A First Look at CCE 2.66SP

[Poplar]

Just got hands on it and played around with it for a while and read the user's manual. Some impressions:

1. The GUI has undergone a big overhaul, more info are displayed when encoding is going on.
2. More functions and controls are added, such as 2:3 pulldown detection and IVTC. There are a simple and detailed quality control settings. Reading user's manual doesn't help much on how they work. What the hell does "cut off high-frequency image" mean?
3. Offcially supports Avisynth and VirtualDub frameserving. But when I tried to run a 3-pass with an AVS file, it got an access violation 75 percent through the encoding, which didn't happen with 2.50 SP. So is there a bug?
4. ECL saving and opening are DISABLED in the trial version! This is really a killer, because I like to tweak ECL files.
5. Speed is noticeably slower than 2.50SP.
6. Image Quality. I run a one-pass VBR with Q.Factor=1 with both 2.50SP and 2.66SP at same bitrates. I don't like image quality 2.66SP delivered, which has a blurry look. 2.50SP is clearer and sharper, not to mention faster. Or maybe it's because I misset some settings with 2.66SP?

Your input on CCE2.66SP is welcomed!

[snowmoon]

That softness can be directly attributed to the image quality comtrol settings.

A High pass filter removes the sharp edges from the image. It's the same type of filter that CCE 2.50/64 had under "Noise Reduction". So I would turn off any of that filtering ( I believe their is a checkbox to turn off filtering completly ).

[Poplar]

@Snowmoon
Thanks for the input. I'll try another run. BTW, what is that low pass filter for? User's manual says "it cuts off high-frequency image". What does it mean?