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Handbrake Really Slow

G

gretschdrummer

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 1, 2011
69
13
I'm trying to rip a 25 minute (24:21 to be exact) video to my Macbook. It is in the "normal" setting, ripping it's native size & resolution. At first I tried encoding it with H.264, but it said it would take 7 hours to complete! So I tried the MPEG-4 (FFmpeg) setting, and now it takes about an hour to complete. BUT the quality is horrendous. What am I doing wrong? Here are my specs:

Macbook 1,1
2 GHz Intel Core Duo
1 GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM
Macintosh HD

And a pic of the settings
1ghkp5.jpg


Thanks in advance. I also posted this on the Apple forums, FYI.
 
Last edited:
It is probably your Constant Quality setting at "14". Try "20" and report back.

The following is on a 2 GHz C2D CPU with a short clip, taking 3 minutes. Even when multiplied by 30 to get your length of clip, it would take less than 90 minutes, and the source is HD.
2012_03_12_pA1_HandBrakeQuality20Settig.png
 
Well the constant quality change doesn't change the time, as I still have 40 minutes to go. I don't know if you saw my edit of the original post, but I said the quality of the MPEG-4 is horrendous, so will this fix it?
 
gretschdrummer said:
Well the constant quality change doesn't change the time, as I still have 40 minutes to go. I don't know if you saw my edit of the original post, but I said the quality of the MPEG-4 is horrendous, so will this fix it?
Click to expand...

You can change the Constant Quality only before a transcoding, not while it transcodes.
Try it again to change to 20 and use the H.264 / x264 codec.

It should be that slow. If it still is that slow, try another preset. Maybe your Normal preset is frelled?
 
simsaladimbamba said:
You can change the Constant Quality only before a transcoding, not while it transcodes.
Try it again to change to 20 and use the H.264 / x264 codec.

It should be that slow. If it still is that slow, try another preset. Maybe your Normal preset is frelled?
Click to expand...

Yeah I know, I stopped my previous one and started a new one. But I just tried 20 constant quality with H.264, and I'm looking at about 2 hours. Is it really going to take that long to rip a 20 minute video?
 
gretschdrummer said:
Yeah I know, I stopped my previous one and started a new one. But I just tried 20 constant quality with H.264, and I'm looking at about 2 hours. Is it really going to take that long to rip a 20 minute video?
Click to expand...

I just saw, you have a Core Duo Mac.
Open Activity Monitor and select All Processes and then sort by CPU to see, if HandBrake is using all the available resources.

H.264 is CPU intensive, during encoding and decoding (playback), thus it takes that long. My G4 iBook with 1 GHz could take 12 hours and more for a 90 minute video using the FFmpeg option. While the MB is faster, two hours don't seem that far off.

Is the source a a ripped DVD or is the DVD inside the MB? Or is it some other source?
 
simsaladimbamba said:
I just saw, you have a Core Duo Mac.
Open Activity Monitor and select All Processes and then sort by CPU to see, if HandBrake is using all the available resources.

H.264 is CPU intensive, during encoding and decoding (playback), thus it takes that long. My G4 iBook with 1 GHz could take 12 hours and more for a 90 minute video using the FFmpeg option. While the MB is faster, two hours don't seem that far off.

Is the source a a ripped DVD or is the DVD inside the MB? Or is it some other source?
Click to expand...
Activity Monitor says Handbrake is using 193% CPU. It keeps changing.

The source is a DVD inside of the Macbook.
 
gretschdrummer said:
I'm confused. I thought I was ripping the DVD. Or would I need a program like Mactheripper to do that?
Click to expand...

Sorry, forgot the link.

Ripping is copying the contents of the video DVD to another HDD and circumventing the copy protection.
Transcoding is the changing of format (video DVD to .mp4) and codec (MPEG-2 to MPEG-4/H-264/x264).
HandBrake does not rip a video DVD, it just circumvents the copy protection via a library VLC Player has brought onto the system.

And yes, MacTheRipper is one such ripper.
 
simsaladimbamba said:
Sorry, forgot the link.

Ripping is copying the contents of the video DVD to another HDD and circumventing the copy protection.
Transcoding is the changing of format (video DVD to .mp4) and codec (MPEG-2 to MPEG-4/H-264/x264).
HandBrake does not rip a video DVD, it just circumvents the copy protection via a library VLC Player has brought onto the system.

And yes, MacTheRipper is one such ripper.
Click to expand...
Looking at Mactheripper, it shows that to rip the 25-min segment, it will take 1 hour and 15 minutes. I don't get this, because people on here have said that they can rip two hour movies in 12 minutes.

----------

It actually took 10 minutes in MactheRipper!
 
gretschdrummer said:
Looking at Mactheripper, it shows that to rip the 25-min segment, it will take 1 hour and 15 minutes. I don't get this, because people on here have said that they can rip two hour movies in 12 minutes.
Click to expand...

Depending on the speed of the optical disk drive (ODD) it can take a while, but even on my iBook I could rip a 2 hour movie in less than 40 minutes, but MTR always showed some strange times, getting lower by the minute. It would start at five hours to rip and get closer to 45 minutes the closer it finishes ripping.

But if it takes too long, you can just use HandBrake to make the .mp4 files, but as you have a slow CPU it might take a while. Or you could use an older version of HandBrake, maybe it works better with your Mac OS X version.

PS: Have you asked at the HandBrake community yet, as they are more versed in that matter?
Or you could ask a mod to move this thread to the Apple TV sub-forum via report button (
report.gif
), as this is more a thread about software than hardware, and the regular visitors of that sub-forum know a lot about proper usage of HandBrake.
 
simsaladimbamba said:
Depending on the speed of the optical disk drive (ODD) it can take a while, but even on my iBook I could rip a 2 hour movie in less than 40 minutes, but MTR always showed some strange times, getting lower by the minute. It would start at five hours to rip and get closer to 45 minutes the closer it finishes ripping.

But if it takes too long, you can just use HandBrake to make the .mp4 files, but as you have a slow CPU it might take a while. Or you could use an older version of HandBrake, maybe it works better with your Mac OS X version.

PS: Have you asked at the HandBrake community yet, as they are more versed in that matter?
Or you could ask a mod to move this thread to the Apple TV sub-forum via report button (Image), as this is more a thread about software than hardware, and the regular visitors of that sub-forum know a lot about proper usage of HandBrake.
Click to expand...

Turns out it only took ten minutes. Should I encode this VOB file with H.264 on Handbrake w/ 20 quality? My other H.264 20 quality looked horrible.

I'll move this to the Apple TV forum.
 
gretschdrummer said:
Turns out it only took ten minutes. Should I encode this VOB file with H.264 on Handbrake w/ 20 quality? My other H.264 20 quality looked horrible.

I'll move this to the Apple TV forum.
Click to expand...

What about another preset, like the iPad one?
Strange, that the Normal preset looks horrible, maybe one advanced setting is changed, but what it could be, I don't know.
Maybe try a reinstall of HandBrake.
 
simsaladimbamba said:
What about another preset, like the iPad one?
Strange, that the Normal preset looks horrible, maybe one advanced setting is changed, but what it could be, I don't know.
Maybe try a reinstall of HandBrake.
Click to expand...

Good news. I reinstalled Handbrake and used H.264 with the VOB file, which took about 40 minutes. The quality is awesome though, identical to the DVD (besides dark scenes). I guess it took about 50 minutes in total to do a 20 minute movie. So problem solved, or do you think it's possible to go faster?
 
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