Canopus ProCoder: is it worth the money?

[Khizhiy]

I am using Cinemacraft Encoder SP 2.64 at the moment, and I just read an article claiming Canopus ProCoder to be of much better quality than CCE. If anyone has happened to play with ProCoder, please post your competitive opinion here.

[Mirror_Image]

I'm awaiting professional reviews, as it is a fair chunk of change (too much $$$ to rely on hearsay), but I haven't seen any as of yet. I don't imagine there will be much input on ProCoder around here. Some, but not much, because that dongle makes it mighty hard to pirate.

[Khizhiy]

The demo version comes without a dongle.

[coops75]

Yes yes yes yes yes. I have played with lots of demos incl. cce sp and Tmpgc(?) and believe that procoder is superior, even to cce sp, though only by a little. However it,s cheaper than cce and faster than tmpgc. But most importantly, the picture quality is good. I imagine that the majority of people using this board did not pay for cce sp and so dropping $700 is not an idea they will warm up to. I am saving my hard earned dinero to purchase a copy. Go to canopus homepage and try the demo for yourself. I will need to re-do all my dvd's (rec. on a dv camera) because Procoder makes them look so much better, especially on my big screen tv.

[GregY]

Very good Coops75, I too have used Ligos 3.5, CCE 2.62, 2.64 and Tempgc.

Everything always looks great on my PC but I just upgraded my HT system to a high end Rear Projection HDTV monitor and DVD player.
(Pioneer SD-643HD5 and DV-47A repspectively) and it looks like Sh*t.

This despite reading all the guides. I was going to try the demo but didn't think much of the time limit nor the fact that you could not use MPEG-2 files for input.

I will be more than happy to pay the $700.00 if the end result is closer to my expectations.

Ohh and about the Dongle thing. I'm using the two oft mentioned here high end DVD Authoring programs and they "had" dongle protection.

"What one man creates, another is sure to discover"

Cya
GregY

[Mirror_Image]

There has never been a safe that couldn't be cracked, nor a lock that couldn't be picked. If you dive deep enough into the gutter of humanity, you can find a way around just about everything.

[TheSeven7hSon]

I tried the Demo and I liked it. The video it produced was neat, clean and with rich, solid colors. Unlike TMPGEnc's products that have a milky film over the video grabbed from cable TV (due to noise?). But I suppose you can get similar results just by raising the contrast in TMPGEnc.

I found ProCoder's ONE, TWO, THREE layout easy enough to follow and the soft yet none pastel colors easy on my eyes. Kind of like Cleaner 5.

I believe ProCoder sets the contrast high from the beginning. While TMPGEnc is more true to the original. (Only tried it with TV video.)

Seven

[Mirror_Image]

If you'd like to try the demo download, this shortcut worked for me (downloading as I type):

http://www.canopus.com/pub/drivers/procoder/ProCoderDemo_1_02.exe

[Khizhiy]

It took me an hour to encode a 37 second DV clip with ProCoder in the mastering mode and the 2 pass VBR MPEG-2 option selected. I confess, the machine used was not much sutable: Pentium-III 350 Mhz, 128 Mb RAM, several other office applications running. The result at 4500 kbps and 720x576 does not look blocky even though a wavy water surface covers most of the screen. The only artifact that I can find is a sort of a noise around the sharp edges of the embedded Canopus watermark.

How does ProCoder perform on a computer with plenty of RAM?

[coops75]

I encoded a clip directly from the premiere timeline using cbr at 8000 and it looked great. A 5 min clip took 11 mins. I am able to lower the resolution on my tv to 480 to suit anything other than hdtv. Also I am using dv as a source.

[TheSeven7hSon]

Sometimes I add a border around my VCDs. I don't know if it's possible with ProCoder. Maybe I missed it.

Seven

[coops75]

Seems that what you say is true mirror, except you do not need to go to the gutter of humanity, just kazaa.