[ MPEG2 encoder ]

[julienb]

which coder MPEG2 do you use ??

-I tested the coder of Mainconcept...
the encoding in VBR is very clean but not enough control (not possible to touch to GOP etc etc)

-I also tested Cinemacraft, which also goes ok.

Which experiments have of these two coders?
In use of others?
Moreover, do you encode each sequence independantly ? or the whole at the same time?
It is not inevitably a technic-technic question, but more one total impression on quality of the one, of the other; on that which is left there best in the majority the cases...

see U

[ronnylov]

I have never used mainconcept mpeg2 encoder but seen many reports that it is a fast encoder with great quality, at least at DVD bitrates.

I have used CCE and it is also a great mpeg2 encoder. It has very accurate bitrate control in multipass vbr mode so it is possible to almost exactly fill a whole DVD-R or SVCD. But it's not so good on interlaced material or noisy captures. I use it for movie conversions but not home video or tv captures. It's too expensive unless you use the basic version.

TMPGEnc Plus is also great. It has many settings to play with and can create good quality mpeg2 and mpeg1. It's the most price worthy encoder in my opinion. But it creates bitrates peaks over the max settings so you have to use margins to stay within standards. But it is slow, especially if you play with the noise filter (but it gives great quality).

Canopus Procoder in mastering quality mode is the best I have seen when encoding interlaced mpeg2 or noisy captures to low bitrate like SVCD and also great on DVD and VCD. I would say this is my favourite encoder but it's too expensive. It's also quite slow, quite similar as TMPGEnc Plus, but I find the quality a little bit better on hard-to-encode stuff.

So for the home user it leaves TMPGEnc Plus as the only reasonable priced multi-purpose mpeg encoder of those mentioned here. Canopus Procoder is still my favourite.

I try to encode the whole at the same time. The reason for this is that the multipass VBR encoding has more data to work with and can distribute the bitrate over all clips to get an equal quality of the whole disc. It's also convenient to start the encoder and let it do all the work overnight. If each clip had been encoded separately the VBR was only distributed over that clip alone and if it's an easy-to-encode clip it would be wasted bits that had been better used on the hard-to-encode clips.

[julienb]

Thnaks a lot for your answer...

I tried a lot of these but It's very difficult to compare them ..
In several case one is better than other etc etc

I'd like to find the optimizest preset I could use in majority of cases ...

> My only problem is a "psychological" :P problem : indeed, compress/encode to mpeg2 at the end of my project create a loss .. of course ... but I would like to avoid a too big loss ..

[pixel]

TMPGEnc is definitely slower than others, but is the best with the most variable features.

Anyway, if you encode a video quickly what kind of quality will you expect it to be compared to a slower encoder.

TMPGEnc also has a lot of user-created plug-ins which are good.

As you are greatly worried about quality TMPGEnc is definitely the best for good quality, as long as you don't mind the slightly longer encodes.

I would not use the most optimised settings in TMPGEnc as this can make it end up taking days for a few hours of video to encode for somewhat unnoticeable difference in quality.

[julienb]

OK

The time to encode is not important for me (if not 50days or more :P)
Quality is the only thing really important !

I used TMPEGenc..
I know its parameters etc etc
but I thought Mainconcept or Canopus or other did better job ...

I may make mistake

[Vejita-sama]

The debate always seems to come down to CCE vs. TMPGenc. Both programs do an excellent shop. IMHO CCE encodes to MEPG2 better, and TMPGenc does MEPG1 slightly better. What that said, the main difference between the two programs is speed and ease of use.

TMPGenc has a much for 'user friendly' interface and several filters including. CCE is really just a pure encoder, no real filters are included. Most people frameserve to CCE using avisynth (you can frameserve to TMPGenc as well).

