Some newbie questions

[bruceleroy]

These are most likely basic, but i'll go ahead and ask you kind folks.

First, does tmpgenc always take this long? I authored time bandits last night and it took about 5 hours to encode. I'm running win 98 se with an 900 meg duron, with over 640megs of sdram. Is that a normal time for a 2 hr movie? ( i did set motion search to best/slowest)

Second, when watching the vcd, I see alot of pixelation, but only in the black areas of the screen, such as a sky shot at night or something along those lines. I'm getting a really good picture outside of this and i'm wondering if its my apex dvd player or maybe theres a setting in tmpge i can try?

Any help would be appreciated, heres the software i'm using
Clad DVD XP for ripping and frame serving, then the new tmpgenc for encoding/video edit, then nero for vcd burning on a lite on 32X CDR.

[m_lea1]

I am also pretty new to the whole video encoding thing. i found it strange also when tmpgenc took 7hours to encode a 3 hour movie and that is with me using a 1.5ghz p4 system. so this is a normal time! you should have a look at some of the other ways of encoding video. when doing the motion search set it to high its good quality and dosnt take as long as the best which isnt much better.

as for your second question i wouldnt say that its anything at all to do with your dvd player its self but maybe the format next time that your encoding a video try encoding to MPEG - 2 (svcd) this may take a little longer but the quality is far superior. there is a nice little guide which i always use in the 'how to' section of this site (ttp://forum.vcdhelp.com/viewtopic.php?t=81103).

Hope this has been a help 8)

[Digifreak]

To determine if the macro-pixels have anything to do with your Apex player, play the same scene on your computer and look for the effect. If its on your computer, then the Apex is not doing it. My Apex will sometimes do this when it gets hot.

[bruceleroy]

The picture looks better on the apex compared to the computer, but in the black scenes I see pixels on the TV, maybe cause its bigger....not sure if I can see them on the computer.
I will try mpeg 2, see if that helps.