Speed of conversion---Why so slow?

[sunni9676]

I have been using tmpgenc to convert .avi for vcd/svcd and it seems to take For-ever to do this (even on lowest quality it takes 5 hours to convert a 30 minute .avi). What I want to know is what makes the converting so long...Does the speed of my computer system have anything to do with this or is it normally a slow process regardless? Or what can I do to speed up the process?

Thanks!

[gcutler]

Speed of CPU and amount of memory make a difference.

My 1GHz takes about 4 hours to encode with 740x480 @ 4000KBPs, my 2GHz machine takes 2 hours for that.

If you have under 256MB ram you are probably using SWAPFILE as virtual ram and not good. Need 256MB or higher. If you had 512MB then assume you are fine on memory.

Also what OS are you using??? Win2000 or XP better than 98/ME

[sunni9676]

I have been using my notebook which is a Athlon 1.0 Ghz, 128mb memory with WinXP. It actually takes about the same time as my ancient desktop which is PIII 450mhz 256 memory WinXP.

This info about the system having influence on the speed of conversion is useful to know since I plan to be getting a new desktop very soon. I have been considering a PentiumIV 2.4 Ghz, so hopefully that system will help hasten the progress. Although I'd rather be able to watch .avi's on my dvd without conversion as it would make life simpler!

[Gazorgan]

Laptop says it all. 128 MB of RAM is not enough to run XP, much less encode, 256 MB minimum. Laptop Harddrives are slow, comes from slower RPM's. Athlon 1 Ghz doesn't support SSE2 extensions, so it's margianlly slower than newer Athlons at same speed.

Encoding speed (on desktops) is roughly equal to CPU speed (given adequate RAM and Drive speed/space). A 2.4 Ghz P4 should encode roughly 6 times faster than your current desktop. Celerons encode very nicely, despite small Caches.