For me avisynth + CCE for MPEG2 encodes is the way to go. I can do a 3pass VBR (actually 4passes) in CCE faster than a 2pass encode in TMPGenc, and get IMHO slightly better quaility. CBR encodes near max bitrate (6000kbit/s+) look the same but again CCE is MUCH faster.

But really it's a matter of personal choice/preference. Some people swear by TMPGenc, some actually swear by Nero (drag/drop avi).

[pixel]

Vejita-sama, good point. I had only thought about CBR encodes.

When you encode to VBR with multi-passes, you are really letting the encoder read the file several times for best bitrate placement.

If your are using a VBR setting in a program it is not really speed that matters, but number of passes.

[julienb]

Thanks a lot for all thes infos

What is the exactly interst of "frame-serving" ??

[Vejita-sama]

Sorry for the typos in the above post, very tired. Yeah it's number of passes but anything more than 4 is unnecessary (I do 3). But speed always matters. As I said I can do more passes faster in CCE than I can in TMPGPenc. But even for VBR encodes the bitrate matters. A 500,6000,8000 encode is different than a 500,2500,8000 encode

CBR is CBR, but CCE still wins speed wise. The nice thing about TMPGenc thou is that the MPEG1 encoder (which I think is better than CCE's MEPG1 encoder) is free. So unless you have an interlaced source, need multiple audio streams or selectable subs you can encode DVDs for free.

[pixel]

Frame-serving basically lets you cut and edit a video, then send it to the encoder without having to save the file in between.

It is mainly used for large AVI's, so that users with small hard drives don't need to save the large AVI file in between. Frameserving is slower though, so if you have a big enough hard drive save the file in between.

If you save the file, it means that if your computer crashes during encoding, you will still have the version ready for encoding.

[julienb]

I Thank you, Vejita-sama !!

I just tried Mainconcept MPEG encoder vs TMPEGenc ...
In the case of my sequence (a piece of friends' party), with several tests, TMPEGenc gives better resulsts than Mainconcept MPEG enc ..

It's difficult to compare difference because it's very subjective in these cases (good encoding..)

To compare, I open my two sequence in AfterEffects, I set the highest layer in "difference mode" and I increase the level in order to have a ""difference-map"" -> Of course, I did my comparison with the original Avi uncompressed file

I also watched the 2 videosto appreciate differences ...

[BJ_M]

which coder MPEG2 do you use ??

-I tested the coder of Mainconcept...
the encoding in VBR is very clean but not enough control (not possible to touch to GOP etc etc)

-I also tested Cinemacraft, which also goes ok.

Which experiments have of these two coders?
In use of others?
Moreover, do you encode each sequence independantly ? or the whole at the same time?
It is not inevitably a technic-technic question, but more one total impression on quality of the one, of the other; on that which is left there best in the majority the cases...

see U

everything in main concept encoder is adjustable including GOP and all motion searchs and in fact - more than any other encoder (except mpeg repair - the granddaddy of them all)

[julienb]

Hello !

I tested Mainconcept MPEG enc again ...
Indeed, I can touch gop etc etc !

I think I'll use it each time I have to encode some movie..

I tested Canopus Procoder ..
It may exist presets what we can change (I didn't find how ..) because In default preset (I just change some variable like bitrate etc etc) procoder contrast(a little bit) my movie !

it may not use the same color space than the others ..
May I understand ?

[SaSi]

With version 1.4 of Mainconcept MPEG Encoder, finally resizing and cropping is possible (otherwise one should use Avisynth of VirtualDUB) and also the two pass VBR encoding is there.

It is now possible to generate higher quality MPEG-2 than before, but when comparing Mainconcept with CCE (2pass) using exactly the same encoding options (except motion search estimate values which are not adjustable in CCE) CCE still produces much higher quality video.

This is true especially if one tries to lower the bitrate (e.g. 2500kbps D1 resolution) where Mainconcept starts to show clear pixelation in high motion sequences while CCE will do a general softening of the image and still manage to make motion scenes look clear.

