slower encode times from HDD's vs DVD's

[carbonell2]

i haven't seen this posted yet, so fogrgive me if this is a repeat. i genuinely looked....

a few weeks back, i encoded my entire DVD collection using mactheripper and stored it on a MyBook Professional 500gb HDD. most of them i did "main feature".

i started to encode a few of the movies and noticed that the fps' started off good at 30+, then within 5 mins or so dropped to 8-9 fps. i let it ride thinking it would be dynamic, but the encode took over 4 hours for a 90 min movie. curious, i copied the video TS file onto my host HDD and encoded.....exact same result. i pulled out the actual DVD, popped it in the optical drive and got a good 30-40fps out of the encode (i let it work all the way through the movie and got an average of 34.4).

a little frustrated, i hooked up my new eSATA MyBook (via USB 2.0), copied the same video TS folder to that and used that as a source....i'm getting an average of 21fps now 60% through. twice the speed of the nonSATA, but almost half the speed of an optical drive encode.

the original machine was my black macbook (core 2 duo, 2gb ram). i repeated the same steps on my 24" imac (2gb ram) and my wifes white macbook (core 2 duo / 1gb ram) and got identical results like my black macbook 8-9fps.

i policed the activity monitor as suggested in the forum and it's riding at 170%+ when pulling from DVD and the eSATA (via USB2.0), but at 60% when coming from the nonSATA external and the internal SATA in all 3 computers. could it be that handbrake prefers "pulling" from a dvd rather than a video TS? it seems like there is a bottle neck somewhere pulling from HDD...since the encode starts good...then drops.

in addition to the above tests, i used 3 differnt movies from 3 different eras (Purple Rain, Pulp Fiction & Kill Bill) all with the same result.

any ideas?

obviously, my plan was to do a batch encode from the HDD i ripped the movies to. i go on holiday next tuesday for 12 days....i figured that would be enough time

[jbrjake]

From the hard drive should be as fast or faster.

Probably an issue with MTR's main feature extraction. Do full disc rips.

And MyBooks are slow...that could be it too.

[loyalty_anchored]

oh oh, 8-9FPS, that sounds awfully close to the speeds reported when audio drops...

did you playback the encodes to verify that they have maintained audio throughout the whole length? if not, i would recommend you playback your encodes and scan through them skipping forward to make sure there is audio up to the very end of the movie.

if the audio drops out, then you need to look for the huge NO AUDIO sticky thread.

[dynaflash]

i encoded my entire DVD collection using mactheripper and stored it on a MyBook Professional 500gb HDD. most of them i did "main feature".

i started to encode a few of the movies and noticed that the fps' started off good at 30+, then within 5 mins or so dropped to 8-9 fps. i let it ride thinking it would be dynamic, but the encode took over 4 hours for a 90 min movie. curious, i copied the video TS file onto my host HDD and encoded.....exact same result. i pulled out the actual DVD, popped it in the optical drive and got a good 30-40fps out of the encode (i let it work all the way through the movie and got an average of 34.4).

When you say you "copied the video TS file onto my host HDD" are you referring to the main feature rips from mtr ?

I can tell you that HB has a very hard time reading the Main Feature rips from mtr. If you rip them full disc, you will find HB reads them as fast or faster than right from disc.

You will also likely find that if you do let the HB encode from the main feature rips of mtr, your audio will drop out of your final movie at about the same point at which your fps dropped during your encode.

This has been my experience, anyway.