encoding speed with firewire drive

[ansberry]

I burned my 2nd DVD yesterday. I am using a Umax Supermac S900 (very much like a Mac 9600 or 9500) upgraded to a G4/450 processor. I have an 80 gig IDE harddrive hooked to a ATA 66 PCI card. The drive has about 10 gigs of empty space. I am running OS 10.2.8.

Okay, I know that this is ancient technology and is bound to be very slow, but it took 19 hours for Toast to encode and burn the video. I realize that I could go out and get a new screaming machine, but I don't want to drop a couple of grand right now. I was wondering... would it make a significant speed difference if I hooked a large firewire drive to the machine and instead of having Toast reading from the dv files on the ide drive and writing the Toast Temp files back to the ide drive, I had Toast read from the ide drive and write the temp files on the firewire drive? Or just run the whole operation on the firewire drive?

Mike

[DanSlagle]

Probably make more of a difference droping a $300 CPU card

[terryj]

DO NOT do the TOAST--.>FW Drive-->Toast
for encoding/rencoding them burning. You
could get i/o errors as it needs constant fast
access to read/write the data as it encodes. Storing the source
file and the re-encoded file on the same FW drive,
even large capacity, at FW 400 would be a very bad idea.

Why not, if you are staying beige/clone, invest in a
Sonnet Tempo Trio Card ( PC133) and attach a
large WD Caviar 200MBHD with 8mb Cache ( total cost $300)
and then install the $300 CPU Card?

I say this because I assume that the current 80GB HD you
have is your only HD. With both the OS using this for
virtual swap, Toast using this for encoding cache,
and were it reads the source files, your system,
even on a lowly 450mhz processor, is fighting itself
to give the system enough ram/swap, Toast enough
VM swap/Cache, and 19 hours...im suprised the thing
didn't give up!!

I have a stock G4 466 at work which I added a 200GB WD
and Tempo Trio setup as listed above, maxed out the ram,
and I have the OS and Apps on the original stock 20GB drive.
I set partitioned the 200gb HD to two 100gb HDs,
put the cache folder for Toast on one, and the source files
on the other. I was able to create a 1.6Gb DVD of some
short fan films ( all were QT movies, so they were in spec)
and Toast encoded the whole thing to DVD in under 7.5
hours including burn.
This machine runs OS X 10.28, and max ram is 1GB.
DVD Burner is on an external FW400 case.

So in comparison, you can see how you can get your
machine up to speed. But of course, for the same costs,
( dan's $300, my $600) you could get a top line Mac Mini,
and be done and not mess with processor /HD upgrades.

[Frobozz]

It might save you a little time to use a Firewire drive either for the source or for the Roxio Converted Items folder. I do this with my G4 iBook because it has only a 4200 RPM drive (although on a much faster bus than yours). But you really should be saving your money for the Mac Mini rather than spending it on more add ons. Once you enter the world of DVD you really appreciate the power of the new Macs.

[live4ever]

Get one of these Fastcoders when they are released.
http://www.lacie.com/products/product.htm?pid=10498
Or save for a Mac mini.

[ansberry]

Yea, I was thinking about a new Mini. I checked the specs on the Apple site. You can't get it with a G5 processor. I have a G4 ibook at school. I burned a DVD on it just to see what it would do. It took it about 10 hours. That isn't bad, but I think I'd rather save up to get a G5 if I'm gonna buy a new computer.

I don't know much at all about firewire, but I always thought it was supposed to have a faster transfer rate than the fastest ide drives. But then, it's just an ide drive with a firewire chipset, so I guess not? I may check the swap lists and ebay and see if I can pick up a pci- ata133 card for a reasonable price.

Mike

[terryj]

Yea, I was thinking about a new Mini. I checked the specs on the Apple site. You can't get it with a G5 processor. I have a G4 ibook at school. I burned a DVD on it just to see what it would do. It took it about 10 hours. That isn't bad, but I think I'd rather save up to get a G5 if I'm gonna buy a new computer.

Mike

OF course this is start to finish, which entails
first getting the source video on, then encoding it,
then structuring the menu then burning to DVD.
10 hours is great, on a g5 you
would only pick up speed in the encoding stage, as everything else
would be relative to the speed of the person driving the computer.

On the G5 at work I have loaded up a 2hour show, trimmed it in FCP,
se the batch presets in compressor, then created the structure in
DVDSP3, when the footage was done compressing ( 2pass VBR),
I put it into the layout in DVDSP3, tightened up the menus, and
burned. Total time to output: 8 hours, 15 mins.

