Best Upgrade to Speed Up DVD Encoding/Authoring?

[UTmtnbiker]

I recently picked up a 4x DVD+/- burner and started burning DVDs. I've been doing a lot of them lately and would like some suggestions on what I can upgrade on my PC to decrease the time.

I'm using DVD Decrypter to rip the DVDs on to my hard drive and from what I've read, there's really nothing I can do to decrease the time here. However, I'm hoping I can cut some time off in the shrinking/re-authoring stage. I'm using DVDShrink 3.1, usually shrinking the files down to 1 disc. I always do 'Deep Analysis' as it supposedly gives better picture quality. This basically doubles my shrinking time, so it's usually somewhere around 40 to 50 minutes per shrink. I don't know if this process is CPU limited, memory limited, or something else. If anybody has any suggestions on how this time can be cut down, I'd appreciate it.

My rig:

Biostar M7NCD Pro Mobo
AMD AXP 2500+ OC'ed to 3200+ (11x200)
512 PC2700 RAM in dual channel running 2.5-2-2-11
Memorex 4x DVD +/- burner
Khypermedia 48x CD burner
Primary HD (C = 250 GB WD SE in 1 250GB partition
Secondary HD (D) = 2 x 80GB 8MB cache running in RAID 0 in 1 160GB partition
Audigy 2
Firewire PCI card

I think that's it. I just upgraded the CPU about 2 weeks ago from an AXP 2000+.

TIA.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

You don't need DVDDecrypter with DVDShrink, just let DVDShrink handle the whole thing right off the disc, it'll be faster. BTW, is 40-50 minutes for deep analysis a typical time for you with that 3200+? You must be running asynch mode with that 2700DDR too. I have a A64 3000+@2.2ghz and I just backed up UnderWorld, and with deep analysis it took 14m 23s, even my Barton@2.35ghz 408DDR dual channel synch mode only took maybe 5 min or so more tops on a film that length, so 40-50min for a film shorter than say BraveHeart or LOTR seems a bit long for your system to me. Are you turning off video preview during the transcode? Because that slows things down quite a bit.

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Hey, another question for ya, are you putting it on the RAID drives or primary? That 250GB being 1 partition is a bad idea too from what I've read.

 

[UTmtnbiker]

I'm usually putting it on the primary 250GB drive. You are correct in that I'm running my RAM in async mode as I'm not sure if I can OC my memory up to PC3200 speeds (Crucial).

I'd say it's about 40 minutes typical re-coding a full DVD.

 

[MercenaryForHire]

Get some PC3200 or better RAM and start dumping your DVDs to the RAID partition. Should cut that time down pretty handily.

- M4H

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Originally posted by: MercenaryForHire
Get some PC3200 or better RAM and start dumping your DVDs to the RAID partition. Should cut that time down pretty handily.

- M4H

Good advice, 'bout time you used your gord for something other than cyber pimp slapping noobs and trolls in OT son

 

[UTmtnbiker]

So would it be safe to say that re-coding DVD's is disk and memory intensive more so than CPU intensive or is more of an 'all of the above' intensive?

 

[DAPUNISHER]

I should think it's all of the above, but I'm no coder or IEEE type so my technical understanding of the program and it's utilization of the hardware are somewhat lacking. I do know that moving to a faster platform as far as HDD performance and memory bandwidth had resulted in a decrease in time using DVDShrink despite the CPU running at lower mhz.

 

[UTmtnbiker]

Thanks guys. I'll move the ripped files over to the RAID 0 and go see if I can push the memory speed up somewhat.

I'll also second it's nice to see M4H not beating down the new kids on the block.

 

[chocoruacal]

Originally posted by: UTmtnbiker
So would it be safe to say that re-coding DVD's is disk and memory intensive more so than CPU intensive or is more of an 'all of the above' intensive?

No. Not at all. Its mostly CPU. Memory Ballers are going to argue of course, but in my experience, using both 512MB and 1024MB on my system (2500@2.3ghz, Abit NF7-S) made zero difference in encoding/transcoding times. This would with Tmpgenc, Xvid, CCE, DVDShrink, DVD2one, and so on.

