The best encoder?

[mojo2185]

I've been making (S)VCD backups for a while now, and i was wondering, what is the best encoder? I currently have some version of TMPGEnc (and i'm happy with the results), but I'm just curious if there was another to use that outputs better quality (or the other popular encoders).
Thanks for any info!
-Mojo-

[ghoster]

try cce, well the quality is about the same but is much faster.....

[mickle]

Ditto....

CCE

[jolo]

About CCE. Are there some simple, instructions on the use of that to encode VCD and SVCD ?

CCE is not the most user friendly product. I don't know if you two do the 4 pass stuff, I hope not.

Please Michle and ghoster, please tell me how you use CCE ?

Thanks,

Jon

[SatStorm]

There are guides for how to use CCE in this very site and others. Read them, they help!

[q1aqza]

I am also a big fan of CCE but I am now starting to sway towards the Mainconcept encoder - it is very fast with comparable quality to TMPG and CCE.

I still use CCE for DVD Rip re-enodes but Mainconcept is the only encoder I use now for my home DV footage.

[jolo]

I have read the guides here and Doom9.
I was wondering if people do things differently because I find the guides which include CCE complicated and recommend 4 passes which is a bit much for me.

SatStorm, if you use it in a way different than they gujides, are use it in a standalone fashion or use it in a simpler fashion please let me know.

Also with regard to CCE, it is my impression that the guides lean to using an older version of CCE, 2.5 rather than the updated one. I wonder if that is because it makes the guides more difficult or if 2.5 really is superior to the newer versions. This seems hard to believe, since there have been a few upgrades since 2.5.

The is beauty and elegance in simplicity.

Jon

[WeedVender]

CCE/AVIsynth are the best when it comes to encoding

[jolo]

I'm always interested in better speed for encoding !!

Please tell me more about Mainconcept. IS there a full demp for it ?
It looks like it is "on sale" at $199, which is rather costly, but I certainly would like to demo it if there if a full demo.

Jon

[jolo]

Weedvender,

If you wouldn't mindm could you answer a few questions about your use of CCE ? I find getting information straight from those who use and like the products they use the most helpful:

1. Do you follow a particular guide ?
2. Do you do the 4 pass thing with CCE ?
3. Are there any other products that you integrate into your CCE use besides AVIsynth.
4. A big question for me anyway, what version of CCE do you use ? Are the versions past 2.5 not as good ?

Thanks in advance,

Jon

[crahak]

CCE is faster and does work better. Not the most user friendly interface but oh well.

You's all tell me you bought your copy though... Sure... I believe you all. The encoder is worth more than the value of the complete collection of DVD's some people are backing up... No need to B.S. me, thanks.

[jolo]

Please excuse the ignorance of crahek and hopefully I can get some information. Below is for crahak, but I do not want it to clutter this forum or this string.

Hey crahak,

When you accuse someone of something negative, you better know what you're talking about. Just because you obviously are a lying sleezball who steals from others, it doesn't mean that everybody is.
First of all, you don't know who I am and I'm glad that I don't know who you are.

Second, if you're going to accuse someome of something publically you better have some evidence to back it up. If you have none, you are a sniveling coward trying to get attention.

Third, if you think something like that, send a private note before you slander someone.

Fourth, It is usually a slimeball who lives with the paranoia to accuse others of things because they are so loaded down by there own guilt. Psyc 1.

I am not going to get defensive about this with you, I'm just going to address the slander part. If you intent is to slander others, get the heck off of this forum !!

[sterno]

I've played with CCE a little bit, I concluded that they deperately need a human interface designer. It wasn't really hard to use, or even all that quirky, it was just inconvenient to do trivial things. Personally, I think a piece of software costing $2000 should look like they spent more than 10 minutes on interface design.

Yes, $2000, and that's after they lowered the price (it was something like $2500). If you think MainConcept's encoder is costly at $200, forget CCE altogether. I think they have a "cheap" version now (probably still way more than $200), but it doesn't do VBR encoding. If you want to see what it's like there is a demo, it puts a watermark on the image.

