MPEG Hardware Encoder

[whscheid]

I am looking into purchasing for my company a hardware encoder to cut down on the time for converting projects into mpeg-2 files. We use Final Cut Pro and mostly cut DV, but I'm not sure I want to limit myself. Currently we are looking at Plextor ConvertX PVR for Mac and Lacie FastCoder. Any suggestions?

[jgombos]

I have the PC version of the Plextor, and you should be okay with that as long as your source is analog.

If you want to do any VCDs, forget it. It's a nightmare. It's advertised and spec'd to support mpeg-1, but it's quite misleading. The capability is useless, because the hardware cannot produce a VCD compliant mpeg1 file. So you must rerender it, which would kill that time you would like to save. I'm pretty disgusted with it myself. There is little value to generating a VCD-non-compliant mpeg1 file. The tv402u cannot even get the resolution right for that standard.