72 hours to ENCODE to .mpg???!i!i!i!i

[FatBat]

Yeah i'm using TMPGEnc ver. Beta 12i and it works for encoding some small mpegs of mine. Then i have this 247MB movie file in *.asf format which i wanna burn into VCD.
Well i tried to encode and this was what i got...(scrnshot)



WTF?! 72 hours total? That's completely CRAZY for a 2 hour movie! I left it for a whole 14 hours and it's only encoded 20%?!???!?!!! I have a, PIII 450 MHz 128 MB RAM, not the BEST but at least way better than this! WTHell is wrong? When i stopped it at 20%(Duh! I'm NOT waiting for another 58 hours!!!) it provides a 27 minutes scene, which has a whooping size of 250MB , way more than the whole size of the orginal .asf movie!!!

Anyway to encode besides TMPGEnc? Another option maybe? I want to burn this movie i d/l but don't know how! I want a fast, cheap, alternative ASAP! Thnx!

<font size=-1>[ This Message was edited by: FatBat on 2001-08-14 20:05:46 ]</font>

[Greg12]

it seems that beta i is pretty slow.

also, tmpg has to decode the asf and then encode it


upgrade ur version n try again

[iant]

First up, a version change up from i ain't likely to make any difference.
From the size of your 27min result, I'll assume you're converting to a standard VCD. This will have a standard size of approximately 10 meg per minute of play time. Guaranteed. You might as well get used to the fact that MPEG1 and even MPEG2 files are generally larger than ASFs or DIVXs as these tend to use higher compression ratios.

The next part involves a couple of questions.
Are you using any filters in TMPEG? If so, the more you have, the longer the encoding time.
Also, what quality level are you using? High Quality is pretty much a standard. If you've gone for Highest Quality, you'll double the encoding time that way too.

Hope this helps a bit.
Ian

[FatBat]

Greg12: Isn't beta TMPGEnc i the latest?

iant: Yes i'm converting to standard MPEG1, then gonna use Roxio Easy CD Creator 5 to burn to VCD.
Any filters? Hhmmm... not sure i just start TMPGEnc, choose the video source, rename output file name, Load VideoCD(NTSC) template, hit START...
Quality level? Like i said i'm not too sure on what to do with TMPGEnc, so i just follow the guide and it works so i just keep dong it...

[iant]

FatBat,
Fair enough. The defaults are generally no filters and Normal quality. ( Or has it switched to Motion Search? Can't remember. )

By the way, h is the current TMPEG version. There's little difference between any of them for MPEG1 performance.

The other thing I should have asked was what speed processor you're using? I take about 10 hrs to convert a 43min AVI on an AMD 500. ( Including filtering and frameserving )

Finally, I have noticed a number of posts on this site have tended to complain about time of conversion on ASF files. It may be that this is actually your primary problem and the re-encode in TMPEG may only be a small part of the problem. If you have the disk space, you may want to try loading the ASF into VirtualDub and saving out as an uncompressed AVI. ( Or use some other codec such as HUFFYUV or MJPEG but this will take time too as it is a recompress. )

[FatBat]

So... If i understand correctly you're asking me to use VirtualDub and uncompress it to an avi file, then use TMPGEnc to compress it again to an mpeg1?
Or alternatively i can use other HUFFYUV or MJPEG codecs to encode my asf to mpeg1?
I only have a measely 1 GB left
*frowns at all the games installed*

Oh, and to answer your question i'm on PIII 450MHz...
Hey! It's not THAT BAD!
I'll have to d/l VirtualDub though...

[Vejita-sama]

Actually the man problem is the PIII 450, I had a AMD K62 400/500 and it took me ~18hrs to encode a 90min movie (and that wasn't with the best quaility settings ^_^).

I now have a Tbird 1.2Ghz and encode at 1.1~1.5x the movie runtime. (: HD space makes a difference if you plan to rip DVDs and/or do a lot of video editing. I've got a 60GB drive and often go from 50GB free to 10GB free, while playing around with stuff...

[Vejita-sama]

BTW in your screen shot the preview is blank? Where you using 2pass VBR? That'll double your encode time.

[Chopper Face]

What's s_s_kitty?

[mball]

Adding more memory will do a lot to speed up your encoding times. I have a system similar to yours. I run a PIII 550 and had 128 MB RAM. My encoding times were similar to yours as well. I'm not sure what else you have running on your machine but if the encoder has to use your paging file due to insufficient memory, it can radically increase encoding times. Memory is cheap. I bought a 256 MB Dimm for $60 and cut my encoding time by nearly 65 - 70%. Try adding more memory and go from there. For me, my biggest limiting factor right now is my processor speed but encoding time is to a point that I can live with. Good luck.

[iant]

Fatbat,
The other codecs I mentioned are also AVI codecs, not mpg. I just think that a major part of your conversion time may be the decoding of the ASF.
If you're a bit space limited, after you've grabbed a copy of VirtualDub, open the ASF, select only a minute or two and save that out as a standard AVI. See how long it takes and extrapolate.
Another idea may be to frameserve from VirtualDub so it's doing the decoding. ( See the How To section on the left. )
This may speed things up.
Basically, your machine specs are not far away from mine so I suspect, as stated above, that a major part of the time is the ASF decode. If that is the case, I'm afraid you're likely to be stuck with it.
Good Luck,
Ian

[gambit32]

Why does it look like your encoding Girls Gone Wild: Sorority Kittens?

