Mpeg encoder shootout

[BJ_M]

http://videosystems.com/ar/video_mpeg_encoder_shootout/index.htm


and the results in table form: http://images.videosystems.com/files/127/404VSsfeature.pdf

[noki]

interesting read...thanks.

[lordsmurf]

Interesting and entertaining ... but...

Who si the audience? I cannot tell. Not at all. Coming from BJ_M, I'd say "pro" or small pro. But maybe not, judging from some comments.

I sometimes wonder about these tests. How can you give CCE top rating when it introduces it's own signal noise? Mosquito noise anybody?

And putting a $25K card in with the mix? Huh?

What about Matrox cards? ATI cards? Hauppauge cards?

Why not test TMPGENC?

Why not use a real test, not a test of text and a waterfall? Where's the people, skin tones, car movement ... you know ... typical things.

I will say the explosion looked nice. That WAS a good test.

Like I said, sometimes I just wonder what these people are thinking when they "test" products.

It left me with more questions. How can less 'B' frames make images "look plastic"?

For what purpose would you WANT to encode mastering quality at uner 4MB/s in Procoder? What, are we mastering SVCD's or something? Again, is the audience home or pro?

What so hard about the user interface of Procoder? As opposed to CCE ???

[BJ_M]

they were "pro" people all envolved directly in compression and dvd bussness .

waterfall is a good test -- its tough to do ..


dont know why they couldnt get tmpgenc to work (maybe it was so good for the price - they were shocked) ..

they also left a out a major player - mainconcept or at least the premiere or vegas variation and herus ..

cce (and other encoders) add dithering -- this is a good thing sometimes and at other times - not .. the trick is to know when to use it ..

ATI cards and Hauppauge cards are not used professionally ..

matrox cards are though sometimes .. they also left out optibase , which is a very popular hardware encoder ..

[tag]

Why not test TMPGENC?

Yep, they tried but, as was stated in the review, the teams couldn't create "technically legal files". Now, I'm left wondering what that means, precisely, because as a rank DV amateur I was able to DL the trial of TMPGEnc and create perfectly fine files (to feed into the trial version of TMPGEnc DVD Author) the same day. Maybe the judges forgot to use this site for guidance!

I also wonder why they blew off CCE Basic. They wondered whether CCE-SP would perform as well as the Pro version but never even mentioned that a $58, Basic version, existed.

Otherwise, the review was interesting and informative. Nevertheless, I'm mystified about the inclusion of the "side-bar" explaining the difference between CBR and VBR. Doesn't every pro, semi-pro, and serious amateur know that? In fact, it seems like it's one of the first things beginners learn (true in my case, at least).

[BJ_M]

i wouldn't say some "pro's" would know the difference exactly ... a good case in point is a HDV forum over at creative cow where a bunch of "pro's" are debating different mpeg profiles and mpeg encoding methods ...

they sound like some newbies here -- but what is worse they are in the video bussness .

[The village idiot]

Waterfall, smoke, fog, fire are all difficult things to encode. There is a lot going on inside each of those things.

[Skynet107]

CCE of course has the best encoding engine on Earth. But it it hardly user friendly. CinemaCraft needs to hire someone to make a nice GUI with some features for CCE. Guess they don't care considering the price they are getting for the software.

[lordsmurf]

CCE of course has the best encoding engine on Earth. But it it hardly user friendly. CinemaCraft needs to hire someone to make a nice GUI with some features for CCE. Guess they don't care considering the price they are getting for the software.

All they need to do is get the Bill Gates mentality. Remember Windows? DOS was good, but the GUI sucked. See how pretty Apple is? Steal that. Same thing here. Use CCE engine, steal the TMPGENC GUI and filters, keep competitive pricing (under $100) and you've got it made. Until then, I think CCE is worthless. MC 1.4, Procoder, TMPGENC, all better choices. It's probably all computer geeks together. None of them has business sense. My thoughts. Even their website looks like trash (though it looks better now than it used to). The look of the product says "homemade" all over it.

[holistic]

......Judges were given a maximum of 45 minutes per encoder to evaluate the interface and features and complete their encoding tasks....

A gauge the intuitiveness of the encoder's user interface.
That I can accept.

BUT to then use that 45 minutes of preperation to then make 'test clips'. THAT I find to be an absurd way to test any software product. period



][

[BJ_M]

......Judges were given a maximum of 45 minutes per encoder to evaluate the interface and features and complete their encoding tasks....

A gauge the intuitiveness of the encoder's user interface.
That I can accept.

BUT to then use that 45 minutes of preperation to then make 'test clips'. THAT I find to be an absurd way to test any software product. period



][

really doesnt mean much because some would have known at least 1 or maybe 2 of the encoders real well ..

[SaSi]

I think the mix of the products tested is shocking.

