The quality of Tmpgenc 2.58 is worse.

[vince]

When I encode more than 90 minutes on one disk using Tmpgenc 2.58, I noticed that the quality is much worse than older version like 2.54, I see macro blocks everywhere. I can hardly notice anything if using 2.54.

[banjazzer]

There must be a moral there, somewhere.

I'm surprised you don't frequently get blocks encoding mpeg at 90 minutes per disc, with any encoder!

[DJRumpy]

Agreed. 50 to 60 minutes for one disk typically gives average VCD quality, which means poor to bad anyway. I'd be curious as to what you put on a VCD that was 90 minutes long, and still looked good. About the slowest thing I can think of is "On Golden Pond". Not much action there...

[banjazzer]

50 to 60 minutes per CD usually gives me exceptional quality SVCD (using VBR). You can get 90 minutes VCD on a CD with good quality, but it means creating a non-compliant (VBR) VCD which may not play on all players.

[DJRumpy]

SVCD is good. VCD is bad. I have yet to find a good quality (in my terms) VCD. They are always either blurry, due to overfiltering, blocky due to bit strangling, unplayable due to x-overdose, or dark/light/red/etc due to inexperience.

The only exception was a post of Star Wars Episode's 4,5,&6. These were straight from the DVD to VCD. There were a few macroblocks, and a minor amount of blur, but the overall quality was about the same as a new VHS tape, as opposed to a 20 year old VHS tape

I wish they'd trash VCD all together, or only post SVCD, leaving the VCD conversions up to the receiving person. The conversion from MPEG2 to MPEG1 couldn't make it look much worse than the loss of bitrate.

:tepping off soapbox::

[vince]

I usually put widescreen low action movies that are less than 100 min on one disk. It was good with Tmpg 2.54, the macro blocks were not obvious. But with Tmpg 2.58, the macro blocks are very obvious. Since I have read 2.58 has improved 2-pass VBR algorithm, I was just wondering how it was improved. Thanks,

[Anonymoususer]

Just got hold of TMPGEnc Beta Version 12A or B one of them....since 2.58 does show blocky pictures Im gonna encode on this beta version to see how it turns out...