Faster TMPGEnc conversion?

[daddynaz]

is there any way to make the mpg conversion go faster?

[andyp1]

It would help to say what you are trying to do and how long it currently takes you.
Also and very importantly 'What are your computer specs?'

Any answer to you question as it stands would be meaningless.

[MpegEncoder]

is there any way to make the mpg conversion go faster?

Get a faster computer.

[Cobra]

As you try to push for more speed, you will always drop in quality. You can make it go faster by:

- Disabling the noise filter
- Turning down the motion search precision
- Disabling any other filters you have working
- Single-pass CBR mode as opposed to two-pass VBR

But then, would you trade a few extra hours encoding time for crappy video? I wouldn't, but it's up to you in the end.

As the other guys have said, tell us your computer specs and current timings so we can more accurately tell what's up - if your system is taking an abnormal amount of time to encode it could indicate a problem that can be sorted out.

More info, please!

Cobra

[Shudder]

As far as quality goes, I really haven't seen a difference between fast motion estimate and Highest Quality other than HQ takes considerably longer to do perceivingly the same thing.

[jwedge]

I heard of forthcoming TMPGEnc 3.0 and even though I don't know details I hope it will be faster. Is there any logic for my expectation based on what anyone knows?

[Supreme2k]

Paint racing stripes on your computer?

Set your clock back a bit once you're done?

[VCDHunter]

Set your clock back a bit once you're done?

Quality

[Tom Lewandowski]

really haven't seen a difference between fast motion estimate and Highest Quality other than HQ takes considerably longer to do

You're kidding, right?

The only way I found to decrease encoding time with TMPGEnc Plus (to any significance) was by upgrading my CPU and RAM. It made one hell of a difference upgrading from a PIII 1 GHz (256 MB RAM) to a P4 2.66 GHz (512 MB RAM). For example, a 20-minute AVI video clip, captured at 704x480, 29.97 fps used to take my PIII from 12 to 13 hours to render in TMPGEnc Plus. 6000 VBR two pass, and noise reduction set to highest quality. On my P4, it takes from 3 to 4 hours. I'm still amazed by the difference.

Like others have said, skimp on the quality settings and encoding speeds, and the picture quality deteriotes noticeably -- more and more pixilation begins to appear the faster you try to render.

[Shudder]

I don't know what you're encoding, but I'd love to see samples of how degraded motion estimate is compared to highest quality, simply because in the things I did (mpg4 to mpg2) I couldn't see any difference other than a considerable encoding time. Now, maybe I had some bitrate to spare and it wasn't that big a deal, but I certainly wouldn't be using highest quality (a misnomer, IMO) unless I truly were stretching the limits of my dvd (low bitrate)

[daddynaz]

well it's kinda embarrasing to tell but here.

my pc has a P4 processor with an overall memory of only 18GB and 96 RAM and currently the system resources counts as 33%. Its just for minimal school and work tasks primarily that's why i dont get too worked up about upgrading. The encoding and burning thing is just my little hobby on the side. i partitioned it with 3 drives.

my drive C contains most of the documents - least 5 GB half is free
my drive D contains my media files - least 6 GB 3/4 is free
my drive E contains mostly of installers - least 6 GB half is free

i encode 20 miunte avi files into 23.97 fps NTSC film and i make sure no other programs are running.

[northcat_8]

really haven't seen a difference between fast motion estimate and Highest Quality other than HQ takes considerably longer to do

You're kidding, right?

The only way I found to decrease encoding time with TMPGEnc Plus (to any significance) was by upgrading my CPU and RAM. It made one hell of a difference upgrading from a PIII 1 GHz (256 MB RAM) to a P4 2.66 GHz (512 MB RAM). For example, a 20-minute AVI video clip, captured at 704x480, 29.97 fps used to take my PIII from 12 to 13 hours to render in TMPGEnc Plus. 6000 VBR two pass, and noise reduction set to highest quality. On my P4, it takes from 3 to 4 hours. I'm still amazed by the difference.

Like others have said, skimp on the quality settings and encoding speeds, and the picture quality deteriotes noticeably -- more and more pixilation begins to appear the faster you try to render.

12-13 hours?? HOLY COW it would have been quicker to draw the frames by hand I think 3-4 hours is still a long long time, especially for 20 minutes. I'm not doubting you but that's a long time. My 2.2 AMD with 1 GB of PC2700 is much faster by alot.

So non-hardware things you can do:

Page file - set your page file to 2.5 times the amount of physical RAM you have.
Disable unneeded services.
Do not read and write to the same drive (if you can keep from it) for example, I capture to one drive, then output to a different drive and neither is my OS drive. 3 seperate drives...not 3 partitions.
Shut down background programs.
shut down screensavers (turnoff monitor if you let it run overnight)
turnoff system restore
defrag your HDs

there are many other things you can do...I'm working from memory, but you can streamline your system to work with video. 3-4 hours for a 20 minute clip is way way too long...it didn't take that long when I had a 1.0 Ghz AMD with 512 MB of DDR ram...something is not right.

