Windows 7: Encoding Speed

By speed, I'm not referring to the amount of time that an encodes takes, but the FPS at which it runs. I understand that there are a lot of variables from one movies to another, which probably accounts for the differences in FPS on each, but since I have encountered movies that seem similar on the surface, they will vary in FPS from ~107-220. I'm certain that there is no firm guide available to predetermine what to expect, but is there anything that would be available on the DVD's case label specs that would provide any rule of thumb?

Im not sure I understand exactly what you are asking.

If you mean the FPS the orginal film was encoded at and plays back at :

For BluRay its usually 24 FPS.
For DVD, its usually 29FPS

Pretty standard and they all follow the same guidelines. But thats NTFS format. PAL may be a bit different.


If you mean the FPS that you Endoder can recode a DVD, it really depends on many factors. How powerful your PC is for 1, and scondly the settings you are using to encode the video. Ref frames, bitrate etc.

My question was regarding the last sentence of your post. However, it is not about how hardware or settings are involved. The variance that I spoke of is with the same hardware and settings in all cases. Therefore, it must be something about the nature of the videos themselves. Yet, on the face of it, they appear pretty similar.

I can't speak for videos, but in the case of audio files, bitrates can vary wildly if you're using a VBR setting due to varying complexity of the music.....i.e.Bob Dylan and his acoustic guitar would be far lower bitrate and complexity than a speed metal band thrashing madly away.

Perhaps there's something similar with video?

It may depend also on the orginal video codec used, its bitrate.
But, my guess would be the major thing would be if the DVD video stream is Interlaced or Progressive Scan.

For example, lets say the are the same setting, and its also set to de-interlace as it encodes.

A Interlaced DVD will take longer (FPS will be lower) than a DVD thats Progressive Scan. Simply because the De-Interlacing processing takes more work, and therfore the FPS will be lower.
If the DVD is a Progressive scan, it can completly skip the de-interlace step, and proceed with recoding.

If this is whats happening, different videos may still show some FPS variation. As there are several methods to De-Interlace, depending on the source.
Some being slower than others.

If this is true, how would one determine whether a DVD is interlaced or Progressive, and how would one then setup the encoder to work at the higher speed? Would the result be desirable, or a disaster?

All DVDs both NTFS and PAL are interlaced. I don't know about BluRay.

BluRay are Progressive Scan 24FPS.

DVD can be either Interlaced or Progressive.
Most older DVD will be interlaced though, and many of the TV series.
But some newer movies are Progressive.


You can try TsMuxer.
Just open it up and choose add, and add the first .VOB file.

After it analyses, it will give all the stream info.
Look at the resolution.
In this example as you can see it says 720x480i.
the "i" means its interlaced.


If the Source is progressive, it will just say 720x480.

There are other ways of finding out, such as File Indexing in MeGUI ... and Im sure there other other tools that can show you as well. These are just the only ones Im familiar with.

I would suggest keeping the number of software as low as possible when working with video encoding. Too many tools, and you will get a habit of running into, well, not problems, but much longer setup times before you can actually encode the video(s). Most open-source encoders have detailed descriptions on the video properties, and will act accordingly to specific aspects of the video.

Some basic tips, I assume, you already know: never change the video's Frame Rate, never upsize videos etc.
But as far as interlacing and deinterlacing go, it is really simple to tell the difference between the two, just open the movie in your fav media player (making sure you don't have any deinterlacing filters enabled) and look for the differences. Here's a great example I found on Bing:



Though these examples seem a bit "overdramatic", differences can be a lot more subtle.
The ones that look "smooth" and clean are deinterlaced frames, the ones with lots of lines and jagging are interlaced.
There are a lot of different types of interlaced frames, which most encoders can efficiently detect and suggest an appropriate deinterlace filter.

If you haven't, you should definitely try either MeGUI or, if you want things to look a bit more simple, Handbrake. I've been using Handbrake for quite a while now, and i can assure you that its GUI will suffice with everything you would wish to apply to the encoder before you start processing your videos.And even then, you can simply choose to encode a small part of the file, like just one minute, to see if the settings you applied give you the expected quality before you start encoding the whole file. This is very important because it easily gives you an insight on what you may have set up wrong in the encoder, and lets you correct it before moving on.

The last two posts are informative, but unless I've missed the point, they do not address the problem. All of the things mentioned are considerations for encoding in general, but do not explain why two different movies that seem to be of the same type, should vary so much in encoding speed. As far as other programs open, this doesn't change from one encode to another, therefore should not be a factor. Interlaced/deinterlaced could be involved, I will have to look into that further. I do not think that the choice of encoders is at issue either, because I'm speaking of differences while using the same encoder, not differences between encoders. I most often use DVDFab8, because it is fast, easy and for the most part, reliable. With Wishmaster's help, I tried MeGUI, and found it too complex for my feeble mind. Handbrake is excellent, except that it won't handle encryption. I have also found it somewhat slower than DVDFab8.