Rip DVDs Faster On Laptop?

[(PeteCresswell)]

It takes over 30 minutes to rip a DVD on my VAIO laptop: Intel Core i3
350M @2.27GHz.

Same DVD on my desktop PC (Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 @2.66GHz) takes less
than 10 minutes.

I'm probably grasping at straws, but is there any hope for speeding up
the process on the VAIO?

Mainly I an wondering attaching the right external DVD drive via a USB
port might help.

 

[Twayne]

In

It takes over 30 minutes to rip a DVD on my VAIO laptop:
Intel Core i3 350M @2.27GHz.

Same DVD on my desktop PC (Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400
@2.66GHz) takes less than 10 minutes.

I'm probably grasping at straws, but is there any hope
for speeding up the process on the VAIO?

Mainly I an wondering attaching the right external DVD
drive via a USB port might help.

I suspect there is something corrupted or messed up on your VIAO. Time to
ininstall/reinstall some apps in my opinion. Ten mimnutes is ridiculous -
that's even slower than real-time!

Good luck.

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In

I suspect there is something corrupted or messed up on your VIAO. Time to

I suspect it's just a matter of the speed of the drive, as Pete
suspected; have a look at what speed the VAIO claims its drive is. (An
external one might not be any faster: certainly check claimed speed, and
also I'm not sure if USB2 will do _that_ many times DVD speed. [USB3
probably will.])

ininstall/reinstall some apps in my opinion. Ten mimnutes is ridiculous -
that's even slower than real-time!

Are you winding us up? Many films on DVD run for ~90 "mimnutes"
"real-time"!

 

[Twayne]

In

In

I suspect there is something corrupted or messed up on
your VIAO. Time to

I suspect it's just a matter of the speed of the drive,
as Pete suspected; have a look at what speed the VAIO
claims its drive is. (An external one might not be any
faster: certainly check claimed speed, and also I'm not
sure if USB2 will do _that_ many times DVD speed. [USB3
probably will.])

No arguement about the lengths and all that; I see where you're coming from.
But even an older 5200 (5400?) drive shouldn't be responsible for those
kinds of times. I guess it might be a problem of disc space though, and how
many buffers need to be created and dismissed. An i3 2.27 MHz shouldn't take
that much time though. I got curious and just for grins fired up my old Win
98, sub-GHz cpu machine, and it only took 19 minutes. That should be damned
close to a very worst-case situation.
It's hard to say what/where the problem is based on only a couple of
timings but I still believe it's a conflict of some sort of corruption of
just plain conclicts with other things running in the background. Without a
lot more information it's very difficult to make any solid assessments
unless one owns the same machine/s and same ripping applications.
The two machines are close in in operating speeds for the CPU; it'd be
interesting to know the Front Side Bus speeds and other useful details. In
view of what information was provided, I stand by my prior assessment.
Perhaps just a leaner, meaner OS Profile with a lot fewer startups, etc., to
get in the way, might go a long ways to gathering some usable information.

Are you winding us up? Many films on DVD run for ~90
"mimnutes" "real-time"!

No, sorry for the mis-speak. I'd have sworn I read the time as much longer
than 30 minutes, but ... whatever. No intention of winding anyone up, at
all. Sorry 'bout that.

lol, what's a "mimnutes"? Rhetorcal; just being a wse guy.

HTH,

Twayne`

 

[Twayne]

In

Drives on n otebooks are notoriously slower in notebooks.

For example hard disks at 5400rpm vs 7200rpm and you
woun't find 15000rpm drives.

10,000 rpm is becoming more and more common though and they are notceably
faster than the 5400 rpm.

Notebooks are a balance between speed and power
consumption and speed is usually the loser.

You have to look at the DVD drive on the notebook and
compare it to the DVD drive on a desktop and they are
never the same. The CPU does not really play a part as
the DVD drive and the interface it connects to are the
limiting factors.

