Which of these 2 produce better quality CCE or TMPEG

[Cecilio]

Hey im kinda thinking about what encoder really has the best quality. like i used to use Tmpeg a while ago like when i started and i wasnt so into video production. ok and i used to suck making my dvd rips to vcds using DVDx2.0 well the program sucks, ok then i started to use DVD2SVCD using TmpegEnc and i would get really crisp and clear picture using CVD and then i forgot all about VCD and DVDx 2.0. so then all my CVDS creating using Tmpeg that i burned i would always have this thing too zoom in on all of my movies to see if you still cant see any pixels even when zoomed in. well i thougt the image picture was very good cause you wouldnt see any pixels when zoomed in at 4x. then i got so into this and i purchased CCE 2.5 and well the video looks good, but when i would zoom in you would get alot of pixels and well this led me to believe that Tmpeg had better results. i viewed these movies on a 32" television. then i tried them on a video projector, and then thats when i saw that Tmpeg had pixelations when not zoomed in even, while the CCE movies were still clear so im wondering whats going on, oh and one more thing now all of my tmpeg convertings have pixels on a regular 32" television when zoomed in. ever since i got CCE [oh and yes i use 4 pass vbr with cce]

[Cecilio]

ill stick with CCE 2.5

[adam]

Please post in the correct forum, this is not news. The truth is that this is just so subjective, that you are not going to really get very meaningful answers. This question has been asked so many times before. Probably the best answer is that it depends. Each encoder has its benefits, from sources which they handle better to ease of use in tweaking encoding parameters, it all depends on what you value most.

If you have access to these programs than try them and see for yourself. Weigh the quality apsects against other factors such as encoding speed and just decide for yourself which encoder suits you best. Or if you are like me, you will use different encoders for different jobs.

[Conquest10]

looks like Tmpeg which ever is winning.

[tgpo]

I've never seen any of those programs before, so I was gonna choose the tgpo option....but sadly there wasn't one.

[Conquest10]

I've never seen any of those programs before, so I was gonna choose the tgpo option....but sadly there wasn't one.

yeah, i was looking for that option, too.

[housepig]

what about TGPO Plus... now with even more TGPO!

but to be on point, I just did some head-to-head comparisons between TMPG, Main Concept, CCE, Ligos and Procoder.

test clips were a 1 minute clip from a b&w movie off laserdisc (lots of gray & blacks, lots of subtle contrast where detail can be lost), and a Beastie Boys video off laserdisc (lots of motion, lots of vari-speed, red tinted footage, and different source video types [35mm, 8mm, camcorder, etc])

source clips were Huffyuv - encoded .avis, 720x480, 48khz audio.
output clips were dvd-compliant mpeg-2, 720x480, 48khz, 224 mp2.

All were done as multiple pass VBR with the highest avg bitrate available. All were done as straight encodes, without any sweetening from the software.

All output files were then authored with DVD Lab and played back on 3 different dvd/tv combinations, with sizes from 17" to 40", for 3 different judges.

Fastest encoder was Main Concept. It was also the worst quality - large amounts of blockiness, ghosting and artifacts.

Best encoder, and slowest, was TMPGenc. Less blocks, more detail, subtler blacks & grays....

it was kind of a drag - I was hoping Main Concept would win so I could cut down my encoding time...

and of course, your mileage may vary.

[housepig]

just occured to me... why is it "which of these 2 encoders" when there's 4 choices?

[lpn1160]

If one has not tried both how does one really know?
If quality is whats to be judged here, then CCE is =2 or better than tmpg & with the increased speed with CCE it's a no brainer which to use!

[FulciLives]

Yo !!!

What kind of POLL is this ...

no TGPO option?

man you guys are slipping up!

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
I voted TMPGEnc (I use TMPGEnc Plus 2.5 version blah blah blah)
CCE is a pain in the ass especially when doing PAL to NTSC conversions not to mention you know most people using it did not pay $1,000+ for it hehehehe

[tgpo]

Yo !!!

What kind of POLL is this ...

no TGPO option?

man you guys are slipping up!

- John "FulciLives" Coleman

P.S.
I voted TMPGEnc (I use TMPGEnc Plus 2.5 version blah blah blah)
CCE is a pain in the ass especially when doing PAL to NTSC conversions not to mention you know most people using it did not pay $1,000+ for it hehehehe

The poll was moved here, thus I had no say in it.....other wise there would be a tgpo option.

[pablo180]

CCE is by far the best. It is much faster than TMGPEG and gives much better quality results in my experience.

I purchased CCE 2.5 a while back and it is the best thing that I have used. It does great VCD's, Brilliant SVCD's and near perfect DVD's.

TMPEG is ok if you have a lot of time and a fast computer and don't mind the quality being a bit dodgy.

[SaSi]

Interesting set of answers. They all go to show that adam's view it depends is the only correct one .

At least one has said that CCE and Tmpgenc is better. How about Mainconcept?

I think that all are capable of being both bad and good, depending on how much you know how to fiddle with their settings. CCE has not many settings to alter, so I would label it "SAFER" than the others.

