Hi,

Mainconcept is a wonderful encoder (MPEG2) and it took me only 5 hours to encode my home video (90 mins), whereas it took me over 14 hours in TMPGEnc - both at 2-pass VBR.

My total captured video was split into 5/6 files. After 19/20 minutes of capture, the AVI reached 4GB and it seamlessly split into the next file. Here are some observations:

a) Mainconcept could not encode files captured by ULead VideoStudio 5. It interpreted those AVIs as NTSC rather than PAL.
b) Files captured by Mainconcept Capute option, were successfully encoded.
c) Although Maincocept possibly can create a single/huge AVI, I split them at 4GB.
d) TMPGEnc DVD Source Creator could recognize all the sequence files and prompted me to load all of them when I opened the first file (xxxx0001.AVI). After the settings for 2-pass VBR, it took (as said earlier) 14 hours.
e) In MainConcept I had to load each file one after another. The encoding at 2-pass VBR was very fast. The whole job finished in 5 hours or so.
f) TMPGEnc DVD Source Creator created a single MPG whereas Mainconcept created individual MPGs for each AVI.
g) The Batch window in Mainconcept had an option - Encode List to a single file, but this option is greyed out. I tried reading through the PDF manual. All it said was when the settings for each file is the same, this option is enabled. I was unable to figure this out.
h) The captured video had interlace problems at the edges. Cropping of edges in Mainconcept cause colour error - blues became green, green magenta, and so on. No such problem in TMPGEnc DVD Source Creator.
i) I used TMPGEnc to merge the individual MPGs created by Mainconcept
j) I used TMPGEnc DVD Author to create the DVD. Took me 30 minutes to create the chapters, etc.
k) DVD shows noise/blocks on the computer but on TV it is fine.

I would like to know how to perform batch encoding to a single file in Mainconcept and how to avoid the colour errors while cropping. I can live with the cropping problem because the resulting DVD on TV did not show the fuzzy edges.

Regards,

Prasanna.