Hardware MPEG Encoding Vs Software Encoding

[khilafah313]

Hello
I am a newbie.
I have a Matrox RT2500 card for NLE editing.
I want to enquire that for good quality is it necessary to purchase expensive hardware MPEG1 Encoding cards. I dont have a hurry to Real Time Encode my edited movies, i,e time is not the issue so the real issue is quality.
My questions are
1- If time is not the issue, using same bitrate will the Software encoders like TMPGenc will give greater quality than a hardware encoding card?
2- Someone told me that there are frame dropping and jerking issues with software encoders which is not the issue with Hardware encoders. Is it correct?
Thanks and bye

[vance43211]

hardware encorder use to be better 6 months ago. now that not necessary the case

i sold my quartet mpeg2 encorder card when instantcopy 7 came out

i have a aver dvd capture card

and i only use that for old vhs tapes

[khilafah313]

Hello, thanks for the reply, but can anyone elaborate more on this topic

[Sulik]

Remember that there is no such thing as a "hardware encoder": it is merely a software encoder running on a DSP, and usually not the best encoder.
The only advantage of a hardware encoder is relialability (no other tasks running on the DSP chip), and offloading the work from the main CPU.
If you want the absolute best quality, it requires capturing uncompressed, applying filters, editing, then only do the encoding at the final stage, possibly using a 2-pass encoder.