Why the "x264: DXVA-HD-Insane" profile (from MeGui 0.3.4.0) became so long ?

[guista]

Hi all,

I first downloaded MeGui in December 2009 because I had some huge bluray disks images to encode to x264/MKV.
I used MeGui many times using the "x264: DXVA-HD-Insane" => encoding a 2 hours video never took more than 6 hours (2h30 for the 1st pass then 3h30 for the 2nd) for a bitrate set to 4000.
Then I did not use MeGui for months.

Today I updated MeGui in order to get the last improvements.
I tried encoding a video using the insane profile set with the same parameters as in December and the estimated time is now more than 24h per pass. So I suppose I would need 2 days to complete the whole encoding which is really too much (I am going to burn my CPU !).

Working with the fast profile works fine (less then 3 hours for doing all).

My CPU is an Intel Quad Core Q6600.

Please tell me if I am alone with this problem & tell me what changed between the December version and now.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Zorro70]

Well i cant comment on megui, but i use ripbot and use quality settings and it can take up to 40 hours to do a really good quality encode on the very best settings, so that's probably right.

im also using a quad q6600 overclocked to 3.2ghz

[lnatan25]

Most likely, because the profiles used back then were nowhere near the "placebo" preset. And also a lot of new features were added to x264 itself.

Now that x264 has these presets, you can be sure you are encoding at the "best" settings, and it does take a very long time. You have to ask yourself whether it is really necessary to encode at these settings for the invisible difference. ;)

[guista]

Well i cant comment on megui, but i use ripbot and use quality settings and it can take up to 40 hours to do a really good quality encode on the very best settings, so that's probably right.
im also using a quad q6600 overclocked to 3.2ghz

Thanks for confirming, I get the same times as you using the last version.

Now that x264 has these presets, you can be sure you are encoding at the "best" settings, and it does take a very long time.

OK so I understand the December 2009 profile was not encoding with the best presets.
Even if it is much longer, this is a good thing we now have the choice.

You have to ask yourself whether it is really necessary to encode at these settings for the invisible difference. ;)

You are absolutely right : I recorded a 1h30 HD (1080x1440) TV show and then:

* encoded it with the "x264; DXVA-HD-Insane" profile => it was processed at about 5 FPS and it took more than 1 day (25 or 26 hours) to complete
* encoded it with the "x264: DXVA-HD-Fast" profile => I do not remember the FPS but it took less than 3 hours to complete

I was disappointed because the final result was quite the same. In facts, the source video had many pixelization effects because my DSL connection rate was not constant.
I even think the insane profile video is worse because the source video was probably more processed than with the fast profile (garbage in garbage out ;-)).