Painfully slow DVD video title processing

[HipNGroovy1]

When creating a DVD, both editing, and rendering of menu titles is slow enough to indicate a bug. It works, but is way too slow.

About 3/4 of the time to render a DVD is spent "Converting video title...", while the progress bars indicate that it should be only a few percent of the time.

While editing the menus, just populating the menu template list can take over a minute.

Details:
VS9, NTSC,
the input/output file format settings don't seem to matter

Any help would be appreciated, Thanks!

[heinz-oz]

When creating a DVD, both editing, and rendering of menu titles is slow enough to indicate a bug. It works, but is way too slow.

About 3/4 of the time to render a DVD is spent "Converting video title...", while the progress bars indicate that it should be only a few percent of the time.

While editing the menus, just populating the menu template list can take over a minute.

Details:
VS9, NTSC,
the input/output file format settings don't seem to matter

Any help would be appreciated, Thanks!

The computer spec's do matter. Did it work at one stage?

[2Dogs]

While editing the menus, just populating the menu template list can take over a minute.

It sounds like something's not right!

You need to fill in the "System" part of your profile.

It's the kind of thing you might normally attribute to a lack of RAM - but I've found VS9 works OK with only 256Mb and up. Do you have integrated graphics, by any chance? These can often "share" RAM, which could cause the slow downs you describe.

Try running Task Manager, and click on the "Performance" tab, then keep an eye on "Available" Physical Memory.

You should also turn off uneeded programs and services and the screensaver, and make sure you are using an "always on" power setting.

Good luck!

[brianosmi]

When I am converting probably at least 3/4 of my rendering time is converting video title as well. I believe this is normal and is how mine has always worked. This makes sense to me, as the video title is the main bulk of the DVD being created. If you add more than one title to the DVD (i.e., several VS projects) then you will watch the progress bar advance for each individual title that has been added.

[HipNGroovy1]

Thanks all for the replies!

To heinz-oz:

I have filled in my computer spec.

Did it ever work?
It was much faster under VS8, but of course, VS8 didn't have motion menus, and it had other bugs that prevented me from working. VS9 has always been slow like this for me.

To 2Dogs:

I will check the available memory as you suggested, but I suspect that isn't the problem, since I have 1GB. Screen savers and background tasks are definitely not the problem.

When I am converting probably at least 3/4 of my rendering time is converting video title as well. I believe this is normal and is how mine has always worked. This makes sense to me, as the video title is the main bulk of the DVD being created. If you add more than one title to the DVD (i.e., several VS projects) then you will watch the progress bar advance for each individual title that has been added.

Hmm... For a full DVD, it's taking about 3 hours to process the video titles, and about 1 hour for everything else, including the actual burn (8x). The motion menus are 30 seconds each, and I usually have 3 of them (2 titles, one chapter menu each). I find it hard to believe that it's normal to take 3 hours to generate 90 seconds of video, while everything else is generated at much better than real time.

[heinz-oz]

Must be something else on your system that is slowing you down. How much RAM is being used when it slows? Some other programs you have run previously may have left some TSR's behind, hogging RAM.

I suspect background programs that you may not even know about. In task manager, check which modules are running, what they are and if they are needed at the time. Shut down all unnecessary processes and try again.

[Ken Berry]

Ever the pedant, I wonder if we are confusing terms here. HipNGroovy is seeing 'converting video title' as meaning the animated menu titles he has created. Others of us, including me, however, see 'video title' as referring to the main video clips themselves. (If you look at a burned DVD structure in Windows Media Player, for instance, you will see a number of 'Titles' sub-divided into 'Chapters', where the Titles are in fact the main video clips on the DVD.)

Seeing 'converting video title' in the burning module context to me would thus tend to indicate that HipNGroovy has either (1) skipped the Share > Create Video File > DVD step and gone straight to Share > Create Disc step; or (2) if indeed he/she did in fact first produce a DVD-compatible mpeg-2 file(s), then somehow or other it was either not fully DVD-compatible or for some reason, Video Studio is re-rendering it. Either way, conversion/rendering of the original video should not be taking place at the burning stage, though would certainly account for a lengthy burning process. (Whether it should be as long as 3 or 4 hours is another matter entirely, though it is conceivable...)

