Each time I encode takes longer time

[jranaudo]

Well I have 19 movies I have to encode. I use TMPGenc to encode the movies in batch and the first time all 19 completed in about 5 hours.

I have done this now 5 more times and each time it takes longer to the point now that after 8 hours only 4 of the videos have completed encoding.

I have a feeling it has to do with the HD being fragmented but I defrag the HD and it does not fix the problem. However, defrag does mention the 19 AVI source files I use to encode cannot be unfragmented.

So anyone else run into this problem? How can I fix this issue?

[harley2ride]

The idea is to defrag before you put the avi files onto the HD. Do you have two HD's or one?

[jranaudo]

Correct me if I am wrong but I think the only way to correct this now is to

1)move all the fragmented AVI files off the drive
2)Defrag the drive.
3)Copy them all back onto the drive.

Do you think this would solve the problem then?

[redwudz]

No, you can just defrag as is. The defragging program will move them around as needed. Check and see if the drive needs defragging first. That's in the defrag program in XP. If you want to speed the process up quite a bit, do it in safe mode.

And what harley2ride mentioned. If you only have one hard drive, you will have a lot more fragmentation problems, besides the OS will be writing to the boot drive occasionally and slowing things down.

EDIT: I missed the part about the AVI files not being defragged. That seems strange. But in that case, go ahead and try taking them off the drive and putting them back after a defrag. I'm assuming you have enough spare HD space? Normally large files don't get really fragmented if you have sufficient HD space, unless you have extensively edited them. It usually when you have a whole lot of small file being taken in and out of the drive that you may need defragging. I really think your slowdowns are caused by something else beside fragmentation.

[ROF]

No, you can just defrag as is. The defragging program will move them around as needed. Check and see if the drive needs defragging first. That's in the defrag program in XP. If you want to speed the process up quite a bit, do it in safe mode.

And what harley2ride mentioned. If you only have one hard drive, you will have a lot more fragmentation problems, besides the OS will be writing to the boot drive occasionally and slowing things down.

Just surfing the net a little more than your alotted cache will fragment the drive.

[redwudz]

Good point, ROF, I'm lucky enough to have more than one computer, and they all have multiple drives. My encoder computer rarely uses the internet, mostly my laptop. And I do run Window Washer on it at shutdown and that cleans out a lot of the excess IE junk. Those temp files take up a lot of space on a little 20G laptop drive.

[Skith]

can't say for sure if this would help fix the defrag problem, but it might: arstechnica forum discussion on shmedia.dll

basically windows reads into memory the .avi files, and locks them so they can't be moved (it does this for preview purposes). The culpret is shmedia.dll (should be in c:\windows\system32)

so you should just have to type "regsvr32 /u shmedia.dll" in the command prompt (without quotes) and reboot. This will disable some other multimedia features (preview related I think) but I am not sure what ones. I have used this fix, and to be honest, I don't notice any difference other than thinks work better :P

if you want to enable the features again, repeate the command, only omit the /u.

[edited for typos]

[jagabo]

And after all this defraging you'll shave a few seconds off your encoding time.

You need to look elsewhere for your encoding speed problem. In all likeyhood you changed some settings (motion search precision?), are using larger frame sizes, got a spyware infection, etc.

[Nelson37]

I agree with Jagobo, are you doing the Same 19 movies over again, if so, why?

That kind of a difference isn't just fragmentation, something else is going on.

How much free space is left? Have you rebooted?