Question re: time for DVD generation

[glashoppah]

I have the following:

Canon HV20 HD video camera with IEEE1384 interface
Homebuilt PC using an Athlon dual core x64 processor, 2G RAM, RAID0+1 primary logical drive using 4x Raptor SATA drives, a secondary storage drive using USB v2.0, and an XFX GeForce 7800GTX video card. I'm using the motherboard's firewire interface.

I bought Movie Factory 6. I've updated it with the two patches. I've had Movie Factory pull about an hour's worth of video off of the recorder's tape and have it as four files on my hard disk. As my first experiment with this software, taking the defaults I've told it to use these files to make a DVD, and I've clicked the "burn" button.

Since doing so my computer has been sitting, with lots of drive activity and a constant 40-60% CPU utilization on both processor cores, for an hour and forty minutes, without any progress displayed in the software's window. It's sitting at "4%" and the message in the "Detailed Progress" bar is "Converting video of the title."

The "title" in question is about 4G in size and is again, one of four pulled from the camera.

Is this about right - over an hour and a half to get to the 4% mark? How long should this take? Moviemaking isn't going to be much fun if it takes days to burn a single DVD from my MPEG files.

Thanks for your time,

g.

[glashoppah]

I have the following:

Canon HV20 HD video camera with IEEE1384 interface
Homebuilt PC using an Athlon dual core x64 processor, 2G RAM, RAID0+1 primary logical drive using 4x Raptor SATA drives, a secondary storage drive using USB v2.0, and an XFX GeForce 7800GTX video card. I'm using the motherboard's firewire interface.

I bought Movie Factory 6. I've updated it with the two patches. I've had Movie Factory pull about an hour's worth of video off of the recorder's tape and have it as four files on my hard disk. As my first experiment with this software, taking the defaults I've told it to use these files to make a DVD, and I've clicked the "burn" button.

Since doing so my computer has been sitting, with lots of drive activity and a constant 40-60% CPU utilization on both processor cores, for an hour and forty minutes, without any progress displayed in the software's window. It's sitting at "4%" and the message in the "Detailed Progress" bar is "Converting video of the title."

The "title" in question is about 4G in size and is again, one of four pulled from the camera.

Is this about right - over an hour and a half to get to the 4% mark? How long should this take? Moviemaking isn't going to be much fun if it takes days to burn a single DVD from my MPEG files.

Thanks for your time,

g.

It's now been over 4 hours, and still no change - lots of drive activity and CPU, but still at 4%.



g.

[glashoppah]

It's now been over 4 hours, and still no change - lots of drive activity and CPU, but still at 4%.



g.

5 hours, 4%. This CAN'T be right.

g.

[DVDDoug]

Something is probably wrong. I don't have HD, so I don't how long it should take to re-code. (People who work with DivX/Xvid often complain that it takes 8-12 hours to re-code. This seems to be the worst-case... except when it completely fails to finish.)

Apparently, Movie Factory is having trouble re-coding the format from your particular camera. Maybe somebody with a similar camera can help you. There are many different video file formats, and many variations of each format. The Corel programs can't handle every variation.

[etech6355]

As my first experiment with this software, taking the defaults I've told it to use these files to make a DVD, and I've clicked the "burn" button.

I would first work in the HD-DVD module, export the videos to Standard Defintion. ReStart MF6+ and go into the DVD module. Import the SD videos you exported from the HD-DVD module. This method works for me and you can create/burn a dvd pretty fast because the source videos are dvd compliant.

First you should setup your "Preferences" (F6 Hotkey) and change the Quality to BEST, also assign a working folder to an NTFS partition that's at least twice the size of your project (some have reported needing more than double).
Make sure your in the HD-DVD module, make sure your "Project Settings" under the GEAR icon are the same as your source videos (the video & audio properties).
I would convert them first to standard definition by using the "Export" feature. You can go to Export -> Customize -> Options and set the encoding parameters for DVD compliant video. Then save the video making sure to assign UpperFieldFirst & 16:9 aspect ratio, I would use VBR 9000kbs because of the source videos high quality.
You can also make custom templates up first and instead of going through all the above you simply use "Export -> Your_Custom_Template".
After you have converted the HD files to SD then start a new DVD project. Insert the SD videos into the timeline, create chapters, menu & burn a dvd (do not edit the videos). The process will go fast because the SD mpeg2 source files are dvd compliant & MF will not re-encode them again. MF will simply multi-plex them into their dvd folders.
For you first dvd make a simple dvd. No motion menus or background audio and no menu transisions. This way you get the hang of how in the last module MF works. Motion Menus, background audio, menu transisions can increase the rendering time considerably.

More help can be found by searching the MF forum looking for "Project Settings" "Disc Templates" & "Workflow"
Here's a link:
http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic. ... 763#132763

[glashoppah]

As my first experiment with this software, taking the defaults I've told it to use these files to make a DVD, and I've clicked the "burn" button.

I would first work in the HD-DVD module, export the videos to Standard Defintion. ReStart MF6+ and go into the DVD module. Import the SD videos you exported from the HD-DVD module. This method works for me and you can create/burn a dvd pretty fast because the source videos are dvd compliant.

First you should setup your "Preferences" (F6 Hotkey) and change the Quality to BEST, also assign a working folder to an NTFS partition that's at least twice the size of your project (some have reported needing more than double).
Make sure your in the HD-DVD module, make sure your "Project Settings" under the GEAR icon are the same as your source videos (the video & audio properties).
I would convert them first to standard definition by using the "Export" feature. You can go to Export -> Customize -> Options and set the encoding parameters for DVD compliant video. Then save the video making sure to assign UpperFieldFirst & 16:9 aspect ratio, I would use VBR 9000kbs because of the source videos high quality.
You can also make custom templates up first and instead of going through all the above you simply use "Export -> Your_Custom_Template".
After you have converted the HD files to SD then start a new DVD project. Insert the SD videos into the timeline, create chapters, menu & burn a dvd (do not edit the videos). The process will go fast because the SD mpeg2 source files are dvd compliant & MF will not re-encode them again. MF will simply multi-plex them into their dvd folders.
For you first dvd make a simple dvd. No motion menus or background audio and no menu transisions. This way you get the hang of how in the last module MF works. Motion Menus, background audio, menu transisions can increase the rendering time considerably.

More help can be found by searching the MF forum looking for "Project Settings" "Disc Templates" & "Workflow"
Here's a link:
http://phpbb.ulead.com.tw/EN/viewtopic. ... 763#132763

Thanks for all the info. I had come to the conclusion that the software is just poor at conversions and ordered a tool called "TotalConverter" online. It converted the video in about 40 minutes, which, as you note, DVD MovieFactory was able to burn without conversion (and is doing so as we speak).

I will experiment with the software using your excellent tips and see if I can avoid this intermediary step.

Thanks again.

g.