How Long Is Too Long (for creating a DVD)

b28c · Post by **b28c** » Mon Apr 04, 2005 5:20 pm

Does it require day & night to create a DVD based upon 1.7GB content?

I suspect that my attempts are incorrect as it often takes nearly an annual quarter to convert videos, moving along 1% per hour.

In brief:
Required/Available hard drive space: 3.3GB/97.3GB
Required/Availalbe disk space: 1.7GB/4.4GB

I select Record to disc, Record speed: max.

I would be grateful to learn of any suggestions. - thank you

thecoalman · Post by **thecoalman** » Mon Apr 04, 2005 5:30 pm

The length of time is subjective to two things mostly:

1. Your system
2. What you have done to the video.

A basic conversion for 1 hour of DV-AVI to DVD compliant MPEG takes about 1 hour with a 3ghz machine. That time only includes the video and is for a straight conversion. If you add a lot of transitions, filters or change the video signifigantly such as adjudting the brightness this time can increase a lot.

The same 1 hour video takes about 2 or 3 hours on a 2.8 ghz machine.

A 2 ghz machine can take the better part of a day to do a straight conversion so yes it's entirely possible for a DVD to take 12 hours to complete. Most of the time required is for converting the video to DVD compliant video. If your video is already compliant and you only have a simple menu the total time to create it including burning could be 1 hour or less even on a very slow machine.

b28c · Post by **b28c** » Mon Apr 04, 2005 5:55 pm

I had no idea that such a fast PC was required to create DVDs.

My Desktop PC is a 1.7GHz, 256MB, Windows XP, using a Benq DVD writer.

htchien · Post by **htchien** » Mon Apr 04, 2005 6:10 pm

The properties of the source video/audio files will be an issue, too.

H.T.

b28c · Post by **b28c** » Mon Apr 04, 2005 6:27 pm

My video files are stored on the main internal hard drive, and the preferences for saving files is an external 120GB hard disk enclosure (via USB v2.0). I prefer to store the conversion files to the internal hard drive when preparing DVDs of smaller quantity, but require the external drive for larger projects.

htchien · Post by **htchien** » Mon Apr 04, 2005 6:41 pm

But sometimes USB 2.0 will be slow because it needs more CPU power to transfer the data. If you do video converting and USB transferring at the same time, it would be possible to be very slow.

If you do wish to use an external drive with enclosure, I would suggest you to use Firewire 1394 instead. However, it will be still not as fast as internal drives but will be much faster than USB.

Hope this helps.

H.T.

b28c · Post by **b28c** » Mon Apr 04, 2005 6:58 pm

that is helpful information, - thank you. I will install integrate the 2nd hard drive to enable faster exchange.

G-Omaha · Post by **G-Omaha** » Mon Apr 04, 2005 8:24 pm

If you have a USB "Tuner or Capture" card, turn it off during the "rendering" as it steals resource just by being attached.

thecoalman · Post by **thecoalman** » Mon Apr 04, 2005 9:59 pm

b28c wrote:I had no idea that such a fast PC was required to create DVDs.

My Desktop PC is a 1.7GHz, 256MB, Windows XP, using a Benq DVD writer.

More RAM may help, don't expect miracles. I always recommend at least 512 for a machine running XP anyway.

Dowload the MSP trial and throw half a dozen video filters, half a dozen audio filters, add a few audio tracks and a bunch of overlays ..... and see how long it takes. You''ll be sitting there for a week.

BTW the example I gave were meant to be in general, no two machines will give you the same results unless they are completely identical.

You could always overclock it. You could probably get another 3 or 4 ghz out of it. Speed for free..... just don't overdue it.

G-Omaha · Post by **G-Omaha** » Mon Apr 04, 2005 10:07 pm

[quote="thecoalman]
You could always overclock it. You could probably get another 3 or 4 ghz out of it. Speed for free..... just don't overdue it.[/quote]

Now, this is something I've gotta see, eeking out another 3 or 4 GHZ form a 1.7 Machine. Please let me know how you do it so I can eek another 6 or 8 GHZ from by 3,4 GHZ P4. Hehehe

I think me meant MHz not GHz - for the uninformed....

thecoalman · Post by **thecoalman** » Mon Apr 04, 2005 11:03 pm

G-Omaha wrote:
I think me meant MHz not GHz - for the uninformed....

No I meant ghz. http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/sho ... ge=1&pp=25

Seriously yes I meant mhz, you can get a few extra mhz with little to no effort. Just a little time.

ruggy1 · Post by **ruggy1** » Tue Apr 05, 2005 2:15 am

With only 256MB memory I would say that your system is paging furiously. My XP takes 240MB just to boot and frequently needs more than 700MB during long MPEG conversions. Time to upgrade I think.