Mac Specs: 17" MBP C2D 2.8 GHz. 4GB OS X 10.6.x Switcher 8/09 no regrets || iPhone OG
Burning movies to DVD...
I need a faster way. I'm using iDVD right now, and it's using 150%+ of my CPU and says it's going to take over 2 hours to encode. Is there another app I can get that will create DVDs from other formats like .avi etc. much faster and use less CPU? If the quality on iDVD is excellent, I think I can put up with the long times, but if not I definitely want to find another way. FYI - I have the quality on professional quality for the current burn session only because I had to cut down on the timestamp. Thanks.
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"The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese."
Mac Specs: 2008 Mac Pro 8x2.8GHz Core, 8 Gig ram, 2TB, nvidia 8800GT, wifi, 2x Superdrives
Transcoding is NEVER a fast process and is usually a fairly highly cpu intensive process. In the case of encoding your DVD, you're transcoding AVI files into mpeg2 video files and appropriate audio files (either pcm or ac3, I don't know which iDVD outputs off hand). It's even worse if your video has to be resized to SD resolution (ie: if you had HD source footage).
Unfortunately, iDVD isn't designed to take in pre-transcoded video AFAIK, which means your stuck with its built in transcoder - you *might* get better performance if the original file was different (like a .MOV) but I honestly don't know if that would make any difference to the transcoder - but some containers and codecs do take more work to transcode then others.
The only way around this is to use a different tool to author your DVDs (like Moviegate or DVD Studio Pro). The negative with one of these other tools is they are either more complex (Studio Pro) or don't have near the quantity and appearance of the pre-built themes (Moviegate).
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My Macs: Early 2008 8 core 2.8GHz 8gig ram Mac Pro; Mac mini G4, 1.25 GHz, 512m ram (server); Early '09 Mac Mini, 2GHz, 4Gig Ram, 120Gig HD, 9400m; 2008 Macbook Unibody 2.4GHz, 2Gig Ram, 250Gig HD, 9400m, Aluminum
Mac Specs: 17" MBP C2D 2.8 GHz. 4GB OS X 10.6.x Switcher 8/09 no regrets || iPhone OG
So basically you're saying the performance I'm seeing from iDVD is about normal and other programs would be about the same with a few trade-offs. I did like the quality of the movie that was converted and created with iDVD and so I think I can put up with it's long time and high CPU usage. Thanks for the input.
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"The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese."
Mac Specs: 2008 Mac Pro 8x2.8GHz Core, 8 Gig ram, 2TB, nvidia 8800GT, wifi, 2x Superdrives
Another one you could try (I didn't think of off hand at the time) is Burn, it's free, doesn't have the flashy menus but it will author - and it might even transcode faster.
But in response to you ImageX - when it comes to transcoding, unless it's really short, I usually reserve that task to my Mac Pro (I use DVD Studio Pro and Compressor - compressor to transcode the video from .mov Pro Res to mpeg2 and AC3, then DVD Studio Pro to author the DVD) and even then it can take a while (I usually transcode 1080i or 720p to SD mpeg2/AC3 for DVD... The more cores, faster cpu, more ram you have the faster your transcodes will go (this is assuming the software that transcodes supports multiple cores)
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My Macs: Early 2008 8 core 2.8GHz 8gig ram Mac Pro; Mac mini G4, 1.25 GHz, 512m ram (server); Early '09 Mac Mini, 2GHz, 4Gig Ram, 120Gig HD, 9400m; 2008 Macbook Unibody 2.4GHz, 2Gig Ram, 250Gig HD, 9400m, Aluminum
what do you guys do if using idvd and the movie needs to span more than one disk. i am trying to burn a AVI file so I can watch it on my dvd player (doesn't support divx) but it is longer than 120 minutes I don't want to lose quality if thats how its done
