DVD Shrink 3.2 Runtime

[x22]

Just got my first DVD Burner NEC 2510A yesterday and was wondering if this seemed about average for the settings. Ripped a 100 minute movie with both of the quality settings checked on, multitask and preview off. Took 4 hours to complete i think 4:18 total with burn at 4x. That seem about right on maximum quality settings for encoding?

[winifreid]

It depends upon the speed of your computer. There are actually several steps here. Ripping (trans fering the file to the HD) can take as long as 18 minutes and is dependant upon the read speed of your drive and quality of your disk. Shrink will also do a deep analysis (depends on the amount of compression and speed of your computer) which can take more than an hour. Then encoding which can take a couple of hours if you have the quality setting checked. Burning then takes about 15 minutes at 4x. So 4 hours is cetainly possible with these settings.

[yoda313]

Hello,
You can save some time if you just shrink off the disc. That can save the 15-20 minutes of ripping because when you take it off the disc your ripping and transcoding together.
Kevin

[smearbrick1]

Um... Doesn't shrink always encode as it rips?

4 hours sounds a bit long. I used to have a 1.4 ghz pc with 256mb of ram and it only took about 20 minutes to rip/encode. If I used deep analysis, it took about 45 minutes. On my current setup... I use deep analysis and one of the quality settings and it finishes in just about 30 minutes.

[yoda313]

Hello,

Smearbrick- Yes but only when you use "open disc". Some people use open iso mode or rip it first - why I don't know. To me it's always more effiecient to just "open disc" and do the transcoding and ripping together (plus saves hard drive space).

Kevin

[x22]

i am running a p4 1.8 512 megs ram. I used the open disc method. still took 4 hours with all the quality settings checked.

[cor1]

x22

It may be an idea to do the steps separately in an attempt to isolate what particular action is unreasonably long (if any).

1. Rip (File mode, all files) to HD using DVDDecrypter or SmartRipper.
2. Open the DVD in Shrink (Open Files) and see how long it takes to do its initial analysis.
3. Set it up the way you want.
4. Choose to save the result to file (do not burn with DVD Shrink) and see how long it takes (Shrink will do Deep Analysis and then Encoding to HD).
5. Burn with DVD Decrypter or some other software.

If steps 2 and 4 (or only step 4) are the ones that take a very long time then most likely it is your CPU speed and/or memory (speed/capacity) and/or HD (speed/capacity/free space).
If step 1 is too long then is to do with your DVD reading speed. This could be your drive not using DMA or other drive related problem. There are many threads for this, search on ripping speed and you should find them.
If step 5 takes a long time (you say 4x burn which should result in less than 15 min) then you’re not really burning at 4x (despite what the screen may say). This could be media or drive or software related.

You have a 1.8 GHz with 512MB RAM. I have a 2.4 GHz also with 512MB RAM.
My results for the steps are generally as:
Rip: 12 – 20 minutes
Normal DVDShrink analysis (on open files): 0.5 to 2 minutes
DVDShrink Deep Analysis: 10 – 15 minutes
DVDShrink Encoding: 18 – 28 minutes
Burn: 13-15 minutes

I do other things with the files in between these steps (mostly checking), but just adding it all up it does not take more than 1.5 hrs and usually it is less than that.

I would not expect a 2.5 hours difference for a 600 MHz difference of CPU speed so there is room for improvement there.

Hope this helps.

[jtoolman2000]

Um... Doesn't shrink always encode as it rips?

Nope, I believe that if no "shrinking" is called for, then it simply rips to your HD pretty much the same way as any other ripper would do. Only when it requires shrinking will it transcode the source video.

[x22]

cor1 i am pretty sure the encoding took up most of the time. I know the encoding alone took more than an hour. Burn time I am pretty sure was about 15 minutes and i believe the rip time was not more than 15 minutes either. I have DMA enabled on all my drivers, and my HD has an average 53000kps read speed and 12.7 ms access time. I also defrag regularly. I will try and take careful note of the individual times again.

[winifreid]

As I said, it depends on the compression setting (> compression > time). and whether you select the extra quality setting and the dvd you are backing up. I have shrunk some disks that took about 4 hours with compression > 60% and quality selected. Others have taken less time, but they were not as long or contained less action. It is possible that it is taking more time if you multitasking or have other programs running in the back ground. If your times are unacceptable, try it without the quality setting checked.

