mail.4roger@virgin.net, on Jun 3 2006, 05:28 AM, said:
This one converts from 696mb to an indicated 4.6 gb, but having selected "fit to disc" I was surprised to see the encoding being very slow indicating it would take MANY hours to convert before burning. Is this the norm or do I need another program to assist this process? Also is my computer just too old to do this? My spec is
Athlon 2.2 / 32 mb graphics / 512mb ram / 30gb hard disc with 13 gb free.
Is this holding everthing back? Why does it take so long? Also do I need to convert and save the image to hard disc before burning?
Your system should be sufficient -- you seem to be a bit low on hard drive space (more memory wouldn't hurt, but what you have is sufficient; also, two drives . . . NOT just two partitions . . . is preferrable for video processing and such, but your system should work). You don't mention what your video card is -- that also can have an impact on encoding, I believe, so that could be a potential bottleneck. My PC spec is as follows:
Athlon XP 1800+ / 128 MB Radeon 9700 Pro graphics / 768 mb ram / 40 GB hard disc for my OS, 120 MB drive for apps and video processing, around 30 GB free total
I think EMC 8 is a great package, but the main problem that you are experiencing is that the encoding engine in EMC 8 is VERY slow, and there are faster FREE apps out there that can be used
in conjunction with EMC 8 which will give you some excellent results, and save you a considerable amount of time.
You can save a cosiderable amount of time if you can bypass the encoding portion of the DVD creation process in EMC 8 -- the goal should be to start off with a DVD-compliant MPEG file, then set the project settings in MyDVD so that EMC 8 will
NOT try to re-encode your files. Then, instead of trying to burn directly to DVD, I always create an ISO file, and THEN I burn that to DVD.
EDITED TO ADD: I decided to get creative while having my morning coffee, so I took all the info that I have posted in other threads on this issue and put it all the info together for use in a single "tutorial"-type post. Hope this helps:
====================================================================
If you are starting a DVD project using source files (AVI, MPEG, etc.) that are not DVD compliant (ex: 480 x 480 MPEG-2 TiVo files, DivX-encoded AVI files, etc.), then EMC 8 (MyDVD) must re-encode the video into a proper DVD-compliant format. Unfortunately, re-encoding with EMC 8 takes a LONG time, as you have discovered. I have essentially the same problem you have, but I have found a work-around that is VERY efficient -- I use gui4ffmpeg (which is FREEWARE) to convert my non-DVD compliant files to a more friendly DVD-compliant format BEFORE I add them to my video project in MyDVD. You can find gui4ffmpeg here:
http://www.videohelp...tool=gui4ffmpeg
And here is a great little tutorial on how to use it (the tutorial says it's for converting DIVX/XVID to DVD, but it actually works for converting virtually ANY file -- avi, mpeg, etc. -- to an DVD-compliant mpeg file):
http://forum.videohe...c.php?p=1345948
With the latest version of gui4ffmpeg (version 1.3) you will find an "Options" menu selection between the "Batch" and "?" selections at the top of the giu4ffmpeg screen -- if you select "Options" and then un-check the "Presetting" selection, the "width" and "height" selections will be un-grayed, allowing you to type in custom height and width settings directly. If for example you're dealing with 480 x 480 MPEG-2 TiVo files (which are NOT DVD-compliant), you would want to re-encode the files with gui4ffmpeg using a 352 x 480 pixels MPEG2 (Called Half-D1) resolution -- this resolution will give you EXCELLENT quality video that will be virtually indistinguishable from the original TiVo source, and you never gain anything from trying to make a small resolution file larger ("stretching" a 480 x 480 TiVo file to a "full-size" 720 x 480 Full-D1 resoltion will gain you nothing in terms of picture quality).
I'm only using TiVo resolution as an example here, but note that I don't work with TiVo files -- I'm a DISH Network user, and the native capture resolution for my DISH Network PVR is also 480 x 480, so when doing video captures (I transfer video from my DISH Network PVR using an analog capture card, rather than directly transferring the digital DISH Network MPEG streams) -- in order to save space on file sizes for my video captures, I do my capture at 480 x 480 resolution because anything more than that is overkill since my DISH Network PVR output resolution is already 480 x 480. The encoding time using gui4ffmpeg to convert my 480 x 480 MPEG-2 captures to DVD-complaint files is VERY fast (see below for actual encoding times) -- then, once the encoding is completed, I create my DVD project by adding the re-encoded 352 x 480 mpeg files to my MyDVD project.
