ultra slow xvid encoding with mencoder

mrpringle · 12-28-2007, 03:21 AM

Hello,
I think mencoder is encoding video unusually slow. I'm in the process of digitalising some of the DVD's I bought, so firstly I ripped the movie to the hard drive using mplayer and redirecting the output to a file.

Then I am running the following command.

mencoder movie.vob -oac mp3lame -lameopts abr:br=128 -ovc xvid -xvidencopts bitrate=900 -o movie.avi

This is encoding at around 8fps.

I have a Core 2 duo E6850 (3.0GHz) and 4GB of DDR800 ram. I am running gentoo amd64.

Granted that xvid is probably only using one of the cores, 8fps seems extrordinarily slow to me. I've never encoded under linux before but I thought my old P4 3.2Ghz used to encode at around 30-40fps under windows.

Can anyone shed some light on the problem.

Thanks

hal8000 · 01-01-2008, 06:22 AM

Thats an awesome machine spec!

8fps does seem pretty slow are you using one pass or two pass encoding?

There is a howto on the gentoo wiki:

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Mencode...coding_Options

to save you typing the same options everytime you can setup a mencoder.conf file.

Other clues I would look for is the output of /var/log/messages, use either gkrelllm, qps or top to see the actual CPU usage, you may be able to renice the process for higher piority.

Hope that helps.

mrpringle · 01-01-2008, 03:41 PM

Thanks for the post, but I was already using the examples from the gentoo mencoder howto wiki.
I'll check /var/log/messges, but top shows about 50% CPU utilisation.

I've tried one pass and two pass encoding, but it doesn't make much of a difference.

I've also tried H.264 which encodes the same video at about ~25fps, compared to ~8fps for xvid.

12-28-2007, 03:21 AM	#1 (permalink)
mrpringle Registered User Join Date: Dec 2007 Posts: 3 OS: Vista Home Premium	ultra slow xvid encoding with mencoder Hello, I think mencoder is encoding video unusually slow. I'm in the process of digitalising some of the DVD's I bought, so firstly I ripped the movie to the hard drive using mplayer and redirecting the output to a file. Then I am running the following command. mencoder movie.vob -oac mp3lame -lameopts abr:br=128 -ovc xvid -xvidencopts bitrate=900 -o movie.avi This is encoding at around 8fps. I have a Core 2 duo E6850 (3.0GHz) and 4GB of DDR800 ram. I am running gentoo amd64. Granted that xvid is probably only using one of the cores, 8fps seems extrordinarily slow to me. I've never encoded under linux before but I thought my old P4 3.2Ghz used to encode at around 30-40fps under windows. Can anyone shed some light on the problem. Thanks

01-01-2008, 06:22 AM	#2 (permalink)
hal8000 Registered User Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: UK Posts: 229 OS: PCLinux2009/Ubuntu/XP	Re: ultra slow xvid encoding with mencoder Thats an awesome machine spec! 8fps does seem pretty slow are you using one pass or two pass encoding? There is a howto on the gentoo wiki: http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Mencode...coding_Options to save you typing the same options everytime you can setup a mencoder.conf file. Other clues I would look for is the output of /var/log/messages, use either gkrelllm, qps or top to see the actual CPU usage, you may be able to renice the process for higher piority. Hope that helps.

01-01-2008, 03:41 PM	#3 (permalink)
mrpringle Registered User Join Date: Dec 2007 Posts: 3 OS: Vista Home Premium	Re: ultra slow xvid encoding with mencoder Thanks for the post, but I was already using the examples from the gentoo mencoder howto wiki. I'll check /var/log/messges, but top shows about 50% CPU utilisation. I've tried one pass and two pass encoding, but it doesn't make much of a difference. I've also tried H.264 which encodes the same video at about ~25fps, compared to ~8fps for xvid.