Understanding Version 3 Conversion Advisor

[ckhouston]

Note: This topic applies only to CX2D version 3, version 4 has a very useful advisor.

The Conversion Advisor is simply a cumulative time counter that changes light color at 2 and 4 hours according to the manual available on the VSO web site. However, it can be interpreted in other ways - see this thread.

Note that I found different times for the change in light color than given in the manual as explained in that thread.

Rather than the light changing from green to yellow at 2 hours and to red at 4 hours, for a target size of 4300 MB (present default DVD5 size), it actually changes at 1:40 (100 min) and 3:30 (210 min). For any other target size, multiply those times by the ratio of the new size divided by 4300.

So the lights are just a rough indicator of the quality you can expect.

PS: I also found that the size on the disc shown in the status bar before conversion begins is nothing more than the time multiplied by 0.0215 GB/min. So it is just a rough estimate and actual size after conversion may be quite different, because CX2D does not know how much a video will compress until it actually starts converting.