Encoding speeds (how long does it take you?)

[FreeFall]

I am still quite new to all of this converting, and i upgraded my machine a few month back. It was a Duron 750 with 650MB RAM. Now i have an AMD XP 2400+ (2ghz) with the same 650MB RAM.
The cpu is more than double the speed and better quality, yet encoding takes around the same length of time. It takes around 3 hours to encode an MPEG to DVD format (mpv&mv2) and 4+ hours to convert an AVI to DVD format. I use TMPGEnc to convert. (we are talking about films here, around 700MB)
What is you spec and how long does it take you to encode?
Are my encoding times high? (considering my computer spec)
Thanx

[thesicilian]

I have an Athlon2400xp also, 768mb ram & 2no 80gb hdd set up as raid.
A 700mb avi takes around 3.5 hours. This depends on the bitrate setting.

Goto option -> enviromental setting -> CPU & enable cache setting to 10000mb if you have the hard drive space.

This saves the analysing result on VBR mode so the encoding if faster.

[wipeout]

use mainconcept and be done in 1.5 hrs without the hassles of tmpgenc

[energy80s]

I am still quite new to all of this converting, and i upgraded my machine a few month back. It was a Duron 750 with 650MB RAM. Now i have an AMD XP 2400+ (2ghz) with the same 650MB RAM.
The cpu is more than double the speed and better quality, yet encoding takes around the same length of time. It takes around 3 hours to encode an MPEG to DVD format (mpv&mv2) and 4+ hours to convert an AVI to DVD format. I use TMPGEnc to convert. (we are talking about films here, around 700MB)
What is you spec and how long does it take you to encode?
Are my encoding times high? (considering my computer spec)
Thanx

You seem to have had a very high encoding speed from a 750MHz processor if it would do a film to DVD res in 3 hours! I had a 500MHz processor and it took 7 hours just to do a 25 min TV episode to SVCD.

Certainly the time it is currently taking on your 2400 chip sounds about right.

[FreeFall]

I am still quite new to all of this converting, and i upgraded my machine a few month back. It was a Duron 750 with 650MB RAM. Now i have an AMD XP 2400+ (2ghz) with the same 650MB RAM.
The cpu is more than double the speed and better quality, yet encoding takes around the same length of time. It takes around 3 hours to encode an MPEG to DVD format (mpv&mv2) and 4+ hours to convert an AVI to DVD format. I use TMPGEnc to convert. (we are talking about films here, around 700MB)
What is you spec and how long does it take you to encode?
Are my encoding times high? (considering my computer spec)
Thanx

You seem to have had a very high encoding speed from a 750MHz processor if it would do a film to DVD res in 3 hours! I had a 500MHz processor and it took 7 hours just to do a 25 min TV episode to SVCD.

Certainly the time it is currently taking on your 2400 chip sounds about right.

yeah but it would of also depended on your RAM and type of processor you had.

If i use 1GB of DDR RAM would i see a big(ish?) difference from my current pc133 650mb SDRAM?

[ABAB]

More RAM is usually a good thing but encoding is generally CPU orientated. More RAM would be a benefit if you had several apps' running or did a shed load of gaming.
DDR over SD is good also but again ( having done the upgrade thing myself recently ) I'm not sure your times will plummet.
I take it your mobo' will take both SD and DDR.

[energy80s]

yeah but it would of also depended on your RAM and type of processor you had.

If i use 1GB of DDR RAM would i see a big(ish?) difference from my current pc133 650mb SDRAM?

No!

[whiplash]

If you have 2 hard disks you may want to try having you .avi source on one and write the mpeg file to the second drive. This is a intensive activity for the HD and if it is reading one area of the HD and having to move its heads to another area to write, it will take some time. Also defragment often. This will allow faster reads and writes.

[antoniosgubba]

Whiplash....does that only work if you have two physically separate hard drives?....ie not just one drive partitioned into two?

[Gazorgan]

I saw no speed increase going from 256 MB 133 SDRAM to 512 MB 266 DDR. Encoding speed is roughly equal to CPU equivalent speed. Why that 2400+ isn't as fast is it should be compared to the AMD is more like versions of TMPG and enviromental settings ( Faster CPU, so go with 'better' precision settings, hence 'slower' encodes).

[whytless physh]

I'm running dual MP 2400's in an Asus A7M266-D and I have to say that TMPGEnc's SMP support makes all the difference in the world. I had a P3 1ghz machine for the longest time. It would take between 7 and 12 hours to encode a feature length film using a 2-pass encode. I moved up to the dual Athlons and now I can run a 2-pass VBR with very aggresive compression settings in about .75 to .50x realtime. I recently encoded about 150 minutes of video and it took less than two hours to do a full 2-pass encode. The quality was quite good as well. A dually system along with a huge disk cache setting and plenty of memory will be your most effective means of speed increase. Not cheap, but effective. And remember, if it's too slow you can always throw more hardware at it.

