Ripping Slows Down (pauses, resumes, pauses, resumes...)

[loserdude]

I'm using the latest version of CloneDVD2 on a Win7 64 bit machine.

I've tested 3 different DVD drives on 3 different PCs, and have even tried ripping an unprotected movie directly from a very fast HDD (no anydvd), yet this issue persists.

The first rip is usually full speed (same speed as other programs), but subsequent rips constantly pause (start, pause, start, pause, start, pause...).

As a result the rip takes 2-3x longer than with other ripping programs (e.g WinX DVD Ripper).

Again, I've tested multiple DVD drives, multiple PCs, from the HDD instead of a DVD... have DMA enabled, am not transcoding, nor writing to an encrypted NTFS drive...plus it happens with and without anydvd...plus I have plenty of RAM and tons free while ripping.

Why does it always start full speed but pause, resume, pause, resume... toward the end of long rips and with subsequent rips regardless of the PC/drive (always win7 64bit)? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

[James]

Originally Posted by loserdude

I'm using the latest version of CloneDVD2 on a Win7 64 bit machine.

I've tested 3 different DVD drives on 3 different PCs, and have even tried ripping an unprotected movie directly from a very fast HDD (no anydvd), yet this issue persists.

The first rip is usually full speed (same speed as other programs), but subsequent rips constantly pause (start, pause, start, pause, start, pause...).

As a result the rip takes 2-3x longer than with other ripping programs (e.g WinX DVD Ripper).

Again, I've tested multiple DVD drives, multiple PCs, from the HDD instead of a DVD... have DMA enabled, am not transcoding, nor writing to an encrypted NTFS drive...plus it happens with and without anydvd...plus I have plenty of RAM and tons free while ripping.

Why does it always start full speed but pause, resume, pause, resume... toward the end of long rips and with subsequent rips regardless of the PC/drive (always win7 64bit)? Any thoughts would be appreciated.

Very strange indeed. What is the source? An iso mounted with VCD? If yes, is buffering enabled or disabled? What is the capacity of your source and destination harddisks? >2TB? Are you ripping from/to the same physical drive? The same partition?

Please elaborate. Thank you.

[loserdude]

Originally Posted by James

Very strange indeed. What is the source? An iso mounted with VCD? If yes, is buffering enabled or disabled? What is the capacity of your source and destination harddisks? >2TB? Are you ripping from/to the same physical drive? The same partition?

Please elaborate. Thank you.

Sources are varied (hundreds of different DVDs).

It occurs whether it's an actually DVD in a drive, mounted via Virtual Clone Drive or on my 2 TB HDD.

Yes, when ripping from the HDD it's from/to the same physical drive, but doing from/to using other rippers is ~6x faster (4 vs 25 minutes). If the first movie is small (~4 GB) it only takes 4 minutes with CloneDVD2 as well, but if it's a large rip or I rip additional movies it takes ~25 minutes each since it keeps pausing and resuming.

I've carefully eliminated all variables (e.g. 3 different drives on 3 different PCs, one after a clean install) so I'm forced to conclude that it's an issue with either Win7 64bit or CloneDVD2 itself.

I'm leaning toward the later since people across the web are claiming that the same versions of CloneDVD (going years back) are both very slow and just as fast, which makes sense if some people are ripping several movies back-2-back (hence experience very slow rips) while others only rip one now and then (hence experience near full speed rips).

My best guess is that CloneDVD2 has a memory management issue that kicks in after ~5 GB (note: closing and re-opening CloneDVD doesn't fix this issue; the computer needs to be restarted).

[James]

Originally Posted by loserdude

My best guess is that CloneDVD2 has a memory management issue that kicks in after ~5 GB (note: closing and re-opening CloneDVD doesn't fix this issue; the computer needs to be restarted).

In this case it can't be a CloneDVD memory issue, as it is a user mode application and all memory is freed by the OS, if the process is terminated.

Virtual CloneDrive could have an issue. Can you please try to enable "use buffered I/O" in VCDPrefs? Do this *before* mounting any image.

Any change?

Thanks!

[loserdude]

Originally Posted by James

In this case it can't be a CloneDVD memory issue, as it is a user mode application and all memory is freed by the OS, if the process is terminated.

Virtual CloneDrive could have an issue. Can you please try to enable "use buffered I/O" in VCDPrefs? Do this *before* mounting any image.

Any change?

Thanks!

Thanks, you've helped me find the answer.

It turns out it's because I use "green" HDDs. According to resource monitor when the pausing occurs all HDD activity, including CloneDVD's, drops to zero while the total HDD activity (blue line) spikes to maximum. Apparently this is a common issue with "green" HDDs.

Once this issue begins the HDD needs to rest for a while before full speed can be once again obtained, which is why restarting CloneDVD doesn't help.

Note: This issue doesn't affect my other two rippers (e.g. WinX DVD Ripper Platinum), which is probably because they consume ~1/2 the HDD bandwidth when ripping at the same speed as CloneDVD. So for some reason CloneDVD is hitting the HDD twice (HDD buffer? page file?) despite ripping directly from a DVD to the HDD, which is overwhelming green HDDs.