The recommended procedure is outlined in the top sticky post on this Board. To summarise, you should NOT be going straight from the project in the timeline to the burn module (Share > Create Disc > DVD). INSTEAD, you should use the preferred method which is to first produce a DVD-compatible mpeg-2 file (Share > Create Video File > DVD). Once you have this file, close your current project, and then click Share > Create Disc > DVD. This will open the burning module. Insert your DVD-compatible file(s).

***Important: Make sure you click on 'Do not convert compliant mpeg-2 files' in the little cog-wheel icon in the bottom left of the burning module screen.

Add your menu, chapters etc, and burn either the DVD itself or produce a disc image or Video_TS folder if you intend to burn more copies later.

If you are not using this method -- though you are certainly free not to, if it consistently works another way -- then the wide experience here is that you are asking for trouble.

[HipNGroovy1]

Firstly, I just checked for memory usage and background tasks using the task manager. I have about a half a gig of unused physical memory, and there is no other process hogging the CPU, so these are not the issue.

Ever the pedant, I wonder if we are confusing terms here. HipNGroovy is seeing 'converting video title' as meaning the animated menu titles he has created. Others of us, including me, however, see 'video title' as referring to the main video clips themselves. (If you look at a burned DVD structure in Windows Media Player, for instance, you will see a number of 'Titles' sub-divided into 'Chapters', where the Titles are in fact the main video clips on the DVD.)

Ah... Yes, that is in fact how I have interpreted the meaning of 'coverting video title'. The main reason I came to that conclusion is that the 'Total progress' bar only moves a few percent for the entire process of converting video titles. Also, there is another step which is called something like 'Rendering video data', which takes over 50% on the 'total' progress bar. I might be remembering the name wrong, but in your interpretation, what is the meaning of this other step that is expected to take more than half the total time? Another reason for my belief is that IIRC, VS8 was MUCH faster at the 'Converting video titles' step, and VS8 didn't have any motion menus. The way I remember VS8, the 'converting video titles' step was only about 10-15 minutes.

Seeing 'converting video title' in the burning module context to me would thus tend to indicate that HipNGroovy has either (1) skipped the Share > Create Video File > DVD step and gone straight to Share > Create Disc step; ... Either way, conversion/rendering of the original video should not be taking place at the burning stage, though would certainly account for a lengthy burning process. (Whether it should be as long as 3 or 4 hours is another matter entirely, though it is conceivable...)
...
If you are not using this method -- though you are certainly free not to, if it consistently works another way -- then the wide experience here is that you are asking for trouble.

Yes, you are correct. My source files are mpeg-2 files generated by ATI software that should be DVD compatible. I've already been through a useless exchange with ULead's support about why VS8 was re-rendering these files when it didn't need to. However, VS8 was significantly faster than VS9.

As I said at the head of this thread, everything actually works fairly consistently. The problem is that this one part of the burn process got 10x slower under VS9 than VS8. I may have some setting wrong somewhere, but it doesn't seem right to me.

I'm just remembering that I've noticed that when populating the menu template selection list in the Create Disc wizard, sometimes Norton Anti-Virus pops up to check something for viruses. It's almost as though the menu templates are getting downloaded from the internet. Anyone know what's up with that?

Thanks for your help!

[lancecarr]

Just on the Norton thing, you should definitley have that shut down whilst working video projects. Norton does not just check incoming data, it checks just about every move you make on the computer, connected to the intenet or not.

[brianosmi]

To summarise, you should NOT be going straight from the project in the timeline to the burn module (Share > Create Disc > DVD). INSTEAD, you should use the preferred method which is to first produce a DVD-compatible mpeg-2 file (Share > Create Video File > DVD). Once you have this file, close your current project, and then click Share > Create Disc > DVD. This will open the burning module. Insert your DVD-compatible file(s).