The ONE thing you have to remember when using this method is that you MUST go into the File --> Project Settings menu in MyDVD and change the video resolution under the Default encoding settings section -- click on the Custom button and set the resolution to 352 x 480 and adjust the bitrate to fit the needs of the file you're re-encoding. You must do this in order to prevent MyDVD from re-encoding your files yet AGAIN (note that if you use the "Fit To Disk" selection, then MyDVD will also try to re-encode your new DVD-compliant mpeg files). If your video is using MP2 audio instead of AC3 audio, I believe you will also need to select the MPEG button under the audio section.
Anyway, using this method, once I create my project using DVD-compliant files, EMC 8 no longer tries to re-encode when creating an ISO file and the whole process takes about 25 - 35 minutes. After that, I simply burn the ISO file to disk, and I'm up-and-running in a little over an hour-and-a-half total. This method is still a bit of a pain, but it REALLY speeds up the process when trying to create a project in MyDVD using files that aren't DVD-compliant.
FWIW, I am a BIG fan of freeware tools -- if you need a good MPEG editor to remove commercials and such, I would recommend Mpg2Cut2 (another nifty piece of freeware . . . I use this for editing-out commercials before transferring TV shows and cartoons to DVD):
http://www.videohelp...s?tool=Mpg2Cut2
Remember, if you re-encode your source files into a DVD-compliant format, editing the resultant files using VideoWave will result in yet ANOTHER round of re-encoding by EMC 8 when you try to create your ISO file in MyDVD. That's why I use a separate tool (typically Mpg2Cut2) to edit out commercials prior to the re-encoding step with gui4ffmpeg. NOTE, however that adding chapter points in MyDVD does NOT result in re-encoding (which is VERY nice).
====================================================================
Just to give you some idea of how long it takes to create a DVD using gui4ffmpeg to generate DVD-compliant MPEG files instead of letting EMC 8 do the encoding, I actually timed the process while creating a DVD for a friend:
I started with two dissimilar, non-DVD-complaint MPEG files (one was 352 x 240 resolution, and the other was a full-D1 720x480 resolution), and I wanted to re-encode them at 352 x 480 half-D1 resolution in order to burn to DVD. I normally wouldn't have bothered sizing-up the smaller 352x240 file to half-D1 352x480 (you gain nothing in terms of picture quality when increasing the resolution of captured video), but both files MUST be the same size in order to select a custom size for the project settings, which is what allows you to bypass the re-encoding step in EMC 8 when generating an ISO file or burning to disk.
Anyway, the two programs made up a total of 1 hour and 43 minutes of video (the larger file was 1.52 GB after re-encoding, and the smaller file was 652 MB after re-encoding); I started encoding at 8:10 PM, and encoding was done at 9:08 PM, so
the total encoding time for both files (103 minutes of programming) was just 58 minutes. I am now going to add the files to my project in MyDVD, and then generate an ISO to be burned to disk -- this makes for a HUGE time savings over the amount of time it would have taken to re-encode these files in EMC 8.
Using the files mentioned in my previous post, I started the "Burn Project" ISO creation in MyDVD @ 9:33 PM; the ISO creation was completed @ 9:43 PM -- that's a
complete ISO file created in exactly 10 minutes with no re-encoding required.
THAT should effectively illustrate the benefit of creating a project using files that do not require EMC 8 to do any re-encoding.
Final size of ISO: 2.06 GB
Total time for re-encoding using gui4ffmpeg and ISO creation using MyDVD / EMC 8: 68 minutes total (not counting background generation and menu layout time, which was minimal).
The last step was to creat a DVD from the ISO file generated above by using the "Burn from Disc Image File" option in Roxio Creator Classic (EMC 8) -- started burning at 10:24 PM, burn complete at 10:47 PM.
Total burn time: 23 minutes
Total project time (re-encoding two files using gui4ffmpeg, ISO creation using MyDVD/EMC 8, and DVD burn using Roxio Creator Classic/EMC 8): 91 minutes (1 hour, 31 minutes)
This may seem a bit involved because you have to do a few things outside of EMC 8, and you have to figure out how to use gui4ffmpeg, but this process has been fool-proof for me, and it is without a doubt much faster than doing the encoding using EMC 8. FWIW, my video rig is a meager Athlon XP 1800+ CPU (not overclocked) with 768 MB of RAM, a Radeon 9700 Pro video card, and a Lite-On DVD burner; my operating system is Windows 2000 Professional.
Edited by jcbodin, 03 June 2006 - 06:40 AM.
3
