for prof. DVD project: Encoding question

[nuzumaki]

Hi guys,

Well, i am basicly for a long time now in the "scene", but now i have to do for a small DVD project the whole authoring and encoding. The thing is that the film (out 100min) was shot on miniDV in NTSC and will have to prepare a DVD-9 with all the extras, menus, films and so on. Well, that aint a big problem, but now i have the question about the encoding of the main titel. I will have to encode the 100min film and will get as source the uncompressed AVI file, which was cut by the director and cinematographer, i guess it will be around 200gb or so.
Which program would you suggest for best quality?
I know CCE, TMPEG, Mainconcept... and some others. I thought that if i encode it with CEE and 4-pass (how many?) with a constant bitrate would be the best, or do you guys have other suggestions?
I mean this DVD will be sold in stores, so i am really looking for the best quality- doesn't matter the time it takes for encoding.

would be great if anybody can help!

thx!

[guns1inger]

For DV I would suggest ProCoder, using either the highest quality or mastering quality settings. I would probably do a set encode of a segment using both settings and compare, as I have had DV footage come out looking worse using mastering quality in some cases, and highest produce a better output. It varies from source to source.

Most commercial discs use VBR encoding - I don't think I have actually seen a studio disc that used CBR encoding, although I have seen a couple of budget labels that have (and the quality was nothing to boast about).

Before you make that decision you need to look at the title in the context of the whole project. You need to actually sit down and look at all your assets and create a bitrate budget for the project. How much footage do you have in total - main title video and audio, extras video and audio, menus video and audio - what is the runtime of all of this ? How much can you allocate to the main title versus everything else. If you take the title in isolation and give it too high a bitrate, you may be forced to diminish the quality of the extras to make everything fit.

You have to look at the whole before you start getting specific.

[lordsmurf]

I would also suggest Procoder for highest quality output. Do 2-pass VBR encoding, fill up the discs with whatever space you have available, just keep it under 9800k total (audio+video).

[nuzumaki]

How much footage do you have in total - main title video and audio, extras video and audio, menus video and audio - what is the runtime of all of this ? How much can you allocate to the main title versus everything else. If you take the title in isolation and give it too high a bitrate, you may be forced to diminish the quality of the extras to make everything fit.

You have to look at the whole before you start getting specific.

Of course, i will first take a look at the extras, but as far as i know there will be online 2-3 trailer (max 12min) and 20min. of interviews. Maybe we will include some WAVs of the OST too...

so all in all we are speaking about 140 min of film. 106 are the maintitel and the rest are extras.

my question was if there is a difference if i encode it with my PC to the proffessional studio? I doubt it, but i don't know which hard/software they use. All in all i want the best possible quality.
So that even fans of well made DVDs like the final product- and that's not easy to accomplish.

stefan

[nuzumaki]

ahhh... there will be only 1 audio asset for everything on the disc.

I tried this encoder a while ago, but sorry for this maybe silly question, but how can an encoder for 60.- be as good as CCE ?

[guns1inger]

ProCoder, not ProCoder Express

http://www.canopus.com/products/ProCoderSW/index.php

It costs a bit more than $60.

But don't use price as an indicator of quality. Many of the best tools used here are free.

[nuzumaki]

yeah, i know that, but for years i only read the best about CCE and it was mainly my Nr.1 tool when it came to encoding. I will check procoder too... maybe there is a demo available

[lordsmurf]

CCE is far, far overpriced. For a number of years, it was one of the only quality software solutions, and it was able to bank a few grand each because the closest competition was hardware at 10x the cost.

But that was 3-4 years ago. For CCE to cost 4 digits is absolutely ridiculous, especially considering the quality problems it has with adding noise to your video.

Something like Procoder, and even certain versions of the MainConcept engine, really outperform CCE in quality.

CCE's only real claim to fame is speed, but with 3Ghz CPU's, it's a weak argument. I can get extremely fast performance from Procoder 2 on my 2.8Ghz and it looks a hell of a lot better.

[masterpug]

just buy CCE Basic, which is 1 or 2pass max, but 2pass is all you'll ever need, $58.
move the "flat part priority" slider from the default 16 to 24 and it will get rid of
the graininess lordsmurf mentioned. awesome speed and quality. procoder is
every bit as good in my opinion, and you'll like it's GUI/wizard and ability to input
more file types without frameserving much better than CCE. if you just are encoding
avi's, then they are natively accepted in CCE and it's my choice. by the way, CCE Basic
has the same encoding engine as the $2000 SP version, and has all the bells whistles
you'll ever need so for prosumer users basic vs is great and cheap!