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sc_markt · Dec 1, 2003, 10:07 PM

Can anybody with an older G4 (I have a sawtooth 450 with 1GB ram and a Pioneer superdrive) and who has made DVD's in iDVD let me know how long it has taken to completely burn a DVD?

I'm going on 1.4hrs on a 15 minute video...

Thanks to all who answer.

- Mark

Hydra · Dec 1, 2003, 11:15 PM

iDVD3 on my old dual 800 would take a little longer than real-time for the encode and the 2x's burner in it would take 1/2 realtime. A 15 minute movie would take a little more than 15 minutes to encode and another 8 minutes to burn for a total of around 30 minutes with some overhead. iDVD definitely takes advantage of dual processors so a 450MHz G4 should take almost 3x's longer as far as I can guess for the encode but the burn is limited by the maximum speed of the burner and the media. Some off brand media will make a Superdrive burn only 1x (and 4x media in a 2x drive will burn at 1x for some strange reason).

1.4 hours for a single 450 G4 sounds a bit on the long side so make sure of a couple of things. Make sure you do not exceed the 60 minute limit on iDVD and push the project to the more aggressive 90 minute encode which will take much much longer. Even if you start a project and briefly exceed the 60 minute mark and drop to only 15 minutes it will still want to encode at the more aggressive encoding. If you do this just restart iDVD and start the project over and keep it under the 60 minute mark.

For reference my new dual 2.0 G5 took about 35 minutes start to finish on a 48 minute project ( under 20 minute encoding and about 15 minutes to burn).

-Jerry C.

Frumpy · Jan 19, 2004, 05:01 PM

This is absolutely rediculous. I was very excited to hear that iDVD 4 was going to be able to burn 2 hours of video on a single DVD that was only able to hold an hour with previous versions. BUT...on my first project with almost two hours burning onto a DVD, it's taken....SO FAR....almost 3 hours just to encode! ARE YOU KIDDING ME?! This is taking all freakin' day to burn one disc!!! You can't even do any background encoding! you have to put everything together, hit the burn button, and then wait for hours while you wait for the spinning bar to come to it's next step. I'm almost to the point where i'll only burn one hour on a single DVD again. Does anyone know if it's any different in DVD Studio Pro? I need something that can encode and burn A LOT faster than this. I don't even care about the burning speeds. The encoding needs to speed up. Can you take a project from iMovie, run it through Compressor and then use iDVD and skip over the encoding? I just can't believe this is the latest greatest version of iDVD from Apple. So far, iDVD 4 is VERY dissapointing (when it comes to actually burning your project).

Eug Wanker · Jan 19, 2004, 05:18 PM

Sorry, but a G4 800 just ain't that fast.

If you want reasonable quality, you're gonna have to wait, or else you can buy yourself a dual G5 2.5 or whatever when it comes out.

There are faster encoders out there, but then you lose the simplicity of iDVD, and the quality may suffer as well.

sdagley · Jan 19, 2004, 10:31 PM

In the standalone Compressor with DVD Studio Pro you can adjust the compression levels and whether it's 1 or 2 pass. I'm guessing in iDVD 4 they've got it hard coded to 2 pass to keep the quality high and still allow 2 hours of video.

Frumpy · Jan 19, 2004, 11:32 PM

Well, i got to the point where i was at four hours, and i quit out of the program. I really just can't believe that it takes this long. Why don't they allow background encoding with two hours of video? You should at least have the choice no matter what the general slowdown of the program may be.

sdagley · Jan 20, 2004, 01:31 AM

Originally posted by Frumpy:
Why don't they allow background encoding with two hours of video? You should at least have the choice no matter what the general slowdown of the program may be.

Sorry to sound like a stupid question but have you checked your preferences settings? On my system iDVD 4 allows selecting Best Quality or Best Performance for the encoder settings. Unfortunately the former seems to exclude background processing.

Frumpy · Jan 20, 2004, 08:08 AM

Yeah, i know about that choice. My gripe is that you SHOULD be able to turn on background encoding for a two hour project. The option that allows it is only for a one hour project, and then it's like i'm back in iDVD 3. What's the point?!

Frumpy · Jan 21, 2004, 09:23 AM

Well, i tried doing a one hour project, and things seemed to go pretty well. I let it background encode everything first, and then the burning was a pretty normal speed. No improvements from version 3, but that's fine with me. The 2 hour disc though, has been encoding for over 8 hours straight (through the night), and it's STILL encoding the asset. Could there be something wrong? The system requirements ask for a 733 or higher. I have an 800 G4 with 768 ram, and NO other programs running. Does Apple expect people to leave their macs on all night (and longer) just to burn a 2 hour disc?! I didn't buy a Superdrive equiped Mac to watch the software outdate it within two years. Come on.

Gee4orce · Jan 21, 2004, 11:12 AM

In order to fit 2 hours onto a disk it has to do a lot more analysis of the content in order to optimise the encoding. This will off course make it take longer than twice as long as a 1 hour disk.

So, what - you use you computer while you sleep ? Let it burn the disk overnight....

Frumpy · Jan 22, 2004, 06:08 PM

Now, most of the time i'm keeping my project on my firewire western digital 7200rpm 80gig hard drive. Would it REALLY improve the time it takes if i had it on my internal hard drive? It's only a 5400rpm drive, so i would think the fw drive would at least be the same speed if not faster.

djjava · Jan 24, 2004, 02:16 PM

what happened to the estimated time remaining from the iDVD progress window??

jfinete · Jan 24, 2004, 04:45 PM

To expand on what Gee4orce said: When you import an hour of uncompressed video from a DV cam, it requires about 10GB of disk. In order to compress that onto a 4.7GB DVD, your Mac needs about two hours (my 867MHz needs the same).

However, the relationship between the compression rate and the time it takes is not linear; it's exponetional. So to compress 20GB (2 hours of video) into 4.7GB doesn't require twice what 10GB did. It requires much more time. Although 8 hours does seem like it should be enough.

And iDVD4 doesn't outdate your Mac. It compresses video as well as it always did. iDVD4 just gives you an option that you didn't have before.

Frumpy · Jan 24, 2004, 07:35 PM

Alright, then i give up on my arguement. BUT, the one thing that would REALLY help is that damn status menu. If they only had an accurate measure of how much longer it would take to encode or burn, or hey...maybe even the whole thing, i would be much happier. Since we're talking hours here, it would really help to plan when to have my mac encode. And as i said before, all night didn't do it. It took half the next day too. I'll continue to use the program of course, but i can't wait for a possible fix in...iDVD 4.0.1?