CCE Basic

[edsmith77]

Good Morning to All,
Some weeks ago this forum was all abuzz about CCE Basic. The posts ran for about 2 weeks then sorta just died out. My question is "has anyone been using it for awhile now and is it work the $$".
I was waiting for awhile before I purchased to see if it was as good (well nearly as good) as its bigger brother.

Thanks,
Ed Smith

[digitalmaster]

It is extremely faster than TMPGEnc, and as good as quality. Just does not have as many options. Worth the 50 bucks if you are looking for speed and good quality.

[bunyip]

The encoding engine appears to be exactly the same, the resulting quality is the same and the configurable options provided in the basic version are sufficent to satisfy most encoding requirements. (Their marketing people really must have listened to us users to have come up with this version at this price - it's a winner).

Some of the more obvious differences though are,
1. you can't set an encoding frame range (e.g. frame 100 to 1000),
2. you can only do up to a 2 pass VBR or CBR,
3. several of the 'quality settings' are not in the basic version, such as the vertical filter (de-noise),
4. you can't load multiple files to encode as a single output.

However frameserving satisfies points 1, 3, & 4.

Apart from this list the only other differences between this version and the very, very, very expensive version is the lack of the dozens of high-end video configuration settings that only a 6 year Video-Science course graduate would know what to do with.

I have just about trialled all the available MPEG2 software encoders and I now use only CCE basic, it produces fast, high-quality MPEG2 results (in my opinion it produces a clearer picture than the others) and the price is right.

Just a note though, don't bother using it for MPEG1 VCD, that's not it's strong point, it really is only a 'high-end' video encoder (SVCD/DVD).

You won't be disappointed.

[ktnwin]

and how much you said Basic CCE cost ? 50 US$?

[bunyip]

Currently selling for $58 (US).

See the CCE site http://www.cinemacraft.com/eng/home.html

[ktnwin]

Thanks - I found it, downloading trial version.
If this works great (fast and high quality) then that would be worth the money.
I just start using neoDVD to encode/author DVD. It's superfast (1X on 1.2GHz system !!!) and good quality too.
Let see if this basic CCE performs better (I am sure it will be at least equal).

[Doggiedaddy]

I like CCE Basic and it is worth the $50.00US but I can not get the results I do with either CCE SP2.66 or CCE SP2.50 SP because they can be ran at 4 pass VBR plus a lot more tweaks. I still like TMPGEncplus better than "CCE Basic" for quality results and in my opinion about the same in speed on high end processors. They seem to be improving the product all the time. I received another email today from visible light of v2.67.01.09 released.

Thread on this site might interest you also.
https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=151067

[DJRumpy]

The same speed on high end processors? Have they crippled CCE Basic that much?

[wwaag]

Disagree with the post about speed and qualty of CCE Basic vs Tempgen. Encoded the same 3 min test clip from an ADVC-100 capture of a VHS tape of the Last Crusade.

Using a 2-pass VBR (roughly the same parameters), CCE Basic was almost 3 times faster. Also the quality was far superior--still not terribly good given the fact of the VHS source--GIGO.

I've got CCE Basic, Tempgen, and MainConcept. Having used all three, my preference is, by far, CCE Basic. Must faster, plus better quality. No filtering, but for that, you have a lot of options using either Vdub or Avisynth.

Also in response to "bunnyip", you CAN select the source range--like in Tempgen. I often capture movies from satellite in which I only want to edit the start/end points. CCE Basic enables you to preview your capture, and then select the beginning/end frames. For me, I find that the processing speed for such encodes to be about 1.3 real-time for each pass. If I'm in a hurry, I can do a one-pass CBR and the results are still good.

[bunyip]

wwaag

I stand corrected - I completely overlooked the [...] button on the input video (silly me).

This just increases my support for the product.

[troyvcd1]

If I want to get the best possible quality from
CCE basic would I use CBR????

[jolo]

I don't know, I haven't analyzed CCE Basic at all, but I can't tell you if I like the product or not, I can tell you is:

The support is non-existant and I found them terrible arrogant via e-mail and not at al knowledgable. They did not know what VBR meant.

As a policy, companies that want me to spend a lot of time evaluation their products that have a watermark (I don't mind that at all), and only allow three mnutes for a demo are ones that I run from.

All sales are final, download it, hate it, forget back. Not much confidence in their product.

Have very little flexibility, cannot encode MPG files, only ATI. I know things can work by using third party products with it, but I wish it worked on its own.

the for Mainconcept is a full one, has a watermark but is fully functional, does 1 pass with incredible speed and will encode anything. The people there are great, accessible and many of them have been the ones who have been involved in many of the free products that we usually use with our encoders.

