Is there a very fast way to convert AVI's?

[randyannie]

Hey everyone, I've been using Super to convert AVI's to DivX/DVD files...but it takes for frickin' ever. Is there another way to convert the file faster....some other app maybe?

The average file size is about 700MB that I'm trying to convert/encode. Any advice for speedier conversion?

Thanks, Randy

[freebird73717]

No real way I know of to get super to run faster. Faster encoders are mainconcept mpeg encoder, cce, procoder. Non of which are freeware. Most all of the freeware encoders are fairly slow (dependent on processor speed).

[45tripp]

I wouldn't call mencoder slow.
Super will do a single pass with not particularly demanding settings...
Perhaps your expectations are too high.

HC is a fast free mpeg2 encoder.
CCE is the fastest.

AVI's to DivX/DVD files
?
What's in the avis?

[solarfox]

I think you need to define exactly how long you think "for frickin' ever" is, and how fast you think it ought to be taking.

It your computer is taking 48 hours to do a single-pass conversion of a 1-hour video to CBR MPEG with no additional filtering or processing, that's one thing. On the other hand, if it's taking three hours to do a 2-pass VBR encoding of the same file, well, I'm afraid you can't expect too much better than that with your system specs.

Personally, the best I've ever gotten on my own 2GHz Athlon system was a 1:1 ratio where a 1-hour file took 1 hour to encode -- and that was doing single-pass, constant-bitrate MPEG encoding through ULead Media Studio Pro (which has a fairly speedy but not very configurable MPEG encoding engine), with no additional processing, with the source AVI being in DV format which requires relatively little processing power to decode. If the conversion requires any "heavy lifting" (such as decoding from XviD or MPEG4, resizing / rescaling / cropping the image, spatial or temporal noise reduction, etc.) and is getting the 2-pass VBR encoding treatment through something like TMPGenc (which is slow, but highly configurable), 2-3 hours per hour of video is not at all unusual.

This is not a hobby for the impatient.

[guns1inger]

If you seriously want to speed up encoding, get yourself a very fast core2duo with 2 GB RAM and some fast HDDS. I have a much faster system that yours and still often get 3 - 4 hour multi-pass encodes, and much longer if heavy filtering is happening. However something like ConvertXtoDVD encodes at much better than real time.

[julesh]

ffmpeg is substantially faster than many commercial encoders. On my machine, for instance, mainconcept mpeg encoder manages slightly better than real time for most AVI->DVD conversions. ffmpeg can normally manage at least twice realtime. And it seems to work better at lower bitrates (at least to my eye).

Only downside is that occasionally the videos it produces go out of sync on my DVD player (although _not_ on my computer -- probably some kind of slight out-of-spec issue that won't affect all hardware players).