Encoding For Blu Ray Takes Forever. Why?

[Shakin_Handz]

Hi there. I have a i5 2500K with 16GB of Ram, running Mac OS Lion 10.7.2 and I'm using Toast 11 Titanium with the Blu ray Plugin. Encoding for any full-length Blu ray from a Mpeg-4 video file is taking 30-48 hours. I just think this is unreasonable and I'm wondering why it's taking so long and if this is normal. When encoding it seems Toast is using only about 1/4-1/3 of my processing power. Is there any way to get it to utilize more? I appreciate any help on this. Thank you to anyone for their response.

[tsantee]

I've noticed the extremely long encoding times as well. I suggest creating a 1-minute clip of one of your videos and conducting some tests. By choosing Save as Disc Image instead of clicking the burn button you won't need any discs to do these tests. Go to the custom encoder settings window by clicking the Customize... button and then click the Encoding tab and Custom button in the window that appears. Change the encoder to MPEG 2. Toast has its own MPEG 2 encoder and that may be faster than the MPEG 4 encoding. Or you can keep the MPEG 4 format and see if Never Re-encode causes Toast to multiplex rather than encode the video.

 

Remember when doing these tests to empty the Roxio Converted Items folder between tests because Toast will otherwise re-use any already-encoded video files located there when it can which defeats the purpose of timing how long the encoding takes.

[Shakin_Handz]

I've noticed the extremely long encoding times as well. I suggest creating a 1-minute clip of one of your videos and conducting some tests. By choosing Save as Disc Image instead of clicking the burn button you won't need any discs to do these tests. Go to the custom encoder settings window by clicking the Customize... button and then click the Encoding tab and Custom button in the window that appears. Change the encoder to MPEG 2. Toast has its own MPEG 2 encoder and that may be faster than the MPEG 4 encoding. Or you can keep the MPEG 4 format and see if Never Re-encode causes Toast to multiplex rather than encode the video.

 

Remember when doing these tests to empty the Roxio Converted Items folder between tests because Toast will otherwise re-use any already-encoded video files located there when it can which defeats the purpose of timing how long the encoding takes.

 

 

Will switching to Mpeg-2 hurt the quality though? I appreciate your speedy reply. Also when hitting never reencode will it format it to play on a bluray player? Or is that what you mean by multiplex? Thanks again.

[tsantee]

Will switching to Mpeg-2 hurt the quality though? I appreciate your speedy reply. Also when hitting never reencode will it format it to play on a bluray player? Or is that what you mean by multiplex? Thanks again.

You won't see any difference in quality. MPEG 2 has a somewhat larger file size so if you are nearing the space limits on the disc MPEG 2 would require a lower bit rate than MPEG 4 which can result in lesser quality, but in most cases either is equally good. I doubt if choosing Never Re-encode will avoid having Toast encode your video, but if it did result in multiplexing there is no change in the source video at all. Toast insists on encoding the video if needed to meet the Blu-ray specs.

[Shakin_Handz]

Now is there a reason why Toast won't use all of my processing power? I have a four-core CPU (i5 2500k) and it tends to use 95%-150% power 200% power if I'm lucky. (400% would be all four cores full-load) It seems it's just neglecting it while as Handbrake for conversion uses it all and is much faster. Just seems like a waste. Also what you told me to do works, and offers me way better speeds. Now do I need to have NTSC conversion on Blu ray or is PAL fine? Thank you so much for all your help. Also, customizing bit rate settings, what is typically a good average and max bit rate for 1080 and 720 if you know. Thanks.

[tsantee]

Now is there a reason why Toast won't use all of my processing power? I have a four-core CPU (i5 2500k) and it tends to use 95%-150% power 200% power if I'm lucky. (400% would be all four cores full-load) It seems it's just neglecting it while as Handbrake for conversion uses it all and is much faster. Just seems like a waste. Also what you told me to do works, and offers me way better speeds. Now do I need to have NTSC conversion on Blu ray or is PAL fine? Thank you so much for all your help. Also, customizing bit rate settings, what is typically a good average and max bit rate for 1080 and 720 if you know. Thanks.

I don't know the answer. I thought one of the benefits of Toast 11 is that it now uses multiple processors. I don't know why it isn't.

[pruthe]

I just passed in some HD video from Final Cut Express to Toast 11 and now doing encode (MP2) for BD disc image. All 4 cores on my old Intel Mac Pro pretty much pegged out. For 50 mins of HD video, I estimate will take maybe 3 hours to encode. I used default "Best" settings on Toast.

[dasprot]

Same problem here.

 

i7 3,4 Ghz, 8 GB RAM, 10.7.2

 

Toast is at around 60-80% on each core until it hits the 1% mark after a short time.

After that it drops to 13-15% on each core.

Tried mpeg2 and the standard best settings.

 

Any help would be appreciated

 

Edit: Handbrake is currently at about 25-35% cpu load and reencodes my mkv (from 35GB down to 23GB) within an hour... Which settings would one have to use to create a file which is not required to be encoded by Toast again? And maybe also a software recommendation?

[mentalmike]

To be fair one has to acknowledge a few basic facts on this topic:

1. Encoding video through software is a (CPU) labor intensive process

2. Toast 11 is a multi-processor aware application

3. Toast is not a product designed for high-throughput, production oriented applications. It's intended primarily for the amateur/hobbyist audience.

 

Having said that I would agree that it is onerously slow at certain tasks. Re-encoding between PAL and NTSC and/or compression of HD source are tasks that Toast seems to struggle with. In comparison to other applications such as Handbrake the code does not utilize multiple processors nearly as efficiently as it should. However, in the end Toast 11 is capable of achieving an impressively wide variety of AV related processing jobs. Due diligence, troubleshooting and patience will usually pay dividends in the long haul. Finally, I would strongly endorse the advice of other in this and other related forums in that it is very wise to test the process by creating an image file first rather than jumping straight to the burn to optical media. If your disk image is satisfactory it is a simple process to burn the image to any variety of media using Toast.

 

MacPro 2x2.4GHz Quad-Core, 20GB RAM, OSX v10.7.5