I think that it has a must brighter future, it is incredibly fast and easy, without needed a long guide integrating other products to make it work.

For me, don't care if CCE basic is free, it is still too much to have to deal with them at all.

Jon

[jolo]

One more thing about CCE Basic, Can someone test it with using any plug-ins and scripts. Just CCE and see how flexible it is ??

Yes, it is $58, but it is not worth 8 cents without additional products to give it a helping hand, therefore imcomplete and can't really be compared to TMPGenc or Mainconceptor other full featured products.

Also, the people here are great, and it is cool that they provide free support for CCE Basic, but that should be considered when support is not offered in any venue. No forums as well.

I'd go with Mainconcept myself, there is more to a product then the price, or maybe thje incompleteness of the product and the lack of support is why they can be cheaper.

Jon

[DJRumpy]

I'll stick with CCE. It makes no excuses. It just encodes...REALLY fast. It is still the king for speed. I would say quality too, but I haven't looked at the MC encoder for a while. As for third party products, you need only two. AVISynth, and Pulldown (Still don't understand why they don't include 2:3 pulldown already though). I don't need the 20 input/output definitions telling the encoder what type of video I have. I just encodes, and it does it beautifully

troyvcd1, Multipass VBR will get you the best possibly quality, but if I recall correctly, from reports in the forum, they crippled the basic version, so you can only do a maximum of 2 passes only.

[jolo]

DJRumpy,

Since you are using CE Basic, your feedback on the demo of MC would be great. It is so easy to use and has the 3:2 pulldown setting. The do get the entire application, but it leaves that watermark which is no big deal and does not effect testing.

Yes CCE basic can do up to two passes and also it CANNOT do one pass with VBR like Mainconcept can.

I don't think we can crown CCE the fastest yet. DJRumpy, do you do any audio manipulation before or after encoding with CCE ?

Jon

[DJRumpy]

I don't have the latest demo downloaded. If I get time this weekend, I'll do a comparison of the two.

[jolo]

Thank you, your Rumpleness.

I look forward to your opinion.

I really believe that the more these things happen, the better that we can make all of the products.

Jon

[ktnwin]

I'll stick with CCE. It makes no excuses. It just encodes...REALLY fast. It is still the king for speed.

I tried the CCE Basic trial version, it's definitely much much faster then TMPGenc (I only tried to convert AVI to MPEG-2, single pass CBR)
But I do not agree that it is the king for speed. I bought another software that is truely king for speed (capture and encode in real time, software only). I have made a lot of DVDs (from home movies tapes) with it and the resulting DVDs have very good quality (on the 65" HDTV, not the small TV screen). It match TMPGEnc quality IMHO.
You can search for my other posts.

[jolo]

ktnwin,

What product are youo referring to.

What are you using ktnwin, I'm too lazy to look at your other posts.

I have great affection for TMPGenc and love the quality of the output, the endless flexibility and MPG tools section. It is the most compete application and if I had to have only one, that would be the one I would select. For $48, it is a great bargin.

But ..... I am enthrolled with the speed and quality of Mainconcept, I find it outputs excellent quality and finished full movies for me between 1.5 and 1.45 hours. And I mean that is total time with no audio extractions and splitting of the file for immediate burning. From there I burn in the Nero SVCD setting. I have always found the MC file output 100% SVCD or VCD complient.

I still use the MPEG editing tools in TMPG and sometimes use it when I do not care about time and I will let it run overnight.

Jon

[wwaag]

I did a speed comparison of MainConcept and CCE Basic some time ago.

Here is the post:https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=148219&start=0&postdays=0&postorder=asc&highlight=.

Problem is that you can only fairly compare the 1 pass CBR since CCE Basic does not offer 1 pass VBR and MainConcept does not offer 2 pass VBR.

No question that CCE Basic is faster. However, BOTH are very fast when compared with Tempgen.

The question of choice boils down to judgments of quality and personal preference--very subjective.

MainConcept offers lots of options--unfortunately, there isn't a lot of info on which encoding options work best on what type of video. There are a few threads, but nothing definitive. Conversely, CCE Basic is very simple--fewer choices.

For me, I prefer CCE since I often do DV captures from satellite. I usually only trim the end points which you can do in CCE basic--you must frameserve in MainConcept. For me, the 2-pass VBR looks a lot better than MainConcept 1 pass VBR. Although it takes longer, the quality is worth it. I also capture a lot of old B&W movies--for those, there is no doubt (in my judgment) that CCE is a lot better--MC loses a lot of detail in the brighter facial areas, for example. (A tip--regardless, use the greyscale filter in Avisynth or Vdub--eliminates any minute traces of color).

