HEY ALL, I'm kind of getting fed up with the very long encoding times for the Tmpg(i use filters). I always set my stuff to "highest quality (very slow)". My cips themselves are cpatured at a 2900 bitrate in mpg form. To encode a clip (about 30mins) it takes the encoder about 9-15hrs. So my question is this, if i lower the quality template to "high quality" instead, wold i notice a major difference or barly any differecne at all? I just started a test clip that i just encoded, but now lowered the quality to high quality instead and by doing this its saving me a little more then 3 hours. Thanks for any info

-- Doug (mazinz@aol.com), January 22, 2001

Answers

I can't say about 2900kb/s, but using standard 1374kb/s for VCD, I've experimented on various clips and the answer to this is, as I've found out, a kvetchy "it depends". Encoding type-2 DV AVI all, I personally found it hard to detect the difference between "highest" and "high" with clips that have little or no motion (talking heads, for example). High-motion clips (sporty ones) or those that feature plenty of moving detail (breaking waves and fluttering leaves) DID make a difference with "high" producing slightly more blockiness than "highest"; it piqued me somewhat but NONE of three "untechie" friends who saw the two VCD versions were bothered. You say you did make a test clip and lowered it to "high". WHAT did you observe with the results??

-- Mehmet Tekdemir (turk690@yahoo.com), January 23, 2001.

my clip was captured at 2900, then encoded down to 2500. So i did a clip and to be honest with you, i saw absoltuely no diefference at all. Maybe it is because i sitll kept the quality at a highrate, maybe i would notice more of a difference if i burned it at normal vcd specs? Have to try that. either way the 6 hrs is sitll a hell of a lot better then the older 9.something hour it used to give me

-- Doug (mazinz@aol.com), January 23, 2001.

I hope I'm not stating the obvious, but the faster your processor, the less time you'll need. I have a 1GHz Athlon and it's been a while since I've encoded anything, but I suspect that to do what you're doing on my box would take 4-5 hours. At the slow speeds you're seeing, I bet you have something along the lines of a 500-700 MHz processor. Even if you upgrade your processor, it's still going to take you several hours to do this encoding.

-- Jason Shumate (Jason.Shumate@sita.int), January 23, 2001.

oh yes i am aware that using a faster processor will give much faster results (running now at intel pet 3 550mhz), but at the sametime im not going to get a new system or be able to upgrade that soon. So with what i got now...

-- Doug (mazinz@aol.com), January 23, 2001.