I get asked by friends to convert video files of various sorts from time to time, nothing commercial or extreme high quality just seems to be a regular thing. I also convert a number of personal video files for my own consumption. I was using another program that has long been out of production due to the developers ceasing to update. I was starting to run into compatibility issues with some files as time has marched on and there are new formats/audio bits that it was no longer able to handle effectively. As such I thought I would purchase Popcorn 4 since I believe Roxio makes good products and I appreciate a number of the features of the application.
After a simple install I ran into some codec issues and upgraded my Perian to the latest which seems to have fixed the error boxes from popping up. I fed popcorn a number of 300-500 Meg AVI files which is promptly converted into .MP4 files with a 640x480 resolution without any remarkable difference from how I was doing things before. At the end of my queue was a .MKV file (about 1.1G in size), this file ran in conversion for apparently 5+ hours before I simply gave up. I played the file original through without seeing any glitches and used my old program to convert it - it took under 30 minutes. I attempted another MKV file as a test and did let it finish - the time ran well over 8 hours, another took 12 hours or so. Both of these converted under my old program in under 30 minutes without a hitch. Even a 730Meg AVI file finished in fairly rapid time under Popcorn but I seem to be having extraordinary conversion times on MKV files. As these are listed as a valid file type on the product page I don't feel I'm asking the application to do anything outside the boundaries of what it is intended. Anything that might help or I might have missed that is causing these incredible conversion times? Of note, the files it does eventually spit out from the mkv's are identical quality to the 30 minute conversions under my old application.
I have a Core 2 Duo Imac running at 2Ghz with 3GB of ram. I considered maybe it was due to my USB chain lagging out (which I perceive to be generally slower under 10.6, but that could just be me) so I did everything under my internal drive with no improvement. I really think 12+ hours is a bit unreasonable so I think I'm either missing something or I'm doing something horribly wrong. I am aware that my Imac is becoming quite a bit outdated but I do not feel that even this older machine should be taking quite this long to convert files. The documentation that comes with Popcorn is a bit light in the area of troubleshooting and searches in the forums under even the older versions helped little.
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phase888
I get asked by friends to convert video files of various sorts from time to time, nothing commercial or extreme high quality just seems to be a regular thing. I also convert a number of personal video files for my own consumption. I was using another program that has long been out of production due to the developers ceasing to update. I was starting to run into compatibility issues with some files as time has marched on and there are new formats/audio bits that it was no longer able to handle effectively. As such I thought I would purchase Popcorn 4 since I believe Roxio makes good products and I appreciate a number of the features of the application.
After a simple install I ran into some codec issues and upgraded my Perian to the latest which seems to have fixed the error boxes from popping up. I fed popcorn a number of 300-500 Meg AVI files which is promptly converted into .MP4 files with a 640x480 resolution without any remarkable difference from how I was doing things before. At the end of my queue was a .MKV file (about 1.1G in size), this file ran in conversion for apparently 5+ hours before I simply gave up. I played the file original through without seeing any glitches and used my old program to convert it - it took under 30 minutes. I attempted another MKV file as a test and did let it finish - the time ran well over 8 hours, another took 12 hours or so. Both of these converted under my old program in under 30 minutes without a hitch. Even a 730Meg AVI file finished in fairly rapid time under Popcorn but I seem to be having extraordinary conversion times on MKV files. As these are listed as a valid file type on the product page I don't feel I'm asking the application to do anything outside the boundaries of what it is intended. Anything that might help or I might have missed that is causing these incredible conversion times? Of note, the files it does eventually spit out from the mkv's are identical quality to the 30 minute conversions under my old application.
I have a Core 2 Duo Imac running at 2Ghz with 3GB of ram. I considered maybe it was due to my USB chain lagging out (which I perceive to be generally slower under 10.6, but that could just be me) so I did everything under my internal drive with no improvement. I really think 12+ hours is a bit unreasonable so I think I'm either missing something or I'm doing something horribly wrong. I am aware that my Imac is becoming quite a bit outdated but I do not feel that even this older machine should be taking quite this long to convert files. The documentation that comes with Popcorn is a bit light in the area of troubleshooting and searches in the forums under even the older versions helped little.
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