My desktop is busy right now, I will look through some of my setup for more tweaks...I just converted 4 hours (13 files) worth of DV-AVI files, 720x480, 29.97 fps, 8000 bitrate to 720x480, 29.97 fps, 6000 bitrate (to m2v + wav) and it didn't take it 3 hours.

Upgrading your CPU and RAM will help considerably but you can get more speed out of your current set up if you tweak it.

96 MB of RAM?? That's not very much....the page file will help you, but you really need to go at least 256 and I would suggest no less than 512.

[fmctm1sw]

really haven't seen a difference between fast motion estimate and Highest Quality other than HQ takes considerably longer to do

You're kidding, right?

Actually, there is more than one TMPG guide out there that recommends "Motion search estimate" ( I think that's what it's called) for DVD compliant stuff. I've been using it exclusively. I would be very interested as well to see someone show differences between those settings.

[sacajaweeda]

is there any way to make the mpg conversion go faster?

Use CCE instead

[mats.hogberg]

IMHO (and a few others) the quality difference between "High (slow)" and "Highets (Very slow)" motion search precision is infinitesimal, but the difference in time is really huge. I tend to stick to High when I use TMPGEnc (which I nowadays only do for the occational VCD).

/Mats

[Matteo693]

I have read that "High" quality is for VCD, "Motion Search Estimate" is for compliant DVDs, and you would only use "Highest quality" if trying to fit 6 hours onto a DVD...!?

Once again, is there ANY benefit to using "Highest" instead of "Motion" when encoding, say, 1-2 hours of stuff?

[fmctm1sw]

I have read that "High" quality is for VCD, "Motion Search Estimate" is for compliant DVDs, and you would only use "Highest quality" if trying to fit 6 hours onto a DVD...!?

Once again, is there ANY benefit to using "Highest" instead of "Motion" when encoding, say, 1-2 hours of stuff?

I did some digging and found conflicting views (conflicting views not here!):

digitalfaq.com says,
"motion estimate provides excellent results without needlessly adding time to the encode"

http://dvd-hq.info/Compression.html seems to go with the "Highest quality" setting.

I don't know. I'd be interested to see if these settings would equate to a difference I could see on my TV....

[offline]

3-4 hours ??

Can u post your settimgs? I get realtime with a p4 2400 HT.

[Matteo693]

3-4 hours ??

Can u post your settimgs? I get realtime with a p4 2400 HT.

Wow, realtime encoding with TMPGEnc is something I've only dreamed about!

Do you encode straight from your avi captures without filters, frameserving etc? What about TMPGEnc's Noise Reduction, do you use it?

[offline]

Huffy avi frame served with avisynth (basic avisynth filters used
inc. 1 smoother, 1 noise reduction 1 resize).

The main bottle necks are how fast each frame is served and how each
frame is filtered. Tmpgenc's built in filters are way two slow as
is its video file api. Bypass those and realtime is easy to achieve.

Using CCE with AVI and then using
avisynth 2.5x and you can easily achieve 2x or greater speed
on basic hardware.

[Matteo693]

OK that's it, I'm learning avisynth once & for all!!! :P

(Offline, your signature is hilarious! )

[DeleriumMDK]

daddynaz, 96MB of RAM? Put some more RAM into that PC, you'll see a huge increase in the speed of that. I have 1GB of RAM, jumped up from 256 a while back...its great. Put as much RAM into your PC as you can afford, and fit into your motherboard. I'm encoding MPEG's twice as fast as I once did, maybe even quicker.

[teegee420]

I'd rather have a faster CPU than more RAM.

[SatStorm]

With my athlon XP 2600, it is much faster than realtime...

Don't use filters with TMPGenc. Learn avisynth or virtualdub for filtering / resizing. Huge difference.

Also, an "eretic" thing to consider: Capture to RGB and use this as a source to TMPGenc. Huge speed difference that way (TMPGenc's vfapi plugin slow down a lot the proccess). Also huge loss of picture quality....
Consider CCE Basic and avisynth for fast results

[jameshgross]

daddynaz,

There are a few things you can do the help process faster:

Disable your network connection.
Update your antivirus definitions and scan the computer.
Disable antivirus software when processing video files.
Stop any unnecessary services that are running. For infomation on disabling process see www.blackviper.com (set up your computer a game machine).
Run a spyware removal program such as AD-AWARE or SPYBOT.
Defragment you HDrives.
Get more memory - with only 96 meg of RAM you are more then certian to be having an excessive amount of file paging.

To check your system - Close any running applications. Run Performance tab from task manager. When idle your CPU usage should be less then 1% with occasional spikes to 5%.. If not you have more tuning to do.

Remember that even the fastest processor can be bogged down with spyware, viruses, backgroud tasks or services and wayward applications(applications that dont properly release system resources).

[thor300]

I agree with those who say the way to go is CCE, a few basic lines in AviSynth is a good enough entry level to start playing with it. Not only do you save a lot of time but you will also have better quality. And, it takes shorter time to learn AviSynth that to encode with TMPGEnc. Concerning motion search precision set to Highest Quality, it will be visible on the action scenes, any other setting in Tmpgenc will degrade the quality of fast scenes too much to be acceptable when using CBR.