Bottom line--it's a matter of personal preference and a lot depends on your equipment. After all, each encoder is different and each has their strengths--e.g. I like Tempgen's MPEG tools and its noise filtering. My suggestion--try them all and see which works best for you. If you can afford it, get them all--you'll probably find like I did that you'll be using each one for different encoding situations.

[jolo]

wwaag,


Thanks for your post. Very valuable. I have a couple of questions:

1. Was the CCE basic 2 pass VBR faster than the Mainconcept 1 pass VBR ?

2. Was there any prework on the audio done before encoding it in CCE basic ?

3. Was there any postwork done, multiplexing and such done on the audo and/or video after encoding in CCE.

4. Was there any splitting of the files that had to be done ?

5. Were the scripts all ready to go for CCE Basic and required no changes before encoding in CCE basic ?

6. Where there equivelent quality settings loaded for both of them ?

I'm just trying to see if we are comparing Apples and Oranges ? Thanks so much for your post !!

[wwaag]

jolo

Lots of questions--here goes.

1. Like I said, the only valid speed comparison is 1 pass CBR--CCE is faster. For 2-pass VBR, the total time is longer for CCE, although the time to encode each pass is less. I'm actually doing an encode now--the speed is 1.3 real-time--that equates to roughly 92 min to encode each pass for a 2 hr movie. Since its 2 passes, the total time is roughly double or around 3 hrs. Still not bad. For awhile, I tried various encoding options with MC, including differnt quantization matrices, and found they had little effect on encoding speed. Suggest you do a search and review some of these old threads.

2. No prework on audio. I use Scenzlyzer that produces a type II DV file from an ADVC-100. In both cases, I selected Mpeg audio. MC permits PCM, but it takes lots of bits.

3. No postwork. For both CCE and MC, the output were elementary streams. In fact, for 2-pass VBR in CCE, there is no option for a system stream output--has to be elementary.

4. No file splitting. MC does enable splitting. My eventual ouput is DVD so I always use a bit rate calculator so that the resulting file will fit on a single disc.

5. Not sure what you mean by scripts. I've used Avisynth scripts though that will work for both CCE and MC.

6. Quality setting--no way to really equate as far as I can see, unless you do a CBR encode. CCE has a very simple 5-point slider scale where YOU have to estimate how hard it is for CCE to encode the video--whatever that means. I always input max difficulty--seems to work OK.

I guess the reason I like CCE Basic is that it really is a "turn the crank" encoder. The only real decision I make is to set the bit rate so that the resulting file size will fit on a single DVD. Its fast and the results are good. I take the resulting elementary stream files and input them into Ifoedit, have chapter stops every 5 min, and out comes the VOB files ready to burn in Nero. For short movies/cartoons, I'll simply do a 1 pass CBR. Works good. I guess the main thing that I've learned in the last year or so is that the most important thing is the quality of the source--GIGO. Hope this helps.

[troyvcd1]

I am a little confused about how to get the maximum quality. I always thought that using cbr with a high bitrate will always give you better quality that vbr. Is this true or not. Also I got CCE 2.5. Is there any reason to purchase CCE basic???

[troyvcd1]

I know that that previous versions of CCE would not handle bottom field first video correctly like taken from a minidv camcorder. Does this version handle these bottome field first video. I was looking at some of the screen shots and I dont see where there is even and option to choose the field order.

[jarroyo]

I dont know if you would call it "not handle it correctly". It handles it differently which can give trouble to some authoring programs. The field order is specified under "Field Offset" if I remember correctly. You set it to 1 for DV. I have not had any problems with it. It always shows as Top Field First but that is because they do a field shifting to account for the bottom field first setting.

As for Post processing once encoded, with CCE 2-pass VBR, it gives you two elementary streams (sound + video). Most high end authoring programs require two elementary streams, but entry level programs usually require a System Stream (mpg) with these two streams multiplexed. In that case you will need to multiplex before you can import into your authoring program (i.e. Pinnacle Studio or Ulead Movie Factory).

As for quality, I compared MainConcept 1 Pass VBR with CCE Basic 2 pass VBR. Using a bitrate viewer, it was my perception that the 2 pass VBR used the bitrates more efficiently (higher bit rate in high motion and lower bit rates in low motion areas). That makes you feel really good, but in my mind, it does not mean squat.

So I picked a movie that had some high motion areas (i.e. Me jerking the camera without the steady feature enabled - I did not do it on purpose) and some very low motion areas. I encoded and burned with MC and with CCE. Then I proceeded to bring the ultimate testers - my wife and kids, and explained that I wanted them to give me their opinion on quality. The results were:

1. Out of a 2 hour home movie, they identified 2 areas where they could see a difference. In both instances, they prefered the movie encoded with CCE. These were high motion areas. They said the difference would probably not have been noticible without me giving the long explanation before the test.