Don't worry so much about 4-pass VBR in CCE, four passes with CCE may take the same amount of time as two in tmpgenc. If you use a high enough bitrate you also don't gain as much from additional passes.

[ghoster]

i have both cce 2.50 and 2.64 and for whatever reason version 2.50 is faster then 2.64. as far as using cce i was lost intill i asked for help. now its simple. well this is how i do it. rip dvd to hard drive. run dvd2avi to get a dv2 and ac3 file. then run VFAPIConv-EN, it will take the dv2 file and make it into a avi file so you can load in into cce, now are you do is encode the video.....

[Laddydaddy]

Whenever I've tried to use CCE with avisynth and I try to burn the reulting mpg file in nero, I get a message that the file is invalid because it is streaming video encoding. I turn off the compliance and burn it anyway. My standalone will not play the disc. Any suggestions?

[pepegot1]

Try Main Concept's encoder. It is faster than TMPGenc and very good quality $149.00

[BJ_M]

yes -- the main concept encoder is excellent and extremly fast (on a fast system), about the same speed as cce on a dual xeon if not a little faster , p2 need not apply ..

its only 149$ and $49 if you own any copy of premiere 6.5 (installed)


http://www.mainconcept.com/products.shtml

[jolo]

Thanks for the remarks, GREAT comments. I was on the main concept web page and there is a demo to download, but if it is one of those 1 minute things, I'm not going to waste my time. I would love to try it.

I'll give that simple breakdown a try for CCE. I really want to know all alternatives and know how to use all of them to some degree.

Has anyone tried Honestech's encoder ? I believe that their MPEG editor is excellent and they came out with version 4 with their encoder. The fact that I have read nothing about it on this site should tell me something. They have the 1 minute demo as well, which I won't do.

I have LSX 3.5, got it for $49. They're support sucks and they're arrogant. Two major things about it I don't like, if it it fails at 98%, you need to start all over. No pausing on that sucker.
Also, it makes everything full screen unless you manipulate the files outside of it as well as the sound. But I do the sound seperately with TMPG as well.

TMPG is just too darn slow. Think that cost about $48 or so. Because of what I do and educational, non-profit status, we had a donation of CCE. CCE is just so flipping unfriendly and strange. I totally agree about their front end, or lack of one. Sometimes brilliant engineers forget that people will be using their product who don't have or don't care to have their knowledge.

Maybe we should get that guy who does gui interfaces for all those apps like lame and stuff to do one for CCE.

From these forums, it appears that the new Panasonic software that does SVCD and VCD is a bust. This is TOTALLY third party info, I haven't used it myself, but I've been so turned off with what I read that I'm not sure I'll give it a try.

After a whole lot of experimentation, it would be great to have make settings in 1 single product and let it do the entire job !! Have consistency and learn the product inside and out.

I thank all of you for your time and great input !! So much to learn, so little time !!

Jon

[crahak]

Please excuse the ignorance of crahek and hopefully I can get some information.

If someone here is ignorant, it's you.

I'm not accusing anyone. I'm not lying, but perhaps you can be. What makes you think I do steal? I'm just about the only one who don't post about movies downloaded off kazaa, and anyways, I'm on 56k so there.


"First of all, you don't know who I am and I'm glad that I don't know who you are."
Let's keep it that way. Don't need you for a friend.

Second, if you're going to accuse someome of something publically you better have some evidence to back it up.

I don't need or care for attention. I didn't make accusations. It's all your imagination. You should know your rights better.

Third, if you think something like that, send a private note before you slander someone.

There's entire threads like this, so? Why should I care about your little self?

Fourth, It is usually a slimeball who lives with the paranoia to accuse others of things because they are so loaded down by there own guilt.

You mean like you calling me a liar thief and such? Sounds like you got a lot more on your mind eh?