-wp

[i-on-s]

Dont use tmpgenc if you arent gonna use any of its filters thats all its good for just use avisyth and CCE if you want faster encoding time it will take about half of the time tmpgenc will atleast for me it does.

[Anonymoususer]

I had a 450MHZ Processor, 20 Gig Hardrive, 56.0 MB Ram, Windows 98 SE, here it goes....

Constant Bitrate for a 50 Minute movie would take around 12 hours...then I found out what 2 Pass VBR was, and it wouldve have taken 24 + hours, made Mpeg2's usually and didn't use 2 Pass VBR's, Mpeg1 wouldve not taken soo long, I also had the Ghost Reduction, Noise Reduction, etc...settings checked as well....now a week ago, I got a custom built computer, specified all the parts, and now

I got a 2.4GHZ Intel P4 Processor, 512 MB DDRam, more then enough, an 80 GIG, and basically a top of the line motherboard ASUS, and a graphics or video card whatever you wanna call it for 700$...and now all I have to say is WOW...

It takes around 4 Hours to make a VCD, Priority set on Highest Slow, and CPU Usage or Task Priority is HIGH, The movie was 50 Minutes long, Bitrate of 1996, Min of 800 and max of 2520, Used 2 Pass VBR BTW, created an SVCD with the same settings, and it took 6 Hours, I've started experimenting, and soon I will try out CCE, and see how it's Passes are, according to some posts CCE is faster and the Passes are better as well...I was reading some of the posts and it seems some people are encoding pretty fast with almost the same systems...anyone got any suggestions throw em out...

[SaSi]

Freefall,

there's no way a 750MHz machine could have the same encoding performance with a 2400 class machine. Encoding speed is almost entirely CPU bound, not RAM not HD.

This is especially true for Tmpgenc, which is rather slow and is very unlikely to make HDs a bottleneck, no matter how fast the CPU is or how slow the disks are.

The only case I found a benefit of having source AVI on one spindle and the encoded stream on another was when the source AVI was an uncompressed one spanning over 160Gb. But this is not the normal case.

Tmpgenc performance is very sensitive on motion search estimate method you choose. Going to higher quality decreases speed by almost half for every step you make. So it's easy to mis-read performance, especially if two runs were made quite a few days or weeks apart.

Tmpgenc, on a P4 or AMD 2400 class machine can be almost real-time (1 hour movie in 1 hour) if you use low quality or Motion Search Estimate (which is fast). Don't be misguided by the "Low Quality" setting. It is no low quality except in comparison with the Highest Quality setting. You can have excellent results in the fast methods and fast encoding as well.

If you make a VCD, using high quality for motion search estimate won't do much difference in quality. That said, I have found out that constant quality encoding creates a slightly smaller file with higher settings in motion estimate.

As a rule of thumb, Tmpgenc, in it's fastest settings is slightly slower than CCE, which is slightly slower than Mainconcept.

As an alternative to re-encoding a DVD stream, DVD2One is the fastest and best method. If you use it for movie only mode you will probably get the best quality in the shortest time possible.

I believe this to be true because converting the VOB to AVI and then back to MPEG is a waste of time and introduces quality loss because of the codec used in the AVI (unless you create an uncompressed AVI or use huffyuv in lossless mode).

Converting a single DVD movie (with a single soundtrack) takes 8 minutes for a 1:30 movie and less than 14 min for a 2:00 movie (on a P4/2.67GHz). It's really worth trying for MPEG re-encoding.

For AVI to MPEG encoding, I have found Mainconcept to be the best combination of price, speed, versatility and ease of accepting all sorts of AVI or other types of input files (e.g. MPEG-1, MPEG-2, etc).

Beware for all programs not to use DirectX 9. All sorts of confusing problems can occur otherwise.

[i-on-s]

CCE is way better for MPEG2 encoding than tmpgenc but CCE will also cost you a arm,leg,head,and left testicle to buy (my step father got it in a software bundle they sent to him for his video production company) and tmpgenc is better at MPEG1 than CCE is so if you wanna make like DVD Complaint files CCE would be the way to go but if your main concern is VCDs than stick with tmpgenc. As far as system and speed its all how well your system is put together and how you keep care of it my new system can do real-time encoding i capture mostly PPV and shit for DVD-R and a 3 hr PPV (lets say a WWE PPV) will only take me about 3hrs to encode to DVD Complaint MPEG2 files (spliting it so 1 1/2hrs on each DVD-R) but that is also in CBR mode havent yet tryed 2-5pass VBR on any movies yet but i have encoded some music videos about 5 mins long and 4 pass takes about 10mins to finish at min 1900 avg 2397 max 2520 SVCD in CCE.

[Anonymoususer]

I was gonna say something about the 750 MHZ Processing speed, but I thought I might be wrong....


The Min Bitrate setting I mentioned above is not a good Idea for ME, it didn't seem to work so good, and I forgot that If you raise the Min Bitrate Higher then 300 or 500 it can cause problems, for more info on that read the post

2 Pass VBR Confusion

now I'm gonna convert again at 500 and see how it turns out...