2. They said the CCE picture was a bit softer. Again not really much of a difference except that I primed them to look hard.

3. They looked at me straight in the eyes and said: "YOU ARE SUCH A GEEK."

So what did I learned?:

1. I am a geek and worry about stuff my audience does not care

2. If you have MC or CCE, I dont think there is any real reason to switch

3. If you are trying to make a decision, my recommendation is: If money is no issue and speed is your main thing, go with MC (end-to-end process in VBR MC is faster mostly because its one pass and you dont have to multiplex). If money is something you are watching and you dont mind waiting a little bit more, go with CCE (CCE = $58, MC = $150).

Its all about YOUR perception of quality and your never ending search for speed. Like my wife said "Must be a testosterone thing... Faster, faster"

[troyvcd1]

Thanks J. I am sure that is the test we all wanted to see done.

[jolo]

Ha !! Great stuff jarroyo !! Both in your analysis and your wife's quote !! That ones a keeper.
"Its all about YOUR perception of quality and your never ending search for speed. Like my wife said "Must be a testosterone thing... Faster, faster""

Of course it is a testosterone thing and I'm proud of it .

Jon

[jolo]

First a big thank you for all of the energy on this string. Very cool.

But, now I would like to get greedy, I am new with using the magical Avisynth, that if you have the knowledge of, seems to overcome the limitations (except speed), of any encoder.

I would like it if troyvcd1, jarroyo, wwaag, bunnyzip and all could share their Avisynth scripts with me and the group. I would be sooo appreciative.
Do any of you use FITCD with their scripts ?

Thank you all again for the education and the humor.

Jon

[DJRumpy]

Jolo, the scripts are pretty basic, and all specific to the source their encoding. There isn't a 'one script fits all' script. I'd suggest you start with the manual, and just read what each command is capable of. I would also avoid the beta version, and stick with version 2.08 (I think that's the latest..I need to check again). You'll find you only end up using about 5 commands on a regular basis. The others are pretty specialized, but they can produce amazing affects.

I would also suggest you get a good IVTC dll, and MPEG2DEC. I use the built in filters of MPEG2DEC all the time.

troyvcd1, VBR will produce better results than CBR, because the encoder pre-scans the source material, to see which parts need exactly what bitrate. It also properly detects scene fades/changes, which play havock with an encoder using single pass CBR.

By the by..tried to download the MC encoder demo..script error during install (sigh). At least someone has already answered. CCE is still faster, which is what I pretty much expected. I don't understand why they didn't leave in the CQ mode though (what modes are still available?). They've crippled some of the oddest things in the basic version.

[jarroyo]

I agree with DJRumpy that you kind of have to play around with it. I found www.avisynth.org invaluable. I actually find myself using avisynth less and less for filtering because it really slows things down and the improvements are not significant. It might be my ignorance. It has helped with some very noisy sources as well as a couple of instances where the overall video was dark and I needed to adjust brightness. It really helped our wedding video which was pretty messed up after 17 years of inproper storage. In any event, here is the basic shell I use:

#
# The function below is used for filters that are affected
# by interlacing and do not have an option to handle it
#
function ApplyInterlacedFilter(clip v1, string filter) {
v2 = separatefields(v1)
selecteven(v2)
even = Eval(filter)
selectodd(v2)
odd = Eval(filter)
interleave(even,odd)
return weave()
}


LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugins\TemporalCleaner.dll")
LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugins\_2DCleanYUY2_for_25.dll")
LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugins\MSharpen.dll")
LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugins\dnr2_for_25.dll")

#
# Other filters I use from time to time
#
#LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugins\cnr2.dll")
#LoadPlugin("C:\Program Files\AviSynth 2.5\plugins\Convolution3D.dll")

#
#load the AVI file. For MPEG use DirectShowSource("myclip.mpg")
# Use trim to get commercials out
#
AVIFileSource("C:\Test.avi")

#
# Convert to YUY2 space since thats the color space
# where these filters operate
#
ConvertToYUY2()

#info

#
#Fix the Microsoft and Canopus DV Decoder problem
#
FixBrokenChromaUpsampling

#
# Good generic noise reduction to improve compressability
#
dnr2(6)

#
# The temproal cleaner I prefer.
#
TemporalCleaner (2, 3)

# 1 implies interlaced!
_2DCleanYUY2(1)


#
# If I am going to sharpen, uncomment the line below
#
MSharpen()

Limiter()