Raavin
10th June 2003, 01:16
Hey there everyone,
This is my first ever post so I thought I'd work up some credit by offering something before I ask any questions.
I'm only a new user to DVD2SVCD and after buying a cheap DVDrom, thought that everything would go smoothly. The good thing is that I'm a bit of a tinkerer so problems with freeware are a bit of a geeky challenge for me. This is not actually a problem with DVD2SVCD but rather with the other utilities it uses. I'll begin.
I'd done a reasonable amount of stuff with Tmpgenc before, using it to put my DV home movies onto disk. These were fairly short, none going over the 45 odd minute barrier. However, it seems that when dealing with the longer files that DVD2SVCD is designed for, Tmpgenc hung and locked up the system.
I checked the FAQ and there seemed to be a similar problem with CCE.
"Q34:"BeerGrave" - I had the problem, that CCE freezes in several stages. Not only CCE but W2KSp2, too. I have all suggestions done, including the recommend swap-space (now 768 MB). Nothing helps. But now I had read on http://www.asuscom.de that W2k can not handle swap-space on VIA based Motherboards using a Athlon or Duron CPU correctly. For help, they offer this patch:
AMD W2K Patch
A: This has not been tested by dvd2svcd but it sounds like it would "do no harm" as it is an official AMD patch for W2k. Feedback in forum is appreciated."
I followed the suggestions there, upgrading my motherboard drivers and got some other upgrades for file access. Unfortunately, this didn't solve the problem.
I decided to investigate a bit further and using some generic monitoring software I watched what was happening with memory and CPU during compression. I found that the available memory (I have 256 sdram) eventually dropped to zero while the CPU usage rose to 100%. After a short time at this condition the system locked up. I thought I was in some real trouble so I started to look at my magazine front cover disks to see if there was any tweaking software on them. After reading through the descriptions, I came across a freeware utility called Rambooster http://www.billwinkle.org/rambooster/ . It basically clears ram when certain conditions are met.
This is what I'v done-
I set it to automatically run when available memory got to 20 meg, clearing another ten, pushing it back up to 30meg available memory. There is a setting where you can make the program run only when the CPU is at a certain level. Make this zero and it will run regardles of the CPU load. I also dropped the task priority to 'only when idle'. This seems to be the only setting that allowed the CPU load to drop below 100%, occasionally dropping to 99%.
Since I did this I have had no problems churning through 150 minute movies overnight. While I have read that software like this seems to degrade rather than enhance performance, in this particular scenario, everything runs as smooth as silk.
Here is a description of my system. It has been cobbled together over time and is, to the discerning builder, a complete disaster. This may be causing some of the issues but it works now none the less.
OS - Windows 98
CPU - AMD Athlon XP 1800+ (big AMD fan)
Motherboard - Crappy Jetway (specifics not even worth mentioning)
Memory - 256 sdram
Harddrives - Primary 20gig ATA66, Secondary 40gig ATA100 on the first IDE (with ATA66 cable didn't run without errors, with ATA100 cable it does run considerably faster than the ATA66 contrary to popular belief)
CD Burner as primary and DVD rom as Slave on the second IDE
Hope this is helpful to someone.
Raavin :D
This is my first ever post so I thought I'd work up some credit by offering something before I ask any questions.
I'm only a new user to DVD2SVCD and after buying a cheap DVDrom, thought that everything would go smoothly. The good thing is that I'm a bit of a tinkerer so problems with freeware are a bit of a geeky challenge for me. This is not actually a problem with DVD2SVCD but rather with the other utilities it uses. I'll begin.
I'd done a reasonable amount of stuff with Tmpgenc before, using it to put my DV home movies onto disk. These were fairly short, none going over the 45 odd minute barrier. However, it seems that when dealing with the longer files that DVD2SVCD is designed for, Tmpgenc hung and locked up the system.
I checked the FAQ and there seemed to be a similar problem with CCE.
"Q34:"BeerGrave" - I had the problem, that CCE freezes in several stages. Not only CCE but W2KSp2, too. I have all suggestions done, including the recommend swap-space (now 768 MB). Nothing helps. But now I had read on http://www.asuscom.de that W2k can not handle swap-space on VIA based Motherboards using a Athlon or Duron CPU correctly. For help, they offer this patch:
AMD W2K Patch
A: This has not been tested by dvd2svcd but it sounds like it would "do no harm" as it is an official AMD patch for W2k. Feedback in forum is appreciated."
I followed the suggestions there, upgrading my motherboard drivers and got some other upgrades for file access. Unfortunately, this didn't solve the problem.
I decided to investigate a bit further and using some generic monitoring software I watched what was happening with memory and CPU during compression. I found that the available memory (I have 256 sdram) eventually dropped to zero while the CPU usage rose to 100%. After a short time at this condition the system locked up. I thought I was in some real trouble so I started to look at my magazine front cover disks to see if there was any tweaking software on them. After reading through the descriptions, I came across a freeware utility called Rambooster http://www.billwinkle.org/rambooster/ . It basically clears ram when certain conditions are met.
This is what I'v done-
I set it to automatically run when available memory got to 20 meg, clearing another ten, pushing it back up to 30meg available memory. There is a setting where you can make the program run only when the CPU is at a certain level. Make this zero and it will run regardles of the CPU load. I also dropped the task priority to 'only when idle'. This seems to be the only setting that allowed the CPU load to drop below 100%, occasionally dropping to 99%.
Since I did this I have had no problems churning through 150 minute movies overnight. While I have read that software like this seems to degrade rather than enhance performance, in this particular scenario, everything runs as smooth as silk.
Here is a description of my system. It has been cobbled together over time and is, to the discerning builder, a complete disaster. This may be causing some of the issues but it works now none the less.
OS - Windows 98
CPU - AMD Athlon XP 1800+ (big AMD fan)
Motherboard - Crappy Jetway (specifics not even worth mentioning)
Memory - 256 sdram
Harddrives - Primary 20gig ATA66, Secondary 40gig ATA100 on the first IDE (with ATA66 cable didn't run without errors, with ATA100 cable it does run considerably faster than the ATA66 contrary to popular belief)
CD Burner as primary and DVD rom as Slave on the second IDE
Hope this is helpful to someone.
Raavin :D