[loserdude]

I replaced my green HDD with a non-green one and sure enough the rips were much faster (e.g. 12.5 vs 32 minutes for a 7.8 GB rip).

The spikes were still there, but this time they lasted for about a fourth of a second rather than about 4 seconds.

Other rippers don't have said spikes (during which ripping is paused and the DVD light goes out as HDD reports 100% usage) and they rip in 9.8 minutes vs 12.5.

So if the developers of CloneDVD are listening please change how the data is written to the HDD. By doing so you can increase ripping speed on green drives by about 350% and on non-green drives by ~20%.

Thank you.

[James]

Originally Posted by loserdude

I replaced my green HDD with a non-green one and sure enough the rips were much faster (e.g. 12.5 vs 32 minutes for a 7.8 GB rip).

The spikes were still there, but this time they lasted for about a fourth of a second rather than about 4 seconds.

Other rippers don't have said spikes (during which ripping is paused and the DVD light goes out as HDD reports 100% usage) and they rip in 9.8 minutes vs 12.5.

So if the developers of CloneDVD are listening please change how the data is written to the HDD. By doing so you can increase ripping speed on green drives by about 350% and on non-green drives by ~20%.

Thank you.

Very interesting, and quite surprising. Can you try the AnyDVD "Rip Video DVD to Harddisk" option? Does this show the same behavior?

And if you aren't afraid of the command prompt, can you try the CloneDVD command line version "tcclone"?
http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=31897

I know that the write routines are quite different from CloneDVD, so this could indeed make a difference. I expect that both AnyDVD and tcclone show similar performance. The transcoder / remuxer code should be almost identical.
AFAIK CloneDVD uses unbuffered asynchronous I/O, where the other two programs use buffered synchronous I/O.
I would expect CloneDVD to be faster, but I am ready for another surprise.

Thanks in advance!

[loserdude]

Originally Posted by James

Very interesting, and quite surprising. Can you try the AnyDVD "Rip Video DVD to Harddisk" option? Does this show the same behavior?

And if you aren't afraid of the command prompt, can you try the CloneDVD command line version "tcclone"?
http://forum.slysoft.com/showthread.php?t=31897

I know that the write routines are quite different from CloneDVD, so this could indeed make a difference. I expect that both AnyDVD and tcclone show similar performance. The transcoder / remuxer code should be almost identical.
AFAIK CloneDVD uses unbuffered asynchronous I/O, where the other two programs use buffered synchronous I/O.
I would expect CloneDVD to be faster, but I am ready for another surprise.

Thanks in advance!

I ran the tests you recommended (using a non-green HDD)

1) AnyDVD Rip

No issues. It took 9 min. 10 sec. (same as the other rippers) with my test DVD (Walk the Line).
Resource Monitor showed no HDD usage spikes that corresponded with ripping pauses.

2) Command Line (--remux E:\VIDEO_TS all)

Again, no issues. It took 9 min. 12 sec. with my test DVD.
Again, Resource Monitor showed no HDD usage spikes that corresponded with ripping pauses.

3) CloneDVD2 reference rip

It took 9 min. 52 sec. with my test DVD.
Resource Monitor showed brief pauses as the HDD usage spiked (despite no data being transfered by any app).

So for some reason CloneDVD takes slightly longer ripping to normal HDDs (due to frequent, but very brief, pausing) and 350% longer ripping to green HDDs (because the pauses are just as frequent but much longer).

Reminder: It takes ~5 GB of ripping before green HDDs switch from short to long pauses, so to re-create this issue you must rip two DVDs back-2-back or use one large dual-layered DVD (~8 GB).

Thanks for all your help. My rips are now progressing at 3x the rate. I didn't trust the other apps because they left random blocking artifacts so I was determined to make CloneDVD2 work at full speed, and replacing my green HDD with a normal one did just that.

[James]

Originally Posted by loserdude

I ran the tests you recommended (using a non-green HDD)

1) AnyDVD Rip

No issues. It took 9 min. 10 sec. (same as the other rippers) with my test DVD (Walk the Line).
Resource Monitor showed no HDD usage spikes that corresponded with ripping pauses.

2) Command Line (--remux E:\VIDEO_TS all)

Again, no issues. It took 9 min. 12 sec. with my test DVD.
Again, Resource Monitor showed no HDD usage spikes that corresponded with ripping pauses.

3) CloneDVD2 reference rip

It took 9 min. 52 sec. with my test DVD.
Resource Monitor showed brief pauses as the HDD usage spiked (despite no data being transfered by any app).

So for some reason CloneDVD takes slightly longer ripping to normal HDDs (due to frequent, but very brief, pausing) and 350% longer ripping to green HDDs (because the pauses are just as frequent but much longer).

Reminder: It takes ~5 GB of ripping before green HDDs switch from short to long pauses, so to re-create this issue you must rip two DVDs back-2-back or use one large dual-layered DVD (~8 GB).

Thanks for all your help. My rips are now progressing at 3x the rate. I didn't trust the other apps because they left random blocking artifacts so I was determined to make CloneDVD2 work at full speed, and replacing my green HDD with a normal one did just that.

Thank you very much for your analysis. I'll forward this to the CloneDVD developers.