Converting DV to WMV

lsilver · Post by **lsilver** » Sat Jan 22, 2005 4:14 am

I am converting a file captured in DV to WMV format. The file was captured using the "Recommend Procedures". It seems like the conversion to WMV is taking forever. It's converting a few seconds at a time, pauses, a few more seconds, pause, etc. At least that's what it looks like on the preview. As an example, it's taken about 1 1/2 hours to convert 20 minutes.

Is this normal? At this rate it seems like it's better to just capture again but go straight to WMV.

lsilver · Post by **lsilver** » Sun Jan 23, 2005 3:14 am

Any thoughts?

THoff · Post by **THoff** » Sun Jan 23, 2005 3:39 am

It may be normal, it's hard to tell without knowing about your system. Processor speed and type impact transcoding speeds greatly -- for instance, the SSE/SSE2/SSE3 instructionset extensions give Intel processors a longstanding advantage when it comes to multimedia encoding.

lsilver · Post by **lsilver** » Mon Jan 24, 2005 6:35 pm

I have a Dell Inspiron 9200, Pentium M 2.00 Ghz, 1GB RAM, 40 GB Free HD Space. It just took me almost 3 hours to render a WMV file from the original 60 minute DV capture. If that's the case, it probably makes more sense to recapture directly to WMV.

Anybody have experience converting DV to WMV and, if so, any tips?

THoff · Post by **THoff** » Mon Jan 24, 2005 8:09 pm

I'm sorry to break this to you, but those transcoding times sound normal, depending on the WMV profile you used.

I would not try to capture directly to WMV format, it is even more complex than direct MPEG2 encoding, and if your system can't do it in realtime, you'll wind up with dropped frames and/or aborted captures.