Does it take you this long to encode?

[PJ]

Hi Folks

I am using dvdX to encode to MPEG-1 and it takes around 10-12 hours to do a full movie. This seems like an awful long time, especially after reading posts where others say it takes them 5 hours to do a movie.

I am using an 800 mhz celeron with 128 meg of ram. Windows 2000. I rip the whole movie to my hard drive. Thanks

[Sefy]

Because you are using a Celeron (and 800mhz) is why it takes you so slow
A Duron 800 will do the same job twice as fast, and will take you around 5hrs

[KingJohn]

How long ?
I use Smarripper to rip the DVD, which takes a few minuets only.

Then it takes about 1 hour 30 minuets to convert the VOB's of a 70 minuet movie to Mpeg 1, but then I find the bitrate is slightly out, so use TMPGEnc streaming to fix it, which takes another 2 minuets or so. I guess your 800Mb really needs an upgrade.

[PJ]

Wow, that is quite a big difference. Are your settings adjusted for quality or for speed? Also, what is your average FPS when encoding? I am getting around 3.7 fps...is that very slow?

[KingJohn]

I would need to go check , but it does go to show the big difference, I also had a P3, which took twice has long. I have a P2 also which is a joke now, but either you set it to convert then go to work for the day or like the new processors you can run it in the background.

Most P4 from 1.5 up can work in real time, Most people convert in less than real time when converting an AVI to mpeg 1 with programs like TMPGEnc, and with programs like DvdX its only a little slower.

Go buy a P4 2.5 then make us all envious

The quality must be the same as the DVD, or I wont do it Well almost as good

[PJ]

Thanks for the good advice Could you share some of your settings with me? I get what looks like VCR quality on a tv but nothing close to DVD quality. What is your secret? Thanks in advance!

[KingJohn]

Well naturally the source must be good, either a DVD you ripped yourself, or one that has been converted to DivX and you downloaded it. Provided there are no problems with the AVI, there are no settings to worry about, load a VCD template and start.

Good quality disks, find one and stick to it... No point in buying cheap. I have used Maxell for many years, and continue with them for VCD.

If it takes 2 disks, then that’s the way to go, don’t try to cram everything onto 1 disk, even though its watchable, some time in the future it may not be, especially when the time comes to replace your DVD player.

There are no fast rules, you need to experiment to see what is best for you, other people will probably not be able to help you with achieving this, only point you in the right direction.

Apart from the CPU speed, fitting a good CPU in a cheap motherboard wont do at all.. Same with hard drives and the rest. If you can't afford to buy it now, don’t buy something cheap wait until you can afford it.

For now, do as best as you can, and except that what you have does its best.

My DVD rips, are as good as the original DVD so are the downloaded DivX movies. On a widescreen TV they look very very good. But don’t expect to get that quality from CAM's or Screeners, sometimes the Reel copies are also great.