I noticed that DVDBackup allows the removal of files. Since most of my copying in DVD2OneX is in 'movie only' mode, is there any way to determine which files DVD2OneX won't need so I can remove them in DVDBackup first?

Or is it a case where DVD2OneX must have all the files to function properly.

I might be barking up the wrong tree but it seems to me this might save on processing time.

All files are needed.

-Pete

(Do you really find DVD2One time consuming ?)

just rip the following files and it will work for just a movie-only

VIDEO_TS.IFO
VTS_0X_0.IFO
VTS_0X_*.VOB (all the main movie ones)

X is the main movie number

that's it

Mack:

How will that help?

He has an outside chance of getting the wrong files and the time savings are not worthwhile. It's just complicating an otherwise straightforward task.

Or maybe it's me - I just find all this extraneity so pointless

-Pete

on most DVD's it's pretty obvious which VOB's are the main movie files and DVDDecrypter even picks them for you if you want. Takes all of 5 seconds, if that

you could even use DVDShrink @100% if the user ain't sure which files to rip and then reduce it with DVD2One afterwards

the processing time I'm saving is in the ripping of the DVD as DVD2One will still take the same time with either a full rip or movie-only ripped files. If you looked at the percentage of processing time saved for the whole process it's quite a high percentage saved

e.g. 15-20mins ripping is now say 8-13 mins so that's a saving of 5mins+ on an overall process of 30-35mins or 13%, probably more is svaed but this is just an example of the possible time saving

so seeing as it saves on ripping time, HD space and wear n tear on both the HD & DVD-ROM, why rip another few Gb of extras etc? when you don't need them for a movie only

I find that pointless

but at the end of the day it's whatever the user is comfortable with but Mr Peter Gattig was looking to speed things up and using this method is one such way

Well, I'm absolutely sure he'll put those 5 minutes to profitable use.

But yeah: he asked and you replied. That's what the forum's for. Sorry for my cynicism.

-Pete

Thank you MackemX, I'll give it a try and let you know. And yes the wear n tear on my HD has crossed my mind.

As I've mentioned a few times on this forum, on a Mac G4 dual 450, I have not been satisfied with overall speed. The 3 steps involved, that's DVDbackup, DVD2One, and Toast, take about 50 minutes each. That's 2 1/2 hrs to copy a movie and IMO is much too slow. So yes, I will try anything to cut that time down.

I'm new to Mac OS X 10.2.5 and have noticed no other Mac user complaining about speed, so I'm wondering if I have the OS configured properly. Also wondered if these programs have been written to take advantage of Altevec.

2 1/2 hours is too slow for a complete copy from rip to burn? Do you realize that until DVD2ONE and this new flood of transcoders that we were happy to get a copy done in the same day?

you should atleast deduct the 50 minuttes used for burning from the calculation. Burning to some kind of media is needed no matter which way you look at it - this has nothing to do with the actual conversion and is limited by the money youve spent on hardware - I burn in 15 minuttes because Ive bought a 4x burner and use 4x media. Your burntimes are 50 minuttes ergo you must be burning in 1x - but thats your choice and is per say irrelevant when talking about converting. If you can see what I mean.

So we are down to an actual copytime including the needed ripping of 1.40 minuttes. From that one should really also deduct the speed of ripping as this is also determined on what kind of money you spent on your dvd-rom and the speed it can deliver.

Buy a faster dvd-rom and you will rip faster.
Buy a faster burner and faster media and you will burn faster.
Those are easy speeded up.

Whats left is the actual conversion which is now 50 minuttes. Since you think this is slow I gather you did not do this before dvd2one turned up. Before dvd2one the actual conversiontime would sometimes be between 24 and 48 hours depending on which encoder and what filters you used.

If you need to speed up this 50 minuttes conversiontime - there are only 2 things to do - buy faster processor's and faster harddrives - buy a secondary harddrive and process to the secondary drive from the primary drive.

I concur with most of the opinions expressed thus far. 2.5 hours per DVD is a very long time, but nothing compared to the BD (Before DVD2One) days when the re-encoding was done overnight and into the next morning...

