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Using Computer While Running RB

Discussion in 'DVD / BD-Rebuilder forum' started by TomBrookl, Sep 2, 2005.

  1. TomBrookl

    TomBrookl Member

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    It sounds like some people have been able to multitask, but I'll try doing my backups overnight for now to be safe. Thanks for the feedback.
     
  2. Lumbastio

    Lumbastio Member

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    You guys are lucky. Today is my first time using RB with HC and after almost 6 hours I am only 52.4% complete. I really can't let my PC remain idle since 12 hours is a long time even for an overnight session and since I am studying, classical must play. But then again, I have every single worthy security installed and running on my PC: SpywareBlaster, SpywareGuard, Spybot, Microsoft Antispyware, Ad-Aware Professional with ad-watch, and Norton Antivirus (not to mention AnyDVD and Firefox.) I sure hope the DVD will turn out to be perfect. Some say that if I buy the CCE, I'll get faster encoding times, if not a little better quality. Do you know how much faster will it be?

    512 RAM, 1.80 GHz
     
  3. l8nights

    l8nights Guest

    cce is the fastest encoder but only marginally. did you try going offline and shuting down all background app's even spyware& anti-virus? since you are offline this should not hurt you!

    what title are you rebuilding??? what version of rebuilder are you using?(pro?) I was once told any movies with interleaving will take a long time on the freeware versions!
     
  4. squizzle

    squizzle Active member

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    not sure how much faster CCE will be, but I have heard that it is faster. What are your PC specs? I have a 2.2 GHz CPU and 1 GB of RAM and I still get 2 hours+ encode times, slower PCs with less RAM will get even higher encode times. Do you use the Undot or Deen plugins or any other AVISynth plugins? Those will also increase your encode times by quite a bit.

    I would recommend ending all those processes like all that spyware stuff while doing a movie. Those all eat resources and it appears that you have a lot of them. Personally I only use Microsoft AntiSpy and Norton AntiVirus, since I've been running Firefox I haven't run into spyware or adware like I used to with Internet Explorer.
     
  5. vurbal

    vurbal Administrator Staff Member

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    If you're using CCE it also makes a big difference what CPU you have. The latest versions are optimized for SSE2 instructions. While even Celeron processors from the P4 family support those instructions, no 32 bit AMD CPU does (all 64 bit AMD's do). As a result, I can get better speed from a mobile Celeron 1.7GHz than a friend of mine does from his desktop Athlon 2200.

    In terms of multi-tasking, the best way to manage this is to run DVD-RB at idle priority. That will mean any program it starts (ie CCE) will also run at that priority. Even though it sounds like it would make encoding take a lot longer, in reality it should only mean a time difference of around 1%-5%. All you have to do is start DVD-RB with a batch file like this:

    start /low Rebuilder.exe
     
    Last edited: Sep 9, 2005
  6. UncasMS

    UncasMS Regular member

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    using my pc when converting i cannot agree to only 1-5% decrease

    it was considerably more the last couple of times i compared encoding speeds

    of course it heavily depends on what you're doing with the pc
     
  7. Mort81

    Mort81 Senior member

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    Hi vurbal,

    I guess I don't understand how to set up dvd-rb in idle priority. Could you further explain please. I'm interested. Thanks.

    Mort
     
  8. UncasMS

    UncasMS Regular member

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    1.
    open notepad

    2.
    insert this:

    start /low Rebuilder.exe

    3.
    save the file into your rebuilder directory and set the extension to *.bat instead of *.txt

    4.
    doubleclick this new rebuilder_low.bat (or whatever you have named it)
     
  9. vurbal

    vurbal Administrator Staff Member

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    It will definitely depend on what you're doing. If you do anything else that's CPU intensive it will take significantly longer since any other program will get priority over RB. I was assuming, probably incorrectly, that using the computer referred to things like websurfing that aren't CPU intensive.

