does "--rate" param work in file2file, non-gui transcodes?

[SteveO]

Dear Forum,

I am transcoding from and to a file from the command line and using the "-I dummy" parameter to have it run without the GUI. I would like these transcodes to go as quickly as possible. I found the "--rate" parameter, but using a rate specification of 4.0 does not seem to speed the processing time over no specification. I do not receive an error indicating VLC was unable to interpret any part of my command, so I have no reason to believe at this point that my command line is in error. My entire command string is:

vlc --rate=4.0 --sout "#transcode{vcodec=WMV2,vb=800,scale=1,acodec=wma2,ab=128,channels=2,samplerate=44100}:std{access=file,mux=asf,dst=c:\temp\VLC\boxout.data}" c:\temp\vlc\box.data -I dummy

My questions are:

1) I assume the "rate" parameter is the appropriate control for what I am trying to accomplish (sped up transcodes).
2) Am I using the "rate" parameter properly?
3) Is the VLC program hard limited to a particular rate range? I would think that if display is not of interest that VLC would be able to transcode as quickly as possible... if this is not the case is the required fix to the code straightforward?

Thx,

Steve.

[Rémi Denis-Courmont]

--rate merely set the playback rate. When transcoding, there is no pacing, so --rate is irrelevant.

[SteveO]

..... so are you saying that the transcode should operate at a much faster rate on a fast processor, or is the transcode tied to real time or some multiple of it?

I tried the transcoder on on an extremely fast server on which several weeks ago I had run run 6 Mp2 stream to Mp4 file simultaneous conversions with each transcoder using about 14% of CPU resources, but on this same machine the conversion to .wmv took about 10 minutes for a 10 minute file and used about 4% of CPU, which makes me think the conversion is connected to real time in some fashion?

Thx.