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If you use TMPGENC to convert dvd2avi projects to vcd could you please list your processor (CPU) type and speed, hard disk type (interface and size) ram (speed and size) and how long it takes for your pc to convert the first part of a movie i.e. two VOBs. I will start.

1.4 Ghz Athlon
768 Mb RAM 266DDR 266Mhz
60 Gb HDD 7200 rpm IDE

2 hours to convert 2 VOBs.

I would really like to compare other systems as I am thinking of upgrading my system but if the times for better systems are not that much different from mine then it will not be worth upgrading.

This may not help you much, but using MPEG Mediator I usually get real or near real time conversion (ie, a 2 hour movie takes 2 hours).

My hardware:
Pentium 4, 1.7GHz, 512MG DDR266
(3) WD 7200RPM 40GB hard drives in SOFTWARE Raid (Win2K)

Somewhat slower using XVid compression (about 2 1/2hrs for a 2 hour movie).

On my old PII-350MHz / 128MB RAM / WD 27GB 7200RPM UDMA33 HDD, encoding took about 8 hours. I haven't tried encoding on my new P4 2.4GHz / 1GB RAM / Maxtor 80GB 7200RPM UDMA133 HDD yet, but I'll let you know when I do try.

Also when I am doing the conversion it seems that the program is not using the whole of my pc performance. I can quite happily play a few mp3s while the conversion is taking place. Is there anyway to maximise the performance I get therefore decreasing the time to perform the conversion.

Mine takes around an hour to do a SVCD of Invader zim 1/2 hour episodes but I always use the best quality settings so it looks real nice.
I had a 1.2 athlon with 512 meg of ram but I just upgraded to a 1800+
which is a bit faster but it made huge improvemnts in some areas of the machine.
It does go a bit faster now, but it's still fairly slow. If you don't need the best quality you can try the lesser modes and it will speed up a bunch.