1.4mhz ripping and burning 75% faster than my 2.8mhz

EDIT: 1.4 ghz and 2.8ghz obviously...

Hi all, I posted on here a month or so ago and got my burn times cut down in half, however I'm getting smoked by my roommates computer. Using the exact same progs and settings (DVD Shrink 3.2 & Nero 6 OEM), he was able to rip and burn a DVD in 35 minutes. He's got an AMD1800 processor with 512 RAM. I have a 2.8 P4 with 640 RAM and it takes me 1 - 1.5 hours to just rip it, then another 20 minutes to burn. What gives?

We set both up to use DMA instead of PIO. One difference I noticed is that his just says "Ultra DMA" or something close to that. Mine says "Ultra DMA Mode 2" This may just be from the chipset, etc. Are these different types of modes?

Anything else I should be checking? This is ridiculous!

 

Another thing you get into is RAM utilization. A lot depends on the programs on the PC. What other programs are on your PC besides the Shrink? You have to compare that to his.

Lest we forget, there are little things like front side bus speeds; HD and disk drive speeds and HD buffer size. Then there are sometimes differences in drive configurations.

If you really want to find the differences, you can load and run SiSoft Sandra. There is a trial version I believe. Read the directions and only do the tests you need. Otherwise you get a read out you could spends many hours sifting through.

BTW, Flip was right on the heads up test. You would have to be burning the same DVD to compare. Also, you would have to be using the same program settings.

There are many aspects to times for a system. We can give a few pointers, but a true check out (like SiSoft Sandra) is something that you or someone has to do manually and correlate the results.
_X_X_X_X_X_[small][bold]'brobear'[/bold]



I was an earth-rim walker, a lurker at the threshold of the abyss. - Grendel -

[bold]Et tu, Brute![/bold][/small]

 

Thanks for the replies. We were burning the same DVD. He has an Nforce2 board with an AMD1800. Not sure what the fsb is with his. I have a P4. and an intel P board w/800fsb. If anything he has more running in the background than I do. I have absolutely nothing running besides Shrink when I'm using it and are settings are exactly the same (after yelling them out to each other two rooms down). We're both using DVD 5.

He's ripping with a new NEC 16x burner. I just have an 8x burner, but the read speed is 16x. However, thinking that was the problem a while ago, I bought a new DVD rom and I'm using it now. I get just about the same speeds.

I have Sandra and everything is up where you would expect it. I don't have it installed on his but obviously his is running up to snuff.

I may try re-installing the IDE controllers. I need to see where I can get these drivers.

Anything else you can think of?? Thanks for all your help!

 

Is there anything I should be checking in the bios? The IDE controllers? I checked some obvious things like read speed of the DVD rom and it's correct. The HD and CD-roms are on opposite cables, etc. Maybe an IDE controller card would help? GRR!

 

How much RAM is your system showing available to run the program? (Not the total amount of RAM on the system.) You can use the Task Manager to get an idea of the RAM usage when the PC is just setting idle. Under Processes you can see the processes active on your PC; the amount of RAM committed and the CPU usage. Leave the task manager open and see how things are running. Under performance you can watch how your memory and CPU are functioning. Take a look and see if that tells you anything. It's normal for the CPU to run at 100% while doing a backup. However if the commit charge is maxing or peaking at the limit, you may be having a problem.

Here is a for instance which is normal times. Ripping to the HD with Decrypter for a 7.3 GB disc (Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back) takes about 20 minutes. Using the preripped file with Shrink takes 15 minutes for deep analysis. Shrink does its own rip, but I've found the times comparable to Decrypter. So give it 20 minutes to rip. The encoding process takes about 1hr 15min. Add to that a burn time of 15 min at 4x (good speed with less errors). Backup time with quality settings is about 1hr 50 min; with deep analysis it runs about 2hr 10 min. So, your 1hr and 50 min is about par for a DVD 9 to a DVD 5 target. [bold]Before anyone says anything; I didn't originally intend to use the Decrypter ripped file with Shrink and only plugged it in to double check work times.[/bold]

