any other process running (AVStoDVD works in low priority), you should have around 25/30 fps during video encoding, both with QuEnc and HCenc. Surely there have been happened something to cut down your encoding speed.
Another strange thing is the presence of a such big .AVS file. AVStoDVD produces big .M2V files and smaller .AC3 files in the output folder and very small files in the Temp folder... no big .AVS files. Please check again.

AVStoDVD (the QuEnc portion being up now) shows two buttons: STOP and QUIT. The distinction is lost on me, unless STOP really means Pause, but I've chosen Stop and will now bail on this first trial because I need to use the computer for other things. I note that the QuEnc is an alpha version, in this latest drop of AVStoDVD. Generally speaking, I steer clear of alpha versions, and even most betas. I thought it also installed HCenc, and would like to know if I can set that as a preference instead.

QuEnc STOP button effectively stops the process without exiting. QUIT stops and quits. Do not bother to use QuEnc Alpha release: I have deeply tested it before including it AVStoDVD package. It is rock solid.

I'll look into your suggestions, and would definitely like to find some guide that covers the possible settings in more detail. I don't think I had ffdshow installed, but my first impression was that it had more to do with playback options.

As a first look guide, you can use the Help Section that comes with AVStoDVD. Just press F1. You can install or not ffdshow, but be sure you have all the needed directshow codecs before trying to make any conversions.

I also have some concern that installing AVStoDVD may have conflicted with or in some way undermined the installed ConvertX, perhaps because of some components they have in common ?

They should not have common components: AVStoDVD makes use of AviSynth as frameserver and the encoders/authoring sw are all in the AVStoDVD install folder.

Let me know your progresses.



Bye