5 1/2 hours to convert an hour of hdtv to dvd?????

[yoda313]

Hello,

Well I got my fusion hdtv 3 Gold T capture card and have used it for a few days. I love it My first attempt to convert to dvd didn't work so well. My dvd was considerably out of synch (but the picture looked great - on a standard low def tv).

I'm trying to use this guide by soopafresh:

https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=268391

I've got the tp file fixed by mpeg2repair and demuxed it with projectx. Now I need to downconvert the .m2v to 720x480 and mux it with the ac3 so I can author the dvd. I'm using tmpgenc with this setting:

DVD for NTSC (North America and Japan) (MPEG-2 720x480 29.97fps CBR 7000kbps)

I have a celeron 2.66ghz with 512mb ram. Should it take 5 hours to convert an hour of hdtv to dvd specs???? That seems unreasonably long.

Is there a quicker setting in tmpgenc to use??? I tried motion estimate (fast) but I it still would be quite long to convert.

Any ideas??

[GaveUp]

Encoding takes time. 5 hours is not that bad.

[yoda313]

Really?? hmm.......

Well I'll keep trying things out. Thanks.

[Conquest10]

It does take time but 5 hours for an hour of hd sounds like a little too much. I'll do some tests right now to see.

[yoda313]

I just tried hdtv2dvd. It took about 3 hours for a 1 hour hd broadcast. It took a .tp file and gave me a mpg AND a no menu authored video_ts and audio_ts folder set.

Its beautiful except it CROPPED the video! And I just got half way through it and the synch dropped!!!! Now I am using cheap Office Depot discs but I've got a hundred plus of them so I hope its just a bad disc.

[Conquest10]

OK, using TMPGEnc, I'm getting about 3 and a half hours per hour of HD. Pentium M 1.6GHz 512MB RAM

[yoda313]

What settings did you use?

[Conquest10]

CQ of 80 with motion search set to normal.

[yoda313]

Thanks

[yoda313]

Well I tried cq at 65 with min and max set to 6500. So far its almost done on the .m2v and will clock in just over 4 hours (to process one hour of hd video to ntsc 720x480).

I was wondering. For interlace programs (the 1080i stuff) does it matter which field should be done first? (top or bottom?).

[lordsmurf]

Interlace must match source. CQ65 is no good.

CQ is the % of the total.
Use a calculator.

You are trying to set 4225k as the average bitrate for a 720x480 file? Yuck.

Never use CQ mode at less than 80-85%. It all goes downhill from there. Or use VBR mode. Or set a lower max.

You never want less than 5000-6000k avg for 720x480, if you want quality to be retained, and be free of various noises.

Audio sync cannot be caused by blanks. TY or cheapo, sync error will exist either way, fault of the encode.

I hate digital TS streams.

Maybe you can IVTC some of the video? There's a lot of things to go over here, I just don't have time for it right now. Hopefully somebody else will come along and continue where I've stopped.

[yoda313]

Thanks lordsmurf.

Where do I analayze a hd capture to get the interlace info?

I'm working on muxing and authoring my finished conversion right now. I'll see how the finished product looks and I'll probably end up using a higher bitrate as you suggested (though I'll be watching the dvd on a STANDARD tv so the video quality isn't nearly as much of a concern as mainting audio synch and sound quality for my surround system - though this particular program I'm converting is plain stereo.

[yoda313]

Update:

It looked perfect! The synch was on cue and the picture was vivid.

I'm pretty happy with the results.

[yoda313]

UPDATE:

I was using this approach again:

https://forum.videohelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=268391

I recorded the 24 premier last night and worked on making a dvd compatible mpg from it.

So I used projectx to make a .m2p file to cut out the commercials with mpg2cut2. That didn't take very long. I managed to get two seperate mpgs without commercials for hours 1 and 2 of the show. Then I demuxed each with projectx (again not very long).

With a demuxed commercial free m2v video that was about 42minutes for the first hour I loaded it into tmpgenc. I set it to progressive (fox broadcasts hd in 720p). Then I used 16x9 display and cq 80 with min and max bitrate at 7000 and motion estimate (fast).

For 42minutes of video the downconversion took about 2 - 2 1/2 hours! Very impressive. I'm guessing that not having the commercials that are at a different aspect ratio helped speed up the conversion (since the whole m2v file was at the same format).

On a side note I recorded and converted last weeks LOST to dvd. I went to see my sister and brother-in-law in ohio over the weekend and watched some of it on their HDTV. IT WAS AWESOME!! Perfect full screen beauty (since I encoded to 16x9). This hdtv capturing is well worth it - especially since I get to keep the 5.1 surround sound if its broadcast that way

Thanks to everybody for their help and suggestions. I think I'm really starting to get the hang of this hdtv stuff.