Speed Up Encoding/Authoring/Compiling?...

[cinders]

Hi Guys,

I'm trying to increase the time it takes me to create my DVD's.

The longest wait I'm having is encoding in CCE (2-3 hours for standard 2 hour movie) and also importing, compiling within Spruceup takes a while.

Orignally I had 256Mb of memory and have since upgraded to 1Gb of memory. This made a huge difference to the times but I want to speed the process up some more.....

Would adding another 512Mb/1Gb improve matters further?

I checked my swapfile size last night whilst importing into Sprucup and strangely it was only 200Mb, also processor time wasn't very high either.

How can decrease loading/authoring/encoding times?

I'm currently running a P4 2.4Ghz, with a RAID-0 set, 1Gb XMS3200 - I'm seriously considering buying a Dual P4 board and adding another processor!

What setups are you guys running these applications on?
What times are you getting?
And is anyone running a Dual Processor setup? Much Quicker?

Cheers for any feedback,
Cinders.

[DivXtreme]

I'm running at 733MHz with a PIII processor. I have 128MB SDRAM with a 30GB 5400RPM Hard-disk. It takes me less than an hour to create a full copy of a DVD :eek: ... i mean a 4.37GB DVD :D
The first pass of the movie takes 4hours (my best time) but usually 6 hours. For carrying out 2 more passes lets say that... i need to forget my computer for the rest of the day and the following morning :( .

Something that could improve the performance of your computer is a watercooling system! For more information visit Tom's Hardware (http://www6.tomshardware.com/howto/02q3/020701/index.html). Such a system will cost you about $199 or a bit more if you want it to also cool down the GPU of your graphics card, your Hard-disk and even your motherboard chipset. This system allows you to overclock you CPU to the limit. Another plus is that it's silent ( also it makes your computer look elite ;)). Keep in mind that computer cases are not designed for watercooling systems, therefore you will need to modify it a bit. There are some cases that come WITH a watercooling system but it is not so efficient as the one described at Tomshardware.

Note: Such a system would only worth its money if you overclock your cpu. you can overclock your graphics card to the limit as well if you buy a GPU cooler. You will get really high fps (if you are a gamer with a decent graphics card)

Also prefer distilled water. I am not sure if alcohol would do a better job. ( Just be careful so that you dont get your motherboard drunk :D In other words if you install such a system make sure your connections are tight so that you dont short circuit your motherboard.)

[cinders]

I'd rather put the $199 towards another P4 and a dual board!....

Watercooling is on the list of things to do, I've heard that a 2.4Ghz can easily overclock to 3Ghz, but thats a long way of me yet, loads of other things to buy yet!...

As for alchohol, no you want distilled water with a touch of anti-freeze (prevents corrosion to the system) water is the best conductor of water. Alchohol will evaporate.

This is going slightly of subject now...

[DivXtreme]

I am not sure if you can find a motherboard that can support Dual P4 processors. That goes for dual Athlon XP processors as well. however if you do find then let me know.

[cinders]

If I buy a new motherboard I'll hold on until Intel's new chipset comes out, the one that supports Dual DDR ram, 8 x AGP - Very Nice!...

[HomerJ]

Cinders,

Why are you trying to increase the time to create your DVD's ? (see quote below) Personally I always try and minimise the time it takes me to create mine.

Doh !!

"Hi Guys,

I'm trying to increase the time it takes me to create my DVD's. "


:confused: :confused: :confused: :confused: :confused:

HomerJ :D

[TRILIGHT]

Just to keep this thread on topic, the one thing that you can do to speed things up is to get a faster processor. The faster, the better. Memory is not going to make that huge of a difference though I would at least keep it about 256 to avoid slow OS/application response. I have 512 and have never noticed a problem.

If anyone wants to discuss processors or motherboards, etc. then please post in the PC Hardware forum as it is a much more appropriate place for such a discussion. Let's keep things encoding/authoring related here. Thanks! :)

[Cayne]

Since you're encoding with CCE a multiprocessor setup wouldn't give much speed increase.
CCE doesn't support it. So your CPU-Use would be around 60 % and it won't speed up.

[TRILIGHT]

As per the CinemaCraft site..

"A computer that has dual Pentium III microprocessors, of at least 800 MHz, is recommended for real-time encoding of Full D-1."

Although there is no information as to whether CCE has always been a dual-processor aware app or not. I would think that it would take too much time to re-engineer the whole thing. Seems rather foolish to write a program so heavily dependant on processing power and then not make it dual-processor aware from the beginning.

[Arky]

Please read #ALL# of the following thread:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?threadid=26451&highlight=arky+cinemacraft+dual


Arky ;o)

[trance1977]

I checked my swapfile size last night whilst importing into Sprucup and strangely it was only 200Mb, also processor time wasn't very high either.


I really believe this is because your processor is waiting on the hard drive to pull the video/audio files into memory to be analyzed or muxed.

I have noticed a large improvement in performance during compiling if my source files are on one drive and my destination folder is on another drive (on seperate IDE channels too).

I am building a IDE RAID system though, so after that is done I'll let you know if that increases the speed any.

[Arky]

I'm currently running my authoring applications from my Primary (MASTER) C:\ drive, and pulling assets from one channel of my RAID, and outputting to the other RAID channel. Can anyone tell me what reason there might be for Win2k having decided, of it's own accord, to create a one-point-five GIGABYTE :eek: swap file on my C:\ drive? My laptop only has a 288mb swap file under Win2k!


Arky ;o)

[cinders]

How do you input from one channel and output from the other?!?....

I assume you are using RAID-0 ?

[shindsh]

@Arky
I always assumed that the virtual memory file is recommended to be >1.5 times the memory (what you are referring to as swap file?), during the installation of Win2K or XP.
Unless you add memory after the swap file is created, then you have to set the swap file manually.
Whats your setting in System Settings->Virtual Memory

I have 512MB and my default setting is 768MB paging file for all drives. This is the hidden pagefile.sys file on the C:\ drive.

There are other types of cache files. Example for hibernation I think it uses hiberfil.sys.

I have SCSI-Cheetah 15K drives. There is an option to "Write Cache Enabled" for hardisks. Note that this hardware caching option is independent of the operating system NTFS file system (NTFS) file cache that could also be in use if the drive contains an NTFS partition.

Arky whats the name of the swap file you are referring to?


Regards,
Shree