bbMPEG vs. TMPEGEnc

[fvd72]

I wonder if anyone did a test to see witch one is better MPEG2 encoder, what are the major differences (quality) or if someone knows of a place on the internet who some test results are posted. I am using bbMPEG a lot and I don't want to buy TMPEGEnc if I don't neet it.

[housepig]

why don't you test it and post the results? TMPGenc's mpeg-2 encoder works for the first 14 or 30 days of the download (can't remember which).

[fvd72]

A good test takes a lot of time, to select good video for the test, to encode it at different bitrate, resolutions, etc. And after that you have to analize the rezult. It takes a lot of time.

I guess that bbMPEG is good enough since the guy who developed it works for Mainconcept, who developed the official MPEG2 encoder for Adobe Premiere. I just red that on the internet. Still, I wish to find an answer to my question, and if possible, the easy way.

[housepig]

true, a thorough test would take serious time.

but if you keep your source short, true, you can't check for sync drift over long videos, but you can get a decent idea of how it handles motion, quick changes, etc.

I did a head to head test with the encoders I had available to me, both for time and quality, and I used 2 test files - both captured from laserdisc, one was a b&w silent film with a lot of subtle contrast & shadows, the other was a Beastie Boys video with a ton of different film stocks, different types of motion, different effects, etc.

Since they were only a couple minutes long each, it only took me about 90 minutes or so to spot some definite pluses and minuses between them.
Yeah, it was kind of a drag to mess around with the dame 3 minutes of footage for an hour and a half, looking for differences, but it was worth it in the long run.

But bbmpeg wasn't one of the ones I tested, so I don't have any data on that yet...

[fvd72]

What encoders did you tested? Did you post the results anywhere?

[Baldrick]

http://www.tecoltd.com/enctest/enctest.htm

[housepig]

What encoders did you tested? Did you post the results anywhere?

nah, because at some points the comparisons are going to come down to personal preference and technical differences between machine configurations.

I tested TMPGenc, MainConcept 1.3 standalone, Ligos 3.5 (I think), Canopus Procoder, and CCE 2.66 (I think.. I'd have to go back and check the version numbers on CCE and Ligos).

What I was looking for was a balance of quality and speed.

Ultimately what I found was that Main Concept was the fastest, but produced some of the nastiest artifacts and distortions in the encode. Ligos, Procoder & CCE produced okay results, with varying speeds (Procoder was slower than TMPGenc!) but I liked the quality of TMPGenc best, even if it was slowest to encode.

Ran this by three different pairs of eyes on three different player / tv setups, from 17" to 40", the consensus was the same - TMPGenc, hands down.

Now I am not an expert with any encoder by a long shot, and obviously other people like MC and CCE quite a bit, but I don't know the programs well enough to get good results from them - all I adjusted in any program was the number of passes, bitrates and general file settings, I didn't do super advanced tweaking.

but again, these are my results on my system...

[snowmoon]

I found bbMPEG to give superior results to TMPGenc on interlaced materal, but that was 2 years ago. It was quickly depreciated because of it's extremely slow speed. Ligos and CCE both trumped it's speed and matched or surpassed visual quality on TV devices.

[tenders]

bbmpeg is great for cutting(mpeg2). for encoding,you just can't beat TMPGENC,and the price is right

[DJRumpy]

Personally, I prefer CCE. TMPGenc produces macroblocking all too often on low bitrate projects(SVCD/VCD). Main Concept also makes an excellent encoder. Both far exceed TMPGenc in speed. CCE was rated one of two encoders scoring a 9: ( http://www.tecoltd.com/enctest/enctest.htm ). They were afraid of the price though. Understandable, since at the time, it was over a thousand dollars. You can buy a version for about the same price as TMPGenc now.

The link shows the version of CCE tested as 2.0, which is extremely old. I wonder if they plan to test any versions that are more recent?

In the end, fvd72, you simply have to try them and see which you like best. Every one of them is different in regards to style. Some are easy to learn, some not so easy. Almost all of them are available in some sort of demo version.

[housepig]

DJ Rumpy -

do you have any links to good guides to CCE? (or written any yourself?)

I'd love to use it for speed, but I don't know enough about it's operation to make the quality live up to it's potential...

[DJRumpy]

For the most part, the only things I ever change in CCE when encoding are the Quantizer Matrix, the Block Scanning Order, the Quantizer Characteristics, The Intra DC Component Precision, and of course the Bitrates. I always use Multipass VBR (min 1 pass setting, which actaully does 2 passes)

For VCD:
Use the 'Ultra Low Bitrate' matrix (Video Button)
Quantzer Characteristics: 32 (Quality button)
Set DC Component Precision to 8 (Quality button)
Block Scanning Order: Zig Zag (Quality button)
Progressive Frame Flag: Checked (Quality button)


For SVCD:
Use the 'Very Low Bitrate matrix' (Video Button)
Quantzer Characteristics: 32 (Quality button)
Set DC Component Precision to 8 (Quality button)
Block Scanning Order: ZigZag for progressive. Alternate for interlaced
Progressive Frame Flag: Checked if progressive

