Questions about Super - and what's a better converter either free or paid?

[brassplyer]

I'm using v2009.build.36 which seems to be slower than other versions I've used. Taking all bloody day to convert a 27 minute DV avi to an mp4 at about 2000 kbps.

Something I notice - even though it shows 100% CPU use, I can still get on the internet, e-mail etc. without a problem. Running a not that fast 2.4 gig P4. Most apps that max out the CPU make it a chore to do anything else.

I keep hearing assertions about Super containing malware, but I've never seen anyone specify an actual malware file that came with it.

I've also used WinFF but consistently have problems with glitches in the audio - seems to get these short "chirps" in the audio.

What's a good pay for converter that you feel works better than Super?

[Soopafresh]

Xvid4PSP is good and free.

[creamyhorror]

I've only heard bad things about SUPER, mainly about the GUI. I hear good things about Handbrake and Ripbot264.

The question is, why are you looking for something to replace SUPER? Is it too slow? Can't you choose faster settings? Any good program ought to offer speed/quality settings to suit your taste.

[brassplyer]

I've only heard bad things about SUPER, mainly about the GUI.

Actually I don't have any complaints about that aspect - the layout seems pretty straightforward and intuitive to me.

I heard good things about Handbrake and Ripbot264.

I'll check them out, thanks.

The question is, why are you looking for something to replace SUPER? Is it too slow? Can't you choose faster settings? Any good program ought to offer speed/quality settings to suit your taste.

The only such setting that I've found is thread priority. Doesn't seem to make a huge difference.

Speed is the main complaint. I haven't used it in a while, I don't recall having had this complaint with previous versions.

[jagabo]

Thread priority won't make a significant difference in encoding time unless some other CPU hungry process is running. Priority only effect scheduling, not execution speed. If more than one process wants CPU time the one with the higher priority gets it more often. If no other process is requesting CPU time then even a process running at idle priority will get 100 percent (or as much as it can use).

You should never run a non-realtime process like video encoding at higher than normal priority. I run all my video encoding at idle priority. That leaves the computer usable for other things like web browsing, email, etc.

[creamyhorror]

The only such setting that I've found is thread priority. Doesn't seem to make a huge difference.

If SUPER doesn't offer speed/quality options, then it's a piece of crap. Get any of the programs named in this thread instead.

[brassplyer]

The only such setting that I've found is thread priority. Doesn't seem to make a huge difference.

If SUPER doesn't offer speed/quality options, then it's a piece of crap. Get any of the programs named in this thread instead.

It offers quality options as far as bitrate for both audio & video. It seems to output a good file, just seems to be a bit slow to me.

[creamyhorror]

It offers quality options as far as bitrate for both audio & video.

That's not really a quality setting, though it's better than nothing. Quality settings determine how fast an encode goes to a significantly larger extent than bitrate. They can make an encode go 4x faster or 4x slower. The basic options are things like "ultrafast", "fast", "medium", "slow", "slower", etc., the slower options giving better quality. Most x264 frontends will allow you at least a modicum of control over these options.

[ehunter]

It offers quality options as far as bitrate for both audio & video.

That's not really a quality setting, though it's better than nothing. Quality settings determine how fast an encode goes to a significantly larger extent than bitrate.

Super allows you to modify the GOP size and or use B frames as you like. This is separate from the Bitrate adjustment as already mentioned. (found under the Other Encode Options micro-button).

[rebl]

After trying to perform various transcoding tasks in megui, mediacoder, super and a couple of others I forgot, I found xvid4psp to be the best combo of power (meaning access to almost -but not all, true- settings) and ease of use. It does crash sometimes (in my case when changing the pre-processing filters- might be avisynth or plugins' fault) but most of the others do too, while those that don't crash lack most of the features I need.
Two clear examples when xvid4psp proved better:
1. transcoding mkv h264 with variable framerate to xvid, WITHOUT losing audio sync
2. it offers a simple way to apply avisynth scripts for preprocessing (denoise/sharpen) with a couple of preconfigured and well-thoughts presets to choose from (could not find such presets in the others apps I've tried).

The only big complain:
I can't find the command line parameters it uses for xvid_encraw.
I mean I can see them in the log, and some of them are of course the ones I chose in the encoder settings, but the others (such as -threads=5) I can't figure where do they come for.
I would like to have full access to the xvid_encraw command-line switches and -for example- change the threads option. I have a three-cored Phenom II, why does it use 5 threads? And why I oly see 33% percent CPU utilisation? (okay, some of these questions are related to xvid_encraw and not xvid4psp).

[sagat93]

I like SUPER, but I use XVID4PSP.

[jagabo]

I would like to have full access to the xvid_encraw command-line switches and -for example- change the threads option. I have a three-cored Phenom II, why does it use 5 threads? And why I oly see 33% percent CPU utilisation? (okay, some of these questions are related to xvid_encraw and not xvid4psp).

