TMPGEnc 3.0 products vs new 4.0 products?

[Valnar]

I'm a happy user of TMPGEnc DVD Author 3 and also have TMPGEnc Plus 2.5.

For MPEG-2 and DVD duties (not blu-ray), is there any advantage to upgrading to DVD Xpress 4.0 and DVD Authoring Works 4? I know TMPGEnc has put out buggy products before and it takes them awhile to stabilize them.

Is it worth upgrading?


On a related note, I use and love x264 for all my H.264 needs, but out of curiosity, how is the TMPGEnc H.264 output?

[Semaphoric]

I've been wondering what the advantages to upgrading would be as well. The only feature that grabs me as new is the 'Smart Scene Search'.

The feature I would like to see the most would be thorough and accurate instructions on how to do custom menus in the Help files. You can really do a lot in this program, but Pegasys is putting their lamp under a bushell by making the directions of menu customiaztion so obscure and, frequently, flat-out wrong.

[deadrats]

I'm a happy user of TMPGEnc DVD Author 3 and also have TMPGEnc Plus 2.5.

For MPEG-2 and DVD duties (not blu-ray), is there any advantage to upgrading to DVD Xpress 4.0 and DVD Authoring Works 4? I know TMPGEnc has put out buggy products before and it takes them awhile to stabilize them.

Is it worth upgrading?


On a related note, I use and love x264 for all my H.264 needs, but out of curiosity, how is the TMPGEnc H.264 output?

tmpgenc uses a slightly feature-limited (read: crippled) version of main concept's h264 encoder, a pretty good encoder in it's own right, one that's licensed to other products as well (sony's vegas uses it, as well as sony's own h264 encoder). the one thing that does give me a bit of pause is that at times main concept's h264 encoder has given me below acceptable quality results, but that rare and it just seems to have trouble with certain types of source, with no rhyme or reason to give any hint as to when it will show up (same thing holds for nero's avc, usually excellent quality, but sometimes...).

perhaps most telling is that divx bought main concept a while ago and instead of using the main concept h264 codec, divx is working on their own h264 codec, now i'm sure divx developer's probably used main concept's h264 code base as a starting point, but clearly they didn't think much of it since they decided to redo it as evidenced by the fact that the divx developed h264 encoder is still in alpha (and cli) and the decoder is still in beta.

then i have a problem with the way pegasys does business: as you mentioned often some builds of its software will have some nasty bugs, but instead of releasing a patch, they expect you to simply purchase the new release that corrects the bugs that the version you bought shouldn't have had in the first place. sometimes the new build will have a single new feature as a way of justifying the new version but a quick review of the change log will show that most of the coding went into fixing bugs.

when i was in school studying comp sci, if i turned in a project that didn't work the way it was supposed to, full of bugs, i would have recieved an 'F' for that assignment but these software companies not only have no problem selling buggy software, they also have no problem charging for a version with those bugs fixed and on top of that they complain if their software is "pirated" (when in fact they stole from their customers first) and they seem to spend more time coding copy-protection mechanisms (which are easily circumvented) than in actually coding a properly working application. it really pisses me off.

if all you do is mpeg-2 and dvd and you don't need ac3, then tmpgenc 2.5 is more than enough. if you need ac3 audio, then you can still get away with using only tmpgenc 2.5, simply demux the video and audio streams, use tmpgenc to create the mpeg-2, use one of the open source apps to create your ac3 stream and then mux them together or use the uncompressed LCPM option within tmpgenc.

and this is coming from a guy that has the latest build of tmpgenc xpress 4...

[Valnar]

I would have never thought they used someone else's compressor in their product. Why not TMPGEnc instead?

Do you know what it used in DVD Author 3 and DVD Authoring Works 4?

[deadrats]

[quote="Valnar"]I would have never though they used someone else's compressor in their product. Why not TMPGEnc instead?

they license other firms compressors for divx (obviously), quick time (you can use apple's h264), vc-1 (microsoft) and mp4 (you use main concept's for avc), for mpeg-1 and mpeg-2 they do use their own encoding engine (as far as i can tell, i may be wrong, see below.

Do you know what it used in DVD Author 3 and DVD Authoring Works 4?

haven't used dvd author 3 in a while so i don't know, dvd authoring works 4 it only supports outputing to divx and mpeg-2 and i also know for a fact that since dvd author 2 they have been using intercom's mpeg video transcoder:

http://www.intercom.co.jp/english/transcoder/

and i can also tell you that there is marked better quality in video encoded with dvd author works 4 vs that encoded with tmpgenc express 4 at the same settings.

you might want to download the 20 day demo of intercom's encoder/transcoder and see how you like it.

[vhelp]

I would have never thought they used someone else's compressor in their product. Why not TMPGEnc instead?

Do you know what it used in DVD Author 3 and DVD Authoring Works 4?

I think that this is because Hori is no longer the developer and has long since left the scene. None of these schunannagins ever took place then. But didn't he sell tmpgenc over to pegasys to begin with--I don't know. But he was behind the 12x 's back in the gold old (beta) days of 2001, when it was free!

As for me, I'm still using TMGPenc v2.520 for all my mpeg needs, though more and more I'm working with h264 format videos now.

-vhelp 4990

[gyoshi]

then i have a problem with the way pegasys does business: as you mentioned often some builds of its software will have some nasty bugs, but instead of releasing a patch, they expect you to simply purchase the new release that corrects the bugs that the version you bought shouldn't have had in the first place. sometimes the new build will have a single new feature as a way of justifying the new version but a quick review of the change log will show that most of the coding went into fixing bugs.

and this is coming from a guy that has the latest build of tmpgenc xpress 4...

Their updates/patches are free. As a 4.0 XPress user, you should know that. By your logic, they should have charged you for the 4.5 update...and the 4.6 update, both of which added some big features that probably would have justified charging you for.

The only TMPGEnc product that I can think of that fits your complaints is MPEG Editor 2.0 Premium. But then again, if you bought that, they let you upgrade to MPEG Editor 3 for free.

Pegasys and their products aren't perfect, and yes they tend to be buggy when they release them, but they aren't as bad about patches and bug fixes as you make them out to be.