Slowness Batch Converting FLAC To MP3

[jnvm@rogers.com]

I am converting FLAC to MP3 and I think I am having slowness problems. I looked in the forums and did not see anything similar as far as I could tell. Any suggestions appreciated.

A couple of years ago I used Batch converter to convert all my FLAC to MP3. I have some new FLAC files and wish to batch convert again. But I feel that the process is now painfully slow. Same PC. Same hardware. Only difference would be upgrade from
Windows 7 to Windows 10 and the new destination HD is USB 3.

I seem to remember watching the progress bar move quickly across the screen (at 9x encoding?). Now it barely crawls
and says 1.2x encoding.

Examples of what I feel is slow:
9 files - 34 minutes - Lame, Quality VBR, Encoding Slow (High Quality)
9 files - 44 seconds - Test Conversion


Background:
***********
dbpoweramp version: dMC-R15.3-Ref-Registered
Batch Converter Settings: Lame, Quality VBR, Encoding Slow (High Quality) - same as before
OS: Windows 10
CPU: Intel Core i7 920, Quad Core - 2.66GHZ
Memory: 12GB Corsair Triple Channel DDR3-1333
Source HD : USB 2.0 WD My Book Essential 3TB
Destination HD: USB 3.0 WD My Passport 3TB

[Spoon]

Re: Slowness Batch Converting FLAC To MP3

1.2x is very slow, try copying the files to a local HDD, you only need 10 albums worth to test with, test converting to and from the same local hdd.

[jnvm@rogers.com]

Re: Slowness Batch Converting FLAC To MP3

Good news bad news kinda thing. I only have one local drive (OCZ Vertex 2 Extended Sandforce 240GB). Tried your suggestion with:
Artists - 10
Albums - 23
Songs - 338
Source HD: C:\temp
Destination HD: C:\temp

Good news: 123x encoding over 11 minutes, 42 seconds.

Bad news: Windows file copy to local disk took 10 minutes to local disk. Copy to final destination was another 5 minutes.
And I really shouldn't just trust Windows copy function with large files and large amounts of files, so I'd probably have to run "UltraCompare" for each copy just to make sure there were no errors.

Regardless, thanks for the idea. I'll keep it in mind, but I'm gonna keep trying.

[mville]

Re: Slowness Batch Converting FLAC To MP3

Good news: 123x encoding over 11 minutes, 42 seconds.

Bad news: Windows file copy to local disk took 10 minutes to local disk. Copy to final destination was another 5 minutes.
And I really shouldn't just trust Windows copy function with large files and large amounts of files

Sorry, why can't you trust Windows file copy?

[jnvm@rogers.com]

Re: Slowness Batch Converting FLAC To MP3

1) I don't completely trust Windows file copy because in my experience with large video files (not the same as smaller audio files, I know) sometimes when using Windows copy to copy hundreds of files, the MD5 checksum on one or more of the files will sometimes fail afterward. Mostly happens when I am backing up or consolidating files from smaller sized media to larger HDs. Based solely on my experience, this happens to me about once every couple of hundred files. Since I'm talking about copying FLAC files I figure I should at least check. In my experience UltraCompare is a good tool for checking large numbers of files across many directories.

2) Update: I have achieved 68x encoding (18 files, 1 minute 13 seconds) if make the use the original source disk (the USB 2.0 HD) and the target disk a USB 3.0 HD directly connected to the motherboard (Asus P6T X58) via USB 3 card (WD SuperSpeed PCIe Card). The source of the slow 1.2x encoding problem appears to be when I make the target drive a USB 3 drive that is connected via a USB 3 hub (ORICO P10-U3 10 Ports Super speed USB3.0 HUB). To my mind there's no reason for a HD connected to a hub to perform so much more slowly than a HD directly connected to the mobo, but there you have it. I can achieve 32MB/sec speeds copying from the local SSD to the HD on the hub. I just don't know why Batch Converter doesn't like HDs on the USB 3 hub.

Any help you can provide on getting Batch Converter to work with my Hub would be appreciated. The reason I have a hub is because the mobo predates USB 3.0, and I only have two USB 3 ports on the WD SuperSpeed PCIe Card. One port on the card is for the hub, the other is for my current online backup HD. Unless you have suggestions/updates I'm gonna have to use the workaround of unplugging and re-plugging in various HDs in the one USB 3 port not used by the Hub.

[Spoon]

Re: Slowness Batch Converting FLAC To MP3

If it is slow on the HUB, it is slow because the hub is not working correctly with the HDD. There are no settings you can do to dBpoweramp or Windows to make the hub work, it is supposed to be transparent to Windows or programs.

[schmidj]

Re: Slowness Batch Converting FLAC To MP3

What else if anything is plugged into the hub? Perhaps something else is eating all the bandwidth up, the hub has to share the bandwidth among everything connected to it. Also, verify that all the cabling is USB3. A usb2 cable will likely work, but at USB2 data rates, far slower than USB3.