CCE $58 basic versus $150 Mainconcept

[jolo]

I have been using the MainConcept demo for a file and really like. There are limitations, but I have foud some solid workarounds using asynth and their tech support. I feel confident that this product will be upgraded in the future.

This gets me to the comparisonn between the new CCE basic. Has anyone compared them ? I know that they have a 3 minute demo, which is not enough for me to evaluate anything, except for my sex life .

If someone has used both Mainconcept, could you please share you're experiences ?

I's love to know about speed, 1 pass versus 1 pass, quality issues, audio flexibility, PAL, NTSC flexibility, ability to keep aspect ratios on wide screen movies, being able to hande 23.976 movies ? Can they both encode MPEG files ?(Mainconcept can) Being SVCD compliant for burning (Nero), handling VOB files, batch encoding, and last but not least, how easy is the front end ?

Thanks so much,

Jon

[wwaag]

See my post for a few of your questions. https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=148219

[jolo]

Excellent research and I thank you for your time.

Has anyone tried to convert straight from a AVI file ?

How about a MPEG-1 or 2 file ?

Should audio be extracted off-line with CCE ?

Obviously wwaag, you are leaning toward CCE. I just wonder about ease of use and flexibility and can you use only that one product ?

Thanks,

Jon

[wwaag]

I capture using an ADVC-100 and Scenalyzer which produces either a Type 1 or Type 2 DV avi file. I prefer type 2 since it is the most compatible--e.g. Premiere for editing, Vdub, plus the 2 encoders.

Both encoders will produce either a MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 output--I only use MPEG-2.

As far as audio extraction, I've done it both ways. For what I do, I see no advantage to extract the audio file separately and process it separately. If you do extract it separately, you can convert to AC3, although some DVD authoring programs (e.g. Movie Factory) will not accept AC3 audio. I just use the MP2 encoder found within MainConcept or CCE--they seem to work fine. No synch problems and the resulting DVDs play OK in my standalone units. (MP2 is apparently not part of the NTSC DVD standard, although it usually works in most players).

As far as which one is best, they all have their strong points. MainConcept is fast, but doesn't offer 2 pass VBR. Likewise CCE has a very good 2-pass VBR, but doesn't a one-pass. For some things, live movies off a satelite, the video quality is usually good to begin with so I don't want to take the extra time of a 2-pass encoder. I also use Tempgen which produces good results, but is very slow. It also has a good set of MPEG tools which the others don't. My advice, if your budget permits--use them all and see which works best for you. I've been following these forums for over a year now and still consider myself a newbie--it just takes time, practice, and a lot of patience.