Encoding a DVD while gaming? Anything better than Handbrake/VidCoder?

[yuppicide0138]

My system:

AMD FX-8350 8 Core 4 Ghz processor
16MB memory
AMD R9 290 video card
Windows 10 Pro 64-Bit
Main drive: Samsung 840 Pro SSD
Other drives: Varies, internal SATA, external as well
Monitors: Dual 1080p 27"

I love VidCoder. I'm trying to figure out settings I like to rip this one DVD of a TV show. I found some settings I like but it's showing me 51 minutes for 1 episode, which is about 23 minutes long say. I have encoded other DVD's of TV shows with a quality I was happy with at about 15 minutes per episode. For some reason this one show I can't find a faster approach I am happy with. I'll have to keep fooling around.

But my question is can I game while encoding? I play Counter Strike. Even if I did manage to finder a faster encode that I am happy with, I still have a LOT of stuff to encode.

Right now I'm sitting on 7 episodes I need to encode immediately, but have another 37 to start tomorrow, 22 after that and then another 52.. so that's over 100 episodes I need to encode.

I just don't have the money to build a second PC.

I run dual monitors so I can game on one and surf the web or other stuff on the other.

[johns0]

With vidcoder it takes me about 8 minutes to encode 43 minute dvd episode so if i set it to encode 22 episodes x8 minutes that takes me about 3 hours while gaming,that's on default settings,Don't use the slowest settings for dvd since it's not hd,just use the default settings.

[yuppicide0138]

Well, I opened up a picture of the DVD on one screen and opened up the preview window of vidcoder on the other. Then I previewed a few different options and tried to pause them both so I could compare. I have deinterlace on otherwise I see lines. I am setting video to a target size of 400Mb per episode with 2 pass encoding. I'm not sure what Turbo First Pass is and if it'll make my video worse or not. I am using Constant quality not Variable.

I made a mistake earlier.. I said 51 minutes.. that might have been for 2 episodes. One of them says 30 minutes with the settings I am using.

[jagabo]

Set the priority to low. With most encoders you can hardly tell the program is running in the background. If Vidcoder doesn't explicitly let you do that you can use Task Manager to set the priority.

[johns0]

Constant quality is variable but based on quality over a bit setting,i think you are a little confused on your encoding method,if you use constant quality you can't set video size.

[redwudz]

My settings for VidCoder to MKV/AC3 are mostly default. I do set the CQ to 18.5, which gives me about a 1GB - 2GB file size.
I haven't seen that much advantage to 2 pass, but it probably helps if you specify a small output size.

For filters I set Detelecine and Decomb to 'Default'. Video to H.264, Constant Framerate.
Audio AC3, passthrough if possible. That can save some time if it's already AC3.

I encode directly from the DVD disc, with AnyDVD HD running in the background. That takes about 15 minutes average.

If you look at my computer details they are similar to yours with a FX8350, water cooled.

I do occasionally watch a movie or do some video editing while encoding. No problems. It might slow the encode a little.
You can check your CPU/RAM usage in Task Manager or Resource Manager to see how the system is distributing the load.

[yuppicide0138]

Sorry.. I meant to say I set Constant Framerate. I am making my target files 400MB. They're older TV shows. Good to know about passthrough.

I tried gaming last night.. it started off okay, but then started lagging. I ended up letting it encode while I slept. I now set priority to low and will test it out tonight while gaming.

[redwudz]

Gaming can be fairly CPU intensive. That's why I mentioned Task Manager to check usage. Multicore CPUs can multitask fairly well, but fast paced games can tax that.

When I used much slower CPUs, I always encoded overnight. I remember a 400Mhz single core Celeron CPU and about 12 hours to encode a DVD.

[yuppicide0138]

I'm like you. My first Pentium was 60Mhz I believe. I remember the days when if you'd even do something like move the mouse or touch the keyboard and you'd burn a CD coaster. So, that's where my original mindset comes when encoding. I didn't want to even browse the web.

So, last night I tried it on low priority. I manually changed it, but I'm going to see maybe there's some software to auto change it every time I open it.

I played the same game I always play and also browsed the web and watched some videos. In game it was definitely a noticeable difference, but still laggy, and I didn't do as well as I normally do.

But at least I know / have the confidence now that my videos will encode fine. I quickly skipped through some of them watching a few seconds here and there and I didn't see any issues.

Only thing I wonder is how someone says they can encode a whole DVD in 8 minutes? I'm doing one epside of a TV show, so say 23 minutes, and it's taking me 12 or so. 11 episodes the software said roughly 2.5 hours.

[hech54]

Patient - Doctor, it hurts when I do this.
Doctor - Then don't do that.

[jagabo]

Only thing I wonder is how someone says they can encode a whole DVD in 8 minutes? I'm doing one epside of a TV show, so say 23 minutes, and it's taking me 12 or so. 11 episodes the software said roughly 2.5 hours.

There is a 100 fold difference in speed between x264's UltraFast and Placebo presets. So how long a conversion takes will depend a lot on the x264 settings used. Cropping away black borders may make the encoding even faster (smaller frames encode faster). So a 90 minute movie in 8 minutes isn't unusual. My quad core i5 2500K can do about that with a typical 2.35:1 movie (~720x360 after cropping) at x264's Faster preset.