Thanks for the Motion Estimate Tip, learn things new everyday, just amazing...

[legionpc]

I've been using CCE these days, as I love the speed, I can get a 2.5 hr avi converted to SVCD in 2-pass in about an hour and 10 minutes

Using TMPGEnc it takes me about 1 hr 45 mins to encode about 55 minutes (usually about the length I cut my movies into) for SVCD in 2-pass.

[FreeFall]

I might give CCE a try, but i choose quality over time, cos usually i encode when i am sleeping or out...But it would be nice to do it through the day if i am not using my pc for an hour or 2. I am also more familiar with TMPEnc so i'd rather use that.
What are these filters i hear about??
It is better to use "multi-thread" or not?

[Bob W]

I use NeoDVD to encode captured mpeg2 from VHS to DVD and it takes only 30 minutes or less to do a 7GB capture. This is the fastest program that I have used and I tried a bunch of them.
http://www.mediostream.com/products/neodvdplus/index.html

[flaninacupboard]

on my nice new xp2000+ cce gives me quicker than realtime when converting DV avi, compared to quarter speed on my old athlon 650.

[txpharoah]

SDRAM 100 slowest, running 100mhz
SDRAM 133 faster, running 133 mhz
DDR RAM is better than the other SDRAM. Runs about 266mhz or faster.
RDRAM is the best, running at 800mhz.
No exceptions here, disagreements would be ignorance in computers and how they operate. The faster the RAM, the more the RAM, the better results you can expect on video encoding. I have 512meg RDRAM, and my system can far outperform most because of it.

On CPU, a P4 and AMD+ can far outperform PIII and slower AMD processors. No exceptions here either.

The only reason people can complain RAM does not help is because at some point, your RAM can exceed the output by the processor, and hence it really would be unneeded. It's why I do not have a gig of RDRAM. On my P4, it would be expensive overkill. Keep getting more, faster RAM until you no longer notice improvement.

But that won't usually happen until you surpass 384meg of whatever you may have.

Be sure your environments on your encoders are set properly. If you have it set to minimum or normal CPU usage, you are limiting it, and it will be slower. Be sure your cache is set high enough (if you have the RAM and HD, make sure to use it). If you have TSR programs like antivirus or DSL/cable running, unplug it and shut down the programs. You are eating CPU and RAM, stealing it from the encoder.

CCE is not faster, MainConcept is definitely not faster, than TMPGenc. All of these encoders can put out DVD compliant files. They are all relatively the same in quality and speed. MainConcept may look best, but is slower and hardest to understand the options to tweak. CCE is hard to use too, but not all that slow, and has some noise added to final encode. TMPGenc is slighter faster, is easiest to use, and output can be noisy too, but set your block soften between 25-50 to make it mostly disapper. On some systems, some users have CCE setup better and hence think it is faster, but CCE just comes set better than TMPGenc. You merely have to know how to set these up to make them do what YOU want to do, not what the manufacturer THOUGHT wanted you to do.

On setting for TMPGenc, set motion search to "low" or "estimate". No, it does NOT mean lower quality, the low refers to other things, and really should be renamed to end the confusions. Best is slow and can interrupt your motion, making it jerky. Use VBR_CQ mode, not CQ or VBR or CBR. This is for DVD and X/SVCD. Use CBR on all pure VCD. Lower your GOPs.

I should go make a site for some of this. I repeat myself a lot in these forums.

Capturing is the only reason for RAID, and even then if you have crappy HD discs, it won't help. Get good buffers and 7200 rpm speeds. Source from hard drive A on IDE1 and saving final encode to hard drive B on IDE2 can help, but not too much. A good 8MB or even 2MB HD buffer can probably handle the in/out on the small amounts that are read during encode.

TMPGenc tends to be more RAM dependent than some other programs, but its a combo of many, many, many factors that determine your quality and speed. It deals with all the RAM on your system. Ever think about your video RAM? Does it share or have it's own? If it shares, speed was just hit on your encode. Not much, but example of how every little bit matters. It adds up. Your processor P4 or AMD? That can make a difference.

Anyway, I'm done. Just want everybody here to consider the bigger picture when they speak of speed and Program A being better than Program B. It's all on you. It is what you bought and how you use it. It's not the programs fault that one is "faster" than the other or that you buddy down the street can make his "faster" than yours.

Freefall,

there's no way a 750MHz machine could have the same encoding performance with a 2400 class machine. Encoding speed is almost entirely CPU bound, not RAM not HD.

This is especially true for Tmpgenc, which is rather slow and is very unlikely to make HDs a bottleneck, no matter how fast the CPU is or how slow the disks are.

I have to agree with the above. I had a 500MHz system with 2 40 gig hardrives and 384mb RAM. It would take me 8-12 hours to encode a 120 min avi to VCD format.

Now with my new system (see the specs at the top) it takes me just an additional 10 minutes to do the same conversion. EX: 120 min avi to 120 min VCD format will take 130 min to convert. The only thing different is the motherboard and CPU.