Well, sort of true. The tellng factor is often the FSB speed though.
Somethng else that hasn't come up is disk fragmentation and its affects on
timing. 1,000 seeks takes 1,000 longer than 1 seek, and if a file is in
several fragments, that seek time et all all adds up. It's often helped a
LOT by simply defragging the drive after every one or two renderings.
I've experienced it; I use a professional video capture/edit/render
applications for weeks at a time when I get the right customer. I learned
quickly it was a big benefit to defrag after EVERY full render. That's
precisely why I have a 10,000 rpm dedicated drive for all my video work; it
doesn't mess up other drives and partitions. Wthout defrag after a few
renders, it can take all night to render one full sized movie.

Here are some easily found links that may help things out:

http://www.zdnet.com/blog/ou/how-higher-rpm-hard-drives-rip-you-off/322
It's old and out of date, but does bring up some things to keep in mind when
you're trying to be a spec-noid as you're doing here.

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/sas-hard-drives,1702.html

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822116058

http://www.seagate.com/internal-hard-drives/enterprise-hard-drives/hdd/cheetah-15k/

And a LOT more in the first search page. I don't know why you would make
that statement about them.

So, you see, 15,000 isn't necessarily such a stretch of the imagination.
They are readily available and may or may not be a beneft, depending on the
environment they're used on.
The pros/cons etc. are up to the individual to make sure it'll benefit
them. DVD drves today are incredibly fast, way over what was common just a
few years ago. I thought 48x was the fastest, but not anymore. Of my two
optical drives, one goes well beyond the 48x but the media is expensive,
which often is the limiting factor on a lot of things unless the user
happens to be a "progress for the sake of progress" type. It pays to check!

HTH,

Twayne`

 

[VanguardLH]

It takes over 30 minutes to rip a DVD on my VAIO laptop: Intel Core i3
350M @2.27GHz.

Same DVD on my desktop PC (Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400 @2.66GHz) takes less
than 10 minutes.

I'm probably grasping at straws, but is there any hope for speeding up
the process on the VAIO?

Mainly I an wondering attaching the right external DVD drive via a USB
port might help.

Different optical drives, different specs for them. You'll have to find
out what the read speeds are for the VAIO's DVD drive and compare to the
read specs for the DVD drive in your desktop.

You also didn't mention how much free memory is available in both hosts
and how many background processes are running along with the CPU usage
while doing the DVD reads.

If by "DVD" you mean a movie on a DVD and you are copying the VOB files
out of the VIDEO_TS folder on the DVD disc, and assuming there are up to
the max of 5 VOB files on the disc totalling around 4.7GB then the
transfer rate you're getting on a read operation (without figuring
anything else for, say, decoding or reencoding the copied files) are:

VAIO: 4.7GB/30min = 21.4 Mbps
Desktop: 4.7GB/10min = 64.2 Mbps

I said "read operation". You never identified what software you are
using on each host to copy the files off the DVD disc, and if by ripping
you are doing more than just copying files but are also decoding them to
extract audio out of a movie or convert to some other file format.

I could generalize and say you have a much slower optical disk in your
VAIO host but then I don't what you consider "ripping" and what software
you are using other than just using Windows Explorer to copy all the
files off the DVD. I'm also assuming you are asking about DVD-5 discs
and not DVD-9 (dual layer).

Are you sure the 10 minutes you stated for copying files off a DVD is
correct? Is it an IDE or SATA optical drive in your desktop? Look at
your desktop's optical drive specs. If it was IDE then it couldn't get
more than the theoretical 33 Mbps of ATA-3 for optical devices.

Then compare the specs for the hard disks in your VAIO and desktop.
Besides the optical drive being slower in the VAIO, a slower hard disk
would also account for taking more time to do a file copy. Slow source
and slow destination compound the nuisance of copy time. You really
shouldn't expect the same performance out of a netbook that you get from
a desktop. Even laptops are often dogs compared to desktops.

