AVCHD Rendering times

[woodchuckr]

I did some avchd encoding times and they are not pretty. I start with a video mpg file and use videowave to turn it into a mpg4 video file that I can then use to create an avchd disk using MYDVD (which all works by the way thanks for this forum :-)

 

Converting a 1280x720 mpg using the AVCHD 720p (video quality selection) takes about 2 minutes of rendering for every 1 minute of video (which isn't that bad according to the forum)

 

Converting a 1920x1080 mpg using the AVCHD 1920x1080i (video quality selection) takes about 5 minutes of encoding for every 1 minute of video.

 

Converting a 1440x1080i mpeg (from a video camera) using the AVCHD 1440x1080i (video quality selection) again takes about 5 minutes of encoding for every 1 minute of video.

 

My computer is an Asus P5GC-mx1333, with the onboard intel 950 graphics, Intel E7500 Dual Core processor (2.93 Ghz), 2 Gig of Ram, XP Service Pack 3 and Creator 2010 Pro. I'm using the hardware encoding selection since it is faster then software on my system

 

Reading the GPU influence rendering thread, it looks like a new video card may help if I can get it to stream. It looks like sknis got his ATI HD4870 to stream. I though I read that nvida had a slight edge in rendering quality over ATI (but that could have been just hear say and not backed up in fact).

 

Mikym gave some ATI card recommendations. Anyone have any nvida suggestions ?

 

Also, after I create the MPEG4 file in videowave and then bring up MYDVD to create the AVCHD .iso file, it again encode the MPEG4 file. Any way to get out of doing this second encode ? (I figured not, so that is why I was looking for a way to speed it up :-)

 

Thanks for any help or suggestions. Woody

[sknis]

Norton could still be part of the problem. Turn it off and disconnect from the internet.

 

How is the "other drive" connected? is it internal or USB?

 

It sounds like you are not doing any video editing; is that correct?

 

Try slowing down your burn speed. Are you creating ISO files?

 

Remind me what OS you are running.

[Jim_Hardin]

Jim,

I updated the firmware to 007. That was the first thing I though of. I've been using Sony DVD+RW, because I figured a Sony player would like Sony DVD's. I'll try a Verbatim and see how that works. I always do iso files since I try and minimize my creation of coasters :-)

I have a Sony disc or 2 in my pile, even paid $60 for ONE… I think that while Sony makes no discs, they do insist on quality and will be OK.

 

ISO first is a choice, there is no right or wrong way there! But try it both ways just to see if it makes a difference.

 

And try the Verbatim too. Start with a very short & simple project. Maybe 2 or 3 pictures added separately and default menus, settings etc.

 

[mikym]

Did some more playing and here is what I found.

If I take a MP2 in MyDVD and make an iso file of that and write that to a DVD+RW, I get an invalid dvd from the Sony BDP-S360. The Sony S360 has the latest firmware.

If I take that same .iso file and write it to a DVD+R it plays fine.

If I take the same MP2 file, convert it to a MP4 file with videowave, and then use that as input in MyDVD, and write that to an .iso file. Then take that .iso file and write it to a DVD+RW, then it plays fine.

In both cases MyDVD is doing the final encoding and writing to the .iso file. Not sure why an mp2 to a avchd only works on a dvd+r and an mp4 works to a dvd+rw

Input should be irrelevant to compatibility of the final, encoded file... Some apps just like some formats better than others, influenced sometimes by whatever Direct Show &/or VFW filters you've installed.

 

Far as disc format goes, there's a PDF guide on creating Blu Ray on DVD ["Blu-Ray_Backup_Guide_milOtis.pdf"] that recommends only using -R if I remember correctly, so the type of disc might have some effect. I have a S360 player as well, & they're said to play almost anything -- my guess would be that you're just experiencing your player's quirks, & suggest maybe you should be thrilled with the positive results you've gotten rather than trying to figure out why. ;-) If you were burning BD from MyDVD with the add-on & having problems I'd be concerned, but otherwise IMHO it's just gravy. :-)

[woodchuckr]

Sknis,

I'll turn off norton and try again and report back.

The drive is internal sata attached (real computers don't do USB drives :-)

No editing is involved. I just take the mpg2 file start up MyDVD and use that to create an .iso file.

This mpg2 file worked fine (stayed in sync) when I used to use the onboard video. So my guess is either the CUDA encoder is doing it, or the encoding is going so fast that something else in my system can't keep up with it. Given that it got better when I defragged my drive, I'm betting on something not keeping up. I always write to iso files, never to the DVD. Hmmm maybe I should try to a DVD. It might slow down the encoding enough to fix this

I'm running windows XP Home Edition, SP3

Is there some windows tuning parms I can set ?

Also I've read that windows writes faster to a primary partition than to an extended partition. My data drive is an logical disk in an extended partition. Maybe I should change that to a primary partition ?

