Encoder comparison Mainoncept vs CCE vs TMPGenc

[vhelp]

@ adam..

Its not a feature per se, its a required setting. Its always going to be set to something, you've got to ensure that its set appropriately for your source and bitrate. If you set it too high then you get mosquito noise. If you set it too low you get contour noise. If you set it appropriately then you get neither. This is the most important setting in CCE for any project, though it does have more of an effect on VBR encodes.

I had the feeling that it was something to do with one's "source and bitrate".
I understand better now.., thanks.

Interlace..

That's funny you mentioned it and CCE.., though you prefered Procoder
for this. In the past, I always thought (based on memory) that CCE did a
better job, because "rumar" had it that it handled it better. Perhaps this was
w/ respect to referencing v2.50 (which is what I was basing my tests from)
Then again, I could have gotten some things confused. Well, it was more
than a year agao ( I think ) and things have changed since other versions of Both encoders 8)

FWIW.., the TMPG version I was using in my tests were v2.520

Thanks for taking the time to respond, and the insight to CCE's
"image quality priority" setting.

Cheers,
-vhelp

[fritzi93]

Interesting discussion. I've been giving MC and CCE a try lately, since everyone raves about the improvement in speed over TMPGEnc. Yeah, TMPGEnc really seems slow now. :P

Have to agree with SatStorm. The quality of TMPGEnc is as good as any. And it's sharp too, not always a good thing. The options and the usability of the GUI are tops. But it's slow.

As for Mainconcept, I haven't got acceptable results yet, must be user error or something. Need to study the settings more closely I suppose. On AVIs that are odd size and not especially good quality, it has had problems occasionally with aspect ratio.

Canopus Procoder- haven't the foggiest idea.

CCE with Avisynth is undoubtedly the best overall. Well worth learning how to write scripts. This one I'm gunna keep. JMHO

[fmctm1sw]

You guys are making my purchasing decision very difficult
Does the CCE basic use the same encoding engine as CCE SP. I will not be buyig SP any time soon, so my only choice is basic. Is SP that much better?

[Skynet107]

cce basic can only do 2 pass encoding max, that is the major limitation. Other than that, used in conjunction with AVISynth it will do everything you need. I agree that Procoder is better with interlaced sources in most cases. But I so seldom encode anything from any interlaced source that I don't care about this, and if the source is interlaced I will de-interlace it anyway.

IF you don't plan on learning and using AVISynth then CCE is totally useless to you. Procoder or TMPGEnc would be better for you.

And to those who claim CCE encodes with noise, you have no idea what you are doing. Used correctly with AVISynth, CCE is the reference standard of software encoders, period. I have proven this over and over again, everything from re-encoding DVD material, video captures, downloads, standards conversions etc.

This is how I would rate the encoders:

CCE Basic: 10/10 (when used with AVISynth)
Procoder 2.0: 8/10
TMPGEnc: 8/10
Mainconcept: 6/10 (good features but quality is not great)

2 pass encoding is more than enough for most projects. It is when average bitrates drop below around 3300 that more passes are valuable and do make a difference. I've done tests with CCE and Procoder at very low bitrates, around 2600. CCE 5 pass had some macroblocking and didn't look that great. Same bitrate on 2 pass looked worse using CCE. Procoder looked terrible, nearly unwatchable.

150 minutes (2.5 hours) with 5.1 448khz AC-3 sound on a single sided DVD gives you a bitrate at about 3500. This bitrate in CCE 2 pass will look excellent. It will be slightly worse than say 6000+ mbits/sec. Mostly noticable on a 50" or bigger high quality display.

....and anyone doing CBR encoding is either very lazy or does not care about quality. Mpeg2 video is designed around VBR doing CBR is just plain stupid.

[fmctm1sw]

cce basic can only do 2 pass encoding max, that is the major limitation. Other than that, used in conjunction with AVISynth it will do everything you need. I agree that Procoder is better with interlaced sources in most cases. But I so seldom encode anything from any interlaced source that I don't care about this, and if the source is interlaced I will de-interlace it anyway.