If i'm reading your sig right, the biggest bottleneck might be your pc2700 RAM...if you are running your RAM and FSB asynch. If the RAM is at 200mhz as well, then just about the only thing that would result in significant speed increases would be a faster chip, something in the P4 family. One thing you can try is always use separate drives for reading/writing during the DVD process. But I hope you already have been doing that

 

[Todd33]

Deep analysis is slow. 30+ min is normal, I don't think any CPU or memory tweak is going to help. They guy who says he does it in 5 min is full of BS. Maybe if the movie is < 4.8GB so no shrinking is needed is it going to be that fast. I did notice you have a DVD burner and CD burner, are you ripping with the DVD burner? That is slow, at least for me. Get a fast lighton combo drive for $40 (CD burner and 16X DVD player).

 

[MangoTBG]

So would it be safe to say that re-coding DVD's is disk and memory intensive more so than CPU intensive or is more of an 'all of the above' intensive?

I think it's also limitied by drive speed (the DVD drive) but you shouldn't have to worry about that if you just got a new DVD drive.

 

[MangoTBG]

Originally posted by: Todd33
Deep analysis is slow. 30+ min is normal, I don't think any CPU or memory tweak is going to help. They guy who says he does it in 5 min is full of BS. Maybe if the movie is < 4.8GB so no shrinking is needed is it going to be that fast. I did notice you have a DVD burner and CD burner, are you ripping with the DVD burner? That is slow, at least for me. Get a fast lighton combo drive for $40 (CD burner and 16X DVD player).

I'm afraid he's not full of BS, but rather you skipped a few words after "5 min". Here, let me help you...

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER
You don't need DVDDecrypter with DVDShrink, just let DVDShrink handle the whole thing right off the disc, it'll be faster. BTW, is 40-50 minutes for deep analysis a typical time for you with that 3200+? You must be running asynch mode with that 2700DDR too. I have a A64 3000+@2.2ghz and I just backed up UnderWorld, and with deep analysis it took 14m 23s, even my Barton@2.35ghz 408DDR dual channel synch mode only took maybe 5 min or so more tops on a film that length, so 40-50min for a film shorter than say BraveHeart or LOTR seems a bit long for your system to me. Are you turning off video preview during the transcode? Because that slows things down quite a bit.

Today's reading lesson is brought to you by Coke (TM).

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Today's reading lesson is brought to you by Coke (TM)

and the letters F and U Todd Thanks Mango! :beer:

 

[Netopia]

In three different nForce machines, I've taken Crucial PC2700 up to 215MHz. I usually have to change the timings to around 8-3-3-3 or so, but then I can run my memory and CPU sync, and it makes it SOOOOO much faster!

I must say though, I'm rather amazed at 15 minutes for a full DVD shrinkage. I'm only just starting at this stuff, but I remember a couple of years ago making a bunch of SVCD's and although I was using an Athlon with 512MB PC133, it really seemed to take forever... like 2 hours + for the whole process for a single movie.

Joe

 

[Netopia]

I think I stand somewhat corrected!

I just used DVDshrink for the first time. I AM IMPRESSED!

The movie I used was The Devil's Own. It's 111 minutes long... so NOT a super long movie, but not a shorty either.

Just for kicks, I made it recompress the movie to 75% to see what it would look like.

The machine I did it on is an Athlon 1800+ in a KT7A (KT133a) motherboard. I pushed the FSB and Memory (PC133 SDRAM) to 145MHz, so the CPU is now running at 2000+ speed and the ram is about 9% faster than normal. I've got two hard drives in the machine... an older IBM GXP75 30Gig and a newer GXP120 80Gig. The program is running on the 80Gig and saving files to the 30 Gig.

