ConvertXToDVD? Convert Speed..
July 23rd, 2013
edit: or does anybody have any tips on how to speed it up? like what is it that makes it go fast/slow anyways.. it isn’t using all my CPU, or my memory.
i dont know but why dont you just try it?
you have nothing to lose. just use VLC player to check the file after or even burn it onto a RW DVD.
mine is always on normal.
I used to use winavi and that only took 15 mins to convert but after one of the later updates the sound kept on skipping. It might be different now so you may want to look into that?
If you want to have a fast conversion, you need to have good system specs. If you don’t, consider doing an upgrade.
Usually conversion programs take a lot of time.. even though with good specs.
Whenever i have tried putting it to higher or whatever, i’ve never seen any difference in converting speed.
In the settings, you can tell the program how many CPU CORES to use.
This might speed it up for you.
vishnubabu replied: Usually conversion programs take a lot of time.. even though with good specs.
That’s not true. While a poor system can take up to 4 hours (or more) to finish a conversion, a good system can take less than an hour. My system is average, and usually doesn’t take more than 45 minutes, using ConvertXtoDVD.
good system spec, convert faster. my computer convert around 10min only.
Isn’t it also dependant on file sizes as well.
I think a more accurate rating would be converting speeds.
I’m only getting around 4x speed, which even though i’ve had to go to a portable version i find odd as i was getting similar speeds on older computer before the upgrade.
And newer computer is much faster than old one.
conversion speeds depend on a few things, so lets run them down:
1. CPU, number of cores and base clock of each core, the more cores the better obviously (though past 4 cores there is no gain, as i have yet to see soft that actually can use more than 4 cores for processing)
2. GPU, this seems to be overlooked by most, conversion speed does depend on your graphic card, even more so, if you apply additional filters and not just a container swap.
3. RAM, doesn’t really depend that much on how much RAM you got, you’ll never need more than 2-3 GB of free RAM at any time, but the clocking of that has an impact on speed. if the soft can’t move the re-coded data fast enough somewhere, it will slow down, so best results are achieved with DDR5
4. HDD the data need to be put somewhere, its always a good idea to have the source file and the final file on the same partition, best choice here obviously SSD.
the whole normal, high, time critical, usually doesn’t gain that much, they just define the priority its performed at, this only gives a speed boost if there are background programs running, as one shouldn’t use the PC while encoding anyways, there shouldn’t be anything to gain.
raising this tends to just make the system more unstable.
and finally of course, the software can have a huge impact on speed, there’s at times severe differences between 2 programs encoding the same source file into the same final file.
and not to forget, the formats and resolution you pick also influence the speed, primarily the compression (final file size)
high compression @ good quality = forever, but good quality and small filesize
high compression @ low quality = fair, won’t look so good but small size
low compression @ good quality = fast, will look good, but file will be larger
low compression @ low quality = very fast but file will be bloated and quality won’t be good
for an acceptable middle ground: low compression @ good quality triple pass (takes about 2-3 times as long to process, but the video gets done multiple times, which has a good effect on overall filesize) file will be about the same size as high comp. @ good quality single pass, and should be done faster
if filesize isn’t a concern, always go for low compression @ good quality, its the fastest but may increase filesize by a few hundred megs per hour (depending on resolution and starting quality).
resolution factors in like this:
the higher the resolution, the more processing of information is required, therefore it will always take longer
decent – good software should on a mid-high range current PC never be below 2-3 times (for every hour of video its shouldn’t take more than 20-30 minutes)
normal i would put it at around 4-6 times (1 hour in 10-15 minutes)
None of this answers his first question – he was asking about the priority setting for ConvX.
The priority setting just set how many slices of the cpu that the program gets when you multi task – if you run ConvX on its own and go have a coffee then changing this setting will not make a difference.
If you are doing other work while doing a movie convert then setting it to high can help. Never set it to time critical because your sysytem will lock solid until ConvX has finished.
For general use it won’t make a hell of a lot of difference setting the priority higher than normal.
Not using the computer while ConvX works will make a difference, all cpu cycles go to the conversion.
*****
There’s not a great deal you can to speed it up for decent quality work – it’s highly cpu dependant.
Faster cpu and more cores will help, more ram (up to 4G) will help a little, over 4g doesn’t seem to make a difference.
Reducing the quality settings will make it faster, but the quality loss may not be worth it.