Issues with new version....

[PerfectCr]

1) Dual Core support. I have an AMD Athlon 64 X2 3800+. S2D does recognize that I have 2 logical CPU's, but they are only both used during the initial AVItoMPG step. Muxing, pulldown and demuxing only use 1 CPU. Futhermore, I thought I read that have dual core could be up to "twice as fast"? Overall, the process takes the same amount of time as it did before with a single core CPU.

2) Nero 7 and S2D...does they work together? S2D froze after writing the DVD assets. This has happened twice now.

Thanks!

[ChrissyBoy]

1: multiple cpus/ht is used during the encoding processes. i.e. when converting avi assets to dvd, converting hdtv assets to dvd and if you are converting PAL assets to NTSC. For the titlteset creation/pulldown/demux processes, single cpu is used. Why? Because the former use CPU power and the later use IO throughput (no benefit to using more than one cpu).
So. Your time gain depends on what you are doing. If you are converting avi to dvd, for example, then you will see a 50% speed increase on the avi to dvd step. But if you require pulldown then the increase will be less than 50% overall.

2: I will upgrade to v7 to see what is going on… though I am loathed to as v5 to v6 was bad enough….

[PerfectCr]

So. Your time gain depends on what you are doing. If you are converting avi to dvd, for example, then you will see a 50% speed increase on the avi to dvd step.

That's what I am saying, it WAS using both CPU's, but it was NOT significantly faster than using my Athlon 64 3000+ (single core CPU).

Are you saying what took 1 hour previously should now take 30 min? If so then maybe something is wrong on my end

[Jikchung]

So. Your time gain depends on what you are doing. If you are converting avi to dvd, for example, then you will see a 50% speed increase on the avi to dvd step.

That's what I am saying, it WAS using both CPU's, but it was NOT significantly faster than using my Athlon 64 3000+ (single core CPU).

Are you saying what took 1 hour previously should now take 30 min? If so then maybe something is wrong on my end

A 50% speed increase on a 1 hour job would equate to 45 minutes, not 30 minutes (that would be a 100% speed increase).

[PerfectCr]

So. Your time gain depends on what you are doing. If you are converting avi to dvd, for example, then you will see a 50% speed increase on the avi to dvd step.

That's what I am saying, it WAS using both CPU's, but it was NOT significantly faster than using my Athlon 64 3000+ (single core CPU).

Are you saying what took 1 hour previously should now take 30 min? If so then maybe something is wrong on my end

A 50% speed increase on a 1 hour job would equate to 45 minutes, not 30 minutes (that would be a 100% speed increase).

Huh? 60 minutes * 50% = 30 minutes.

[ChrissyBoy]

What i am saying is that the encoding part should be approx "twice as quick"... But if you have pulldown, demux, pan & scan, merging and title creation on top then the over all duration will not be "x2"... If you have your stopwatch out then compare the encoding process for the same asset on the two different PCs...

[PerfectCr]

What i am saying is that the encoding part should be approx "twice as quick"... But if you have pulldown, demux, pan & scan, merging and title creation on top then the over all duration will not be "x2"... If you have your stopwatch out then compare the encoding process for the same asset on the two different PCs...

I know, I am not talking about those other processes, just the encoding part. The dude above me got's some "fuzzy math" lol.

[ChrissyBoy]

So. Your time gain depends on what you are doing. If you are converting avi to dvd, for example, then you will see a 50% speed increase on the avi to dvd step.

That's what I am saying, it WAS using both CPU's, but it was NOT significantly faster than using my Athlon 64 3000+ (single core CPU).

Are you saying what took 1 hour previously should now take 30 min? If so then maybe something is wrong on my end

A 50% speed increase on a 1 hour job would equate to 45 minutes, not 30 minutes (that would be a 100% speed increase).

Indeed 100% speed increase is "twice as quick"

[ChrissyBoy]

Don't compare apples and pears....