For DVD:
Use the 'Standard' matrix (Video Button)
Quantzer Characteristics: 16 (Quality button) [if interlaced video use 32]
Intra Block DC Precision: 10 (Quality button)
Block Scanning Order: ZigZag for progressive. Alternate for interlaced
Progressive Frame Flag: Checked if progressive

If I'm not pressed for time, I will always do at least 2 pass (performs 3 real passes). I use a bitrate calculator (the one from this site), to maximize my AVG bitrate setting. I always use MIN:0, and set the MAX to the highest allowed by the format I'm encoding to (i.e. 2524 kbps for SVCD, 9.8Mb/s for DVD, etc).

That's it. I don't use any of the filters because I find that they are a bit too crude. I prefilter, if necessary, with AVISynth.

[housepig]

thanks DJ Rumpy... I'll give that another try.

like I said, I liked the speed, but the quality was noticibly worse than the TMPGenc output with similar settings.

oooooo, I can't wait to go home and test....

[alenhard]

Housepig-

In your test, did you do any frameserving? If not, what codec had you used on your avi's?

Was it strictly video or did you encode the audio as well? Any differences there?

[housepig]

still haven't figured out how to frameserve

all conversions were done from Huffyuv codec avi's, and audio and video were encoded together.

havne't done too much demuxing and encoding elementary streams - that's next....

[DJRumpy]

Definately take the time to learn frameserving. It will save you alot of time, temporary avi's, and drive space. I use AVISynth, but VirtualDub is another favorite. In VDub, you simply setup all of your filters/resizing, etc, and then select FILE | START FRAMESERVER. It will ask you for a server name, and a filename for the 'psuedo avi' that is created. This psuedo avi can be dropped onto the encoder of choice.

For AVISynth, you simply create your script with Notepad, typing in the resize, cropping, cleaning commands, and then save it as a .AVS file. This .AVS file, just like VirtualDub's .VDR, can be treated as a psuedo avi. You can play it in Media Player, as if it was an AVI, or drop it onto the encoder of choice.

Much faster than saving a temporary file, and then encoding that. Why do two steps, when you can do one?

[housepig]

DJ -

I guess the reason I haven't learned frameserving is that I capture at the final resolution, so I don't have to resize. Most of what I'm capturing is movies or concerts, either from laserdiscs or VHS, so there's no internal cuts (like commercials) - just trimming front and back of the file, which I do with the Source Range in TMPGenc when I encode.

And most of my bad video is so bad that I haven't found the combinations of filters to fix them, so I don't really have any intermediate avi files - I go from the first Huffyuv capture to the final mpeg-2, not avi -> filtered avi -> mpg.

but yeah, I need to learn to do it... I'm comfy on my plateau right now, though....

[DJRumpy]

The only filter that would probably be useful to you, would be a noise (temporal/spatial) type filter, for your broadcast, and VHS captures (not the laserdisc). It will remove the 'snow' in your picture, reduce bitrate requirements, and just give you a better picture overall.

Every encoder benefits from a noise free source. If you use VirtualDub, I'd suggest the Optimized 2-D cleaner (I think it's on dgraft's site: shelob.mordor.net/dgraft ). The same filter can be used for AVISynth.

[housepig]

true, so true.

I should show you what I mean by "bad", though... not so much distortion caused by the VHS playback or anything, but "bad" in that the original image quality is terrible and I'm trying to correct it.

for example - a video of the Black Sabbath reunion show in 1992 - the original camera guy filmed sections of the show by pointing his camera at the DiamondVision screens, and the resulting video is super dark. I spent a couple of hours trying to coax a bit more detail and brightness out of the image, but it's blood from a turnip - it's just not there.

or another video, a documentary where I have a 10th-generation copy, and it's got large amounts of snow and lines on the top quarter of the screen. I spent about an hour running every filter I thought would work, in different combinations, on a short section of the tape. I saw improvement, but the ratio of the improvement to the time and effort wasn't good - I could put in 1 hour working on it, and get 80% of the results I wanted, or I could put 20 hours working on it, and get 82% of the results I wanted... just not enough of an improvement.

but the deeper I delve into my VHS conversions, I know I'll get into the stuff I can fix, and at that point I'll start picking up the frameserving.

[DJRumpy]

Sounds like some of my old projects, converting VHS to DVD. Some of them were so bad, I finally just requested them from the newsgroups. The DVD rips provided a better source than I had, and since I had already bought my copy, I was didn't have any copyright issues to worry about.

[housepig]

my only problem with that is most of the stuff I'd convert would be concert footage that I shot, so this is the master copy, or stuff I traded with other bands for - lots of times, the band breaks up, and nobody knows who has the video archive.

[fvd72]

I transfered some VHS to DVD and they look pretty good. I used bbMPEG, and what I don't like is that it doesn't have the sharpness that I would like. Other than that, everything is, I would say, okay.