Deep Analysis took about 12.5 minutes. The ripping and reducing to 75% took another 17 minutes. So that's less than 30 minutes on a machine that is by no means top of the line. I could see where an Opteron based System @ 2.2GHz with 200MHz DDR and VERY fast drives could make a SIGNIFICANT reduction in time. DAPUNISHER says that his A64 system does it in about half the time as mine and that his "Barton@2.35ghz 408DDR dual channel synch" system only does it about 9 minutes faster than mine.

I would say 2 things, DAPUNISHER 's A64 system ROCKS and so does DVDShrink!

Joe

 

[UTmtnbiker]

Okay, I've OC'ed my memory up to PC3200 speeds and I'm copying the ripped/encoded/re-authored files to my RAID0. Maybe I'm doing something wrong, but I'm still getting around 35 minutes to rip & shrink the DVD.

I'm thinking...does compression ratio have anything to do with it? I'm usually compressing my things to about 65% of normal. Also..I'm wondering if I'm doing the procedure correctly.

I'm clicking on the 'Open' button, selecting the drive with the DVD in it, hitting OK so it loads the disc bascially in to the program. Then I hit 'Backup', adjust all the ratios, sound, extras, etc that I want. I let DVDShrink do the Auto adjusting of the ratio. Then I go to the 3rd tab over, make sure I have 'Deep Analysis' checked, put in the path where I want the shrunken file placed (on my RAID) and hit OK. According to DVDShrink's calc, my disc takes about 35 minutes.

I also upgraded to 3.1.2 of DVDShrink as I was using 3.1 and I thought maybe that had something to do with it.

Just curious as it seems everybody else is kicking my kiester on this....or just slap me around a little bit and tell me to quit my whining!

 

[DAPUNISHER]

Something is wrong me thinks, maybe your ATAPI isn't very fast? You are definitelty backing up correctly since you aren't re-authoring. I had only backed up LXG and UnderWorld since those are the only 2 DVDs I've bought since building the A64, and I was able to keep the main movies uncompressed. Since you mentioned compression I thought I'd better try a movie I'd have to compress even after killing all superfluous content. So, I backed up Gladiator using deep analysis and here is the result with my A64@2.2ghz 440DDR with a 120gb 8mb cache Deathstar using my K8USA with AMD8151 northbridge using MSI 16x DVD-ROM and settings and procedure same as you listed which is my preferred settings as well. 19m 20s that's a 155min movie.

 

[ScrapSilicon]

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER
Something is wrong me thinks, maybe your ATAPI isn't very fast? You are definitelty backing up correctly since you aren't re-authoring. I had only backed up LXG and UnderWorld since those are the only 2 DVDs I've bought since building the A64, and I was able to keep the main movies uncompressed. Since you mentioned compression I thought I'd better try a movie I'd have to compress even after killing all superfluous content. So, I backed up Gladiator using deep analysis and here is the result with my A64@2.2ghz 440DDR with a 120gb 8mb cache Deathstar using my K8USA with AMD8151 northbridge using MSI 16x DVD-ROM and settings and procedure same as you listed which is my preferred settings as well. 19m 20s that's a 155min movie.

nothing wrong with his main setup..it is that Memorex DVD writer..most DVD writers when using for ripping..suck(unless fw modded) ..my LG 4480B regularly rips @ 6x-8x but my current dru510a only at 2x..

 

[DAPUNISHER]

nothing wrong with his main setup..it is that Memorex DVD writer..most DVD writers when using for ripping..suck(unless fw modded) ..my LG 4480B regularly rips @ 6x-8x but my current dru510a only at 2x..

that makes the most sense.

 

[ScrapSilicon]

Originally posted by: DAPUNISHER

nothing wrong with his main setup..it is that Memorex DVD writer..most DVD writers when using for ripping..suck(unless fw modded) ..my LG 4480B regularly rips @ 6x-8x but my current dru510a only at 2x..

that makes the most sense.

not sure how long DVDDecrypter took on the batch of XMen2 files..but DVD2One took 17:11 (2hrs 13mins/7.23GB down to 4.229GB) on my setup(an35n ultra/2500+@3000+/1.5GB of Kingston pc2700) to setup the files be burned..