Grab an avi asset. Do "Add Asset->proces for DVD", make sure there is not pulldown etc. Then compare the pure avi to mpeg encode time with 2 cores verse one core.

[Jikchung]

The dude above me got's some "fuzzy math" lol.

lol at yourself, you've got the "fuzzy" math, example: 100 miles per hour for 1 hour = 100 miles. 50% increase in speed = 150 miles per hour (50% x 100 = 50, 50 + 100=150). 100% increase in speed = 200 miles per hour and 100 miles traveled in 30 minutes.
"Unfuzzied" yet?

[Jikchung]

A 50% speed increase on a 1 hour job would equate to 45 minutes, not 30 minutes (that would be a 100% speed increase).

One correction here, was trying to keep things relatively straightforward, but a 50% speed increase to a 1 hour job would IDEALLY mean 40 minutes.

[PerfectCr]

The dude above me got's some "fuzzy math" lol.

lol at yourself, you've got the "fuzzy" math, example: 100 miles per hour for 1 hour = 100 miles. 50% increase in speed = 150 miles per hour (50% x 100 = 50, 50 + 100=150). 100% increase in speed = 200 miles per hour and 100 miles traveled in 30 minutes.
"Unfuzzied" yet?

Right, then 50% of 60 is 30. So 50% faster is 30 minutes.

[Jikchung]

Right, then 50% of 60 is 30. So 50% faster is 30 minutes.

Still not quite there. You're getting your equation factors confused, I'll try it one more time:

Say you have a 60 minute file and you get "real time" conversion speed from your encoder, you render a file in 60 minutes, this is considered a factor of 1.00. With me so far? 50% of 1.00 is 0.50, so 50% faster (1.00 + 0.50) is 1.50 (one and a half times "real time"). 60 minute file divided by 1.50 is 40 minutes conversion time.

A 100% increase in speed is where you get 30 minutes: 100% of 1.00 is 1.00. 1.00 + 1.00 = 2.00. 60 minutes divided by 2.00 is 30 minutes.

Keep at it, you'll get it eventually.


Chrissyboy-
Sorry for taking this so far off on a tangent, I'll stand aside and let you gentlemen sort things with the program.

[desantnik]

Quick question Chris...

I've finally got this all up and running and it strikes me that certainly on my PC the program could gain a fair bit of performance increase if the .S2D files (and other working files) could be placed in a place of the users choosing.

If you could do that then you might be able to gain some speed increase if you had multiple physical disks.

Just a suggestion seeing as you say a big chunk of it is determined by IO speed...

[ChrissyBoy]

desantnik: True. i looked into this before and didn't see much improvement but that could have been my hardware setup. I will take a look again. BTW the final VIDEO_TS creation step can be put on a seperate drive currently....

PerfectCr: I can confirm that Nero 7 does indeed work with SVCD2DVD.... Are you getting an error? One problem i have observed is that with Nero 7, when you burn, if you then close SVCD2DVD the process is still running in the Task manager. This didn't happen with Nero6 so i will have to investigate. Perhaps this could be the issue at your end?

[desantnik]

Yeah I already place the VTS's on another disk - that seems to speed it up a fair bit.

Should be quite easy to code an option for the path for temporary files no?

[PerfectCr]

PerfectCr: I can confirm that Nero 7 does indeed work with SVCD2DVD.... Are you getting an error? One problem i have observed is that with Nero 7, when you burn, if you then close SVCD2DVD the process is still running in the Task manager. This didn't happen with Nero6 so i will have to investigate. Perhaps this could be the issue at your end?

No error message, just when the job was done (titleset authored) and it was time burn, S2D just locked up and never even started burning. I will try another project and see if I can duplicate the issue. Thanks!

[have mercy]

I too found that svcd2dvd doesnt completely close after burning with nero 7 and at times it would freeze svcd2dvd prior to burning.
this was frustrating when you left the computer only to come back to see the project hadnt finished.

as a result i had to change to copy to dvd burner.

[ChrissyBoy]

This is now resolved in the latest build.