Sharpen will definitely cause a serious performance hit. Maybe you should try trbarry's UnFilter. You can download it from doom9's downloads section. I think that UnFilter(20,20) will do the same as Sharpen(0.1) - there was a post about this correlation earlier somewhere in the forum and there also was a script to test it as well. What comes to the speed you're getting, I think it's too low. I get about 1.25 with Athlon XP 1800+. I can't say what could be the cause there unless you give us some details (settings used etc.)

Some of my settings are: Frameserver: SimpleResize Sharpen 0.10 TemporalSm. Strength 2, Radius 1 Encoder: Multipass 4 (which I'm told is really 5pass) Image Quality Priority 23 AntiNoise filter 12 Deinterlacing: Telecide on PAL, Blendfields on NTSC Bitrate max 2530 min 300, Max. avg 2410 I will test a lot this evening turning off sharpen etc Thanks in advance!

Your Speed is normal! 

You use Temporal Smoother und De-Interlacing!!! TS alone will drop your speed around 20-30% De-Interlacing costs also 10-30% When you turn off this 2 Things you should have 1.4-1.7 on your System!!!

If you want quality, you're going to have to live with increased encoding times.. 'tis a fact of video encoding ;)

My speed certainly raised alot when not using temporal smoother, sharpen and deinterlacing. But of course you have to take your time if you want high quality...

Hi there, this discussion reminds on a quote I once heard but don't know the source anymore - it goes like this: "Good. Cheap. Fast. Pick any two, you can't have all three." Seems to perfectly match when speaking about video encoding - doesn't it. ;) Greetz, Gerti