WHY do avi to mpg take SOOOO LONG????

[PilotHaz]

Can someone please tell me why it takes about 13 hours to encode a avi to mpg??

Is there any trade secrets?
I am converting it so I can burn them for my dvd player.

I am using Nero 5.5 to burn the mpg files when it is done. Also, one I did, with the conversion that nero converted the avi to mpg and half way through the swordfish mpg file on the dvd player, the sound was ahead of the video...

My computer that I am using to encode is a
P3 733mHz, 128 Ram, 14 GB hdd, voodoo 3 3000, and firewire card for my hi8 camcorder.
And I am using a standalone dvd player : Samsung DVD-M201 model.

Can someone give suggestions to make it work, and get it done faster??

thanks
rumble@topgunner.com

[Dragonsf]

Please give some details: how long is the avi, what filters are you using, doing some resize or what? Is 128 MB RAM really enough? I think your PC is wasting time swapping your memory in an out. And your HD 14 GB, that's about 75 Minutes of DV avi. Do you work in such order of time. Then you should be done in max 6 Hours, On my machine I get a rate of 1:3 or 1:4 conversion time.I.e 1 hour avi takes 3 to 4 hours for conversion.I'm doing this with 1 GB RAM, but only the half of it is really used.
With your configuration you should expect a ratio of 1:6 or 1:8.

[PilotHaz]

I am using avi files I am getting from the divxstation.

I really don't know what I am doing when I use the TMPGEnc... WHat you are talking about with the resizing I have no clue, and the swapping between my ram . no idea.

[w00kiee]

128 mb ram should be enough.. even though encoding is cpu intensive it doesnt move ram around very much so swapping (temporarily moving lesser used data from your ram to your hard drive in order to open up space in your *physical* memory) if you are running large apps while encoding it may cause swapping. i had 64 mb ram and had very little swapping during encoding (have 200 mb now)

resizing : if the avi your converting to vcd is not exactly 352x240 then it is resized (or padded meaning black video is added to the top/bottom or sides to fill in the difference.) usually both are necessary. resizing adds lots of time to an encode.. id say for me about 30-40% added time for even a little resizing. the encoder tries to resize without making the picture look resized. but you cant really avoid resizing since most avis get done at non-vcd setting so deal with it i sometimes use virtual dubs resizer set to nearest which adds no time but the resizing can be detected easier in the video.

anyways follow the guide

http://www.vcdhelp.com/tmpgenc.htm

and should only take you (for vcd) about 8 hours tops - even with resizing

[uneek-flip]

dragonsf... you said that half of your ram is being used. i have 310RAM and i don't think my comp is using all of it... i can't even run 3d studio max, and another prog at the same time... when i check my system, it says "low on resources", what does that mean... and is there a way that i can increase the ram being used?

[Chris X]

Resources isnt your ram, its addressable ram addresses. How many programs u have open at 1 time, drains your resources, u eventually run out of addresses causing system instability.

U probably havnt tweaked your ram out. In your bios, Enable 4 way or bank interleave, set rame ras 2 cas, at the fastest timeing, enable cas2 latency.

start-run-msconfig under system ini, 386Enh, add a new string "ConservativeSwapFileUsage=1" without the "". They set your typicaL role of your computer as Network Server. Enable DMA on all your hardware. Reboot.

U will notice a performance boost about 100 megabytes per second faster with your ram

[uneek-flip]

sorry, but do you mind doin it step by step.... not really good at this computer program stuff.... thanks a lot.

[Dragonsf]

Ok, to solve some confusion: I'm using WIn2k Prof. which uses as much memory as needed(or possible).Win Win98 more than 256MB is waste and more than 512MB slows the machine really dpwn.ANd yes, as noticed, resizing takes a lot longer than straightforward encoding.
To see, how much RAM encoding uses, I look at the task manager and I see 100% CPU and about 512MB RAM for the encoding process.

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: Dragonsf on 2001-12-31 03:32:55 ]</font>

[Sefy]

I apologise if i'm budging in here, just wanted to give my hunch on the subject, I believe your AVI is a DivX file, and you should first use VirtualDub to save the Audio into a WAV file, and then only use the DivX as the Video Input, and the WAV as the Audio Input, then load a VCD/SVCD Template, and only then to encode, it should speed up your process.

[rhwimmers]

That seems way too long! I have a p3500...about 180mb ram..20g 5400 rpm hdd...For a avi file, typically half a movie, takes about 2 hours to get to MPG, so for a full movie, from a divx avi-mpg about 3-4 hours...
i dont think you should need to alter your system at all to get the specs above..
im running w98se
id try to download another divx avi file and go step by step on encoding...see if it is quicker
(fyi, i never do the audio-video seperate..)

[TheInformer]

Quote_____________________________________________ ___

dragonsf... you said that half of your ram is being used. i have
310RAM and i don't think my comp is using all of it... i can't even
run 3d studio max, and another prog at the same time...
when i check my system, it says "low on resources", what does
that mean... and is there a way that i can increase the ram
being used?
__________________________________________________ ___

uneek-flip:
Win9X devotes a section of RAM (typically 64K) for the management of system resources. System resources are things like fonts loaded, windows open, etc. You can have 1 gig of RAM on your system, but if you have too many fonts on your system (for example), you will be running low on system resources.

Here's a hypothetical case for you. These numbers are not accurate - they're only meant to illustrate!
System memory needed to keep track of a font: 64 bytes
System memory to keep track of 16 fonts: 1024 bytes = 1K
System memory to keep track of 160 fonts: 10240 bytes = 10K

Having 160 fonts loaded will take up 10K of the 64K alloted for system resources.
Will you use 160 fonts? Probably not, so deleting unused and unnecessary fonts
will free up RAM for more system resources. Result? You will notice a 'slight' system
speed increase because you computer's not having to waste time keeping track
of those extra fonts and you will free up your system resource RAM for other uses.

Now, the numbers were hypothetical, but the results are not. In the past I was
font-crazy for a while and had 200 or so fonts installed at one time. I got rid of 150
of them and my system suddenly was more stable from freed up resource memory
and actually ran a little faster.

Win NT/2K/XP doesn't have this system resource problem, BTW.

[mortisvanberg]

I have a PIII 700 w/256 RAM running NT 4.0 SP6 and it only takes about 3 to 4 hours to convert an AVI (divX 4.1) into mpeg. First I use Virtualdub to create a wave files from the avi file. Then I use TMPGEnc to avi and wave file into mpeg.

[TheeeGod 3]

i am running a 900 athlon, 384 ram, 45 gb hd and it took me bout 3.5 - 4 hrs to convert a full divx movie to mpeg. but now i dont know what to do with it. when i try to burn it with nero 5.5 it says insert a disk with more capacity and im already using 700 mg discs. the mpeg that was formed from the divx is arond 900 megs. i read somewhere that on a VCD 10 mins = 1 meg. i think some guy told me before to split this mpeg in half but i have no clue how. can any of u guys gimme any suggestions?

[uneek-flip]

thanks the informer... i do have a lot of fonts downloaded to my comp... but still can't solve my problemo... i can't seem to load my movie in TMPG.. the error says unsupported... i tried many ways like, virtualdub and seperating the audio and video, it still doesn't solve my problem of loadin the video... PLEASE HELP.