    When I first experimented with CCE (CCE SP 2.67) I read on Doom9 that the difference was around 3%. I didn't believe it until I tested for myself, but my own tests with that version of CCE and newer versions of CCE Basic have shown the difference I stated. Of course I've only tested this with a handful of movies and only 2 CPUs (Duron 900MHz and P4 2.4GHz) and with 768MB RAM on each machine, so there are certainly variables I haven't taken into account.

    I have, however, done other experiments with Windows and priority settings that lead me to the conclusion that multiple CPU intensive tasks are more efficient when run simultaneously at idle priority. For example, when I use EAC to rip a CD and convert it to MP3 files I only get about a 25% slowdown when I have three encoding operations running at a time, making it much faster to do it that way. Of course if I had less memory this might not be true since I'd be taking a substantial performance hit by using the pagefile where I'm currently using RAM. Maybe not completely relevant to this discussion, but still interesting.
     
    Last edited: Sep 9, 2005
  10. Mort81

    Mort81 Senior member

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    Thanks UncasMS. I'll give it a go.
     
  11. Mort81

    Mort81 Senior member

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    Wow dvd-rb idle priority made all the difference in the world. My pc used to drag even trying to surf the web while dvd-rb/cce was running, now I can't even tell it's running. Cool. I'll have to see how much it slowed it down.

    Mort
     
  12. UncasMS

    UncasMS Regular member

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    that actually surprises me a little bit as you said you were using a 2.8 @ 3.x pentium

    running rb + hc/procoder/cce has not slowed me down noticably on an athlon64 3500 + 1gb ram

    will give it a try again this very minute out of curiosity
     
    Last edited: Sep 9, 2005
  13. Mort81

    Mort81 Senior member

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    Yeah suprised me a bit too. Almost hated useing dvd-rb/cce during the day in case I needed to access the web. I could still surf but took about 3 times as long to open pages. I can't even tell rb/cce is running now (right now as I type). I haven't noticed that idle mode has slowed the encode time down.
     
  14. UncasMS

    UncasMS Regular member

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    i have 100% cpu usage this minute running:

    rb pro + hc 016 test release
    firefox with 2 tabs + 1 download
    quintessential mp3 player
    total commander
    remote admin

    rb + hc run in normal priority and i can spot no lag at all
     
  15. squizzle

    squizzle Active member

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    so with all this multitasking you guys are doing, are there errors on the output files?
     
  16. Mort81

    Mort81 Senior member

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    Hi squizzle,

    I've never had any errors even before I was useing idle mode and my pc was doggy.

    Mort
     
  17. Sophocles

    Sophocles Senior member

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    a minor correction, I haven't been able to encode anything in under an hour. On large sized DVD's my fastest was 72 minutes but my average is between 78 and 84 minutes. As Vurbal just stated you need SSE2 instructions to benefit from speed gains. In RB under the idct settings I've been using the one that is the third from the bottom.
     
  18. Mort81

    Mort81 Senior member

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    Hi Soph,

    Yeah I corrected myself. I was over bragging your achievements.

    Would you please explain those idct settings a little more for me. Will it work with my P4 2.8 ghz @ 3.2 ghz?

    Mort

     
  19. Sophocles

    Sophocles Senior member

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    You'll find it under Avisynth options in DVD Rebuilder Pro. There's a list that pops up with several choices. I wish I could tell you more but I just did a reformat and reinstall and I don't have copy of RB/Pro at this time.

    I was messing with over clocking and some things got corrupted to the point of failing to boot.
     
  20. Sophocles

    Sophocles Senior member

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    Encoders are CPU intensive (virtually 100%) and the faster the CPU is the more they'll make use of it. There is no such thing as true multi tasking on a single core CPU, what's happening is that windows is switching back and forth between them (oscillating) and if you're using a single processor then you will definitely see some slowdown.

    If you're using a dual core CPU then windows can assign one application per core but if you're using CCE then it's going to use both cores because it's multi threaded and it will use virtually 100% of both of them. When you're using RB/avisynth they're single threaded applications and you could see some increased speeds but when they're being used by CCE, you should still experience a slow down.
     

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