avi to mpeg - 700 meg to 1.6 gig?!? + 12 Hours To Do It?

Hi,

It's me again. I did a little more perusing of [bold]afterdawn.com[/bold] and learned that I should download and install VCDeasy and TMPGE or whatever they are called (its late and I'm too tired to think, which just might have something to do with my troubles.

So I did. I even checked out the guides for those programs, although I haven't fully read them yet. [bold]DOH![/bold] Another likely reason that I'm floundering, I guess.

Well, I've still got this 700meg .avi, divx-encoded, 640*464, 25fps. I tried to create a test svcd with vcdeasy. Well, actually I was going to try to make an image that I could mount on a virtual drive via Alcohol 120% as my cd-r stack only has a couple left in it, but that is irrevelant I guess.

So someone mentioned 2-pass vbr for quality. Sounded good. Hadn't gotten to the part where I figure out some of the settings such as aspect ratio - it was set on 1:1 and I left it, along with most everything except the bit rate alone. I figured that vcdeasy would probbably take whatever .mpeg file I threw at it and put it right(? ?? ???) Like I said I'm tired and just wanted to test things, I'm sure I'll read some more tommorow or Wed. and learn something useful.

But I just wanted to try converting a file, so I just dove in. And it was ready to convert and noticed that my 700meg .avi was listed as about to become a [bold]1.6gig[/bold] .mpeg!

I kind of figured that if the quality was about the same the file size would be about the same. And if the quality went down (& I'm hoping it stays the same, for it looks "decent" on my monitor so I assume it will look like "generic cable tv quality" on a dvd player outputting to a standard cable tv. I am sure their dvd player has an S-Video output (my nVidia FX5200 even has one of those) but I don't think their tv has one. I know mine doesn't, or I would try watching a dvd or two on my tv (19") instead of my monitor (17")) Well, I lost my train of thought... Oh yes, if the quality goes down I assume the file size will also shrink.

But I didn't expect (or really see how) the quality would go [bold]up[/bold]. So why is the file size going up over 225%?

Is it like what happens when a .mp3 is converted to a .wav, or a .jpeg is converted to a .bmp? IOW am I going from a compressed format to one that isn't compressed? I thought .mpegs were also compressed.

I guess it's true that hearing about someone setting a broken leg won't make you a brain surgeon. [bold]8-D[/bold]

One other thing (for now) I have a question about is the time that tmpge told me it would take. It stated just over 12 hours for the conversion!

Haven't been hit with a figure like that since I stopped using a 486SX/33! I did notice for the few seconds I let it go that the time figure dropped a little faster than real time, but...

Is that a normal time to do this on my computer? It is what I would consider reasonably up to date: Abit nf-7 mobo (nVidia nforce 2 or ultra; think just the 2), Athlon XP 2200+, 512meg of ddr 400 ram, what I guess is an "average" drive - 80 gig 7200rpm "100" (not 66 or 33 or 133, the term escapes me as my eyelids are drooping... y'all know what I mean). Oh yeah, WinXP Home with all the updates that microsloth has seen fit to come out with. Wish I could do this stuff in Mandrake Linux (well, I probbably could but it seems xphome is more idiot proof and I have a knack for destroying my linux installs in a day or two on average!).

Seems a trifle slow. The only bottleneck I can think of offhand would be my video card as it is only an nVidia FX5200/128meg. But it has always seemed adequate enough for me (I don't operate over 1024*768 and often at 800*600) and I am not watching the video during the conversion so I assume it would be the same speed whatever video card I have installed.

Perhaps I should just start a thread, "Diary of a madman (Or Trials and Tribulations of a Man Trying to Learn (S)Video CD Production the Hard Way."

I hope to screw up a few more times so that hopefully this weekend I can go over all the guides/faqs again thoroughly and actually understand what I am reading.

Because at this point if I got everything to work I wouldn't know why and couldn't expect to do it again. But it would still be nice. [bold8-P[/bold]

 

sigh, that is 2 long post you got there.
i'll make it short.
here goes,

1)mpeg is compressed, but divx is a better compressor and video tends to get very small. uncompress video can get up to 20GB for 20 minutes worth of video.

2)your video card doesn't speed up your video encoding, i really is the processor.

3)i'm getting about 8 hours for 92minutes of video, with all the "advanced" setting i used on tmpgenc. all on an athlon xp barton 2500+. if you don't believe me its not your video card, then how come i'm doing better than you with an S3 video card.

4)faster encoding ? then close all unnecassary process that use up the cpu power.

i once a newbie too, but only for a few days, as i intensively read all the necassary info.

you can also get a premodded xbox that will let you play divx on it. or the kiss dvd player.