Thanks for the all the help and suggestions.

[Jim_Hardin]

Did some more playing and here is what I found.

If I take a MP2 in MyDVD and make an iso file of that and write that to a DVD+RW, I get an invalid dvd from the Sony BDP-S360. The Sony S360 has the latest firmware.

If I take that same .iso file and write it to a DVD+R it plays fine.

If I take the same MP2 file, convert it to a MP4 file with videowave, and then use that as input in MyDVD, and write that to an .iso file. Then take that .iso file and write it to a DVD+RW, then it plays fine.

In both cases MyDVD is doing the final encoding and writing to the .iso file. Not sure why an mp2 to a avchd only works on a dvd+r and an mp4 works to a dvd+rw

Unless your media is Verbatim or Taiyo Yuden, you shouldn't even bring it in the house.

 

I do 8X Verbatim DVD+RW all the time for testing and my Sony BDP-S300 plays them without fail.

 

And it is a rare day that I ever use an ISO file anymore… So the vast majority of my burning is done directly from MyDVD.

 

Have you updated your BD Player firmware? I see they are up to Version 7 for that model – Sony Update

[sailingby]

Sknis,

Sorry to take so long to get back to you. Tried turning all the acceleration off and it still loses sync. I also noticed that when I select software rendering, it still is using the cuda hardware. Once it finds it I guess they use it no matter what :-) I was going to try and find either a driver that didn't have the cuda support in it or hopefully find a way to disable it so roxio won't use it. It is a shame because the picture looked pretty good and it was really fast. But if the picture and sound are out of sync, it really doesn't do much good.

 

The only way to try encoding without using Cuda I have found is in the "Project Settings" menu:

 

1. In "Preset" select something other than "Same as Original" or "Fit to Disc", i.e. "High Quality(HQ)"

2. You now find you can check the box labeled "2 pass encoding (creates higher quality video but takes longer)"

3. Burn with these settings and the old rendering preview returns in place of the "Cuda" logo, but it is slow and I didn't notice any better quality and it didn't fix any of the problems I was trying to overcome.

 

Anyway, if you want to see if disabling Cuda fixes your synch problem, then the above is what I suggest you do.

 

(I use a 2.67GHz i5 quad core, Nvidia GTS250 1GB, 8GB RAM and Windows 7 Pro 64-bit but end up having to "Burn" productions on a Vista dual core laptop as Roxio 2010 has a number of unacceptabel rendering problems on this machine that I can't overcome)

[woodchuckr]

Disconnected from the internet, turned off norton and redid it again. Still have audio/video sync issues.

Nuts....

[woodchuckr]

Sknis,

Sorry to take so long to get back to you. Tried turning all the acceleration off and it still loses sync. I also noticed that when I select software rendering, it still is using the cuda hardware. Once it finds it I guess they use it no matter what :-) I was going to try and find either a driver that didn't have the cuda support in it or hopefully find a way to disable it so roxio won't use it. It is a shame because the picture looked pretty good and it was really fast. But if the picture and sound are out of sync, it really doesn't do much good.

[sknis]

Disconnected from the internet, turned off norton and redid it again. Still have audio/video sync issues.

Nuts....

 

Since you are runing XP, have you tried turning off Windows audio acceleration? How about Windows video acceleration? Do that through Windows run dxdiag. This, to the best of my knowledge cannot be done with Vista and W7.

 

I use camtasia studio and when there is a problem with sync in doing a movie of a screen capture, they suggest turning those down. I know that turning down audio accelerartion will help audio capture.

[woodchuckr]

Jim,

I updated the firmware to 007. That was the first thing I though of. I've been using Sony DVD+RW, because I figured a Sony player would like Sony DVD's. I'll try a Verbatim and see how that works. I always do iso files since I try and minimize my creation of coasters :-)

[NoriNYC]

I just load mpeg2s onto VideoWave, and save it as a VideoWave PROJECT file (I think File --> Save As), instead of outputting an mp4. Then load the VideoWave project file onto MyDVD. That way, you won't be re-encoding twice.

 

If you want quick encoding, the fastest CPU (at least quad core) you can buy and a mid-range video card like the GeForce 9600 or 9800 will do.

[sknis]

If you get a CUDA or Stream enabled card, you can use those video card capabilities to encode to mpg2 or blu-ray format in Video Wave. When you go to MyDVD, you can select quality as "same as original" and it should not re-encode regardless of what the pop up window says.

 

Actually 5 minutes per one minute of HD video is not all that bad. On my old computer, it would take 14 hours for 40 minutes of video. My old, old computer would take that long for a standard definition video!

 

I'll still stick to my ATI card but I'm starting to hear better things about NVidia.

[woodchuckr]

Well just put in my new evga geforce gts 250 1 gig and I have good news and bad news :-)

The hardware test (on videowave) went from 350 fps - 310 mbps to 2800 fps - 1042 mbps.