In terms of speed, if one selects a very short motion search setting in Mainconcept it becomes very very fast - much faster than CCE.

Tmpgenc on the other hand generates the type of soft image CCE does in very low bitrates but when the scenes become quite dark it miserably fails with black becoming flat-black all over the frame and with clearly visible contour lines around it.

One thing I like about Tmpgenc is that it happily accepts all kind of video for input (including wmv or asf files). Of course all types of AVI are ok also. Almost the same holds true about Mainconcept while CCE is the worst bitch of all. I have only succesfully encoded AVI files using hufyuv codec and nothing else.

Finally, the argument that Tmpgenc is better because it offers a whole lot of filters is, I believe, not important because any Tmpgenc filter is way slower than any similar implementation in VirtualDUB. It has been a very long time since I used the Tmpgenc filters.

[ronnylov]

Hello !

I tested Mainconcept MPEG enc again ...
Indeed, I can touch gop etc etc !

I think I'll use it each time I have to encode some movie..

I tested Canopus Procoder ..
It may exist presets what we can change (I didn't find how ..) because In default preset (I just change some variable like bitrate etc etc) procoder contrast(a little bit) my movie !

it may not use the same color space than the others ..
May I understand ?

Don't use the wizard in Procoder. Start it in advanced mode and use the advanced button to make all the settings. I never use templates myself, I set everything as I like. I have no idea about the color space problem.

[julienb]

Thanks for all your answers !!

I'm trying to find the most compliant template that I could use in all situations...

My criteria is very simple (I'm not professionnal..):
->quality

of course I have to make mpeg2 dvd-compliant (size<4,3Go etc etc etc)

but I have no others constraints as quality
- neither time encoding (I don't calculate, my pc does )
- neither final size ( I mustn't fit my movie to a very restricted size )
etc etc


If we can share our templates experience, it would be great !!!

See U

[flaninacupboard]

julienb,

just thought i'd throw in some personal views here

If you're encoding to DVD and aren't bothered about the length of video on the disc, i'd use 9700kbps CBR, or even 9700kbps min/max/average 2-pass. this makes sure every possible bit gets allocated to your picture.

On a seperate note, if the material is stuff you've shot yourself, then noise reduction is pretty much a requirement for decent encoding. you needn't go overboard, but do have a play. as you have TMPGenc, try encoding two files with identical settings except the noise reduction filter. try using it at a setting of about 6 1 8.

Finally, i wouldn't try comparing encode results in any way other than burning to a disc and watching on a television. what's obviously a compression artifact close up on a monitor, usually disappears when viewed on a television. this allows you to actually compare what encoder looks the best quality, as opposed to which produces what kind of artifact.

[ronnylov]

Regarding the Canpus Procoder I have also got a contrast change in my encoding now when I compared with my original. Black is more black than the original and white is more white than original. Can this be fixed somehow?

[ZenZen]

Why wait for any encoding time??
Use MainConcept Encoder 1.4 to capture directly to Mpeg2.
As soon as you click "Stop Capture" you have a DVD compliant Mpeg2
ready for authoring and burning. The quality is excellent.
How? Do a forum seach for a previous topic "DataVideo DAC-100?"
Then look for my name zenzen (rather than repeating it all here).

[julienb]

capturing directly to MPEG2???

I'd prefer use DV because DV is less compress than MPEG2 => I only compress/encode at the end of the process, when my movie (cut/insert/effects) is finished

[ZenZen]

>>I'd prefer use DV because DV is less compress than MPEG2

Well if you have read my previous posts, you will see that I also use DV via the DataVideo DAC-100 or Canopus ADVC-100 (I own and use both).

>>capturing directly to MPEG2???
Only if you want to save hours of tedious encoding.

Sure, if I need to apply cuts/inserts/effects then I will take the long way, but, for example, most movies captured off cable TV do not require editing. That's when I use MC 1.4 and capture in real time.