Main Concept Encoder V's TMPGenc - Your thoughts.....

[tyders]

All,

From using both of these TMPGenc seems to have many more functions etc but one thing i have noticed is the differene in encoding time. TMGGenc takes 'real time to convert' a file from say avi to mpeg while mainconcept only takes about a 10th of the time.

Is there any problems with doing this? I.e. major quality loss etc?

[housepig]

that's one of those questions you need to experiment and see for yourself.

lots of people here swear by the MainConcept encoder, but I did some head to head tests on various encoders, and while MC was the fastest I tested, TMPG still gave me much better quality.

so either I'm looking for different things, or I don't know how to properly set up MC for good results, or something about TMPG just looks better.

mainly, the tests I ran showed that TMPG handled greyscales better on black & white footage, and also handled high motion better in color footage.

but try for yourself - if you get the quality you like out of MC, that's all that matters...

[ZippyP.]

TMGGenc takes 'real time to convert' a file from say avi to mpeg while mainconcept only takes about a 10th of the time.

If MC is encoding 10x faster than TMPG then you are using very different settings.

Things that will slow down TMPG (but give better output quality...to a point):

Filtering - dramatically increases encode time, not needed if the source is DVD.
Motion Search Precision - High is good, Highest is too slow, Estimate is OK too.
2-pass VBR - can double encoding time, 4096 MB cache setting speeds it up under Options>Environmental Settings>CPU.

[LanEvo7]

I'm tried Main Concept. The encoding time is about 5x faster than TMPG with about the same settings. The problem I have with it is the video freezes near the end no matter how long the clip is. It could be twenty mins long or thirty seconds long and near the end, the video it would freeze. I have no idea why this happens.

[racer-x]

In my opinion, if you're going to make a vcd or svcd, then stick with TMPGEnc. If you're going to make a dvd, then Main Concept is best.

I've made some dvds with TMPGEnc (using super high quality settings) and the quality was better than Main Concept, though much slower. But when I viewed the video on TV, it had errors during long fade sequences.

That same avi encoded with Main Concept was perfect when viewed on TV. 99% of my work is DV - DVD, so I'm sticking with Main Concept.