My encoding times went from 2 minutes for every 1 minutes of video to 30 to 45 sec for every 1 minute of video. When ever I encode (either in videowave or mydvd), the cuda logo is displayed in the preview window. That would explain my big jump in speed. The bad news is that for my 5 minute segment, the voice and picture get pretty badly out of sync by the end of the 5 minutes. Guess I speeded up encoding so fast, I broke the speed of sound :-)

The sizes of the encoded files are different than before. My 1280x720 went from 62000 KB to 189000 KB.

The 1920x1080 went from 42000 KB to 50000KB.

I've got the latest drivers for the card (ver 196.21). Anyone one have any idea how to turn the cuda encoding off and go back to what was used before (which hopefully should still be faster than what I had before) Thanks

 

Forgot one thing. The picture in the cuda encoding looked pretty good, much better than the sofware encoding option. If I could get the sound in sync I think I would have it

 

[woodchuckr]

One more thing. I noticed that I'm running directx 9.0c. Would going to direct x 10 help any of this sync problem ? Does Roxio use the directx 10.0 interfaces ? Thanks

[woodchuckr]

NoriNYC,

I do start out with mp2 video (from my tivo/VideoRedo decoded). I thought I tried just adding one of those in MyDVD and building a DVD (well actually wrote to an .iso file, then burn to dvd, another trick I learned from these forums). I don't think that worked in that my BR DVD player (Sony BDP-S360) complained about invalid format dvd. What always works is to convert the mp2 to an mp4 via video wave and then use that mp4 file in MyDVD to create the AVCHD dvd. I always choose "same as original". The mp2 to mp4 takes 5 to 1 minutes in videowave and then when MyDVD does it's magic, the preview shows the same encoding going on again at

the same rapid rate :-(. I've never gone from videowave to MyDVD via the "Send to MYDVD" button. I'll have to give that a try. Usually I either go right to MYDVD or run Videowave first, close that down, then bring up MyDVD. I don't like to stack programs as sometimes funny things happen. This way the programs all start with a clean slate. But I wonder if the "Send to MyDVD" button does some magic under the covers that stops the need for the re-encoding. Needless to say I'm following your other thread on re-encoding since I'm in the same boat.

Also thanks for your CPU/Video Card suggestion. Just wish I had it a few months ago. I was looking into getting a slow quad or a fast dual core. After some snooping around I came to the conclusion that a faster dual core was the better way to go since most software doesn't handle quad cores that well and a faster process was better in those cases. (I'm also still running XP and not Win 7). So the dual core 2.93 Ghz is what I got. As for the video card, I just ordered a evga GTS 250 with 1024 MB of memory. That hopefully should be faster than my onboard intel graphics.

 

Sknis,

I hope you are right about those good things you are hearing, because I'm going to be a cuda boy in a few weeks :-) Guess I can let you guys know how well the nvida encoding works. Most of the people here have ATI cards

[sknis]

Creator runs with DirectX 9c.

 

How badly is you hard drive fragmented? Clean it and defrag. Don't have anything else running; including your anti-virus and anti-malware. Are all your resources on the system drive or do you have some on an external drive? What output did you select in Video Wave?

 

Where do you see the sync issue? On your computer or on the disc?

[woodchuckr]

sknis,

I have a separate harddrive that I use to write the mpgs and .iso files to. I defragged that and tried again. It is a little better but after 15 minutes, the sound is a .5 sec slower than the picture. It gets worse as time goes on.

I have Norton 2010 running, but I put that in silent mode so that should not be slowing things down.

The code is on one physical hard drive and the .mpg and .iso are on another physical drive. I did not defrag

the code drive. Just the data drive.

I'm not using videowave. I'm taking MyDVD adding the mpg2 to it and then burning that to an .iso file with the same as original quality. It is an avchd project. I then create a dvd from the .iso file and playing that in the Sony S360 BD DVD player. My guess everything would look fine on the computer.

I never had this problem when using the onboard video chips, but it took FOREVER to encode. Now I have good encode times, but a sync issue.

I'm wondering if I can set something so that Roxio thinks that cuda support is not there and goes back to using hardware not in cuda mode to see if the problem goes away.

[woodchuckr]

Did some more playing and here is what I found.

If I take a MP2 in MyDVD and make an iso file of that and write that to a DVD+RW, I get an invalid dvd from the Sony BDP-S360. The Sony S360 has the latest firmware.

If I take that same .iso file and write it to a DVD+R it plays fine.

If I take the same MP2 file, convert it to a MP4 file with videowave, and then use that as input in MyDVD, and write that to an .iso file. Then take that .iso file and write it to a DVD+RW, then it plays fine.

In both cases MyDVD is doing the final encoding and writing to the .iso file. Not sure why an mp2 to a avchd only works on a dvd+r and an mp4 works to a dvd+rw