Mpeg Two Pass burn on DVD

Hey there:

Trying to burn a 30 min video to dvd through compressor, using an MPEG-2 two pass burn, and it seems to be going nowhere fast, even after i've dialled most of the quality levels back. I've left it for 16 hours once and saw no change.

I'm using the latest Final Cut Pro x on an iMac, OSX v10.9.2, with a 2.5 GHz Intel Core i5 processor. There are 202.38 GB free on the main hard drive, and 1.5 TB free on the external drive where the project is based.

I'm fairly new to Compressor, so these might be silly questions:

Does anyone know, roughly, how long a 30 minute video should take using an mpeg two pass? I was able to burn an H.264 to blu ray in a handful of hours, so I don't quite understand why dvd would take so much longer.

Assuming I'm not just being impatient, is there a step or configuration I've missed that may help move things along?

Let me know if you can.

Thanks,

fcproteur

I'll assume you are trying to burn a standard def DVD using create disc in Compressor.
I do this frequently mainly to generate sd dvd's from converted analog tape for clients.

Using a mid 2010 Mac Pro, a 30 minute burn generally takes 10 to 15 minutes using the high quality settings, vbr 2 pass best and using some cropping controls. Even 2 hour DVD's seem pretty quick at 30 to 40 minutes roughly. I am creating the disc from a master Prores 422 file exported from FCPX. Without knowing what your source video format is I can only guess that maybe that is a contributing factor.

Also, there is a setting in Compressor preferences that allows you to select the number of concurrent Compressor instances to use for transcoding. Generally on my system I set that for either 3 or 4. This setting affects performance differently on various systems, so if you have the number of instances set too high, it may have an adverse affect by limiting system resources. If you haven't checked this, try starting at 3 and reduce the number to see if things improve.

You don't indicate the amount of ram you have and that would be helpful to know, as would your version of FCPX and Compressor.

Finally, you may have an issue with Compressor itself, or a preference file. You can try trashing your preference files using the free "prefs manager" program from Digital Rebellion and also using their "Compressor Repair" program.

Okay, my source video I exported as a Apple ProRes 422 Master File. I am currently using FCPX 10.1.1, and Compressor 4.1.1. My system has 4GB of RAM available, (they are 1333 MHz DDR3, if that matters)

I found the setting for additional Compressor preferences, but it is blurred out, and won't allow me to enable it, for reasons I haven't yet determined.

I will definitely look into the DigiRebel programs; they sound promising.

Thanks for your quick reply!

fcproteur

If you're not seeing other selectable instances, it means your processor and RAM can't support them. As I recall, you need a minimum of 8 cores – so a quad core with hyper threading could support one additional Compressor instance.…and so forth. I forget the RAM requirement, but putting aside the question of multiple instances, I would suggest your RAM should be upgraded (if possible) to at least 8 GB.

As mentioned earlier in this thread MPEG 2 encoding for DVD is not a particularly long process and I agree that real time or less for the whole process is normal. So there seems to be a bottle neck somewhere. You might try opening the Compressor folder in your Home library/Applications Support and dragging the History folder to the trash. Also, when making your DVD, start with as much RAM as possible by restarting your computer and not launching any additional apps while Compressor is working.

Russ