Ben Thomas wrote:
Hi all,

I have been trying to turn my MiniDV home videos into DVDs but it takes
many hours to encode the MPEG for the DVD on my AMD Athlon XP 2700+ with
512MB RAM and 7200RPM hard disk, using Ulead VideoStudio. It seems to
take even longer to convert MPEG2 (captured from my digital TV card)
into MPEG2 suitable for DVD. I'm guessing CPU is the main problem and
there aren't many faster CPU alternatives but please correct me if I'm
wrong.

So can I get a PCI card that will do the job for me?

Thanks for any help.

Ben Thomas
Melbourne
Australia
Simplest solution fit this
http://www.inventa.com.au/Product%20...usionMPEG2.htm
and attach your outputs from your DV card to it. Save files. Author your
transitions and menus with your software and compile to dvd format.
Should save time as the mpegs only have to indexed into VOB's.

On Fri, 17 Jun 2005 13:43:53 +0800, spodosaurus
wrote:

Ben Thomas wrote:
Hi all,

I have been trying to turn my MiniDV home videos into DVDs but it takes
many hours to encode the MPEG for the DVD on my AMD Athlon XP 2700+ with
512MB RAM and 7200RPM hard disk, using Ulead VideoStudio. It seems to
take even longer to convert MPEG2 (captured from my digital TV card)
into MPEG2 suitable for DVD. I'm guessing CPU is the main problem and
there aren't many faster CPU alternatives but please correct me if I'm
wrong.

So can I get a PCI card that will do the job for me?
I've recently been researching something very similar to this. Do to
other equipment needed, (CPU upgrade from Athlon 1700+, VCR, new video
card, etc) we opted for a software based encoder as our needs were
pretty basic. However, there were two hardware based encoders that I was
seriously looking at:
Leadtek Winfast PVR 2000:
http://www.leadtek.com.tw/eng/tv_tun...6&pronameid=91

Actually, I've got one of these (well, the DV2000 version which comes
with the 3x Firewire ports on top of the basic spec).

The thing is, it's not really a hardware encoder : Although the
Conexant chip is pretty powerful, the one used in the PVR isn't the
one with the hardware encoding capabilities AFAIK (love to be proved
wrong - if the Linux crew have a hardware MPEG encode driver for it,
that'd be great !!!)

So in reality you get the Winfast software which is ahem quirky as
hell, even if it works most of the time. For comparison purposes, I
can *nearly* encode realtime PAL 720x576 @ 25fps from the Winfast TV
card, on an Athlon 1700 + 384 Meg to MPEG2 with a small amount of
frame skipping

But I can't to MPEG4 or WMV9 because of the higher compression needed,
which in turn requires higher levels of CPU for transcoding the files.

However, encoding from a DV input is actually much easier. Any modern
disk can keep up with 25mbps for DV-AVI. So, always try to go down the
DV route if you can - keep the source files as DV-AVI for as long as
possible (editing and so on) if you're concerned purely about the CPU
usage with this card.

Cheers - Neil

On Fri, 17 Jun 2005 10:24:48 +0100, "Trev"
trevbowdenATdsl.pipexDOTnet wrote:


"mb" wrote in message
.. .
On Fri, 17 Jun 2005 03:40:03 GMT, Ben Thomas
wrote:

mb wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jun 2005 22:10:28 GMT, Ben Thomas
wrote:


Hi all,

I have been trying to turn my MiniDV home videos into DVDs but it takes
many
hours to encode the MPEG for the DVD on my AMD Athlon XP 2700+ with
512MB RAM
and 7200RPM hard disk, using Ulead VideoStudio. It seems to take even
longer to
convert MPEG2 (captured from my digital TV card) into MPEG2 suitable for
DVD.
I'm guessing CPU is the main problem and there aren't many faster CPU
alternatives but please correct me if I'm wrong.

So can I get a PCI card that will do the job for me?

Thanks for any help.

Ben Thomas
Melbourne
Australia


Do yourself a favour. Buy a dvd recorder which does all this in real
time.


Can you create chapters, menus, scene transitions, etc?

It does the chapters automatically.
If you want to do fancy stuff then upload and use dvd author and NO
encoding required because its already encoded.


If you alter it then it will need re-entering.Its the transitions and
effects that take up the time especially noise reduction and colour changes.

DVD author does not re encode it. Go download the trial version and
see for yourself. Been using it for the past couple of years. I use it
to create my own menus or edit out bits of video. No extra encoding is
done.

