Video conversion/DVD creation takes days?

[jmelvin]

I am attempting to resample and master an XVID encoded AVI documentary to DVD. The file is 592MB, weighing in at 70 minutes. I set the video sampling rate in DVD Workshop to 7000kb/sec to squeeze the entirety of this presentation on one single sided, single layer DVD.

It is "converting video" right now and has been for the past 23 hours and is 42% done. This seems like an incredibly slow process. This couldn't be normal? Any suggestions? My system specs are as follows:

AMD Athlon 64 4000+
2GB dual-channel DDR RAM
400GB 7200RPM HD w/ 173GB free
WinXP Pro SP2


-Jonathan

[Devil]

This is perfectly normal when you try to convert XVID to MPEG, especially if you try to generate more than >6 times as much information as is there in the original (592 Mb becoming ~4 Gb). Can you imagine the mathematics involved?

Patience!

I would like you to tell us whether the resultant quality of the video justified the wait.

[the britisher]

As Devil said.

But a little further clarification - because your AVI file is compressed using the XVID codec. XVID is an MPEG-like codec but has very high compression rates, it can actually produce excellent results but it isn't DVD compliant.

That means that your effectively asking DVD Workshop to uncompress each frame (using your XVID codec) then render and recompress to MPEG2 Format. If you video is PAL, that would mean 105,000 frames! Even with the slightly lowered bit rate, the maths are indeed astronomical.

And IMHO, I do think that DVD Workshop's MPEG encoder is quite slow compared to other software encoders available but as Devil said: Patience.

As is oft’ repeated on these forums the best formats for MPEG conversion are zero to minimally compressed AVIs. DV AVI - for example. XVID and DIVX seem to be the cause of a lot of the problems on this forum, regarding this issue.

I personally use a stand-alone MPEG encoder (very fast) to create DVD compliant MPEGs from uncompressed or minimally compressed AVIs, DVD Workshop has no problem with these and simply writes them to DVD as is.

Like Devil, I too would be interested to know what kind of quality your resultant DVD is.

Regards

the britisher

[davidjatt58]

Hi Jonathan

I tend to use the free VSO DIVX 2 DVDtool which takes in your DIVX file (plus a variety of other formats) and outputs VOB and IFO files ready to author in DWS.

It's fast (takes mins not hours) and I've never had any probs with it.

There is a retail version now with more features, however the freebie one is still more than adequate for getting quality results onto DVD. Feature list: here

[jmelvin]

It was around 47-48% done last time I checked. An hour later, it was completed. So much for the slider bar approximation. The whole process took roughly 25 hours.

Image quality is decent. There is certainly some artifacting, especially noticeable on marquee block text on black background. Its satisfactory. Oh... and I did do NTSC. Audio fidelity sounds like the original source.

I will definately check out that VSO DIVX 2 DVD tool in the future. I'm anxious to hear others' thoughts on VSO and other similar tools. Thank you all for the quick input!

-Jonathan

[DVDDoug]

Make sure that DMA is enabled for your hard drive. I don't know about WinXP, but For Win2K it is disabled by default. My process is simpler, (I'm usually working with MPEGs) but turning-on DMA for the hard drives & burner cut the rendering+burning time in half or better!

I haven't used DIVX/XVID, but from what I've read on this forum, what you are doing is a notoriously slow process, if it works at all!

Can you imagine the mathematics involved?

Well, the player can decode the file in real-time, so the decode step shouldn't take any longer than playing the video! And with lossy compression, it's easier to decode than to encode. The compression algorithm has to determine what data to keep, and what data to loose... That's the tricky part. The decoder only has to deal with whatever data it's given.