Highest quality MPEG2 encoder?

[Colmino]

I plan to tackle a few questions before I start soaking my feet in DVD authoring, but this is a biggie. Very little research is needed to reveal that the final visual quality of one's authored DVD depends primarily on which software one used to encode it. The results seem to vary wildly.

So far, all I really know is: Pinnacle Studio 7 absolutely blows (re: http://www.puremotion.com/mpegxs/qualitycompared/dvd.htm), and EditStudio and Ulead use the same encoder.

What would be nice: Software that lets one define bitrates, both as a whole and in specific cases (eg: For this ten-second clip, I want the bitrate to be 10mb/s). Further, software which lets one define their own I-frames. And a nice pie-in-the-sky feature would be, oh, software that can compare the encoded video against the unmolested original and provide details on image reproduction accuracy (like a graph). (You can ignore that last one if it's too far off kilter.)

So anyway. Encoding quality. Need to figure out what's the best. Chances are, it's some piece of software that just about nobody ever uses because encoding's all it's good at. Shrug, I'm just interested in hearing what people think. Maybe there's a more in-depth comparison on some webpage out there.

Thanks!

[indolikaa]

TMPGEnc.

[MrMungus]

I thought Ulead used the Mainconcept encoder...or SDK or something. I read that here earlier today.

[Ziffelpig]

Canopus Procoder for speed and quality, all though Tmpgenc all round is the best if you base it on versatility, quality and cost. Slow as hell though and terrible with audio.

[jimmalenko]

TMPGEnc to do video only. It has many customisable options where you can set bitrate, I frames etc but as mentioned previously the audio stuff does blow a bit. I use Besweet or HeadAC3He for my audio.

[Colmino]

Thanks all. I've been finding a lot of people saying CCE (CinemaCraft Encoder) is better than TMPGenc, beyond argument. In fact, they seem to be saying it's the best. So for now I'm hunting around for visual comparisons. I did spot one or two people mentioning Procoder as well.

Not really worried about cost, nor even the speed. Audio quality? Hmm. Nah, I'll probably pipe all my audio through Cool Edit anyway, to make it sound less like home videos. ;P

[sacajaweeda]

CCE & AviSynth is pretty tough to beat.

My $.02