"Best" quality all-in-one converter/encoder DV to

[tmh]

I have become a procoder fan for my DV to mpeg2 encoding. However, in many cases i'd rather not do all the demuxing/muxing and all the other steps involved with all seperate apps. Which all-in-one do folks feel gives the best quality output? My assumption is it's one that allow you to use one of the "pay for" encoders like TMPGenc, Procoder, CCE, mainconcept, etc.

I think The Film machine and maybe a few others can use procoder but I haven't tested this yet - but I will.

Again, not limited to freeware, but not $200+ high quality all-in-one.

[guns1inger]

It's not an all-in-one converter if you need to install and configure several different pieces of software to do it. I don't understand what you are doing in your process if you have all these steps. DV - DVD is pretty straight forward.

I use Vegas, but there are cheaper alternatives that can do the same. My steps are pretty much edit and filter etc in Vegas, output from Vegas (video and AC3 stream), author in DVD Lab Pro.

If you seriously want quality, get the best tool for each job, rather than hoping some other persons canned settings will be good enough for you.

[thecoalman]

mainconcept, etc.

Don't know for a fact but it's my understanding from a lot of posts that Media Studio Pro uses the mainconcept engine for encoding.... 8) Regardless I'm very happy with the results. It will accept just about any file you can throw at it.

It's all I use, I have a simple 3 step process. Capture to AVI>Edit in MSP then output to DVD Compliant MPEG w/AC3>Author (no encoding neccesary in this stage) It's more than your $200 limit but it's also much more than just a encoder.