Here's a break-down of how long it takes me:

1. Rip: 6 GB in about 8 minutes due to a fast DVD-ROM reader at 6X - 8X (Starlogic DVD-ROM from Circuit City for $70 - best one I've found for ripping). Before, it took 45-50 minutes at about 1.7X - 2X on a Toshiba 16X DVD-ROM...

2. Compress: Using DVD2One in Movie-Only mode. About 12 minutes. Again, I rip from one drive to another on a different IDE channel. New 120GB IDE drive with 8MB buffer - about $120. This on a very modest AMD Athlon T-Bird at 1.4GHz.

3. Burn: Using Nero on a Sony DRU-500A. With 1X DVD-R media (Minus R) about 53 minutes. With DVD+R media (Plus R), about 23.5 minutes (DVD+R media is inherently at 2.4X speed). With 4X DVD+R media (Plus R), about 13 minutes.

There you go... since I now use 4X DVD+R media exclusively, I can do the whole thing in about 33 minutes.

My suggestion to you in the order that's feasible:

1. Get that new IDE DVD-ROM reader - PowerMac's support IDE drives. That's a big return on a cheap investment.

2. Get that new IDE hard drive and put it on a different channel (do Mac's have 2 IDE channels?)... there will be an improvement in the compression stage, but not as big an improvement as for suggestion #1.

3. Upgrade your burner to a 4X burner and use 4X media.

4. Upgrade your Mac. Let's face, a PowerMac G4 with dual PowerPC processors at 450 or 500 Mhz is just not going to cut it these days for intense tasks like compressing DVD's. If you upgrade to a new box (the dual 1.5 GHZ PowerMac G4 for example), there'll be a big difference in the compression stage as well... but this is a big ticket upgrade! Is it worth it to spend $2,000 for the new box to save maybe 25 minutes each time in the compression stage? You decide, but that's why I put it as the last suggestion.

Good luck - I know how you feel. I was previously bogged down in all steps, but mine was related to a bad setup (horrible ripping drive, no second hard drive, and limited to using 2.4X media rather than 4X).

Thanks to all who replied.

MackemX your tip knocked 8 minutes off the ripping time and about 5 minutes off compression. It's odd though, I tried playing the ripped files on DVD Player but the only thing that would play is the movie's illegal coping warning message. Nothing else worked. But once I ran the files through DVD2OneX the movie played just fine.

Phuocle and dvr105 you're right, I am post DVD2OneX, so I had no idea how long it took prior to DVD2One. Don't think I would have gotten into it back then if it took a day or two to copy a DVD.

I installed an internal Pioneer DVR A05 4X, it works great but I made the mistake of buying 100 pk of 1X media. I will definately switch to 4X once I finish this pk. The read speed on the A05 is 12X for single layer and 8X for dual, so I don't see the reason for buying a separate reader. Can you explain?

Buying a new computer is out of the question, however since I have two 30 gig HDs installed, I'll try compressing to the other drive.

At this point, if I can get the whole process down to an hour or less, I'll be more than satisfied.

The readspeed on the A05 is cripled by firmware to 2x if you rip from an encrypted dvd (thats why it takes you upto 50min to rip) - unless you update to a hacked firmware (which I would not advice). Furthermore using your expensive burner as ripper puts an unneneed wear on the unit imho.
My advice would be to get a separate 16x dvd-rom reader - they are cheap and much faster when ripping. Use this as ripper and dvd-player and only use the A05 as burner.

And yes - next time - get some good cheap 4x Princo or 4x Ritek - you'l love the 13-15 min burntime

That would get you down to:

Ripping: 15 min
Compression: ?? (Im down to 12min on a P4 2.4 going from primary to secondary harddrive)
Burning: 15 min

I would like to weigh in with the free option of time management. Perform these tasks when you are away from the computer.

As they say, a watched pot never boils

Benn

Well now, that little tid bit of info really burns me up. I got the darn thing because of the speed.

I'll have to get a firewire reader because I have no bays left. Problem is, how can I be sure what I'm getting considering Pioneer's false advertising? Any suggestions from the Mac people here will be greatly appreciated.