If your friend is doing that same complete process in 35 min recording the same movie using the same app with the same settings, then something is screwy. 3.2 DVD Shrink with quality settings is just not that fast. However the encode time without the quality settings for the same movie above is just 20 min. So, 20 for the rip, 20 for the encode and 15 for the burn at 4x comes to 55 min. Doing a faster burn could cut off a few min. If the friend is not using quality settings and burning fast he could come close to the time mentioned if the movie isn't too large. If the friend is getting the 35 min time out of Shrink with quality settings and files around 7 GB then tell him I'm interested in buying that PC.

If you are using Shrink without quality settings and getting those long times, then you do have a slowness problem, then you already considered that.
_X_X_X_X_X_[small][bold]'brobear'[/bold]



I was an earth-rim walker, a lurker at the threshold of the abyss. - Grendel -

[bold]Et tu, Brute![/bold][/small]

 

Thanks BroBear for the reply...it may help shed some light. I'm taking some screenshots of my taskbar and will post them shortly.

I was going to ask about the quality settings but I think I have found what you are talking about. Neither one of us are doing the deep analysis or the quality enhancements under the "Quality Settings" tab. I still get 1.5 hours or so with the same movie compared to his 35 minutes.

His exact steps are. Put the DVD in. Fire up Shrink. Open the Disc. Remove all of the extra sound, subtitles, etc etc. Go to Backup! Select location for ISO. Then it takes 25 minutes to create the ISO file. Then open Nero and burn at 8x in about 9 minutes. I use the exact same steps and get 1.5 hours in Shrink and 20 minutes in Nero.

Thanks again for the replies. I'm hoping to figure this out once and for all.

 

OK, below are pictures of the taskmanager before encoding and during it.

Before encoding...


During encoding...


During encoding, DVD Shrink...



I have gotten my kb/s up to 3300ish but rare and it takes a while as if it needs momentum. The buffer will get to 70mb or so as well later on in the encoding. Does this shed some light?

One last thing I noticed which I believe is completely normal is that the CD-rom seems to read for 1.5 - 2 seconds then it stops for a few seconds, then starts back up, then stops. Normal I'm guessing?

 

I see one problem already. Your CPU is running at 33% during encoding. My 2.8 GHz P4 runs near 100%. You need to find out why yours is only running at 33%, if that is where it stays. Does that reading stay there most of the time during the encoding process?

Have your friend check and see if his CPU isn't running at near 100% during encode. You can't do any kind of speedy processing with the CPU moving at a crawl.
_X_X_X_X_X_[small][bold]'brobear'[/bold]



I was an earth-rim walker, a lurker at the threshold of the abyss. - Grendel -

[bold]Et tu, Brute![/bold][/small]

 

I thought I was just running efficiently. The CPU jumps from 10-35% during the encoding. Like I said, it sounds like the CD-rom spins for a while, then stops, then goes again, then stops. When it spins fast and loud, it's around 35%. When not, it slows to about 10% usage.

I'll have to check around to see what might be causing this...

 

Sounds like the problem is your burner or more specifically it doesn't like what channel you have it on. Try downloading the latest driver for your burner off the manufacturers website. If that doesn't work try changing what IDE channel you have the burner on.

I have a Lite-On that does the exact same thing and i was told that some burners like to be master or slave on a IDE channel. I never tried this myself as i also have a Sony DVD burner and just switched to using that to make my CD's. But let me know if it works for you cuz i would like to use my Lite-On again someday.

 

NeAlvey,
I run and AMD 2600 and when I encode the CPU runs at 98-100%, the RAM runs around 338mb or so. You seem to be bottle necked there some where.

