Bicubic scaling

[RastaPiggy]

Converting a DVD to SVCD takes a very long time on my G4 700 Mhz (100 minutes takes about 11 hours). I wanna know if this is normal to take so long.. Tho this isn't my main question: I want to know how useful Bicubic Scaling is.. I made my first SVCD a few days ago and left Bicubic scaling off since I didn't see any difference in my test file... but know I am a bit dissapointed because the movie is a bit blocky at fast paced sequences. I left Bicubic Scaling of because it is supposed to make the encoding time even longer. How much longer does it take really? And will Bicubic Scaling solve my blocky SVCD problem?

[Pix]

Hi,
to your first question YES it's normal. On my G3 400 Mhz it takes 24 hours for a movie (90 mn) !
That's linked to mpg2enc. Maybe an other engine (in an other software) might be faster... There are many out there to be tested, but most are not free.

For Bicubic scaling, it's advised to be ticked.

http://homepage.mac.com/major4/options.html
-> Use the (Mitchell-Netravalli) high-quality bicubic upscaling and/or downscaling algorithm to resize the image (slower). Always used if not encoding to standard VCD or SVCD size.

You don't know how lucky you are to encode a SVCd in 11 hours

[RastaPiggy]

Damn!! It sure as hell takes a long time... thats sick!! and for the bicubic scaling.. do you also know how much longer it will take?

[Mr Mxyzptlk]

On my G4 400 (Yikes motherboard) I find that bicubic scaling adds 2-3 hours to process a 90 min source. I do in fact see a slight difference in quality, however it doesn't bother me, so I usually leave it off. Just a personal preference, not a recommendation.