Tmpgenc suddenly slow as hell!

[pokes]

I've been using Tmpgenc Plus for over a year now to convert Divx files to DVD. I use the standard 720x480/576 templates that come with the program, no filters of any sort, motion precision set to highest quality, rate control is 2-pass VBR and task priority is set to high when active and normal when not active.

With these basic settings, I could always encode a 90 min divx file to mpeg-2 in about 10-14 hours (depending on how much I used the computer while encoding).

Suddenly, out of the blue, my encodes now take 24-30 hours with the exact same settings. I've tried several different divx files of approximately the same length and it's always the same 24+ hours.

What happened??? I have no other tasks running and even shut down my virus scanner in case that was the problem, but no dice.

The only difference with my system before and after the slowness began was I installed the DIKO converter. I messed around with it for a few hours, decided it wasn't for me and uninstalled. Ever since, Tmpgenc has been useless to me. Perhaps it's just coincidence, but something is clearly wrong.

I even tried installing an earlier version of tmpgenc but the problem continues. I've read a few other threads here where people suddenly experienced the same trouble, but nobody offered any solutions. Does anyone know what's wrong or will I have abandon Tmpgenc?

[guns1inger]

Check to see if you HDD have dropped back to PIO mode (do this through Device Manager - IDE Channels). If they have, uninstall the IDE channel and reboot. It will reinstall itself and should correctly set the mode to DMA. If this happens repeatedly, oyu have a hardware problem with the drive and should run a scandisk surface scan.

[pokes]

Check to see if you HDD have dropped back to PIO mode (do this through Device Manager - IDE Channels). If they have, uninstall the IDE channel and reboot. It will reinstall itself and should correctly set the mode to DMA. If this happens repeatedly, oyu have a hardware problem with the drive and should run a scandisk surface scan.

Thanks for the advice, but the disk is set to DMA mode.

Also, I started trying out the Mainconcept Encoder. The same Divx file which Tmpgenc needed 28 hours to encode is now in its 2nd hour in ME, with only 3 more hours to go. That makes me think it's a Tmpgenc specific problem, or ME would have the same slowdown, even though it';s said to be significantly faster, no?

[mats.hogberg]

Sounds odd, but my experience is that MainConcept is faster than TMPGEnc. Also, using highest motion search precision takes TMPGEnc down to a crawl - Drop that setting one notch or even two - I dare you to see any difference in the picture quality, but the speed increase is substantial.

/Mats

[zoobie]

Wait 'till it stops working altogether...