I don't know if you can manually set those settings in Xvid4psp but I can tell you that Xvid isn't especially good at multithreading so using more threads than cores can deliver better CPU utilization and hence faster encoding speed. The low CPU utilization you are seeing is probably due to your filtering -- a single threaded filter in your chain is your bottleneck, not the Xvid encoding.

[rebl]

Thanks, jagabo. I am already using the modified avisynth.dll with mt.dll and I am able to see all three cores in use when using a filter in multithreaded mode (loaded by mt.dll). But when using a filter without multithreading or no filter at all, I can see in task manager that the xvid_encraw process uses a single core.

[jagabo]

Thanks, jagabo. I am already using the modified avisynth.dll with mt.dll and I am able to see all three cores in use when using a filter in multithreaded mode (loaded by mt.dll).

Note that even with a single threaded app you usually will see activity on all three cores because Windows bounces the thread between cores to even out heat distribution. So the single thread will run on core 1 for a few milliseconds, then run on core 2 for a few milliseconds, then run on core 3 for a few milliseconds, etc. The granularity of Task Manager isn't good enough to show you this, you just see 1/3 CPU usage. This is just a general observation, not necessarily the explanation for your particular case.

But when using a filter without multithreading or no filter at all, I can see in task manager that the xvid_encraw process uses a single core.

That sounds like your xvid encoder is single threaded -- which would explain why it's only using 1/3 of the CPU power. Older versions of Xvid were single threaded.

[creamyhorror]

Super allows you to modify the GOP size and or use B frames as you like. This is separate from the Bitrate adjustment as already mentioned. (found under the Other Encode Options micro-button).

I see, but that doesn't go anywhere far enough. Users should have control over more options (of which bframes and GOP length are only two) through x264's presets. Handbrake, MeGUI and the like will serve the average user who's interested in quality or control better.

[dvdfever]

I've been using build 35 for ages and saw build 37 was out now and thought I'd give it a try as occasionally when I record something from my TiVo to a DVD, while the resultant mpg2 file is perfectly fine, for some unknown reason recently, once it's gone through the conversion process into a hi-res MP4 file it ends up going out of sync. I haven't changed anything I've done lately but all of a sudden this has happened.

So, I tried build 37 and it's giving me a bizarre issue where, while previously with build 35 it would output an mp4 file that's about 1/3 the size of the original mpg2 file, with build 37 the mp4 file is slightly bigger than the mpg2 file!

I'm using the same settings:

resolution of 1024x576, 16:9 ratio, 25fps, bitrate 576kpbs, options ticked: hi quality, stretch it, 48k audio
audio 44100 sampling freq, channels 2, audio 128kpbs

Comparing file sizes, if I take an mpg2 file of 151Mb which I've had today, build 35 converted it to an mp4 file of 88Mb, while build 37 has converted it to an mp4 file of 263Mb!

I've tried uninstalling build 37 and reinstalling build 35 but while it tells me it's installed, it just won't run it. It starts to try and... stops.

Oh, and in both cases (and this has happened for previous versions of Super I've used) every time I start to convert a file, it quits me out of Outlook 2000! I'm now used to that even though I'd rather it wouldn't happen, and I'm more concerned about this file size issue with build 37.

I'd really appreciate someone's help with this. Thanks.

PS. I just tried doing a system restore to yesterday when Super build 35 worked fine, but while the PC worked on the basis of build 35 being there, it wouldn't work just as it won't now. So I undid the system restore and am back to the present, but then build 37 didn't want to work! I uninstalled that and reinstalled it, and so I'm here with build 37, but with the problems of the files being much more bulky than normal.

PPS. I also tried checking all the settings of build 35 with another PC I have (which is XP while my main one is Vista - although build 35 worked fine under Vista until build 37 came long) to make sure I had the correct settings and I do so I have no idea what is causing this. Thanks again.

[ehunter]

Thanks you guys for pointing out this Xvid4PSP5 utility.

I had been trying for 2 weeks to get a MT2S vid converted with Super. I concluded it just was not possible to do it. The vid had plants blowing in the wind throughout the vid and no amount if encoding in getting it to MP2 turned out satisfactory. (AVI worked good but just not to MP2. Most of the time the quality was horrible!!! So I installed Xvid4PSP and set what I thought was the strongest settings for quality and the program got it right on the first try.

On my Intel 860 without overclocking the encoding took 5 hours for two passes.

A few questions though. Xvid4PSP5 has tons of options for video encoding, filtering, etc and I dont see where there is docu explaining what each setting is and its advantages or disadvantages are. Have I missed the obvious and there is a place where this info exists?

Currently to get things on DVD I use Xvid4PSP5 > DVD Flick > DVDVideoSoft Free Studio to burn. DO you know of easier ways? TIA

[dvdfever]

I had a go at Xvid4PSP5 when trying something other than Super, but it just crashed when I tried to use it. I've had a go with Ripbot264 and got good results from that. However, what's really annoying me about it is that I want to use the same settings every time I run it (eg. save to the same folder, convert to the same 16:9 ratio with the same settings), but every time I run it, it's gone back to its defaults

Is there a way round this please? Ta.

(Edit: I've just found this happens with every file I had! )