[Greg12]

lol. interesting.

that would explain the blacked out parts

[jugernaut]

I face the same problem the first time i tried to convert an asf to mpg. I think the size problem was solved with the others reply (You have to pay with space for the ability to see your videos on your DVD player).

To solve the time issue, extract the audio from the asf (With Dbamp) to another directory, then when you convert open the asf and on the audio source put the wav uncompressed. This way saved me about 75% of the time (one asf convert without the uncompress wav takes 8 hours, now it takes 2)

[FatBat]

Oh Gambit32 you got me
The blacked out part is because i put Preview Option> Do Not Display. So i did not use any 2pass VBR(Whatever that is! )

For the rest; i can't add anymore memory/ RAM at the moment, but i plan to buy a new computer soon so it'll have to wait. However i will try the other methods suggested, using VirtualDub...

jugernaut: Dbamp? I'll have to try the VirtualDub way then if it doesn't work i'll try your way. No offence but i don't know what a Dbamp is, so until then i'm trying VirtualDub

Note: I'm making a VCD, NOT DVD, SVCD...etc.

[FatBat]

Crap!
I just d/led Virtual Dub 1.4.5, and it CAN'T open *.asf files!!! It says 'Not Supported'; it have disallowed opening of *.asf file since version 1.3D...
Shit! What else could get wrong now...
And you guys didn't even tell me! BAD! BAD!

So... like what now?

[iant]

OOPS. Sorry didn't know. There are a nunmber of versions on the VirtualDub site. Check there and see if you can still get the old one.

Could be, as ASF is a microsoft codec, that you may need to download something from there. I seem to remember that there's an encoder kit for Media Player 8 or something like that. Sorry I can't be more specific but I inadvertantly wiped my data drive the other day.

Other than that try the DBAMP route. ( It's just another program. Do a search using your favourite internet search engine and it should show up. )

[Bester]

Allthough i have been visiting here for awhile, i'm still new to this. I did catch a post the other day that helped me with the same problem. My encode time was horrific, But i red a post (can't remember where) that had these settings... Load the standard vcd template (i use ntsc 29.97) then load the unlock.mcf file in the extra folder, then change motion search precision (under the video tab in settings) to high, under gop structure, i uncheck the detect scene change, then under Quantize matrix, check the soften block noise, and set them both to 45. my encoding time for 45min video (avi) has been only 2.5 to 4 hrs (depending on the quality of the avi, and sound format) and i have an AMD k6 III 550 and 256mb of ram. And the files I SWARE look AS GOOD as svcd, as a matter of fact, i ripped some svcd's (using DVD2AVI save project, then loading in TMPG) and encoded in vcd with those settings, and i sware you can't tell the diffrence.


Hope it helps

[FatBat]

iant, ok i will search for DBAmp soon...
Lemme just try Bester's technique first, which i sincerely hope works!

HOLY SM0SES! (Whatever that is!) it works!!! Eureka! My length is now dropped to 8-9 hours!! 0_o
Bester mah-man you SAVED me!

Oh no... wait... WTHell, it jumped to 23 hours!
Hhmm.. maybe it's b'cos i'm multi-tasking... However i thank you anyhow for saving at least 49 hours of my power supply, and my life...

BUT i still strongly appreciate ANY help given and will continue with solving this insane problem... I have NOT verified wheter the method mentioned by Bester works fully or not. Maybe only the starting takes less time, and gains more time as it encodes more.

[Bester]

Just wait a little bit, I forgot to mention, that whenever i uncheck detect scene change, when ever the encode starts, i allways get a hugh encoding time (like 245hrs) then it will drop to 125hrs, then 98hrs, then 52hrs, untill it actually reaches 35% or more then i get a real encoding time (usually 2.5 to 4 hrs for 45min of vid) so it shouldn't take TOO long

[FatBat]

Hhmmm... i tried it again, but it still gives kinda huge d/l time...
I blame it on a weak processing power then
Bester unlike yours my encoding time is different, oppposite actually... At first it gives fast, and low encoding time. Later when it's like 1% it gets higher and higher, probably due to more "motion"/ "movement" in the clip. I'm still looking for ways to reduce more time...Any help appreciated!

However the method you provide DID help to reduce time... And it works(MPEG1 format) to be burned to VCD too! Thnx anyway!

[FatBat]

Hhmmm... i still can't get it to work right!
It's around like 45+ hours now! Pls help still needed, to lower Conversion time!
I would do it for 24 hours or less!
Any other bright ideas to go around this?

[mball]

I still think adding more memory would do a world of good. I know you said you can't add any more memory but that is the one sure thing I know that will have a big impact on encoding time.

[FatBat]

You mean add more RAM? or more disk space?

[thxkid]

have to tell ya I stayed with TMPGE beta version b, because all version after that tend to run much slower. I was using a AMD 500 k6-2 with 384 megs of 100mhz ram and I was getting a 8-9 to 1 ratio when encoding.
went to a thunderbird 1.2 gig 266 bus speed 512megs of 133mhz ram, it jumped up to 1.5-2 to 1 ratio when encoding now.

[DN]

hiya~
i'm still new to doing encoding.
but i hope my suggestion may help.
i was also having a same problem as u.
i notice u use asf as the audio source.
it doesn't work....the output will have no sound coz the problem of codec.
u can convert the asf to wav first using GOLDWAVE.
then use it as a audio source,so u can convert it to mpg directly by TMPGEnc.
for 90 mins i think it should take 4-5 hrs