I am not going to get defensive about this with you, I'm just going to address the slander part. If you intent is to slander others, get the heck off of this forum

Sure, if you're going to be such a jerk, you can get off my planet too I've always been nice and helpful to everyone, you're the first parinoid freak to jump at me... Oh, wait, it must be me, right.

Nice self-concious prick attitude, oh, and merry xmas to everyone else

[mojo2185]

People... I've asked a simple question here (i am the original poster)... and suddenly, there's people fighting in here. Please stop. It ends here.
Thank you to those who have posted useful information and did not fight back and forth with someone.
-Mojo-

By the way...
What is Pinnacle (whatever version) good for? What exactly does it do?

[jolo]

I'm really sorry for crahak's behavior, I didn't read his reply and I advise all to ignore it as well.

We have a GREAT string going here, let's keep it going.

Jon

[vitualis]

@ jolo: You have to take things less personally. I don't think crahak's comments were necessarily directed at you, and even if they were, they were a fairly general observation that seem harmless to me.

If anything, you've over-reacted and your next post was fairly offensive.

I suggest that you (1) read posts carefully and (2) be a little more tolerant of other views from now on.

I'll treat this as a miscommunication for the time being but any further flaming and I'll lock the post.

Regards.

[donpedro]

By the way...
What is Pinnacle (whatever version) good for? What exactly does it do?

Here is what it does for me (Pinnacle's Studio v8.3.18.0)

Capture (from DV), Edit, Convert, Author (with nice menus) and it should burn too (not realy success with Sony DRU-500A). So in my case, It will create VIDEO_TS folder with everything that I need to burn with Nero to create my own home video DVD. And yes... any codec mentioned here might be better with encoding, but I like it simple in one package and quality is watchable with one product instead of .... Hmm... let's rest of the group provide you that number.

[sterno]

I'd just like to point out that Pinnacle is a company, not a product. They sell several different video capture/edit and authoring packages, some of which include analog capture or firewire cards. Visit their web site (http://www.pinnaclesys.com/) for a list of their products and what they are supposed to do. I'm sure people on this forum can give you their opinions on how well a given product actually works, if you're thinking you might need one.

[donpedro]

I updated my product name in my previous post.

[midwestarts]

I noticed how much everyone likes Cinema Craft Encoder and decided to check it out. Looks like the lite version costs $250.00 and the SP edition costs $1950.00 Is it so much faster than TMPGEnc? Does the speed justify the much larger price?

[WeedVender]

I actually bought the Lite version, and the SP version is close to being bought. Although I still have the Demo on the SP version. I dunno why you guys would acuse me or anyone else rather of stealing.
Well anyway, my typical AviSynth script would be
AvIsource("C:\Video")
LanczosResize(352,480) #or any resolution in the standard
ConvertToYUY2
ConvertFps(framerate)
SpartailSoften(X,X,X) #plug in values
ConvertToRGB32

and thats basically it.

[Dodzzz]

Go with TMPGEnc, it's only $45, great mpeg outputs, and the Noise Reduction kicks ass.
for the speed, you could buy several sets of computer instead of buying CCE SP

[midwestarts]

Do most people using CCE buy it, use the demo, or something else. How long does the demo last?

I actually bought the Lite version, and the SP version is close to being bought. Although I still have the Demo on the SP version. I dunno why you guys would acuse me or anyone else rather of stealing.
Well anyway, my typical AviSynth script would be
AvIsource("C:\Video")
LanczosResize(352,480) #or any resolution in the standard
ConvertToYUY2
ConvertFps(framerate)
SpartailSoften(X,X,X) #plug in values
ConvertToRGB32

and thats basically it.

[pinoy2201]

i gotta post my views here!

if u want X/VCD go with TMPGEnc makes the best quality mpeg 1 encodes TMPGEnc is also great for basic SVCD encoding

X/SVCD go with Avisynth w/ CCE 2.50 great quality and fast i recommend 3-6pass for the best quality!

its really up to you what u most need!