smcclendon
asked on
I have a 16X IDE DVD Burner and it is taking 5 to 8 hrs. to burn a movie. Should it take this long?
I have a 16X IDE DVD burner (external) and it takes about 7 hrs. to burn a 3 G. movie. I am using Windows 2000, Pentium III, 900mghz, 391 ram and I have 2 hard drives. I use the 2nd drive for capturing and burning movies only. It is 60 g. I am using Nero. I received this as a Xmas present. I have read a lot of the questions on ee and was going to update my dvd burner but it said did someone tell you to update some updates may cause your dvd not to work correctly. Some of my movies pause or skip a little or the sound is interrupted some. I am new at doing this. Does burning usually take this long?
Salli
Salli
Try this .....
"3. I was told to enable DMA for my IDE recorder and any IDE CD-/DVD-ROM drive connected to my system. How is this done under Windows?
Enable DMA for any CD-/DVD-drive.
For Windows 95/98/ME: Go to your 'Control Panel --> System --> Device Manager --> CD-ROM' and under your drives 'Properties --> Settings' enable DMA for your devices.
For Windows 2000/XP: Go to your 'Control Panel --> Systems --> Hardware --> Device Manager' and double-click on the 'IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers'. Right-click on the 'Primary IDE Channel' and go to 'Properties --> Advanced Settings'. Change ´Transfer Mode´ to 'DMA if available'.
Do the same for the secondary IDE channel."
...from nero help
"3. I was told to enable DMA for my IDE recorder and any IDE CD-/DVD-ROM drive connected to my system. How is this done under Windows?
Enable DMA for any CD-/DVD-drive.
For Windows 95/98/ME: Go to your 'Control Panel --> System --> Device Manager --> CD-ROM' and under your drives 'Properties --> Settings' enable DMA for your devices.
For Windows 2000/XP: Go to your 'Control Panel --> Systems --> Hardware --> Device Manager' and double-click on the 'IDE ATA/ATAPI Controllers'. Right-click on the 'Primary IDE Channel' and go to 'Properties --> Advanced Settings'. Change ´Transfer Mode´ to 'DMA if available'.
Do the same for the secondary IDE channel."
...from nero help
ASKER
I read the part about changing IDE mode to DMA on ee, I did that already and my primary was set to DMA the secondary was not. It was set to PIO. whatever those acronyms mean.....I did set the secondary for DMA if available but I have not restarted and tried it yet. I will try and see what happens. My memory is about 378.
Thanks
Thanks
If, as I suspect, the time is being consumed encoding -- during which time the DVD burner isn't even running -- then DMA will not effect this in any significant way.
Actually, since memory is always multiples of powers of 2, it sounds like you have 384 megs of memory (256+128). Upgrading to 512 (ditch the 128 and replace it with a 256 if you don't have enough free memory slots) may help somewhat. But it's mostly dependent on the software and the CPU.
ASKER
I restarted and it didn't help any. I did upgrade my memory when I bought my digital camcorder a couple of years ago. I think it is 384. I can't upgrade the CPU right now, so i will have to do with what i have. I am going to upgrade memory. Is there anything else I can do to upgrade the cpu inexpensively. How or can you upgrade the megahertz? So what software is the best. I've read a lot about DXD copy on ee. I have thought about downloading a trial program, but if they are like nero, you can't have another recording device loaded on your computer. When I loaded nero, i had to take off my software from my camera and i also had another software version of nero that i had to take off. It just took a lot of time and troubleshooting.
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ASKER
I have an HP that is about 3 yrs. old. So........which one of your applications do you like the best. All I am doing is burning my home movies that i have taken on my digital camcorder. I am not into coping dvds. I do like to add effects and make chapters. If I had a choice i would probably buy an apple g5. i have an apple g4 laptop. I love how easy it is to make a movie.
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ASKER
Thank you both for all of your help. Looks like i have a good christmas wish list already started.
Salli
Salli
While it's taking many hours (I've had it take more then 14 hours -- I let it run overnight), in all probability the time is being consumed encoding the video to MPEG2, and not in actually "burning" the data to the disc, which probably takes under one hour (it would take 1 hour with 1X media; while you may have a 16x burner, it's likely that your media is not faster than 4x, which would take about 15 to 20 minutes to actually burn).
The encoding process, during which time the DVD burner drive will actually not be running, is extremely dependent on software and CPU performance, and slightly (but not greatly) dependent on memory performance.
You didn't say how much memory you had, but if it's less than 512 megs, then upgrade to 512. More than 512 megs is unlikely to help. The main factors here are the software and the CPU. There is a huge difference in how fast different software encoders perform their encoding. The same encoding task can easly take 4 or more times longer with some software than with other software. And in all cases, it is highly CPU intensive, so if you have a slow CPU, then upgrading to a fast CPU (say 2.8 GHz or faster) should be high on your priority list. Note that some software packages can take advantage of, and will benefit from, Hyperthreading, while others can't and won't.