Misleading GUI makes some transcoding appear slow in v1.0.0

[Grouse]

Hello. First post, please be gentle.

I'm a Windows user but I'm posting this in the general troubleshooting section because I'm guessing it's common to all builds. Please correct me if I'm wrong.

For the last few months I've been using VLC 0.9.something with a Windows batch script to semi-automate conversion of radio shows recorded in Topfield .rec format to .mp3 format. The script includes the following lines

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vlc %_file%.rec :sout=#transcode{acodec=s16l,ab=128,channels=2}:duplicate{dst=std{access=file,mux=wav,dst=f:\\%_file%.wav}} vlc://quit

which converts the .rec to .wav. The WAV file is then trimmed in an audio editor before the next part of the script is run:

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vlc f:\\%_file%.wav :sout=#transcode{acodec=mp3,ab=128,channels=2}:duplicate{dst=std{access=file,mux=raw,dst=f:\\%_file%.mp3}} vlc://quit

which converts the edited .wav to .mp3. Under the earlier version of VLC the GUI for both conversion stages showed 1.00x as the speed with 00:00/00:00 as the time reference and the timeline slider moving quickly from left to right (about 30 seconds for the .wav conversion, 90 seconds for the .mp3)

Since moving to version 1.0.0 the .wav conversion GUI is the same as for the earlier version. However the .mp3 conversion stage displays the actual file duration in the bottom right, with a real-time count running next to it. Furthermore the timeline slider moves very slowly from left to right, giving the impression that the transcoding is taking place in real time. I only knew that wasn't the case becase the size of the destination file was increasing too quickly. Indeed the conversion itself completes in the expected time but the GUI is totally out of sync (the demonstration file I used completed conversion with the slider only about 5% of the way across, with the time index reading 01:22/28:41)

This is really only a cosmetic issue but it's very confusing. Before I realised everything was working OK behind the scenes I was starting to consider codec reinstallation and various other strategies which weren't ultimately necessary because I was convinced the transcoding was happening at the speed reflected by the GUI. I've no idea what's changed between v0.9.x and v1.0.0 to cause this, and it's a mystery as to why it happens only when converting to some formats but not others.

Hopefully in the short term this post may prevent other users jumping to the wrong conclusion if they see this behaviour, and in the long term it'd be nice if there was a fix!

For the record the host machine is a Q6600 running Windows 7 RC 7100 64bit.

[Grouse]

Furthermore the timeline slider moves very slowly from left to right, giving the impression that the transcoding is taking place in real time.

For what it's worth, even though the lack of replies suggests nobody else is seeing this, it's still doing this for me in 1.0.1 for wav-to-mp3 conversions.

[friwi]

Hi,

it seems that I have the same problem with version 1.0.3 Goldeneye on Windows XP. I just
upgraded from 0.8.5 and now the time display and the slider somehow seem to represent
the current time when I do a transcoding of an mp3 file from 192 kBit/s to 64kBit/s. I first
thought that the new version is so slow... So after a time display of 35 minutes, the
transcoding of a 7h file was done. The slider moved accordingly, i.e. representing the
35 minutes of the the 7h file.

Anyway I moved to the current version because this transcoding crashed in the previous 0.8.5
version. So I take the chance to thank you all for the great VLC!

Regards

Friedrich

[Grouse]

Furthermore the timeline slider moves very slowly from left to right, giving the impression that the transcoding is taking place in real time.

For what it's worth, even though the lack of replies suggests nobody else is seeing this, it's still doing this for me in 1.0.1 for wav-to-mp3 conversions.

For the record this problem seems to have been resolved in v1.1.0. Thanks.