Best Encoder

[karter74]

Lets say money is no object, for regular VCD's, is Panasonic the best, or is LSX, or Tmpgenc. For SVCD's is CinemaCraft by far the best and if not that much better would it be noticeable if I just used Tmpgenc. I have CCE 2.5 pro but don't really have a clue on how to use it.

[nsdn]

use dvd2svcd pain is removed.....uses CCE and I get far better results than frpm Tmpge

[adam]

I find cce's vcd output rather pathetic, especially for that price tag. TMPGenc is MUCH better for mpeg1 and panasonic encoder might even beat TMPGenc at vcd quality.

For svcds its definitely a toss up between TMPGenc and cce and your results depend largely on your source. If money were no object I would still use TMPGenc most of the time.

[Jeomite]

I'm hearing mixed views upon CCE vs TMPGEnc. I never tried CCE, so I can't put my opinion in it. I was wanted to know if it's true that CCE is faster AND has better quality (I'm referring to CBR, not any sort of VBR) than TMPGEnc?

[Vejita-sama]

CCE is better at MPEG2, TMPGenc is better at MPEG1. CCE allows for up to 5pass VBR, this will produce a better encode then TMPGenc 2pass VBR. However, if you USE CBR at your DVD players max bitrate it doesn't matter as much.

CCE as a lot of extra settings and features that TMPGenc lacks. But most people don't know what they are or how to use them, so...

CCE is MUCH faster than TMPGenc (about twice as fast on my Tbird 1.2Ghz). That means that 3pass VBR in CCE (ie. 4 passes) is actually faster than 2pass VBR in TMPGenc. As I only do MPEG2 these days that means CCE will allows make a better encode.

CCE's audio encoding just plains SUCKS! TMPGenc's audio encoding is very good, and if you want you can run tooLame to encode your audio from within TMPGenc.

So bottom line. For MPEG1 use TMPGenc. For MPEG2 use CCE. CCE isn't quite as user friendly, but it has more features, is much faster, and generates better encodes for VBR. For CBR TMPGenc might be a little better (thou slower).

[Truman]

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On 2001-09-18 21:06:59, karter74 wrote:
Lets say money is no object, for regular VCD's, is Panasonic the best, or is LSX, or Tmpgenc. For SVCD's is CinemaCraft by far the best and if not that much better would it be noticeable if I just used Tmpgenc. I have CCE 2.5 pro but don't really have a clue on how to use it.
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You are the first one, who mention to use CCE Pro. Congratulation!
All replies above refer to CCE SP, I believe.

[vitualis]

For standard VCD standard MPEG-1, it is a toss up between Panasonic and TMPGEnc. CCE MPEG-1 encoding is poor.

From experience, you can't really judge between Panasonic and TMPGEnc on just short video clips. Panasonic does some things better while TMPGEnc does other things better. If I have a short clip (e.g., title animations) I encode with both and then choose the one which looks better.

TMPGEnc produces sharper video output than Panasonic and this is why on short clips it may look better. It may also handle colour better too. However, it also tends to be blockier and this is usually why I consider Panasonic to be generally better encoder for MPEG-1 at VCD bitrates for the entire length of the movie. (BTW, I know you can use filters to reduce blocks with TMPGEnc, but you then sacrifice the sharpness and the fine detail in the video if you use a perfect source like a DVD rip).

To contradict somebody before, TMPGEnc has terrible native audio encoding quality. Panasonic is much better. tooLame does fix this problem nicely though. However, if you use toolame, you can't use FlaskMPEG to frameserve to TMPGEnc and have it handle both video and audio at the same time.

Although I can't confirm this, I also have suspicions that TMPGEnc encode MPEG streams aren't 100% VCD compliant all the time.

BTW, if you plan to make XVCDs (i.e., non-standard VCDs), TMPGEnc offers much more options than Panasonic and is undoubtedly the better choice.

Regards.

[HillJack]

I only make VCD's, and find TMPGEnc 12h with the default NTSCFilm template and zero tweaking, to produce excellent results for my DVDrips. Cut the resulting mpg in half with TMPGEnc's MPEG Tools, and I get my final product which I'm VERY happy with.

[nfl2k2]

a CCE 5 pass goes at 17 hours. a tmpgenc 2 pass goest at 30 hours on my 1 gighz amd. plus CCE does a better video job