CCE vs Tmpgenc is a popular subject in this and other sites. But if they wanted to suggest Tmpgenc to professional users, they should at least try to learn how to use it. And if they had troubles, they could have posted in DVDRHelp, in the newbies section

And the final results are funny too!

CCE: Multi Pass VBR up to nine passes. Performance comparable to best hardware based encoders"

So, CCE needs 9 passes to compare with a h/w encoder 8)

And for Canopus Procoder: Field based encoding is possible. (As if it isn't with other products...)

And with Tmpgenc, they finally admit it: Impressive features for a $48 product (sorry guys, too complex for us to make use of :P )

Thanks BJ_M, nice reading.

And apart from Mainconcept, they forgot Heuris, Honestech, and a few others, not so known products.

[BJ_M]

i think "CCE: Multi Pass VBR up to nine passes. Performance comparable to best hardware based encoders"

is two seperate things -- they are not saying you need 9 passes to get hardware quality (in fact they prove it themselves) ..


"Canopus Procoder: Field based encoding is possible.." -- most encoders are frame based only , which is per the dvd spec .. canopus can do frame and field and autoswitch ....

tmpgenc IS impressive for a 48$ product .. thats a for sure ..

[cirving]

Can I throw in a question here about Frameserving? What is it? Is it something you do in the encoding stage? Can CCE "frameserve" or Procoder "frameserve".

How is it different from regular encoding? Thanks.

C.I.

[lordsmurf]

Can I throw in a question here about Frameserving? What is it? Is it something you do in the encoding stage? Can CCE "frameserve" or Procoder "frameserve".

How is it different from regular encoding? Thanks.

C.I.

https://www.videohelp.com/glossary

Frameserve
The process of creating a direct video "link" from one application to another. For example a video editor application to standalone mpeg encoder so you don't need a plugin or create a temporary video file.

[SaSi]

i think "CCE: Multi Pass VBR up to nine passes. Performance comparable to best hardware based encoders"

is two seperate things -- they are not saying you need 9 passes to get hardware quality (in fact they prove it themselves) ..

Of course. I was just "exagerating" a bit on the comments.

[Capmaster]

It is kind of an oddball comparison. I'd be more interested if they compared boards I'd be more likely to buy. It's a hobby for me, not a profession.

BJ_M
00101010

BJ_M
2A

[thor300]

"Until then, I think CCE is worthless" - Thats the staement of someone posted almost 4000 posts to this site. Ok... So the best encoder on the market is worthless, this guy cant be wrong.

[BJ_M]

It is kind of an oddball comparison. I'd be more interested if they compared boards I'd be more likely to buy. It's a hobby for me, not a profession.

BJ_M
00101010

BJ_M
2A

accually 2B now -- i get the year mixed up

[duhmez]

Worthless or not, perhaps exaggerated statement, but CCE does need a MAJOR GUI and feature overhaul. It cant do anything except encode.....

Needs filters, aspect ratio auto letterboxing like tmpgenc does etc.

[offline]

So the best encoder on the market is worthless, this guy cant be wrong.

LordSmurf said "I think..." It is his opinion and his right to express it.

Worthless or not, perhaps exaggerated statement, but CCE does need a MAJOR GUI and feature overhaul. It cant do anything except encode.....
Needs filters, aspect ratio auto letterboxing like tmpgenc does etc.

If you do not know how to edit, filter and frameserve then what are
you doing with a powerful encoder like CCE for christs sake?

[troyvcd1]

This is really a crap review. Any encoder shootout must have tmpgenc to be legit. And if they can not get it to work then they are too stupid to compare the results. For me I used some various encoders, ulead, premiere, and even tmpgenc. Then I did my first encode with CCE and I just never went back. I saw such great improvement that I neve wanted to spend anymore time trying to configure tmpgenc to get better results and then wait for tmpgenc to encode a movie that CCE can do in half the time. I have heard that mainconcept is good but I have never tried it.

[freestyler]

It'd be better if they rounded up experts that actually USE these encoders (maybe a salesman) to duke it out before an impartial panel, rather than a bunch of newbs tweaking settings on encoding softwares it seems they've never used before.

Took em forever to find the advanced settings on procoder? Give me a break. Couldn't get Tmpg to work? LAME

Then they get the best results on the encoders they use all the time (CCE and Sonic SD-2000).... Was this shootout sponsored by the GOP? (pun intended)

I'd like to see some sample clips available for download or an ISO image of everything so I can burn it and see myself. Doesn't mention what this was viewed on either - for all we know could be a 13 inch tv. Might it have been a production monitor? Who knows, doesn't say. Kinda disappointing that this was done at a renowned video school.