[Jah_Rankin]

I'd rather have a faster CPU than more RAM.

DVD2ONE, Instant Copy, Nero Recode, and otherswill give u the speed and quality u need

[SatStorm]

@thor300: It depents. There are 2 kind of users: GUI directed / Line command directed

I was instantly able to work with virtualdub, but I needed weeks for the same thing with avisynth. Still today, I use it only rarelly. I prefer the combo of Virtualdub / TMPGenc, even if there is some kind of loss there...

It's like maths: You like them or hate them. I Hate them!

[offline]

OK that's it, I'm learning avisynth once & for all!!!

(Offline, your signature is hilarious! )

Thanks.
SatStorm said he gets faster than realtime - this is easy too but
I tend to use some of tmpgenc's built in functions which do slow
things down.

You do not have to "learn" avisynth. Just download the latest
version and then steal a script. Once you get the hang of it
you can read the online manual and fiddle with plugin filters
and advanced editing.

#Cut and paste this to notepad and save as myfile.avs
#Load into tmpgenc as you would a .avi file.
#This is the most basic script- it can turn a four encode into
#less than one hour
AVISource("C:\myvideo\At the Mountains.avi")



Here is a good basic one to use with VHS captures

#Cut and paste this to notepad and save as myfile.avs
#Load into tmpgenc as you would a .avi file.
#++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
# FOR CAPTURED VHS FOOTAGE:
#++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++


# CAPTURE TO AVI USING PICVIDEO @ 20Q, HUFFYUV OR HIGH
# QUALITY "DV"


# STEP ONE: PLUG-INS GO HERE
LoadPlugin("c:\avisynth\decomb.dll")


#STEP TWO: LOAD THE CAPTURED AVI
AVISource("vdubcap.avi")


# STEP THREE: DECIDE WHAT SORT OF FIELD PROCESSING YOU WANT
# (UN_COMMENT ONLY ONE, DEPENDING ON WHETHER THE VIDEO
# CAPTURED IS FILM, TRUE NTSC NON-FILM, OR HYBRID

# OPTION "A": FIELD DEINTERLACE ONLY. (NON-FILM OR HYBRID)
# (THIS OPTION OUTPUTS 29.97 FPS BUT REMOVES COMBING)
# (TO USE OPTION "A" UNCOMMENT ONLY THE NEXT 1 LINE.
#
# FieldDeinterlace() # <-- UNCOMENT FOR OPTION "A"

# OPTION "B": FULL IVTC W/POST PROCESSING (TRUE FILM)
# (THIS OPTION PERFORMS IVTC ON TELECINED MATERIAL RESULTING
# IN 23.96 FPS MATERIAL)
# (TO USE OPTION "B" UNCOMMENT ONLY THE NEXT TWO LINES.
#
# Telecide() # <-- UNCOMENT FOR OPTION "B"
# Decimate(cycle=5) # <-- UNCOMENT FOR OPTION "B"

# STEP FOUR: RESIZE TO FINAL RESOLUTION
# UNCOMMENT ONLY ONE OF THE FOLLOWING OPTIONS
#
# BilinearResize(352,480) # XSVCD (FUTURE DVD-R COMPATIBLE)
# BilinearResize(480,480) # TRUE SVCD

# STEP FIVE: (OPTIONAL) REDUCE LEVELS TO KILL DANCING PIXELS
# IN WHAT SHOULD BE "BLACK" SCREENS
# (A PRETTY COMMON PROBLEM WITH CAPTURED MATERIAL)
# (NOTE: USE ONLY AS MUCH DARKENING AS NEC TO MAKE THE BLACK
# SCENES STAY BLACK. )
# DARKER = BETTER COMPRESSION, BUT DON'T OVER DO IT
#
# COMMENT OUT ONLY ONE
# Levels(20,.85,231,0,244) # STONGEST DARKENING
# Levels(16,.91,235,0,248) # STRONG DARKENING
# Levels(14,.94,243,0,250) # MEDIUM DARKENING
# Levels(8,.97,251,0,252) # MILD DARKENING
# Levels(4,.99,253,0,254) # MILDEST DARKENING


# STEP SIX: (OPTIONAL) CLEAN UP THE VIDEO NOISE
#
# TEMPORAL: TIME-BASED CLEANING
# (UNCOMMENT ONLY ONE OF THE FOLLOWING THREE)
#TemporalSoften(2,15,15) # STRONG, USE FOR NOISY CLIPS
#TemporalSoften(1,9,9) # THIS ONE USUALLY IS ADEQUATE
# TemporalSoften(1,4,4) # USE THIS FOR CLEAN CLIPS
#
# SPATIAL: AREA BASED CLEANING
# (UNCOMMENT ONLY ONE OF THE FOLLOWING FOUR)
#
# SpatialSoften(3,16,16) # REALLY STRONG, FOR REALLY BAD CLIPS
# SpatialSoften(2,10,10) # STRONG, BUT NOT TOO BAD
# SpatialSoften(1,7,7) # MEDIUM, THIS ONE USUALLY IS ADEQUATE
# SpatialSoften(1,3,3) # LIGHT, FOR GENERALLY CLEAN CLIPS