IF you don't plan on learning and using AVISynth then CCE is totally useless to you. Procoder or TMPGEnc would be better for you.

And to those who claim CCE encodes with noise, you have no idea what you are doing. Used correctly with AVISynth, CCE is the reference standard of software encoders, period. I have proven this over and over again, everything from re-encoding DVD material, video captures, downloads, standards conversions etc.

This is how I would rate the encoders:

CCE Basic: 10/10 (when used with AVISynth)
Procoder 2.0: 8/10
TMPGEnc: 8/10
Mainconcept: 6/10 (good features but quality is not great)

2 pass encoding is more than enough for most projects. It is when average bitrates drop below around 3300 that more passes are valuable and do make a difference. I've done tests with CCE and Procoder at very low bitrates, around 2600. CCE 5 pass had some macroblocking and didn't look that great. Same bitrate on 2 pass looked worse using CCE. Procoder looked terrible, nearly unwatchable.

150 minutes (2.5 hours) with 5.1 448khz AC-3 sound on a single sided DVD gives you a bitrate at about 3500. This bitrate in CCE 2 pass will look excellent. It will be slightly worse than say 6000+ mbits/sec. Mostly noticable on a 50" or bigger high quality display.

....and anyone doing CBR encoding is either very lazy or does not care about quality. Mpeg2 video is designed around VBR doing CBR is just plain stupid.

Thanks. Good info. Though I am slightly disturbed by the interlaced source and CCE thing you mentioned. A lot of my stuff is interlaced (home movies, etc). I try not to go below 3500 with the bitrate so I guess two pass would be OK. I've also seen it explained that the two pass is actually three pass. I may disagree with your CBR synopsis though, I've used CBR with my 352x480 material at about 4000. This was, partly at least, due to the fact that TMPG takes a little longer (Ok, a lot longer) to do two pass. I know avisynth pretty well, so it looks like I'm down to CCE basic and Procoder 2 (express). I can't justify paying double for mainconcept. I havn't seen Panasonics encoder mentioned much.

[SatStorm]

If you know avisynth and like it, don't even think it! Go for CCE! Basic is slighty worse CCE SP (based on the reports I read from the CCE fans) but still better anything else!

Since my last post in this topic, I did more tests. Anyway, with mainconcept, you can succeed excellent results, but not "as is". The main "issue" with this encoder, is that "smooths" the picture, in a point that you think that blures it. Also, this smooth seems to be more noticable on NTSC than PAL.
Finally, I like to say that my tests show me that Procoder do top job with NTSC and excellent with PAL. Mainconcept do excellent job wth PAL (not top, CCE is still the winner - unfortunatelly for us whose dislike avisynth ...) and very good NTSC (That means less good the rest encoders...). TMPGenc do excellent job for NTSC and PAL equaly (but not "top").

So, when you are PAL I suggest compare results from Procoder and MC before you buy anythings. IMO mC is better here, but maybe it is just my idea (or my source: DVB transmissions or PicVideo Mjpeg captures)
The NTSC users have better alternatives than MC for their projects

[Skynet107]

2 pass is actually 3 pass yes. I also wanted to mention that the procoder trial I had crashes on me constantly. I'm not sure why but I could not get the thing to work properly. I have basically zero crashes in any application with my system so I found that troubling. CCE has never crashed on me ever, I have probably done over a thousand hours of encoding since I got CCE.

Procoder 2.0 comes with a dongle and also installs a stupid system driver which slows down the system and hogs memory. I highly doubt the regular version of Procoder has a dongle though.

As for your concern with interlaced sources, it is not a big issue. Procoder seems to give a *slightly* better look to interlaced video from camcorders and the like. It may that I just don't know how to tweak CCE for interlaced material seeing I use it so seldom for this. Good luck with your choices.

P.S. get the trial versions of these programs and do a test on identical footage. Best way is to author the encodes onto a DVD-RW and watch them on your favorite TV.

[fmctm1sw]

I just tried Procoder and... I don't know. Something about it I just don't like. I hit the quicktime snag right off the bat. I compared the output of it to an identical avi (of a boxing match) and I get pretty much the same result when I use "high quality" with procoder as I do with CCE (with nothing checked). It said "mastering" could take 10-20 times longer Procoder takes longer for what looks the same to me.