"mb" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 17 Jun 2005 10:24:48 +0100, "Trev"
trevbowdenATdsl.pipexDOTnet wrote:


"mb" wrote in message
. ..
On Fri, 17 Jun 2005 03:40:03 GMT, Ben Thomas
wrote:

mb wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jun 2005 22:10:28 GMT, Ben Thomas
wrote:


Hi all,

I have been trying to turn my MiniDV home videos into DVDs but it
takes
many
hours to encode the MPEG for the DVD on my AMD Athlon XP 2700+ with
512MB RAM
and 7200RPM hard disk, using Ulead VideoStudio. It seems to take even
longer to
convert MPEG2 (captured from my digital TV card) into MPEG2 suitable
for
DVD.
I'm guessing CPU is the main problem and there aren't many faster CPU
alternatives but please correct me if I'm wrong.

So can I get a PCI card that will do the job for me?

Thanks for any help.

Ben Thomas
Melbourne
Australia


Do yourself a favour. Buy a dvd recorder which does all this in real
time.


Can you create chapters, menus, scene transitions, etc?

It does the chapters automatically.
If you want to do fancy stuff then upload and use dvd author and NO
encoding required because its already encoded.


If you alter it then it will need re-entering.Its the transitions and
effects that take up the time especially noise reduction and colour
changes.

DVD author does not re encode it. Go download the trial version and
see for yourself. Been using it for the past couple of years. I use it
to create my own menus or edit out bits of video. No extra encoding is
done.


Something went amiss. Re-entering should have read rerendering a bit
differant from encoding. If you make cuts add transitions Its a new movie
and need's to be rendered again

On Fri, 17 Jun 2005 18:36:08 +0100, "Trev"
trevbowdenATdsl.pipexDOTnet wrote:


"mb" wrote in message
.. .
On Fri, 17 Jun 2005 10:24:48 +0100, "Trev"
trevbowdenATdsl.pipexDOTnet wrote:


"mb" wrote in message
...
On Fri, 17 Jun 2005 03:40:03 GMT, Ben Thomas
wrote:

mb wrote:
On Thu, 16 Jun 2005 22:10:28 GMT, Ben Thomas
wrote:


Hi all,

I have been trying to turn my MiniDV home videos into DVDs but it
takes
many
hours to encode the MPEG for the DVD on my AMD Athlon XP 2700+ with
512MB RAM
and 7200RPM hard disk, using Ulead VideoStudio. It seems to take even
longer to
convert MPEG2 (captured from my digital TV card) into MPEG2 suitable
for
DVD.
I'm guessing CPU is the main problem and there aren't many faster CPU
alternatives but please correct me if I'm wrong.

So can I get a PCI card that will do the job for me?

Thanks for any help.

Ben Thomas
Melbourne
Australia


Do yourself a favour. Buy a dvd recorder which does all this in real
time.


Can you create chapters, menus, scene transitions, etc?

It does the chapters automatically.
If you want to do fancy stuff then upload and use dvd author and NO
encoding required because its already encoded.


If you alter it then it will need re-entering.Its the transitions and
effects that take up the time especially noise reduction and colour
changes.

DVD author does not re encode it. Go download the trial version and
see for yourself. Been using it for the past couple of years. I use it
to create my own menus or edit out bits of video. No extra encoding is
done.


Something went amiss. Re-entering should have read rerendering a bit
differant from encoding. If you make cuts add transitions Its a new movie
and need's to be rendered again

NOT with DVD Author it doesn't. Been using it many times over the past
2 years. Its the beauty of DVD Author and why iots so popular with
millions across the net.

On Thu, 16 Jun 2005 22:10:28 GMT, Ben Thomas
wrote:

Hi all,

I have been trying to turn my MiniDV home videos into DVDs but it takes many
hours to encode the MPEG for the DVD on my AMD Athlon XP 2700+ with 512MB RAM
and 7200RPM hard disk, using Ulead VideoStudio. It seems to take even longer to
convert MPEG2 (captured from my digital TV card) into MPEG2 suitable for DVD.
I'm guessing CPU is the main problem and there aren't many faster CPU
alternatives but please correct me if I'm wrong.

So can I get a PCI card that will do the job for me?

Thanks for any help.

Ben Thomas
Melbourne
Australia

Does the Ulead program give you a choice of rendering settings? If
you choose an output format with the same resolution and frame-rate as
the source, rendering is much faster. Otherwise EVERY frame has to
be heavily processed.

For instance, here in the UK our dv cameras usually record PAL format.
The default output format in an editing program is often NTSC.
Changing this can drastically reduce rendering time.

mb wrote:
Something went amiss. Re-entering should have read rerendering a bit
differant from encoding. If you make cuts add transitions Its a new movie
and need's to be rendered again


NOT with DVD Author it doesn't. Been using it many times over the past
2 years. Its the beauty of DVD Author and why iots so popular with
millions across the net.


I've been using DVD Author for some time and I must assure you it does
let you cut an already encoded video stream and burn it without
recoding. Despite common belief, cutting out part of a video does not
require the video stream to be re-encoded. The video stream is shortened
by removing any frames within the cut range.