M

 

If your computer is running at near 100% in the processes tab of you computer you have running program in the back ground of your computer.First of all make sure you have a good spyware remover and then clear out any extra spyware program running in the background of the computer along with other programs that you can disable that are not too important like msn messenger etc.go to start > run > and type msconfig and click the start up tab on the computer uncheck all of the program except for one that you want to keep on start up of the computer.Even it you uncheck them all you computer will work just fine.I use to work for a computer manufacturer and this is a step we would do.if you computer is at 30/33 percent then it should be fine.I alway clear out spyware from the computer because it slow it down even when your not on the internet.also are you backing up the movie portion or the movie and all the extras?

 

Another thought is your Pentium 4 2.8 hyperthread?

If so, shouldn't you see 2 cpus in the CPU USAGE screen?

I am not up on Intel things, but a mate has one and I was sure it shows 2 cpus.

M

 

Hijacker,
Video encoding is a CPU intense process, that's why the faster the processor the faster the encoding.

At idle the cpu should run at nothing (as mine does).

M

 

My friend had just bought a pioneer dvd with a OEM version of nero 6 that would lock up his computer.I have a demo version of nero from the website and I installed it on his computer and it worked fine.So you may have a problem with the OEM version of your nero.You don't really need nero to back-up your movie.You can back up with decryptor just fine.When you get the destination of the movie file in shrink.The one with your back up to your burner and a second folder of the compress file for the HDD.Pick ISO Image.Then you'll see a check box to burn the Image to Dvd decryptor, check it and then encode.And kick back after the encoding process and dvd decryptor will open automatically and burn.your movie will be back up like a zip file.When you back up the movie from just the hard drive with decryptor it will have a .iso extension from the file to back up.If you unzip the movie with either winrar or winzip you'll see the audio_ts and video_ts folder with files intact.

 

go to www.nero.com and this is the key hint hint to get a nero or the trial version I mean.I program I like to use for cleaning spyware etc is called crap cleaner of misterbass.org it works really good and it's free.You may want to try looking for the patin couffin driver for burning access layers with the burner and it can integrate with dvd-decrptor just fine and it was use in dvd-x-copy for it's burning program but you can find it on the internet.

 

WOW, lots of replies. Thanks for the help. I'll try to respond to all of them the best I can. As for the DVD burner being on the wrong channel. I have a DVD burner and also a DVD rom. They are running secondary/master and secondary/slave. I've mainly used the DVD rom which is S/M but the burner takes just as long. The Harddrives are both on the primary IDE channel. I haven't tried switching and putting the DVD-roms on the primary and the HD on the secondary. Don't think it would make a difference though b/c I would still be transferring from one to the other.

I was trying to flash the DVD-burner last night to version 2.16 (I have 2.15 currently) but didn't fiddle too long with it b/c the burner isn't even in the equation right now so I figured it wouldn't make a difference.

The computer idles at 0% so I don't believe spyware is a problem. I have virtually nothing in the background through I can take a screenshot of my proccesses tab if that would help.

As far as Nero, I haven't even got to that step so I don't think that is a problem. Is there a diagnostic program I should try to find out where my leak is? I have Sandra and last I checked everything looked fine but I will play around with it tonight. When I go into Photoshop, the CPU usage jumps up to 60-100% while loading it up so it doesn't max at 30%.

Finally, as for hyperthreading. It only shows one right now b/c I disabled it thinking that might help. It didn't and I just forgot to turn it back on. I get the same speeds with hyperthreading on and off.

My reasoning for trying it off is that I have one 512 stick of Crucial and one 128 stick of whatever came with it. I know the Crucial is PC2100, not sure of the OEM. Would this bottleneck it so much that it might be cause of these speeds? My friends computer is running with PC2100 I believe. I will double check this afternoon.

Thanks again for the help! Let me know if you have any other suggestions and I will try them out asap.

 

I don't know if the RAM is your problem, but the RAM will only run as fast as the slowest stick, so if your running a stick of say PC1800 and a stick of PC2100 the memory bus will only run at PC1800, I really don;t think that is your problem, but in saying that slip the OEM stick out and see if that improves it, I will say that it won't, it is something to do with the rate at which the data is getting to the CPU (for processing).

M