[holistic]

Sesame Street was brought to you today by :

The Letters CCE and the Numbers 1999. :P

[thor300]

Holistic, try the number 58. But you got the letters right; CCE, so 1 point to you for nice try Some people always defend tmpgenc no matter what, i think they are to lazy to spend time learning CCE/AVS. As Troyvcd1 said, once you tried CCE you cant go back to tmpgenc, and if you cant encode without tmpgenc-type GUI then you should consider another hobby, but then again maybe collecting beercaps would be too advanced also. Tmpgenc can be good for high bitrates and NO resize, because of its resize problem one should use AVS anyway, at least frameserve with vdub or something. So there goes the argument of "cant use CCE without AVS", you need it also with tnmpgenc to get good results and to speed it up a bit.

They didnt get tmpgenc to work? Read the shootout, tmpgenc did work for them but did not create compilant files. Same as with VCD i guess, who hasnt seen the warning in vcdeasy "Strange, possible noncompilant user data seen (Not a problem, usually a sign of tmpgenc)"? Not a problem but POSSIBLE not compilant.

[petar]

I think it's important to note what BJ_M said - that this test was aimed at pros. The fact that TMPGEnc has many nice filters which CCE doesn't have (and one needs to use frameserving to achieve the same thing) was irrelevant to them. The video they were encoding was probably already edited and all they cared about was the encoding. "Pros" would use an encoder to encode only. They'd use another hardware/application before to do resizing, frame rate conversion, cleaning or whatever.

I'm a defender of TMPGEnc for my needs. I have neither the time, nor the money, nor the resources to do professional DVDs. Hence the fact that TMPGEnc can resize, crop, cut and apply some filters is great for me for the VHS tapes I convert to DVD. Plus the quality is great considering the source. But this is not what these guys were testing. Neither their source was VHS nor they needed to do anything else but encode.

Did surprise me though that they didn't get legal files with TMPGEnc.

[holistic]

Holistic, try the number 58. But you got the letters right; CCE, so 1 point to you for nice try Some people always defend tmpgenc no matter what, i think they are to lazy to spend time learning CCE/AVS.

The 1999 is the price !.

As for defending TMPGEnc, don't presume to speak for me.
I have tried CCE, and I have dabbled in the very basics of avisynth. But this was not, my bone of contention with the review. (CCE v TMPGEnc)

In summary : ONE review by ONE group doesn't make me a believer.

I started out years ago with TMPGEnc and was very satisfied with the results I got doing my family VHS/Hi8 to MPEG2. I have since upgraded to the Canopus product and ,despite other opinions, find it very user intutive. For some CCE may be the best, but for performance for the dollar ProCoder is for me.

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[Phlexor]

I'm not suprised about the TMPGEnc being non-compliant. It pisses me off to no end. The bug with TMPGEnc not closing GOPs properlly annoys me to no end. And before you say "use closed GOPs', I shouldn't have to.

This is the main and possibly only rerason that I will not shell out and pay for the Pro version. I've said it here before and on the TMPGEnc bbs, but pretty much no one knows dick about it.

How can the author of TMPEnc Charge money for a product that has had this bug for god knows how long. I haven't found a version that does not contain this bug, and no one seems like they want to do anything about it. Near enough is good enough as far as the TMPGEnc zealots are concerned.

[petar]

Curious about this TMPGEnc not being compliant (and worried cause I use it for all my encodes).

Phlexor, can you explain what's this bug about TMPGEnc? I read through your previous posts and it seems to me that you're saying TMPGEnc doesn't close a GOP on a scene change, is that so? If that's true, it won't make it non-compliant, it just that your random access (like setting chapters points) may suffer.
You can still make a random access, it just that if the GOP is not closed the B frames immediately after the I frame won't be displayed if they reference the previous GOP.

Anyway, I ran my last encode through an MPEG parser and was able to find quite a few closed GOPs. I repeated the encode with the CCE Basic trial and it didn't close any more GOPs than TMPGEnc.

Maybe I didn't understand what the bug is about (or maybe they've fixed it?).

[andie41]

Adam made a comment in another thread Re problems with TMPGenc's GOPs:

TMPGenc encoder actually appears to have a bug where leaving GOPs open may prevent it from maintaining your set GOP size limit, so in this instance you unfortunately have no choice but to close all GOPs. If using any other mpeg encoder than always leave them open. TMPGenc DVD Author should accept either input equally well and this setting has no effect on compatibility with any standard, ie: SVCD, VCD, DVD etc

After reading this comment I checked my Mpegs in Bitrate Viewer and found all with correct Gop sizes. Some time later, I came accross a couple of Mpegs from a couple of years previous and when I checked them, the Gops showed a number of problems. My suspicion is that TMPGenc did in fact have this "bug", but it appears later versions have corrected it. None of my current Mpegs exhibit this problem.