best free mpeg2 encoder for me!!!

[malahal]

I have DV-avi files from my panasonic DV camera. I want to encode to mpeg2. I have no hard size requirements (if I can put one hour tape in one DVD, I am fine). Shall I go with QuEnc or HCenc? I heard FreeEnc and others. What are merits and de-merits of each? Thank you for your time.

[gadgetguy]

QuEnc can encode both Video and Audio. HCEnc only encodes Video. I usually use HCEnc for the Video and QuEnc for the audio (it can do audio only). IMO HC does a little bit better job of respecting maximum bitrates. In the tests that I did when evaluating for myself, I didn't see any difference in quality when I viewed them side by side. I recommend you test for yourself and make your own decision.

[FulciLives]

I vote for HC and if you need an AC-3 audio encoder then ffmpeggui will do the job.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[gadgetguy]

Just for the record QuEnc can do AC3 audio (which is what I always use).
ffmpeggui is a good conversion/encoding tool, but what I like about QuEnc is that I can feed it the same avs script that I used for HCEnc. To my knowledge there's no way to do that with ffmpeggui at the moment, so if I make trim edits in my script then I have to save the audio out to wav via Vdub then encode separately.

[Abond]

Completely agree with gadgetguy. Some tricky audio files crapped ffmpeggui, but QuEnc even without avisynth make them nicely. For record only QuEnc can open directly avi and wav files.

[guns1inger]

I must admit that I haven't used Quenc in a while, but when I did use it I wasn't impressed by either it's lack of speed or mediocre quality. I'm sure it has moved on since then, but HCEnc is so far ahead of it now that it doesn't matter to me. Aften is also shaping up as a great AC3 encoder.

[loster]

I would second Aften.
Also besweet has the ability to do ac3 but buggy.

[FulciLives]

Aften is a good freeware AC-3 encoder ... better perhaps than ffmpeggui.

As for Quenc vs HCenc ... I tried Quenc a while ago and was not impressed with the quality whereas I am very impressed with HCenc. Perhaps Quenc has become better since ... can't say.

I will say this ... don't let the fact that HCenc being a video only tool scare you away. Just about all of the really good encoders either can't do sound or do it poorly so it is not uncommon to use one tool for video and another for audio.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[kevo777]

I use the SoundOut plugin for Avisynth in my scripts. Very simple.

I feed HC my script. When I click Encode, SoundOut's GUI pops up. I click on AC3 and voila!. I believe SoundOut uses Aften.

[malahal]

thank you all for your suggestions. I have used HCenc in the past, it was good. Also, I have lots of DV tapes and I want to recycle them but don't have time to edit the footage. I am going encode and store them on my hard drive for now. My editing involves no more than deleting some footage. Can I use virtualDubMod for doing that (I used virtualdub for deleting some footage from DV-avi file)? If so, how do I delete the video and the corresponding audio as they are now in separate files.

I know it is better to edit the avi files rather than encoded mpeg files, but I am not that worried about quality. Thank you for your answers.

[jman98]

I know it is better to edit the avi files rather than encoded mpeg files, but I am not that worried about quality. Thank you for your answers.

I disagree with this statement and view it as out of date. Many AVI junkies don't realize that the MPEG world has had frame accurate editors for some time (VideoReDo and MPEGVCR for example) and they don't re-encode your video as the result of your edits. Whether you can actually tell the difference or not between AVI edited video that is converted to MPEG-2 or MPEG-2 video that is then edited is a very good question. Some people swear that they can and although I firmly think they have a minority opinion, I can no more prove that they are wrong than they can prove that they are right. If you're just doing simple edits, such as removing commercials, I doubt it makes any difference whether you edit first and then convert or convert and then edit. I've known of people who think 128 Kbps MP3 is as good as original CD source and I've known others that think that anything below 256 Kbps is crap. I just point out that just because some people are convinced that you HAVE to edit in AVI first or the quality will suffer is debatable and you might have a different opinion.