Results of Beta Test for New MainConcept Version

[sammie]

I've been doing some runs on the new beta version of MainConcepts MPEG encoder v1.4. Not sure of all the changes yet, but the key one I was looking for is multipass encoding. The good news is it's there and seems to work fine. The bad news is they've gone the TMPEGEnc and CCE Basic route and only allow 2 pass. Now granted, in my experience 2 pass is fine 99% of the time so not a huge gripe.

I only had time for about a half a dozen shor trials last night so the last critical analysis will have to wait for this weekend, but so far here's the results. All tests were run using 2 pass VBR encoding, AVISynth 2.5 and a filter train containg Convoution3d noise reduction (low level), bicubic resize to 352x480, and either the native avisynth sharpen or Msharpen. I used a DV capture of one of my torture test ancient vhs tapes, noisey with a lot of motion and detail.

1) MainConcept is FAST. Unfortunately it was a busy night so I didn't get precise times for everything, but it was at least 50% faster than CCE and probably faster than that. So TMPEGEnc was left way behind.

2) Quality is excellent. So far for most of the equivalent encodes 100% of novices picked the MainConcept encode. I noticed a slight tendancy to oversharpening (a bit of white halo), but that just seemed to need a little adjustment to the resize and sharpen filters. I've noticed when newbies pick their favorites based on short snippets they tend to "like" over sharpened, and only realize that it's not quite right when watching the full movie.

3) So far it seems quite stable, although admittedly on shorter runs.

4) The "Shut computer down when finished" doesn't seem to work, but this is a beta so who knows if it's turned on.

5) It appears to still have all the extensive adjustments that v1.3 had, so tweaking it to the nth degree is still possible. The default settings are still ok, but more than a bit odd (partly due to being European biased). The first thing you should do is create more standard templates for your favorite formats.

6) The final size prediction is a lot better.

7) Need a lot more work and better understanding of the adjustments to say it's any better (or worse) than CCE Basic or TMPEGenc, but it's clearly in the ballpark. My first impression is that it might be slightly better than either, but nothing that's going to change any devotee's minds on the quality.

8) The price is still a bit high. Think it will stay around $150 compared to the what, like $60 price for TMPEGenc and CCE Basic. The good news is they seem to work with and are becoming more and more the choice for providing the MPEG encoder for various editing software packages. So that will obviously mean a better price when you buy a package and hopefully will mean you'll finally get a really good quality encoder with your package.

So bottom line is that it's REALLY fast and the quality is in the ballpark of the top encoders. The issue will remain price.

[BJ_M]

beta2 was out yesterday, did you use beta 1 or 2 or alpha 1 (i am beta tester) ..

it also has capture now - which you should mention, as well as preview and crop and resize and flip video , clamping , noise reduction (works very well) as well as some other features (audio is now fixed also) ..

you HAVE to tweak the adv. functions for progressive sources and add more matrix tables (only comes with mpeg standard) ..

quality is outstanding and speed is outstanding ..

also has the new multiview mpeg encoding ability -- though i'm not sure at this point how it works ..

[sammie]

I'm using Beta 2. Had problems with earlier downloads.

Yeah, I forgot to mention capture (mostly because I didn't use it).

Plus, should mention it works with DirectX 9 now.

I didn't report it that way because I didn't get exact times and frankly I didn't believe it but head to head 2 pass MainConcept seemed to be almost twice as fast as CCE.

I noticed the filtering and noise reduction. I haven't played with them too much and I wanted to do a "fair" comparison using tools that I knew how to work.

Still seems like you still have to use a VFAPI wrapper for aviSynth files which is a bummer.

[BJ_M]

it can take directly Ifo files and vobs with no problems, as well as quicktime files and v-dub vdr files .. i dont need to use a vfapi wrapper w/ avsynth (most of the time - seems some days i seem to not have it working and other days yes) ..
i dont think capture is working yet in beta - im not sure ...

it also can split files automaticaly to whatever size you what (muxed) ..

[SaSi]

How did you manage to get access to the beta version? I've sent 3 e-mails to the guy at Mainconcept forum, plus posted a response to his sticky message, but they appear to ignore me.

Anyway, the news I read from you guys seem interesting.

[sammie]

Don't know SaSi. I've been a bit active with them and I believe BJ_M has too, but I didn't do anything more than e-mail like you did. They do tend to have tight windows where it's open /not open. I know I missed Beta 1 even though I had the password. For my beta to work you need a serial number. Not sure if you already own a version, but that could have something to do with it.

Seconding BJ_M it does seem to read almost anything else. I've tried VOBs, VDUB VDR's and DiVX avi's. Interesting that you said somedays on the aviSynth files. I've never had it work with them, but the wrapper works ok.

Unfortunately, looks like the wife and kids want to head out for Labor Day weekend. Probably means I won't get to do any extensive testing.