**Variable Bit Rate Encoder(mpeg2) for the mac?**

[videogod]

Is there a software based mpeg2 encoder that used VBR on the mac yet?

I have virtual pc and was wondering if I could install a pc encoder and encode DV that I imported using my mac.

Friend of mine sent me a dvd-r that he created on his pc and he used VBR on it and got 90 mins of great video!!
---D

[watson]

I have compiled portions of mjpegtools-1.6.0-beta2 along with mpeg2dec-0.2.1-mjpegtools-0.7 on for use with Mac OS X. These work great for transcoding mpegs, and I believe you can transcode quicktime movies, and certain avi's. My mileage with a dvd-svcd transcode with mpeg2enc at a "-q" setting of 6 on a new FP iMac w/512 MB ram is about 3 fps.

I will be posting full build instructions as time permits, but you can look at Paul Hagstrom's site (http://www.bu.edu/linguistics/UG/hagstrom/vcd.html) for working info on older versions of the decoder/encoder.

If you choose this route, mjpeg.sourceforge.net has the source code for the encoder. You will also need the free Developer Tools from Apple, and plenty of patience to get all of the dependencies built.

There is also MediaPipe, which gives a lot of the tools a gui, but is somewhat erratic for my tastes, and doesn't give you as much control as the command line tools. The source code with build instructions for a MediaPipe compatible version of the encoder is available, and is practically the same as the mjpegtools-1.6.0-beta1 source.

Both of these routes provide a free, and remarkably good mpeg1/2 encoder for the Apple platform. And to answer your question, yes mpeg2enc does VBR. I believe you could get somewhere on the order of 4 hours of mpeg2 material to fit on a DVD-R, but I wouldn't envy you waiting for the encoding to finish.

[Ross]

MissingMpegTools provides a full feature GUI for MediaPipe's mpeg2encoder.
Also includes the other tools needed to complete the job, mplex,mp2encoder, vcdxgen, &vcdxbuild.
homepage.mac.com/rnc

[resnullius]

there's also media cleaner pro it's rather slow tho... quality is great however. Rather pricy if you don't find it floting on the net...
As to the virual pc thing i don't know i don't have it(not that i haven't looked), but i'm guessing your dv footage is mov... which isn't supported by tmpgenc apparently (i've tried), videopack might work tho but i don't think it does vbr. you could try to frame serve to tmpgenc from premiere in virtual pc but it might not be the fastest way of doing it.

[jo-jo ma]

i post this at risk of being flamed out of existence....

for the price of MCP, and the hardware supercharger, you can get a 1600+ athlon system, and Tunsami encoder for free- which gives you (IMHO) better results than MCP-- and encode in less than half the time

i love my G$, but there is no comparison to peecee's when it comes to S/X/VCD creation (mpeg-2 encoding)- at the prosumer level

[resnullius]

you dont really need the hardware supercharger... although it does make it faster. And personnally i find mcp better at any kind of compression(cause it does mov asf wmv mp3 mpg....) but it is true it'll likely take about 4x as much time... But i was assuming it would'nt be a legal version, tmpgenc cannot legally encode mpeg without buying the mpeg 2 codec... so it's not quite as free as you seem to think jo-jo ma

[nemethmik]

i love my G$, but there is no comparison to peecee's when it comes to S/X/VCD creation (mpeg-2 encoding)- at the prosumer level

I believed that if there is something in which Mac is better than Wintel it is multimedia. And now it turns out that a $50 conversion tool (TMPGEnc) is better than a pricey Mac system

[major]

nemethmik, you're comparing software with hardware. Tmpgenc is for PC because its author developed it for PC. But if he had chosen a mac, it would have been the same powerful. Tmpgenc is so powerful not because it runs on a PC, but because its author is far more talented than most geeks working for big companies.

[jo-jo ma]

resnullius- i was getting anywhere from 40:1 to 55:1 encode times for mpeg-2 ... without the supercharger on a G$ 733
30:1 to 35:1 with the supercharger!!!

for my needs, that was totally unacceptable (two and a half days to encode 120 mins at best speed!)

my dual P3 1Ghz gives me anywhere from 2:1 to 22:1 depending on how many filters, noise reduction, and motion search quality(5:1 with the kind of quality i was getting from vanilla MCP)... using tunsami- that kind of encode time i can live with

my mac still rules NLE, hands down... FCP2.0 and DVDSP have no equal for the money...

all i'm saying is: for mpeg encoding on the mac platform, there are no acceptable consumer priced options (like there are on the peecee)... you can get 'em... but now you're into professional level equipment, minimum thousands of dollars... and way up

i don't think theres anything wrong with having a windoze/mac environment.... i get the best of both worlds

[resnullius]

the problem with dv and tmpgenc is that you need to frameserve to tmpgenc cause it doesn't accept dv input. As frameserving takes more time (took me about 3 hrs to encode 6 mins on my 800mhz pc(same amount of time as when i did it with mcp actually)) you don't save the time doing it by pc when dealing with dv(which was a specification of the question)