 

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per VanguardLH:

Then compare the specs for the hard disks in your VAIO and desktop.

I just cut to the chase.

Pulled an old USB wrapper off the shelf, stuck an old IDE drive in it
and ripped the same DVD.

Then I sucked it up and bought a SATA enclosure with eSata external
interface, put a SATA drive in it, and ripped the same DVD.

Now I've got three rips of the same DVD:

- VAIO's internal drive: 30 minutes

- USB/IDE external drive: 21 minutes

- eSata/Sata external drive: 12 minutes

 

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per (PeteCresswell):

Now I've got three rips of the same DVD:

- VAIO's internal drive: 30 minutes

- USB/IDE external drive: 21 minutes

- eSata/Sata external drive: 12 minutes

Make that four.

- Desktop PC: 12 minutes.

12 and not 10, I am assuming because this is a different DVD than was
ripped for the original post.

But the bottom line seems tb that with the faster connection and faster
(16x read) drive, we're at the same speed as the desktop PC. FWIW it's
the same make/model drive in the eSata wrapper and on the desktop PC.

 

[J. P. Gilliver (John)]

In

In (PeteCresswell) <[email protected]> typed:
It takes over 30 minutes to rip a DVD on my VAIO laptop:
Intel Core i3 350M @2.27GHz.

Same DVD on my desktop PC (Intel Core 2 Quad Q8400
@2.66GHz) takes less than 10 minutes.

I'm probably grasping at straws, but is there any hope
for speeding up the process on the VAIO?

Mainly I an wondering attaching the right external DVD
drive via a USB port might help.

I suspect there is something corrupted or messed up on
your VIAO. Time to

I suspect it's just a matter of the speed of the drive,
as Pete suspected; have a look at what speed the VAIO
claims its drive is. (An external one might not be any
faster: certainly check claimed speed, and also I'm not
sure if USB2 will do _that_ many times DVD speed. [USB3
probably will.])

No arguement about the lengths and all that; I see where you're coming from.
But even an older 5200 (5400?) drive shouldn't be responsible for those

I should have made it clear that it was the DVD drive I was talking
about, not the hard drive. The optical drives in laptops - or external
for use with laptops/netbooks, especially if they're USB-powered - tend
to be slower ones than the ones in desktops. (Plus, I suspect the USB
interface itself might limit things, unless it's USB3, though I haven't
done any sums.)
[]

No, sorry for the mis-speak. I'd have sworn I read the time as much longer
than 30 minutes, but ... whatever. No intention of winding anyone up, at
all. Sorry 'bout that.

lol, what's a "mimnutes"? Rhetorcal; just being a wse guy.

[]
So was I (-: [look 4 lines earlier ...]

 

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per (PeteCresswell):

Make that...

FWIW, the wrapper I bought supports both eSata and USB2.

I ripped using USB2 instead of eSata and the time was only about 20
seconds longer .... recalling that my initial USB test took close to
twice as long as the eSata test.

My guess is that the initial USB test (with an old IDE drive) might even
have been running at USB1 speed.

Leaving me to believe that USB2 is not much of a bottleneck compared to
eSata at DVD until DVD read speeds exceed 16x.

 

[Paul]

Per (PeteCresswell):

FWIW, the wrapper I bought supports both eSata and USB2.

I ripped using USB2 instead of eSata and the time was only about 20
seconds longer .... recalling that my initial USB test took close to
twice as long as the eSata test.

My guess is that the initial USB test (with an old IDE drive) might even
have been running at USB1 speed.

Leaving me to believe that USB2 is not much of a bottleneck compared to
eSata at DVD until DVD read speeds exceed 16x.

This feature is called "Rip Lock".

When the optical drive detects DVD playback, it purposely restricts
rotation speed of the optical disc. Such a restriction doesn't
exist for data DVDs.

It is possible to modify the drive firmware, so rip lock is no longer
used.

