TMPGEnc Slowing Down?

[Suprman37]

I've been using TMPGEnc Plus to convert videos (usually .avi files) to MPG and then TMPGEnc DVD Author to burn them to DVD. Lately I've noticed that the conversions are taking far longer than they should and I can't figure out what the issue is.

The system specs are:

Athlon 2000+
Asus A7V-266E
512 DDR Ram
XP Pro SP2
GeForce TI 4200

I know the specs aren't that great, but it was an old gaming machine of mine that I decided to use just to do this.

Either way, I used to be able to convert .avi files that were two or so hours (generally around 2-2.5GB files) in two to three hours. Now, it is taking upwards of seven hours. Because I was getting a lot of lag on videos I was trying to stream via a VHS, I formatted and reinstalled Windows. This fresh install is less than a week old. I have no reason to believe that I am infected with a virus or any type of spyware.

Does anyone know what could be causing this?

[KBeee]

Have you changed the Motion Search Precision from Lowest or Low quality to High or Highest quality?
7 hours isn't very unusual for a 2 hour movie in TMPGEnc at high quality.

[Suprman37]

To the best of my knowledge, none of the settings have been changed. When checking Motion Search Precision, I've noticed that's it's on Motion Estimated Search (fast), so that doesn't seem to be the culprit.

Any other ideas?

[spanky123]

Are you doing the same number of passes ?

Also, is the source the same (or atleast the same format/resolution/framerate etc.) because different sources are harder/easier to encode. HD 720p content for example usually takes a lot longer than 576i when encoding to mpeg-2 for dvd.

Btw. You might wanna update if you can. There's TMPGenc Xpress 3.0 and even TMPGenc Xpress 4.0 now.

[GKar]

some dopey stuff to check:
Are you processing on a 2nd hard disk? If so maybe it is loaded with temp files and needs cleaning and defragging. Make sure your hard disk(s) are in DMA mode (not sure how disk intensive what you are doing is). Possibly on a recent bootup you lost your BIOS settings and your processor is not running to rated speed....

[jagabo]

Btw. You might wanna update if you can. There's TMPGenc Xpress 3.0 and even TMPGenc Xpress 4.0 now.

Yeah, if you like software that calls home every now and then to get permission to run.

[stantheman1976]

Are you using CBR or VBR? CBR should take roughtly twice the tof the video or slightly less from my experience. VBR takes much longer. For a 2 hour video it can easily take 6-7 hours because it has to analyze the file frame by frame first before actually encoding it.

Also if you are using the highest quality setting this will make it slower. If you use normal or motion search estimate it goes much quicker.

[jagabo]

TMPGEnc Plus also has an option in Options -> Environmental Settings that caches the results of the first pass, speeding up the second pass by quite a bit.

[stantheman1976]

sweet. i didn't know about that one. thanks.

[spanky123]

Btw. You might wanna update if you can. There's TMPGenc Xpress 3.0 and even TMPGenc Xpress 4.0 now.

Yeah, if you like software that calls home every now and then to get permission to run.

How do you mean ? Does it do that in the background ? And why does it do it ?

I don't use it anyway. I prefer CCE or Procoder.

[jagabo]

Btw. You might wanna update if you can. There's TMPGenc Xpress 3.0 and even TMPGenc Xpress 4.0 now.

Yeah, if you like software that calls home every now and then to get permission to run.

How do you mean ? Does it do that in the background ?

I don't think it's very intrusive -- unless you don't have an internet connection when it decides to check your license.

And why does it do it ?

Because they don't trust you.