Which is the PREMIER Codec Used for Pro/Commercial DVDs?

[DW]

HI all,

just was wondering, which MPEG2 codec do most commercial DVDs use to encode? (hardware and software?)

TIA

[guns1inger]

Mpeg2 is the codec. Are you asking which encoder they use ?

[FulciLives]

MPEG-2 is MPEG-2

The difference is in the encoder not the "codec" itself.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[redwudz]

Cinema Craft Encoder is one that is popular for encoding MPEG-2.

[DW]

woops... yes, i meant which encoder. sorry.

redwudz,
is Cinema Craft Encoder really what commercial DVDs use? is it really better than TMPEG or whatever i thought Sony has that i've now forgotten about?

[guns1inger]

tmpgenc is way too slow for commercial work.

If you are talking about commercial DVDs from the studios then they use film scanners that can scan a frame line at a time to get 2k image, hardware encoders that allow them to tweak settings on a per frame basis if required, and toys beyond your wildest dreams (and budget)

Smaller houses will favour tools like CCE and ProCoder. I know a number of houses in Aus use ProCoder because of it's watch folders and batching.

[DW]

thanks, guns1inger, I have an old version of procoder... i think i'll try that...

is there anything else thats used in industry? And i'm just talked about the encoding process, not the scanning process (like as you mentioned with film scanners at post/transfer houses).

[FulciLives]

My understanding is that most commercial MPEG-2 DVD encoding is done using rather expensive hardware encoders that a regular person couldn't dream of owning due to the price.

BJ_M would be the one to ask. He works in the industry.

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[BJ_M]

FulciLives is right - it is almost exclusively hardware encoders .. small runs are sometimes done on macs and with procoder ... CCE sp is popular in japan .. and more than a few users in NA and elsewhere ..

Sonic Solutions SD-1000 and SD-2000 hardware encoders are very popular , the 2000 model is 25,000$

There are Hardware encoders for more than 50,000$ also

all hardware encoders take sdi input, which really is a crucial factor .. as well as very tight timecode control.

procoder is popular because it retains the closed caption data (which most do not) for small runs (plus its batch mode).
Sony has both software and hardware systems ...
so does Panasonic and many others...

i would say most dvds are done on apple for authoring..



there are several broadcast realtime encoders also ... for cable and sat (mpeg2 and mpeg4) - almost all of these are multichannel and multistream ..

[FulciLives]

@BJ_M

What is that image you posted above?

I can't make much out of it as you shrunk it too much LOL

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

[guns1inger]

At a guess, the front end to this http://www.sonic.com/products/Professional/SDEncoder/

or similar

[pijetro]

Just to bring me and DW back to earth.......

The other option would be hardware cards like Canopus, Matrox, Pinnacle (i'm drawing a blank right now)...
For the most part, they are DV accelerators, but have output to MPEG..
With a modern machine, and a PCI hardware card as mentioned, you should easily get fast encoding, with reasonable quality..

OOPs, sorry, didn't realize this was regarding stricly commercial work..

[BJ_M]

the pic above is the GUI for the sonic 2000 card .....