Experiencing Difficulty Using DVD RB and CCE? If So, Then Ask Your Questions Here.

Thanks so much for clearing this up for me, you just saved me 1/4 of my encoding time!! (I was using 4 CCE passes) Truley appreciated

 

ebega

A lot of people have made that same assumption regarding CCE passes, and it's been answered a few times on this thread, and no one can fault you for not wanting to go back a couple of thousand posts to find it. LOL

 

Hi,

Ok, I have backed up the other DVD and it was the right size when done this time, so upgrading to the newest version seems to have solved the problem of the end result being 32MB too long for a regular size DVD.

The process took 790 minutes using 10 passes with CCE 2.66.01.07 using ECL, and the DVD started at 7.27GB and finished at 4.31GB.

The DVD that was giving me so much trouble was the BBC's The League Of Gentlemen Season 3 Discs 1&2. The first two seasons of this DVD I backed up and compressed using Roxio 7 and the discs look like crap, very pixelated, especially on scenes where there is very little moving in the shot, then they are terrible.

My rig is as follows:

P4 2.26malay, a good overclocker so I have been told. (is this true?)

Zalman CNPS7700-Cu fan

2gb OCZ Gold EL DDR500 CL3-4-4-8 Ram

ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe S478 865PE Dual DDR AGP 5PCI SATA 1394 Sound 1000LAN Motherboard

BFG GeForce 6600 GT OC AGP8X 128MB Dual DVI-I TV-OUT Video Card

Antec True Power 2.0 550W ATX12V V2.0 SLI 120MM Fan Power Supply

1 Maxtor DiamondMax 10 200GB SATA 7200RPM 16MB Cache

1 Maxtor DiamondMax 10 200GB IDE 7200RPM 16MB Cache

1 WD Caviar 120GB 7200RPM 8MB Cache

Plextor PX-716A 16X8X16 DVD+-RW 4X DVD+R Dual Layer Drive IDE

Running XPpro SP2

all in a Black SILVERSTONE SST-TJ03 ALUMINUM FULL TOWER CASE EATX

I have been working on building this system up for a while, but know I am limited by the S478 mobo and the AGP video card slot on the mobo. My next upgrade will be to get a S478 P4 3.4mhz with HT.

So that is my system, is there any way to increase the encoding speed? Should I try overclocking? It is my understanding the processor I have overclocks well, and my motherboard supports it.

I have the time, I just let my rig run at night when asleep, so it is not the end of the world, but it would be nice to decrease the time if possible. I know I can decrease the time with fewer passes, but how can I increase the speed at which the program works, regardless of passes?

Cheers, Mark

 

http://www.starmicro.net/detail.aspx?ID=543
That is the link to the CPU you need and at the best price I've seen. They may be pulls, I'm not sure. They don't come in Intel packaging. They're about the price you see for used on auction sites. The Northwoods are actually starting to be hard to find. I purchased one and it works the way it's supposed to. I've done a lot of encoding since I got it and no problems. It sells for $265, the 2MB cache version sells for $899. The extra cache would be nice, but not at those prices (at least for me).

Look around and you'll see the 3.4GHz Northwoods priced much higher. The hotter running Prescotts work on the Asus board, but you'll be needing that big Zalman CPU FHS to keep it cooled down. The Northwoods are actually the best for OCing in the S478 P4s because they're cooler operating. I'm not saying that just because I have one, check around. That's the reason I have one. LOL That and it's the only thing that would fit the Dell board. You can call that luck. I'll be putting a 2.8GHz processor back in the DELL, so it will still be okay as a backup PC.

I don't know what you're using, but there are some good AGP graphics cards. Check out the ATI Radeon line. I have an X850 Pro for the current build. The X850 XT is a bit pricier. You can check out the offerings at the ATI website. The 1600 is a good mid line card as well. Just depends on what you want. Unless you're an extreme gamer, the AGP cards will do the job. It's no SLI system, but the venerable socket 478 Northwood P4 on the Asus board is quick. Though not a gamer's dream, it is capable. You can note my specs to see the components going onto the system I'm currently building with the P4P800E board. The new build gets the best I've been upgrading the Dell with, along with a host of upgraded parts slated for a performance build later. Like your system, another mobo, a dual core processor, a good sound card and a good graphics card and you have a reasonably priced performance PC.

The processor upgrade will drastically improve your processing times. The upgrade is much better than trying to OC the relatively slow processor you have. For $165 dollars you can get a 3GHz CPU that will be faster than your current processor and it OC(ed), plus the 3.O would still be able to be OC(ed). As you can see, you can do much better for little cost with CPUs much faster than the one you have.

With the faster CPU and doing the passes at a reasonable number (3 at most) your encoding times will be drastically reduced. That way you will have quicker gratification and be less likely to accumulate hair on your palms. Plus, you'll still be able to [bold]see[/bold] the excellent quality of RB/CCE encoding. LOL

 

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=13899

I was looking at the above proc, as i like dealing with this company. It is too expensive to bring things into Canada from the US - the courier companies ding us with a huge fee. Plus this company gives good warranties and free rma.

I might just go with the 3.0 as it is much cheaper and not sure the .4 is worth the increase of over 50%.

http://www.ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=11787

Are these northwood or a prescott cores? I do like the 1mb L2 cache, but they may run hotter than the sun.

