Windows DVD Maker Encoding Time

I recently purchased a new laptop with the following specs.

Vista Home Premium 32 bit
Intel Dual Core 2 1.66
2GB Ram
Intel GMA 950 Video Card

I have used Windows DVD Maker to make two 90 minute DVD's from avi files
imported from my camcorder.

The final product looks nice, but it takes about 15 hours to encode the AVI
files. Is this normal?

If not, is there something I can do to speed it up?

On Tue, 27 Mar 2007 16:56:47 -0700, bgrillo
<bgrillo@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

>I recently purchased a new laptop with the following specs.
>
>Vista Home Premium 32 bit
>Intel Dual Core 2 1.66
>2GB Ram
>Intel GMA 950 Video Card
>
>I have used Windows DVD Maker to make two 90 minute DVD's from avi files
>imported from my camcorder.
>
>The final product looks nice, but it takes about 15 hours to encode the AVI
>files. Is this normal?
>
>If not, is there something I can do to speed it up?

Although I don't have enough info to give you an exact answer; based
on your specs and the fact that it is a laptop AND I'm assuming an
uncompressed AVI (possibly HD) file...15 hours is possible.

On Tue, 27 Mar 2007 16:56:47 -0700, bgrillo
<bgrillo@discussions.microsoft.com> wrote:

>I recently purchased a new laptop with the following specs.
>
>Vista Home Premium 32 bit
>Intel Dual Core 2 1.66
>2GB Ram
>Intel GMA 950 Video Card
>
>I have used Windows DVD Maker to make two 90 minute DVD's from avi files
>imported from my camcorder.
>
>The final product looks nice, but it takes about 15 hours to encode the AVI
>files. Is this normal?
>
>If not, is there something I can do to speed it up?

AVI is NOT a compatable DVD file format. So the file is getting
transcoded first. That's a big extra step. What options if any does
your camcorder have as far as exporting?

Regardless rendering (encoding) is a time consuming task. If you're
inporting 2 90 minute raw movies and only did mimimal editing and the
camcorder outputs to a compressed avi format then 15 hours isn't that
bad a time.

[This POS]

Even if your files use a DVD-Compatible codec, there is another reason for horribly slow encoding. Microsoft DVD Maker's encode process runs as a background process at a low priority. All this means is that, it'll run slower than anything else on your computer, whether that be AIM, Weather Bug, what have you.

If you need to encode fast, and don't mind it dramatically slowing down your computer for a much shorter amount of time read my article on how to speed it up (Windows DVD Maker: Encoding Slow)

For the savvy, just use the task manager to change the priority to anything other than normal .

Hope this helps,
Jeffrey