It is great to pick up a new best practice from this. I have always went straight from the project to Create Disc. I will try this different method and see what kind of results I get.

Thanks,
Brian Allen

[2Dogs]

Hi HipNGroovy1, in your second post, you wrote:

Screen savers and background tasks are definitely not the problem.

yet you then later told us that you had Norton anti virus running.

You need to read the reponses to your posts more carefully, and try to follow the advice - otherwise you are just giving people (who are trying to help resolve your problem) the runaround.

It seems clear that you are not managing to get VS to perform Smart Render. Smart Rendering an MPEG-2 file may be 25 times faster than re-encoding it on your system. Make sure that you follow the Recommended Procedure to the letter. And beware, there are many settings and default values that can conspire against you.

It will make a difference if you stop Windows services that you don't need. It doesn't matter if they aren't apparently using cpu capacity when you look at them in Task Manager - they still slow things down. When running VS on my own system, I have 12 processes running, including VS and Task Manager itself.

Having said that, however, the biggest benefit to you will arise from getting Smart render to work.

[sjj1805]

2dogs

When running VS on my own system, I have 12 processes running, including VS and Task Manager itself.

I've been tinkering about with a "Video Editing" profile disabling all sorts of things. I haven't got it down that far yet. Care to share with us what the 12 are you have running?

Regards
Steve J

[2Dogs]

Hey Steve,

I thought you'd never ask!

Here are the 11 without VS, in order:

explorer.exe
svchost.exe
svchost.exe
lsass.exe
services.exe
winlogon.exe
csrss.exe
smss.exe
taskmgr.exe
System
System Idle Process

In order to get it down to these few, I'm running a "bare bones" hardware profile, with many services disabled - such as those relating to networking for example.

By contrast, my Windows Default hardware profile runs 22 services, with 6 of them relating to my anti virus and firewall (AVG & ZoneAlarm) If I stop as many services as possible in that configuration, I end up with 12 services - all of the above plus spoolsv.exe. Although you can easily stop spoolsv.exe in task manager, it will start again after 5 minutes - and you wouldn't want that to happen when capturing/rendering. Note however that I have System Restore, Remote Access, Indexing Service and Messenger disabled.

I still use SP1 on my video pc, so results with SP2 might differ slightly.

[sjj1805]

Many thanks, I Have SP2 so will let you know what I manage to get it down to.

Regards
Steve J

[HipNGroovy1]

yet you then later told us that you had Norton anti virus running.

You need to read the reponses to your posts more carefully, and try to follow the advice - otherwise you are just giving people (who are trying to help resolve your problem) the runaround.

I stand by what I said. Norton anti virus seems to be the cause of the slow loading of menu templates, but is not related to the slow progress of "converting video titles", which is my main concern.

It seems clear that you are not managing to get VS to perform Smart Render. Smart Rendering an MPEG-2 file may be 25 times faster than re-encoding it on your system. Make sure that you follow the Recommended Procedure to the letter. And beware, there are many settings and default values that can conspire against you.

I think you might be right about smart rendering. Video Studio's user interface is neither intuitive, nor well documented. The reason for posting here is to get insight into the settings you allude to. I want to understand what's going on, not just follow a recipe - especially since I have other reasons why I don't want to follow the recipe anyways.

Which settings might affect smart render? I have always had the "Instant Playback" method selected, which is the only setting the documentation mentions related to smart render (and doesn't even say where the setting is found).

It will make a difference if you stop Windows services that you don't need. It doesn't matter if they aren't apparently using cpu capacity when you look at them in Task Manager - they still slow things down. When running VS on my own system, I have 12 processes running, including VS and Task Manager itself.

Killing tasks might shorten the time from 4 hours to 3 hours and 58 minutes. I am more concerned about why it takes 4 hours instead of 2, like it did under VS8.