Need fast authoring software...

[snafubaby]

hi. I have DVD Movie Factory 3. It takes FOREVER to author some DVD's, especially ones that have a high bitrate value. Can someone suggest something speedier? Doesn't matter if it's shareware, commercialware, or freeware.

thanks very much!

[guns1inger]

What is your source ?

Bitrate really should not impact the speed that much, but if you have to encode the source to DVD compliance then it will take time, and usually, slower is better quality. You also have an older PC which will not help.

CCE is still the fastest quality encoder around, follwed by HCEnc and Mainconcept,

Try AVStoDVD as a free alternative. If you want more flexibility for authoring, have AVStoDVD output elementary streams and author those in you program of choice.

However looking at your hardware specs, the speed difference won't be huge. If you want a faster authoring process, upgrade to at least a Core2Quad 6600/8400 or an i5. If you have the $$, go i7. Then you will see some major improvements. Encodes that took 2 - 3 hours will come down to 15 - 20 minutes.

[snafubaby]

Thanks for the help. Yes, i know my system is pretty much light years away from the speedy machines of today. I am looking for a quad core machine, and i'll get one someday, hopefully soon. I'll try those software titles you mentioned, to see if it speeds things up at all. The source is from a video tape. I used a USB capture device and copied it to disk. It was in mpeg2 format, but maybe it wasn't DVD complaint, because of the amount of time it's taking. It's only a 2 hour movie. I've worked with 2+ hour movies that haven't taken this long!

I'll try those programs and i hopefully will be able to speed up the conversion.

[guns1inger]

Two things to check.

1. Use Mediainfo to check if the file is DVD compliant. If it is, authoring should not take more than 15 minutes or so. Your experience would suggest that it is being re-encoded. Check 'What is DVD' (Top left corner of this screen) for compliant DVD specs.

2. Try authoring with something that will not re-encode, such as GUIForDVDAuthor.

The other thing to look at, of course, if the source file size. If it is larger than will fit on a DVD then your authoring tool may well re-encode in order to make it fit. If it is only slightly over, it will be faster to create an oversized DVD and use DVD Shrink to make it fit afterwards.

[GSP_87]

I have DVD MF 6, and had to run at least 2 diff patches for it from the Ulead Support website for it to work normal. It is a hella lot faster than DVD MF3SE, because I think it doesn't try to re-encode compliant MPEG. MF3SE took like 1 hour to make a full DVD vs. about maybe 15 minutes on DVD MF 6 to make DVD ISO and maybe 15 minutes to burn. MF 6 isn't perfect though. I posted some other things on this.