The 6600GTOC is actually a nice little video card, and its recent addition has vastly improved my gaming experience.(so has the ram) I got the card for about $125us with a rebate.

Appreciate the feedback.

Mark

 

Why 10 passes or 790 minutes? I think you're going to kill your system the more you use DVD-RB Pro + CCE SP to encodes your backups this way.

The most I'll ever do is 3 Passes.

 

I am cutting down on my passes after what jdobbs wrote, if he wrote the program and say 3 passes are enough that is good enough for me.

I was just assuming that the most was the best, and that I would give the time. but don;t need to now.

Cheers, Mark

 

mark9977
Those are the Prescott processors you listed. One way of recognizing the Northwoods are that they were manufactured using the 0.13 micron manufacturing technology, Prescotts use the 90nm process. Prescotts are noticably hotter, so it's good that you have the big Zalman if you intend to OC one. The 3.0 should get you into the range of 3-4 hrs for an RB backup using 3 passes.

 

brobear,

Please correct me if I'm wrong but I read somewhere a while back that 512 kb cache processors were better/faster for encoding than the 1 and 2 mb cache processors but the 2 mb cpu's are better for data and number processing. Is this incorrect? I don't know that's why I ask.

So that cpu you linked to is a northwood core? If so I may jump on that.

 

Mort81

I don't think I've heard that L2 cache affects encoding speeds, if anything it should show a small improvement. The reason that Northwood's are a little faster than their Prescott brethren is because they have shorter pipelines, use a little less voltage, and it runs cooler than the Prescott's do. Two years ago the Northwood was one of the over clockers chips of choice.

 

I read that in an article somewhere. Something about video being incosistant and data processing being more constant. The video bogged the higher cache chips down a little more where it could pass through the 512 cache easier. I don't know. 512 would be fine with me as long as it was a northwood core. I need to check whether or not my mobo will accept higher than 3.0 ghz. It's a gigabyte 81848P-G. Where can I find this out for sure without digging out the manual?

 

Mort81

L2 Cache runs at the same speed as the processor so the only slow down that occurs on Intel based systems is when it hits the memory controller and front side bus. On current AMD chips the memory controller and the front side bus are also on die (chip) and so they too run at the same speed as the processor.

 

Just wondering if anyone has any more tips for improving the performance of DVDrebuilder, other than cutting the number of passes and getting a faster processor?

My specs are in a previous post if you need them.

Cheers.

 

If you're doing your routine maintenance to keep the system in top condition, there isn't much more. The process is heavily dependent on the processor speed and having ample memory to run it. With 2GB of RAM, you have the memory. That only leaves the CPU.

 

Ok,

Thanks. I had read somewhere that using multiple hd's would speed things up, but didn't understand the technique, or if that method actually improved the time it takes.

Thanks, Mark

 

mark,

It is recommended that you use different hdd's for the sorce and destination folders if you have more than one hdd. I've always used this method so I don't know how much it will speed things up but even jdobbs recommends doing so if you have multiple hdds. It may just be a matter of a few minutes but every little bit helps.

 

I've done it both ways and haven't noticed a significant time difference. In fact I use the same HD most of the time and my times are better than a lot. My system is under construction, I have a new 300GB HD on the way, so I just did a movie with the Source stored on the 80GB E: drive (2nd HD) with the work and output on the D: partition of my main drive. C: is reserved for the OS and programming (saves on fragmentation issues that way). At 3 passes I did the entire disc of "Two For The Money" in 175 minutes, that including RB building an ISO from the Output files and cleaning up. That's about normal for my system when I'm using an E: and F: partition on the storage/work drive. The Source was 7.35GB. As we know movies vary but for this size movie, it's about average on my system. At 2 passes that would have been close to 125 minutes for the complete task. The encoding time by itself was 150 minutes for the 3 passes.

To actually check a time variation, a person would have to do the same backup, with the same source and settings twice with just the drive locations being different. Anyone want to do an actual time trial to give us a time difference? That leaves the questions, what is the best locations for the Source, the Work File, and the Output File; or does it matter?

 

That is similiar to how I do it brobear. I rip the dvd to my 300 gb hdd then run it through remake and save the edited folder to my D: drive which is a 40 gb partition of my 80 gb C: hdd. I don't put any of my dvd files on the C: partition of my 80 gb drive. I use that partition exclusively for windows and program files. Anyway for rebuilder the sorce folder is the one from remake on my D: partition of the C: drive and I make a new folder on my E: drive for the destination folder.

BTW my 2 gb of dual channel memory should be here tomorrow or the next day. I'm curious to see if another gig of memory alone will make any improvement on encode times.

 

I can't image that it would make a difference, however, using Task Manager's Performance tab would certainly tell you while DVDRB was running. Of course, asking jdobbs that question is even more relevant, and hopefully he will answer that question, I'd be real curious myself.

Best regards,

Rich

 

@Mort81

I recently upgraded from 1 GB of DDR2 RAM to 2 GB myself (system specs on profile page)... There was no significant difference in my encoding times. I was, however, able to open over 50 application instances with various programs without experincing any lag time. I must add that none of them were CPU intensive like video encoding, though...