Ultimate Quality: Canopus ProCoder

[WarpEnterprises]

At the german forum =http://www.dvd-svcd-forum.de/ this encoder is discussed quite in detail.
Now I think it would be interesting if someone here around did some tests,too.
Here are some results (hope I sum up correctly):

+ better quality than ANY OTHER encoder (including CCE, TMPG), at least for truly interlaced video, using "Mastering Quality" (encoding with relative low bitrates)
This can be so pronounced, that it is impossible to get the quality for standard SVCD bitrate and DV-interlaced source with another encoder even by tweaking/tuning matrices,... !

- quite slow (slower than TMPG@Highest), some users even reported a steady decline of the speed throughout the video to very low values

- the setting which produces the best quality ("field structure") is quite incompatible on standalone players

- no direct Avisynth possible

- quite expensive

° few settings, may be a little TOO few (e.g. there is no MIN-bitrate, no luminance range, no real GOP,...)

° some stream parameters (quant scale, scan order, frame type) are not fixed with the same encode settings but change depending on the video content (-> difficult to analyse)

° the quality is of course not achieved by miracles but at least partly by a sophisticated pre-filtering, which causes a slight blurring but VERY few macroblocks or mosquito noise.

° the program has a nice GUI but is by far not so universal as TMPG

==> some drawbacks, but if your top aim is quality, nothing comes near.

[You_Are_Alive]

I'd have to respectfully disagree. I've seen its quality and its just on par with whats already out there. The panasonic e30 will give you better quality. Even my Dc1000 is just as good with crisp colors and realtime to boot, from capture, author, output. I'm not saying the Procoder is bad, cause its not. But there are things that have been around that can give you same quality, if not better.

[SatStorm]

I saw this encoder working, a friend of mine had it for test. It comes with a hamp for RS 232...
It is slow. About CCE @ 4 PASS VBR. The quality is very good. I can't say better CCE or TMPGenc, but it is good.
Expencive comparing TMPGenc (I don't remember, I think is about 340 Euros).
Overall is very promising, but slow!

[LeeBear]

I have a 'ummm' demo of the encoder and I too would have to disagree. The quality is good but in no way impossible to get from other encoders. I haven't done alot of testing with this encoder (it's so damn slow!) but from the half our anime I tested I'd say the MPEG1 is pretty good on par/slightly below TMPG, each has it's strength and weaknesses. And the MPEG2 is also good but definitely not better then what CCE can do in a much much quicker time. Also during my test encode I noticed the colour of the Procoder encode seemed to be off. Colours seems to be a bit more saturated. I did a frame compare of all the encodes to the orignal source and only the procoder exhibit this problem. Maybe since it was anime this was easily noticeable, probably not as obvious for normal material. I wonder if this was done on purpose because a slight increase in colur saturation gives the picture a more vibrant, brighter look... and most people subconsciously interpret a brighter more vibrant picture as the 'better' looking one. Of course I consider the best encoder the one that best matches the source. Just some food for thought.

-LeeBear

[Poplar]

1. You can frameserve to Procoder through Avisynth + Link2. So AVS files are not dead, not yet.
2. It's so DAMN slooooooow and gets slower as times goes, which puts a serious limitation on its usefulness.
3. Quality is impressive. Can someone rate it with Mosalina?

[WarpEnterprises]

Could you give me a hint how to compare things with Mosalina?
I didn't find something useful...