Now mind you, my footage was already DV,
so I had little conversion, just straight input into the G5.
Also, my layout i authored was a simple 2 menu setup
( 1 splash, 1 chapter), and I only had to create two backdrop picts,
and I used the standard Apple text buttons in overlay mode.
So by keeping it as simple as it can be, it still took a while, but
would that 1.5 hours I gained back be enough for me to trade up
to a G5, when a G4 is in my current price range---no.

in comparing the iBook you mentioned to a top mac mini,
I'm sure the following will be diffrent:

* Superdrive burning speed ( mac mini smokes the ibook)
* HD capacity/rotation speed ( mac mini wins again)
* amount of Ram ( last i looked, an ibook topped out at 640mb,
mm is 1gb)

All of which can contribute to a "difference" in getting the job done.

I'll leave you with this: Just remember that even if you do the HD /pci card now, you will still have to do a pci/processor card to make a real dent, as only having A without B won't get you to C.
And for that kind of coin, just to get into G4 speeds/capability, you'd
be better off buying a new machine, and just toughening out your setup
a while longer. Your machine, even upgraded won't top out
the top dollar prices ( see http:www.everymac.com),
so any patches/fixes/upgrades you do now, you won't
get your money's worth back....

[ansberry]

One of my relative's builds his own PC's. He says you can build a PC that will encode a whole DVD in just a few hours. I know that this is the Mac list, but if this is true, maybe it's time I turn to the dark side. A blazing DVD maker for the price of a Mac Mini?

[terryj]

I wouldn't know anything about it, but
again he is only talking ENCODING.
If all we are talking about is ENCODING,
then ANY mac that is a G4 733 or better
can ENCODE in a couple of hours, depending
on how you set the bitrate, quality settings,
and audio.

If you have 2hours of say, something from
Court TV, where there isn't much explosions,
or fast movements, digitized in from 1st or
2nd gen VHS, then you could once the footage is in,
set a Compressor setting that would encode the
video at CBR ( Constant Bit Rate) at a min of 2.1MBS
and a peak of 5.0MBS, and get it ENCODED in under
2 hours ( like at 1 hour 36 mins on a G4 QS 800).

But VBR ( variable Bit Rate) which ensures MAX quality,
will ALWAYS take twice as long, because it has to do
TWO passes, and the higher the min and max MBS
settings, the longer it will take then.

I'd be curious to hear what he would spec out for this machine that could "encode in a few hours",
as well as the settings he would choose to do so.
Methinks it will probably boil down to a P4 that would
use USB ( eech!) to bring in the video, and then
use CBR to encode the footage at low min and max MBS,
not VBR at a high rate.

[dcsos]

The Windows machines are faster at the top end,
but to build such a machine costs become similar to MAC

Stick with a platform that performs reliably.
If you would put this machine on the internet, there's no comparison..
The WINDOWS machine would be much worse at shifting gears for other tasks

[Frobozz]

* Superdrive burning speed ( mac mini smokes the ibook)
* HD capacity/rotation speed ( mac mini wins again)
* amount of Ram ( last i looked, an ibook topped out at 640mb,
mm is 1gb)

terryj, thanks for the excellent information about video encoding. FYI, the G4 iBook has more memory capacity than the mini (because of the iBook's built-in 256 MB of RAM) but in all other ways the mini is more powerful than any iBook. MCE Tech sells a DL 8X DVD burner upgrade for the iBook, so that eliminates any advantage the Mini has in that category.

Just to add to your point that encoding takes time, different encoding applications on Macs and PCs will take a different amount of time for the same video. That's due to the software-makers choice of quality versus speed. So if you hear someone brag about how fast they can encode a video, you know they are accepting some compromised quality.

The FastCoder mentioned earlier is going to be terrific for people with slower Macs because it speeds up the encoding stage to real time. Because it is a hardware encoder its quality should be pretty good, but still won't match that of Compressor or BitVice.

[ansberry]

Wow! A lot of good information flying around here. I have learned a lot from this forum over the last 6 months. (even if I am still incredibly ignorant about digital video)

I have heard you guys talk about various compression programs to use. But my Toast insists on compressing whatever I put into it into mpeg2, right? So if I compress it with bitvice or some other program, then try to burn it with Toast, won't I be compressing it twice and lose quality? Is there a way to compress with bitvice and then burn with Toast without having Toast recode the material? Is there a difference between compression and encoding?

I asked similar questions in a previous post, but didn't really understand the answers. Sorry if these questions are too stupid. I'm trying to sort this all out in my mind.

Mike

[Frobozz]

Toast 6.0.3 and later will NOT re-encode an existing MPEG video unless it was encoded out of the DVD spec. In other words, if you encoded a NTSC video as 528 X 480 Toast would have to re-encode it to 720 X 480, but why would you do that in the first place?

What Toast does to an existing muxed MPEG 2 is demux and remux the video and audio tracks as part of the authoring process. Toast 6.0.9 correctly describes this step whereas versions prior to 6.0.7 confusingly called this "encoding."

If you use BitVice you'll have separate video and audio streams. Drag the .m2v video stream to Toast and it will automatically add the audio stream or ask you to select it. Then Toast merely needs to mux the video and audio while authoring the DVD.