So CCE is the choice... Not so fast, unfortunately. It's done it to me again. Every once in a while it just slows down to about 20- 40 percent CPU time. I thought it might be the file itself. I took the same file (RGB colorspace) and converted it to yuy2. This fixed the problem. I took another file that was RGB and it worked fine I don't like that at all. Grrrrr, what next?

[monzie]

QOUTE:

....and anyone doing CBR encoding is either very lazy or does not care about quality. Mpeg2 video is designed around VBR doing CBR is just plain stupid.

EXPLAIN

I'm not LAZY or STUPID I just dont spew BS about VBR over CBR when the source does not require multi-pass VBR for general viewing from 12 feet on the TV.....talk about techno-dorks weve got a real live one here.

[Shocker Milwaukee]

If you are getting "noise" then you haven't mastered the image quality priority setting yet.

Another trip behind the woodshed...

[troyvcd1]

I dont know why CCE gets slammed for interlaced sources. I encode all my home movies with CCE and get excellent results. I tried procoder on the highest quality (and very slow) settings and when I watched the results I could never tell any difference. I took some bitmaps of CCE vs procoder (which I do not have anymore) and found that procoder would make things like a stick coming up from the ground jagged where CCE would not have this. And CCE is so much faster and you can do so much more with it using Avisynth I think CCE wins hands down even for interlaced sources. I have not done any intensive testing so this is just my opinion.

[proxyx99]

Seems everyone has their own favorite. Nothing wrong with that as all encoders mentioned here rate from good to very good. I personally prefer MC 1.4 despite some, in my opinion, unjust comments. I've spent a lot of time testing encoders using my own specially compiled test clip. I like Pinnacle Edition 5 the most, followed by MC 1.4. TMPEG blurs static images so does Procoder 1.5. After thorough testing I have found no convincing evidence to use any other, although I admit, I often use TMPEG mpeg tools. The differences between encoders are minimal, so whichever works for you, stick with it. Results depend on the quality of the test material, its structure and content and I have yet to see an encoder that is a champ in every aspect of encoding. About all that hype about Procoder I'd say, I'm not impressed. Also, its system conversion quality is a slight disappointment. Jagged, blurry edges, especially visible on text screens. But if anyone loves it, great.
As stated in my other postings, I never used CCE (I'm not the biggest fan of Avisynth) extensively to pass a judgment on it but one of the best (if not THE best) encodes that I have ever seen (done outside a movie studio) were from CCE. Unlike Procoder it does not kill what's in the shadowed areas. Picture is well balanced and eye pleasing.
Out of pure laziness I doubt if I ever switch from MC to anything else and if some think it is inferior, so be it. It does the job very, very well (for my needs). I rarely to revert to Pinnacle unless I do a full edit.

[adam]

If you are getting "noise" then you haven't mastered the image quality priority setting yet.

Another trip behind the woodshed...

Have you ever even used CCE? Give me any source and I can quickly give you an encode with horrible mosquito noise. Then I can give you another encode with horrible contour noise. Then I can give you an encode with neither. Anyone who has played with CCE a few times can do the same. Its not some secret setting and its not some mystical excuse to explain away any given problem that someone may have with the encoder. If you do a search for my posts about CCE you'll see that I have explained the image quality priority setting many times. When used correctly it gives an additional layer of control over your bitrate allocation. Unfortunately, many people just blindly use the default and get mixed results.

Again, I'm not saying CCE is any better than anything else. But the "noise" that CCE creates is an often raised criticism with a very simple solution...figure out how the image quality priority setting works. Its like someone complaining that TMPGenc only exports program streams because they haven't noticed that little box on the bottom right yet.

[fmctm1sw]

If you are getting "noise" then you haven't mastered the image quality priority setting yet.

Another trip behind the woodshed...

Unfortunately, many people just blindly use the default and get mixed results.

That's me. Looks like I have some reading to do....

Its like someone complaining that TMPGenc only exports program streams because they haven't noticed that little box on the bottom right yet.

There's a box down there?