[smearbrick1]

Nope, I believe that if no "shrinking" is called for, then it simply rips to your HD pretty much the same way as any other ripper would do. Only when it requires shrinking will it transcode the source video.

I knew that if no compression/nothing was omitted, that DVDShrink would just perform a straight rip. I guess I was just thrown by the fact that he rips first, then encodes.

[x22]

Heres an update. Updated firmware and here are my times now.
The inital analyazation took 2 mins. Deep scan took 31 mins and encoding took only 18 mins. Havent tried a burn yet but im sure thats still around 15 mins. Much better than the original 4 hours.

[x22]

okay now im stuck where I was before again. I tried to do another test and now in the encoding phase im transferring only at 2 kb/s as compared to before when I got the encoding done in 18 mins was transferring at 7.5-8 kb/s. What is causing such a drastic slowdown?

[smearbrick1]

What are you doing while ripping/analysing/encoding? Also, is your IDE still using DMA? (not simply set to DMA, but using DMA).

[cor1]

X22,

Well, the tests you made at least told you what is NOT wrong. So DVD rip/write is OK.

The deep analysis phase taking 31 mins and the initial one taking 2 mins is a bit bigger then what I get but not by too much so maybe it’s OK for a 1.8 GHz. Also maybe your RAM is not as fast as mine (I forgot what DDR speed I have in it anyway).

The most interesting thing is that you got 18 minutes encoding the first time (good result) but then it slowed down 3-4 times.

Now, analysis is mostly CPU and memory speed and if you are low on RAM then HD speed comes in to it as well because the system will make heavy use of the swap file.

Encoding also uses CPU and RAM but here there is no question the HD is an essential factor because the “encoded” files are written to the HD.

So what if your HD – while set to use DMA – somehow “drops out” of DMA mode sometimes? I say sometimes as you DID get a fast encode. I am NOT a specialist in HDs and their settings but I have seen posts describing DVD low ripping speed while the PC (control panel etc.) reports the DVD as being in DMA mode. Some responses suggested that the OS (or the IDE drivers or whatever) somehow “refuse” to accept the DMA setting. You could do a search on this but one method I seem to remember was to take out the IDE controller in Control Panel. Apparently on reboot the OS reloads the IDE controller all by itself and the problem goes away.
I STRONGLY recommend you look for this info and not just jump and do it especially if you have stuff on your PC that you may be sorry to loose (in case things get so screwed up you have to reformat). Also these posts were about DVD drives and though logically it could apply to HDs logic is not always to be relied on in the PC world.

What else could it be? Well, what if the first time you ran the test (fast encode) the system had a minimum of programs loaded and a lot of RAM was free to use. Then maybe the second test you did the RAM was clogged up. This would have forced a lot of swap file usage maybe (and this would seriously slow things down) even use the swap file to load/unload DLLs used by the OS and/or the Shrink process every time they are needed. This is different from using the swap file for data as the OS is pretty good at optimizing this. But with a DLL there’s nothing the OS can do. If you need say 20 MB of RAM for it the OS cannot only load half (and use 10MB) do something then load the other half.

Frankly your best bet is to do encoding tests until you can reproduce a slow encode and a fast encode at will. Then you will know the answer.

I am sure there are many people here who know a hell of a lot more than me about this, so hopefully they will see this thread and answer. To have them help you it would be best if you could provide as much information as possible (your previous 2 posts were, for me, excellent in that regard).

I am very sorry I cannot properly help you with this.

[x22]

cor1 thanks so much for your help. I will try my best to duplicate to see if I can duplicate a fast and slow encode and see if I can narrow down what exactly is the problem. thanks again to everyone else who has chipped in.

[x22]

Only factor that I can figure out which is affecting the transfer rate during encoding times would be the DVD source. If i pop in one DVD it will transfer fast around 7-8 kb/s. Others for some reason will go very slow 1-2 kb/s.

[Poppa_Meth]

P4 2.6Ghz 512 mb memory.

ripping from single layer: about 6-7 minutes
ripping from dual layer: about 10-12 minutes.
those are straight rips, no shrinking.
deep analysis: 15 minutes.
transcode with error correction enabled: about 50 minutes.
the new error handling has added a fair bit of time to the process but it gives much better quality IMO.
those results were from what I did last night, which involved shrinking two different episode discs to one DVD.