Hey,

I have a bunch of episodes of a tv show which are in .avi and mpeg format. I want to make DVDs out of them which will play on a standard DVD player. I tried using Winavi to convert the files to DVD files but that did not work. I wound up with a disc that had menus and everything but would lock up after playing exactly 1 second of each title.


I decided to just try dropping the files into a Nero Vision Express 3.x.x project and that worked! The only thing that sucked was the time it took - almost 3 hours to transcode 5 30-minute episodes. The actual burning time was normal - I used an 8X TY02 and a BenQ 1620 to burn. The disc came out fine but WOW - nearly 3 hours to transcode the files?????

Is this normal? If it is then fine but if there's anything I can do to speed up the time, I'd love to know. Thx!

3 hours for 2 1/2 hours of video isnt bad at all, thats allmost realtime.
I dont think there is anything you can do to speed it up, NeroVision Express 1-pass is about as fast as you are going to get, maybe dvdSanta is a tiny bit faster, but not much between them.

Ben

OK. Thanks for the reply. I just wanted to make sure there wasn't some other system issue slowing down the process. If that's what it is then it's ok as long as the end product works!

That sounds about right, I know it has taken at least 2 hours for all of the videos i have transferred to DVD.

What CPU do you have? If your using an older Celeron or Sempron then this will also add to the time of the encoding.

There are also other variables that will add to the transcoding time besides your CPU speed and available RAM.

1. Quality setting - there are 7 settings.
2. Sample format - 4 settings.
3. Encoding mode - 2 settings.

These can be found under the Video Options tab.

Your encoding time will depend on a "mix" of these settings and others - such as - adding a menu, size of the video file, etc.

Lately I've been transcoding individual Star Trek (TOS) episodes (350MB ea) using these settings:

Quality setting = High quality
Sample format = Automatic
Encoding mode = High quality (2-pass VBR)

CPU = AMD Athalon 1.00 GHz
RAM = 248MB

I also add a homemade menu (approx 1.4MB) and burn the DVD files to a hard drive directory so I can view it before I commit to a disk burn.

My usual transcode time is around 4 hours or so but I like the quality I get.

I would suggest experimenting with mixed settings.

c4evap

Sounds about right then. I'm using a 1.6ghz Pentium 4 processor with 1gb of RAM. I didn't really have any suspicions that my system resources were to blame - I know those are fine. I guess I was just concerned that maybe I was doing something in Nero which was causing a lenghty encoding time.

I have fooled with all the quality settings a fair amount. I'm able to get 5 approx 22-min episodes (minus commericals, of course) on a DVD with standard quality, automatic sampling and 2-pass VBR encoding. I put a menu on them but it's just one of the simple ones that Nero provides templates for - I'm not all that concerned about making fancy menus for these.

It's ok if that's how long it's going to take. I've just been setting one up before I leave for work in the morning and when I get home, it's done! If I can get one a day finished, that works for me. Thanks for the suggestions everyone!