I am fairly new to burning movies and just wanted to make sure the time it has been taking me is normal.
I use dvd shrink, and most movies (ones that are compressed around 50%) take about 1.5 hrs to be deeply analyzed and then encoded. ones that don't need compressed at all usually take 1/2 hr to be encoded.
from there i burn the disk with clonedvd1. i have an 8x writer, so I burn at 8x (with 8x dvd-r media) and it takes about 20 min to burn a disk.
I had clonedvd2 for the trial period awhile back and it took about 20 min writing at 4x, which is one reason i am confused.
I really just want to know if these times are about right or if there is a way i could be doing it faster. maybe there is a program better/faster than shrink that people use...
thanks!

NMR1279,

The combination of AnyDVD and CloneDVD2 are excellent programs for backing up your DVD collection. These two programs work in conjunction with each other and are easy to use. These two programs have been around quite a long time and are constantly updated and produce excellent results.

Depending your computer hardware system the combination of AnyDVD and CloneDVD2 will Rip, Transcode, and Burn most DVDs in approximately 20 minutes.

Suggest looking at the “Clone DVD FAQ” Read First sticky in the beginning of this Forum for information about these two excellent programs.

Best Regards,
bjkg

There is no need to run "deep analysis" with Shrink (no visual improvement). If you want to maintain a high quality picture, then split the movie to two DVDs.

If you don't need to compress the title, then the "rip time" for an average movie is around 20 minutes. Your actual speed will vary depends on how fast your DVD drive can read the data on the DVD disc and the speed of your PC.

4x burn...15 min
8x burn...10 min


Older PC with slower hard drive will take longer to burn as the DVD drive will have to slow down to receive the datastream. The two primary reasons for slow burns are:

1.defragged or slow hard drive not running in DMA mode.

2.CPU load hitting 100% at higher burn speed.


I personally use Nero Recode and AnyDVD. With my new custom PC (AMD 64 Winchester 3000 overclocked to 3600 speed with 1 GB DDR400 RAM), I can transcode the movie ANTZ at 76% video quality (24% compression) in 13:14 including 28 seconds to analyze the movie in Nero Recode. Note that my CPU load is around 56% when using the NEC 3500 to rip the movie. The average rip speed for this DVD burner is 5x. A DVD drive that can rip at 9x will further reduce the transcode time. The CPU load should not be an issue with this PC.

If you have a very fast DVD ripper, then you may be able to transcode an average 2 hr movie in 9 minutes. Add about 6 minutes to burn the data to the DVD at 16x burn speed. Therefore, the total processing time from start to finish is 15 minutes.

Can you give your system spec's

With AnyDVD and CloneDVD, I can rip, transcode and burn anywhere from 19-21mins., but this is using a 12X burner...

4X = about 14min, I really can't remember, havn't did it in awhile.
8X = 7:50 min burn
12X = 6:10 min burn

Ripping and transcoding anywhere from 13-15 mins using CloneDVD and AnyDVD

I have a new Dell 4700. 512 MB ram, 80 GB hard drive.
My dvd drive is an NEC 3450a.
I usually have a bunch of movies on my hd, sometimes it gets so full i have to delete one before it will write a disk. could that be slowing everything down?
if a movie needs compressed by 40-50% and i don't perform deep analysis, it still takes an hour or so to encode with dvdshrink.
and i am not sure why it takes 20 minutes to burn a disk since my drive is supposed to burn up to 8x.

Dell PCs come from the factory with a bunch of useless applications running in the background. These proggies can pull 200 MB of RAM with the PC in idle mode. To make sure that you have sufficient RAM to process a DVD back up session, reboot the PC and right click the TASKBAR. Select TASK MANAGER and click on the Performance tab. Let this program run in the background. At the end of your DVD back up sesssion, check the PEAK COMMIT CHARGE on TASK MANAGER. If this number is more than 512000 K, then you should add a pair of 512 MB RAM modules.

In Windows, go to Device Manager\IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers. Right click the Primary IDE channel and select UNINSTALL. Repeat for Secondary IDE channel.

Reboot the PC and go into BIOS. Look under the NEC 3450a drive and make sure it is set to AUTO DETECT. Save and exit. Reboot to Windows.

Now go back to Device Manager\IDE ATA/ATAPI and click on Primary IDE channel. Make sure Device 0 and Device 1 under ADVANCED SETTINGS tab are set to use DMA IF AVAILABLE. Repeat for Secondary IDE channel. Note that you will see the NEC drive running in ULTRA DMA MODE 2.

Always leave about 14 GB of free space in your hard drive to process a DVD movie (9 GB to rip a DL title to the hard drive, and another 5GB for the output files). Also defrag your hard drive once a week.

Delete the stuffs that you don't need from the hard drive. The access speed of data stored near the end of the hard drive is very slow. I would recommend that you keep 20 GB of free space for optimum performance. And DEFRAG the hard drive.

Are you using a modified firmware to disable riplock in the NEC? If not, then the rip speed will be stuck around 3x. That's 40 min for an average 2 hr movie. Add another 10 to 15 min to transcode the data at 50% compression. Shrink is FREE, but it is not very fast.

thanks for the tips. i am not using a modified firmware (as far as i know, me being not all that computer saavy). should i be, and if so, what and where do i get it?

http://www.micheldeboer.nl/firmware/3540.html

Try firmware LD3540_1W1.zip if you have the NEC 3540 DVD burner. Use the DUMP function to backup your original firmware PRIOR to update.

furballi, I think you may have given NMR1279 incorrect information. The link you have given him is for the NEC 3540 burner. This isn't the burner he has got. His burner is the NEC 3450. I also have a NEC 3450 and I have successfully disabled the riplock function on mine by installing the firmware from here,
http://www.micheldeboer.nl/firmware/3450.html
The file is the '3450_103c.zip' it only came out on the 30th.April, 2005. If I am wrong, please accept my apologies.

My BAD!

5{\0\0\0\0\0\0\0\0e]furballi, I think you may have given NMR1279 incorrect information. The link you have given him is for the NEC 3540 burner. This isn't the burner he has got. His burner is the NEC 3450. I also have a NEC 3450 and I have successfully disabled the riplock function on mine by installing the firmware from here,
http://www.micheldeboer.nl/firmware/3450.html
The file is the '3450_103c.zip' it only came out on the 30th.April, 2005. If I am wrong, please accept my apologies. [/quote]

altone/furballi:
Ok, I installed and flashed the firmware....what's next?
now the drive should burn faster than before?

now the drive should burn faster than before?

no, it should rip faster than before because your drive shouldn't be
riplocked anymore

Burn time should not change. The "rip" time (decode data from the DVD to your hard drive) should drop by 60%.