Rip lock exists, so the drive makes no audible noise while
you're actually viewing a commercial movie. Playback is ~1X
rate, to match the consumption rate for movie playback.

But rip lock is perfectly inappropriate, if you're actually
ripping a DVD (i.e. treating it as a data source and processing
it at maximum speed).

So you need to find a hack on one of the optical drive forum
sites, to remove rip lock.

I have at least one drive here, that doesn't have rip lock on it.
And that's what I'd use if trying to read a movie.

*******

An article which includes hacking details...

http://www.maximumpc.com/article/features/dvd_rip_challenge_12_popular_drives_put_test

Paul

 

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per Paul:

Rip lock exists, so the drive makes no audible noise while
you're actually viewing a commercial movie. Playback is ~1X
rate, to match the consumption rate for movie playback.

But rip lock is perfectly inappropriate, if you're actually
ripping a DVD (i.e. treating it as a data source and processing
it at maximum speed).

So you need to find a hack on one of the optical drive forum
sites, to remove rip lock.

I have at least one drive here, that doesn't have rip lock on it.
And that's what I'd use if trying to read a movie.

I'll look further, but right now I'd guess that rip lock is not an issue
because, when I rip a DVD in the public library, the drive makes so much
noise that I have to seek out a location where it will not bother
anybody... It's spinning so fast that it sounds like it's going to
scatter any minute...

 

[Charlie+]

Per Paul:

I'll look further, but right now I'd guess that rip lock is not an issue
because, when I rip a DVD in the public library, the drive makes so much
noise that I have to seek out a location where it will not bother
anybody... It's spinning so fast that it sounds like it's going to
scatter any minute...

Wow Pete, never thaught of doing that in a Library!! I shd think you
need a quiet corner so the librarians dont see what your at!
Tho probably they would only lift an eyebrow! In my experience DVDFab
rips as fast as the computer can cope with the decoding which takes alot
of processing power! Fab allows you to give rip first priority IIRC.
battery intensive use also ! ..C+

 

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per Charlie+:

Wow Pete, never thaught of doing that in a Library!! I shd think you
need a quiet corner so the librarians dont see what your at!

It's the other library users I'm concerned about. Nobody want's to
hear something like that. But yes, I have to find the right area -
which, in this library, is the scanning room.

Tho probably they would only lift an eyebrow! In my experience DVDFab
rips as fast as the computer can cope with the decoding which takes alot
of processing power! Fab allows you to give rip first priority IIRC.
battery intensive use also ! ..C+

With the separate (i.e. full-speed) drive, I'm down to between five and
twelve minutes per DVD and that's totally acceptable to me. Thirty was
just too long...

 

[Charlie+]

snip

With the separate (i.e. full-speed) drive, I'm down to between five and
twelve minutes per DVD and that's totally acceptable to me. Thirty was
just too long...

5 and 12 mins. seems fast to me, what s/w are you using? I assume the
time bracket is for SL and DL disks and they are protected! C+

 

[(PeteCresswell)]

Per Charlie+:

5 and 12 mins. seems fast to me, what s/w are you using? I assume the
time bracket is for SL and DL disks and they are protected! C+

Unencumbered by any knowledge, I assume it's the data content of the DVD
that enables a 5-minute rip. Most are more like 12 minutes.

I used to use DvdShrink, but have gone over to two products from the
same publisher:

- DVD Anywhere, which acts as a sort of add-on driver and presents
whatever DVD is in the drive as if it were not encrypted

- CloneDVD2, which actually does the ripping.


DvdShrink can't handle some DVDs. DVD Anywhere/CloneDVD2 can't handle
some DVDs.... I'm not inclined to say one is hands-down better than the
other except that DvdShrink is a freebie and the other two are paid.

I think I settled in to the second two more out of habit than anything
else... I know where all the strings are and pulling them has become
kind of like tying my shoelaces: burned into my lower brain stem...