Handbrake users: are insanely long encode times normal?

yes.

Crap. Would I see a dramatic difference doing this work on a Mac Pro with more RAM?

Or do you know of a better way to accomplish this Herculean task?

Well I’ve never tried it with HD video so I don’t know if 3 days is normal but it’s never been what you might call fast.

Faster computer might help a bit but I expect it will still be pretty slow.

I’m dumb, I said Handbrake and meant VisualHub.

I think the slow bit is actually the h.264 codec, not the program your using.

That’s what my research indicates. I do want these to be of good quality and small files, so H.264 is the way to go. Bummer it takes so long.

I’ll check back in December 2009 when they’re done.