BTW dvr105, I tried compression to my second drive and didn't notice an improvement in speed. However, I've been thinking about getting a third 80 gig drive anyway. I'll use it as my main drive and the other two 30 gigers for back up. I'll try again then to see if there's any speed improvement. Once again, thank you, you've been a tremendous help.

you are most welcome Peter

I guess results may vary when we talk speedincrease going from one drive to another - it may just be that your cpu's are the limiting factor here and not your harddrive. I dont know anything about MAC and the speed of cpu's they use - but on my P4 2.4 the cpu was compressing faster than one drive were able to keep up reading and writing at the same time, therefore I saw an increase going from one drive to a second instead, not alot perhaps, cant remember how much, but anything count in this game

One thing I've adopted from the MAC world is firewire - I got me a 200gb firewire harddrive - just love firewire, much more stable than usb2 and faster than usb2 irl also.

just use the hacked 105 firmware man, 12X ripping on non encrypted dvd's, encrpted ones avg at like 7-10X ripping speed

theres software that can flash it back to original if you're worried about that

whitethunder, I have the firmware patch sitting on my hard drive right now. Unfortunately I can't use it, it's for the Windows platform. Can't seem to find a Mac OSX version.

However, I still have my old 8X internal ROM drive, the one I replaced with the Pioneer A05 but there's no room to install both. The second bay on this Mac is just large enough for a Zip drive only. So I was thinking, is there any reason why I can't rig an extension IDE ribbon and power supply cables, feed them out of a vacant API slot and use this drive on the desktop? Five foot of cable should do it.

why not just stick the A05 in a Windows OS PC then flash it and stick it back in Mac?

yeah I was thinking the same thing mackemX

really, that would only take a few minutes to swap then a minute to flash then youd be set

I also thought of that, that's why I haven't trashed the firmware. But I'm reserving that idea for a few reasons:

1. You take your chances using hacked firmware, there are no garantees.

2. Less wear and tear on the burner if my idea of using extension cords for the ROM drive works.

3. All my close friends are Mac users, although I will be visiting my brother up north in a couple of months. He uses Windows PC. I could flash it then if I can't get the ROM drive extension cord idea to work.

In the meantime I would really like to know if there is any reason why I should not use extension chords.

IDE cables for ATA33/66/100/133 should have a maximum length of 18 inches. For ATA66/100/133 they must not be any shorter than 10 inches. IDE cables are not terminated at their ends to prevent the signals rebounding or reflecting as is the case with SCSI (Small Computer Systems Interface) cables. Neither of these types of cable are shielded to prevent the signals radiating and other signals getting on to the lines.

The longer the cable the longer the signal takes to travel, the more time there is for interference from other signals and for the IDE signals to radiate to other systems. If you were to use an IDE cable of say 36 inches then the signal will take about 1/10 of a clock pulse longer at 33MHz IDE to travel down the cable. At higher IDE clock speeds the problem gets worse.

Once again, thank you dvr105.

I thought about electrical interference so I thought I would cover the cable with some 2" heavy guage aluminum tape. Same stuff they use to wrap air ducks. I knew IDE doesn't need termination, however I had no idea about the time lag with longer lengths. Still, I think it's worth a try. I'll let you know if it works.

It didn't work, in fact the computer wouldn't even boot until I disconnected the ROM drive. The wires are still hanging out the back of my computer. For some reason, the system will not tolerate two internal DVD drives. And yes, I configured the ROM drive as slave.

My last recourse is a firmware update. Sure hope I have better luck with that than I've been having with everything else I've tried. javascript:smilie('')

It sounds as if one of the drives are not fully ATA compatable. You could consider an external case for one of the drives. I bought my external case for $45.00. It has Fireware, USB1.1 and USB 2 all in one. Bought it from a local computer show recently. It does give you some flexibility especially if you want to move it around.

I don't know dun4cheap, it's the ROM drive that came with the computer, so it should have worked. Could it be the ribbon cable I used? The Mac uses 80 strand wire even though the connectors are 40 pins. I used some 40 strand ribbon I already had. Would doing this make it ATA incompatable?

I have an external Firewire CD burner I bought a few years ago and I already tried swapping the DVD ROM drive into that case. The system profiler didn't even recognize it, so I'm a little leary about buying another case. Unless of course they make a different case for DVD drives than they do for CD drives.