slow encoding

[viperjay9]

ok i have an mpeg2 file and i need to make a m2v file or video file compatible to author a dvd using ifoedit. i dont want to use tmpgenc because ive used it before and it didnt take that long to make the m2v file but with this movie it says its gunna take like 200+ hours and theres no way in hell it can take that long. so what other programs would you recommend to make the encoding much faster or something? thanks

[SaSi]

MPEG-2 encoding takes a lot of time. I agree with you it shouldn't take that much (MPEG-4 is more complex than MPEG-2, however, capturing video with divx in realtime is not an issue with a reasonably fast machine).

Tmpgenc is perhaps the slowest high-quality encoder. CCE is faster and on a P4 > 1.6GHz machine can really encode faster than realtime.

Another newcomer in the endoding world is Newconcept. It's not as good as Tmpgenc or CCE but is cheaper and faster (mind the settings though, as it can inflate the movie instead of compressing it).

With Tmpgenc and a P4/3GHz machine you can expect slightly less than realtime DVD level MPEG-2 encoding with the proper options. Should never reach the 200 hours you mention, unless you have a very old CPU and selected too much.

If space is not tight, go for 2 pass VBR and select an average bitrate of 5000kbps, a min. of 200kbps and a max of 8000kbps.

In Motion search estimate, select Motion Search Estimate which is fast.

If you have more than 1 hard disks, read the movie from the first disk and write to the second. It helps.

Final point: Never use Tmpgenc's filters. They are good quality but performance sucks. More or less the same things can be done in VirtualDUB in almost realtime.

On a Pentium III @ 1000MHz or so, this should encode at 0.2 realtime at least. This means that a 2 hour movie will be encoded in 10 hours. It's much, but not 200 hours.

Use the above settings as a guideline and experiment with a 1 minute clip. Time the settings and understand how changing settings affects performance. Then you will be able to convert in acceptable times.

Of course, if you have a CPU with less than 1000MHz clock, don't expect much.

[viperjay9]

thanks for the thought out response. i got it to work in a reasonable amount of time by what you said. thanks again for all the help