My first encode with Mainconcept was a disaster. I always start by bold experiments, rather than risking to use the defaults, and my first DivX to MPEG-2 resulted in worse picture quality and double the original size.

If you find the correct settings to encode, I think all three programs can produce good quality. So, allow me to focus on other pros and cons.

I don't like CCE, because it has always given me trouble importing video encoded with various codecs. I've never been able to encode from DivX.

I like CCE because it almost always produces fast and good quality streams.

I don't like Tmpgenc because it's slow. Also, dark videos tend to have flat black areas where shades of grey-black should appear.

I LOVE Tmpgenc, because of it's flexibility. I can take an incompatible frame size video, crop it the way I need and encode it resizing it into whatever frame size I need.

I don't like Mainconcept because ... well, I like it but it could have a two pass VBR. It currently doesn't, although quality is not hit badly by the absense.

I LOVE Mainconcept, because of it's speed, versatility and overall compromise between quality and speed.

A final word on Mainconcept.

Try to encode with the following settings:
Search method: give a value of 5
Search range: give a value of 15
Enable line filtering
In advanced settings:
Encode with Mode 128
use min-avg-max of 200-4800-8000
Set Noise sensitivity to 12
Enable half pixel search
Select motion search mode of 7
Set motion search areas to enabled and give values between 5-7 each.

I use the above settings to encode less than 2 hour movies on a DVD. The results I get are very acceptable and the speed is fine.

[Will Hay]

....but sadly there wasn't one.

No, there wasn't.
Kinda re-affirms my belief in the Almighty.
Will

[energy80s]

I would vote for TMPG as I've never used the other 3 in any meaningful way!

[Cecilio]

Tmpgenc is good but not that good, because i have been using tmpgenc for along time and i used to think it was great, but then i got cce and i did a movie i had done before on TMPGENC like the movie Boys and Girls. the quality kinda sucked in Tmpgenc and it was very bright. i did the same movie on cce as a CVD same bitrate and same everything and my cce output was way better it was the same color as the dvd and it was very sharp and well no blocks.

[SaSi]

I've done some more comparisons between Tmpgenc, CCE and Mainconcept - now that I managed to work with CCE properly.

My finding is that in very high bitrates (8000kbps VBR with min=200 and max =9000), all three produce excellent results. Tmpgenc is the slowest.

At low bitrates (3000kbps VBR with min,max as above), the results are interesting.

Tmpgenc produces video that is shallow. Colour depth is lost and smooth gradient images exhibit significant contour lines. Grey to black shades become flat black.

Mainconcept introduces random artifacts that are more obvious in sequences of little motion.

CCE is apparently the best. It doesn't sacrifice colour depth but introduces a gradual smoothness in the picture (like a gaussian blur). It's almost visible on the PC but totaly lost on TV screen. It can even go as low as 2Mbps VBR with descent image quality.

Furthermore, of all three encoders, CCE does the best job in bitrate allocation. It really encodes little content parts in <1Mbps bitrates while high action ones get the full 9Mbps as configured. Tmpgenc varies the average bitrate a little while Mainconcept is the worst of all in Bitrate allocation. Of course, Mainconcept is the only one that doesn't provide multipass encoding so the allocation problem is to be expected.

The low bitrate results above with CCE cannot be achieved unless one selects the low and very low bitrate quantization matrices - something most people don't know about and hence complain with MPEG1 encoding at ~1Mbps.

Of the three encoders, if properly used, I think CCE will produce the best results in the least amount of time, Tmpgenc will produce slightly worse results in the largest amount of time while Mainconcept will produce the worst results in close to CCE times (comparing single pass VBR between the two).

I will need to test CCE Basic also to see if it's worse than CCE SP.

[Cecilio]

well i kinda underestimated TMPGEnc a little i mean i have used CCE 2.5 with ULBR and tried to make a music video with the reselution of 352*240 which is low and with a low bitrate such as 400 for video and 128 for audio. yea i know thats very low and the speed was supppper fast like 7.8 but the results were shit you cant tell anything thats going on. and it was a video with almost no action it was justin timberlake's-Cry Me a River. and i did the same video the same bitrate same everything only this time i used the standard matrix of TMPGEnc and that video actually resulted in good quality i mean not great but im just testing the two with low bitrate. and the fact is that with high bitrate theres no doubt that CCE will lose cause its great it keeps all the color and everything while TMPGEnc is ok but not as good and takes longer, but for low bitrate yea TMPGEnc is way better.

[willy_annand]

I've never seen any of those programs before, so I was gonna choose the tgpo option....but sadly there wasn't one.

That is because tgpo has less than 5% of the market.

tgpo is a visible minority, so let's not pick on him/her/it.

[willy_annand]

just occured to me... why is it "which of these 2 encoders" when there's 4 choices?

you are seeing double again HP, go lie down.

[stiltman]

TMPEGnc

[sacajaweeda]

CCE 2.5

[redwudz]

CCE, but TMPGEnc is a lot easier to set up and use. I still use CCE with DVD2SVCD, but I usually default to TMPGEnc for DVD use.