Anyone encode relatively fast?

[rkr1958]

@tekkie:
I was thinking the same, but I don't know whether the learning curve of CCE is worth it - ATM I'm quite happy with TMPGEnc, so I see no dire need to change encoders just yet, as the time taken isn't that important to me, whereas the end results are, and I know I get what I want from TMPGEnc.

I was quite happy with TMPGEnc Plus too. The only reason I bought CCE Basic was to use with DVD Rebuilder. I've only had CCE Basic for less than a week now but, given this cavet, CCE Basic has no learning curve given your level of expertise. I'm sure this is not true for CCE SP, but CCE SP costs $2000 compared to $58 for CCE Basic. CCE SP is way out of my league.

Last night I did a little experiment on a 18-minute VHS clip that I had capture to AVI through my DV camera (i.e., full resolution and bit rate, NTSC).

First I encoded that clip to MPEG-2 (full resolution) with TMPGEnc Plus, CBR @ 8000 bps ... This took around 25-minutes ... slower than real time.

Next I encoded the clip (Full Resolution) using CCE Basic, 2-pass VBR, 9000 bps max, 6000 bps ave & 2000 bps min. This took around 18-minutes ... real-time to near-real time.

Also, I've found that using DVD-RB w/CCE basic re-encodes the video faster than does Instant Copy 7. That is, the encoder is faster than the transcoder! https://www.videohelp.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=1185770#1185770

[Gurm]

CCE Basic? No learning curve?

Look, it has no controls. Everything needs to be done through a script, so you have to learn a scripting language. Given the number of DIFFERENT responses you get when you ask how to do a simple thing with CCE, from different people, I'm betting it's an obtuse scripting language as well.

So the "learning curve" is steep compared with an application that actually has ... y'know ... more than one dialogue box.

[Dilemma]

I would argue that MainConcept is the best all around encoder. You can encode to almost every format (with the newest version) and its wicked fast. I have an athlon xp 3000+ w/ 512megs of pc3200 and it will encode a 2 hour flick in 1 hour 10 min. I also did not notice any artifacts (like dvdsanta) or any quality loss. You can also do 2-pass and it will encode at exactly real time. Those are my two cents. Any thoughts anyone?

[adam]

You don't need a script or any other program to use any version of CCE. If you are talking about backing up a DVD using something siimlar to the DVD-RB method then yes you need avisynth scripts and several other applications as well, because it is a PROCESS. You'd need these third party applications and scripts for this process regardless of what encoder you used.

There is no reason why you can't throw any avi to CCE Basic and have it output DVD compliant footage. In this respect, I believe it has a much lower learning curve than something even as simple as TMPGenc, which can often take a great deal of fiddling with to get DVD compliant output.

And it of course has more than one dialog box. There are a number of different variables that you can adjust in any version of CCE.

[rkr1958]

CCE Basic? No learning curve?

Look, it has no controls. Everything needs to be done through a script, so you have to learn a scripting language. Given the number of DIFFERENT responses you get when you ask how to do a simple thing with CCE, from different people, I'm betting it's an obtuse scripting language as well.

So the "learning curve" is steep compared with an application that actually has ... y'know ... more than one dialogue box.

For the project I did last night with CCE Basic all I did was to:
1) Open CCE Basic
2) From within CCE Basic select the AVI file I wish to encode
3) Right click on the AVI file and select the encoding options I wish to use
4) Click 2-pass VBR, select average, min & max bit rates
5) Select Audio output type (i.e., .wav or .mpg)
6) Select where I want the outputs
7) Hit encode
8) Close down CCE Basic when Finished

Now, I know there are other settings that I could tweek, but to encode an AVI this was all I had to do.

Given the expertise of most videohelp users, I'd call this a no-learning curve.

[Jonas_Vedder]

With my computer specs (P4; 1,7GHz; 256MB Ram; 40GB HD) if I wanted to encode a 2h avi to mpeg2 with TMPGEnc with all the options set to achieve the best quality, I would take more than 20 hours wich is absolutely crazy..with Cinema Craft Encoder (CCE), it took me 5 HOURS!!!! It's a hell of a difference! When I had this result I thought something was wrong, maybe the mpeg2 generated by CCE was poor quality...but NO! What an excellent quality it produces...TMPGEnc doesn't do better you bet!
I only use CCE now!

[Soopafresh]

Oh no. Here we go again...

[vhelp]

That was about as simple a "learning curve" as one could get there.
.
For basic no-frills encoding projects, the above should serve anyone
well, in most projects.
.
But, there are those that desired more, and in time, learned how to
obtain the "more" by trial 'n error. That process came about through
acting out the steps. In other words, "do". Anyways.
.
People who use things like scripts, IMO, are those that have gone
the next level up.. or have become Advanced. I say advanced because
scripting is another "learning curve", and requires some programming
background as well as "video-gramming" (IYKWIM) in the routines of
scripting, and what-nots. There is a lot more to scripting than just
typing a coupld of statements into a text file and frameserving it
inside CCE; MC; TMPG; Procoder etc. or other encoder.
.
Then, there is the art of Filter-graming. Utilizing Filter inside a
script is a form of programming too. You have to understand the
inner working of Filters and What they are used for, and best time to
use them in a given project, and knowing if one or more filters should
be applied, etc.
.
Then there is the debuggin stage of these items (Scripting and Filtering)
Thats another form of programming.

Well, you get the picture.

FWIW, there are GUI's that assist or make things easier w/ CCE (and
other Encoders) But these too, have limits. And only (or usually) the
more experienced will know this. But over time, even a beginner will
realize/learn this and move on into the higher ranks for Video Specialists
as some of us our

On my Athlon XP 1800+ setup ...

On don't know the exact numbers, but I really didn't write them down, but
my encoding times w/ TMPGenc goes somewhere's around 2 minutes for a 30
second clip. And, speed will vary, depending upon the format I use in my
AVI captures. Mine is DV, so the speed is pretty fast. Huffy will take
a little longer. I think the Algorithem is hotter to handle, probably.
.
I can tweak TMPGenc to encode almost real-time, and take that same 30 sec
clip, and encode it in 1 minute.
.
So, for a 30 second length clip, and depending on my approach, and my
system spec above:
.
* w/out tweaks - encodes at 2 min
* With Tweaks - encodes at 1 min

And, another FWIW.., for my VHS projects, I much prefer TMPGenc for it,
because it seems to produce the best results, based on my subjective eyes

Cheers,
-vhelp 3036

[reboot]

Just for fun, I did a trial encode with CCE, to the same settings I would use in tmpgenc. It's extremely fast, at almost 2.5x realtime.
BBMpeg, on the other hand is extremely slow, at less than 0.5x