What are the current encoders comparable to tmpgenc in quality?

[inuyasha]

Hello all.
I have not done much dv to dvd conversion for more than 3 years now and will be restarting again, mainly on home dv video. I had tried different encoders and was very pleased with tmpgenc's quality particularly at medium or even lower bitrates. Speed wasn't an issue as I left machine running overnight.

3 years is a long time. There must have been advancements or new products released in the encoder field. I remebered those days enthusiasts would post screen shoots comparing quality of different encoders and compared them at near forensic level.

I am wondering if the old tried, trusted, and true tmpgenc is still the favorite for some, when quality of conversion matters, or newer apps have narrowed the gap?

Would those of you who have been (or had been) a long time user of tmpgenc and also have experimented with other encoders share your opinions on what is your favourite encoder in terms of quality of encoding only (no regards to features, UIs, easeness of use etc)?

Thank you in advance for your thoughts.

[redwudz]

I still use TMPGEnc Plus most of the time. The others are faster, but TMPGEnc seems easier to set up. Probably the two main contenders are CCE and ProCoder, both faster. HC is also a very good freeware encoder. TMPGEnc faults may be in not doing any more development work to speed it up a little.

Quality comparisons are difficult as the encoders have different settings and work slightly different. I can't tell much difference between them myself. But others likely have their favorites.

And welcome back.

[Soopafresh]

I'm a fan of HCenc. You can check it out by downloading FAVC and feeding it an AVI file.

[kevo777]

HC or QuEnc.

AviSynth scripting never hurts either.

[inuyasha]

Thanks for your replies, and redwudz your welcoming.
Looks like the main players remain the same as they were. I agree TMPGenc could have improved it some more instead of leaving it where it was. I tried QuEnc before and back then, it was worse off at low bit rates compared to tmpgenc. But I will definitely give HC and QE a try with their newer versions.

What about products from adobe? sony? Ulead?
I also noticed tmpgenc xpress is now up to version 4. Has the speed been improved from 3 to 4?

[themaster1]

procoder ALL THE WAY

[lordsmurf]

Procoder 1.x and MainConcept are better. I use TMPGEnc only when I need the built-in filters.

[ronnylov]

HCEnc and Mainconcept Encoder are my current favourites and the quality with the right settings is as least as good as TMPGEnc.

[towtruck]

I'll drink to HCenc. Did a super job with footage of a water skiier, shot by my handheld from inside the towboat. And the options available through AviSynth (required by HCenc) give lots of possibilities. Don't forget GSpot, Imgburn, and GFD for authoring.

Enjoy!

[regjo]

procoder is the best.dont even try the others because they cant even get close to procoders quality

[inuyasha]

I have definitely heard something good about procoder 1.x. Problem is I can't find it in the canopus site anymore. Does anymore know if a trial 1.x version is available anywhere for download?

[ronnylov]

In my opinion Procoder 2 is equally good in quality as Procoder 1 but the newer version is faster. I have not tried Procoder 3 but there is a trial version.

Procoder Express is more reasonably priced but I could not find it on canopus homepage. Is it discontinued?

[Jeremy of Many]

I've also been out of the game for about 3.5 - 4 years. I've encoded and authored some DVDs from DV before and just wanted to know what you guys do to take the audio from a video and make it AC3 for authoring programs to put into a VOB?
I extract the audio as WAV with VirtualDub, encode to AC3 with BeSweet and then use TMPGEnc DVD Author.

[towtruck]

ffmpeggui for converting to ac3 or mp2. It will go directly from a *.avi, without having to extract to wav first, although for some reason it has always given me a divide by zero error which I have always ignored as it still gives me a good ac3.

I like GuiforDVDAuthor for authoring.

[towtruck]

P.S.

ffmpeggui also goes from wav to ac3 (without the error message), but why not eleiminate a step??

[SCDVD]

Does anyone know about Procoder Express? It supposedly uses the same encoder engine as its big brother but doesn't have as many usage modes such as the ability to select multiple output formats and run it in one operation. I was looking at Canopus's web site yesterday http://www.canopus.com/home.php and found no mention of it. A link to their Procoder Express page from a search engine is a dead link. Has Prododer Express been dropped?

[towtruck]

Have you noticed that Canopus has been bought out??? Maybe a policy change removed express???

[45tripp]

I have not tried Procoder 3 but there is a trial version.

Where?
not that I know of. Still only 1.25.

Procoder Express is more reasonably priced but I could not find it on canopus homepage. Is it discontinued?

Yes it's discontinued.
And yes it uses the exact same engine as Procoder 2.
There are a few limitations (e.g. no mastering quality; dubious option anyway), but it's the engine you're after. Pick it up while you still can.

Besweet is old.
I always go to uncompressed first. Good practice.
Aften is the leading free ac3 encoder, which was born of ffmpeg.
EncWAVtoAC3 is an aften powered gui.

gl

p.s. HC kicks arse

[SCDVD]

There are a few limitations (e.g. no mastering quality; dubious option anyway), but it's the engine you're after. Pick it up while you still can.

What is "mastering quality" anyway? Is it just a default higher bitrate or something than you can manually set in any case. If there is no specific spec on what "mastering quality" means, it sounds like some sort of blather out of their marketing department.

[themaster1]

Nope default setting is "highest" i believe depending of what your type of ouput is(dvd,svcd..) ....and then u have "mastering quality" hehe and here >>> be prepared for fantastic results
bitrate advised 7800

edit: Procoder Express doesn't seem to have "mastering quality" so try pro coder 1 or 2 or...3

I don't know the specs of this mode all i know is what my eyez see, & what they see is definitevely great check this topic

[45tripp]

Probably just a wider motion estimation range or slower more precise method.
Can't ever be sure with procoder though.

You can make a loose comparison to using tmpg with the highest motion search precision.
Slowwww and often detrimental to quality. Certainly in Plus the 'fast' method is vastly superior.
With procoder you may fare better than tmpg, but nothing worth the extra time.
I suppose there are scenarios where god awfully slow motion search actually returns something better, but you'd have to look hard and what's more likely is you wasting time and possibly ending up with something worse. I don't think it's ever worth it.

gl

[SCDVD]

Probably just a wider motion estimation range or slower more precise method.
Can't ever be sure with procoder though.

How does a problem with a range of motion estimation show itself? What does the resulting video look like in this case?

[45tripp]

Won't be visible, barley measurable.

The problem is encoding time. Quantifiable, real.

Try it out yourself.
If you think you can see a difference and that it's worth the extra time, then it is.

gl

[jagabo]

As SCVCD points out the difference in quality (in bitrate modes) or file size (in constant quality mode) is minimal when going from say, Normal to Highest. But the encoding times goes up several fold. You may end up spending 6 times longer (with what's already the slowest MPEG encoder) to get a 5 percent improvement in quality.

[ronnylov]

I was probably wrong regarding trial of procoder 3. On canopus homepage it advertised procoder 3 and that there was a trial version of procoder but I never filled the form to download it... Sorry...