Other Mpeg2 encoders ?????

[mol3000]

everyone is fighting over tmpgnc and cce.... what other mpeg2 converters can i use to chge .avi files to dvd........ i no it has to be more than 2.... and i no panasonic suppose to be comin out soon....

[offline]

Software encoders BEST

The current Panasonic encoder is great for VCD's; there is a new encoder
from Ligos that is not bad, and Canopus's procoder is looking to be on a par with tmpgenc but faster.

Hardware encoders REAL TIME QUALITY

There are also a number of hardware encoders (c-cube etc) that range in price from $150 - $10,000

Application encoders/renderers OK

Mostly mpeg-1 mpeg-2 software codecs plugged in to various
apps such as Ulead and Premier.

[Darr1960]

Try trex although you can't vary the bit rate it an easy program you use..

[Mirror_Image]

Try the trial version of Canopus ProCoder.

[mol3000]

somebody said adobe does also.... anyone use this for enconding mpeg2 for dvd ??????

[thxkid]

Buy you a MPEG2 Hardware encoder card good ones for home use sell from $99 to $499 my now out of print Happuage PVR does great to fantastic MPEG 2 from 480x480 2000 bitrate to 4000 bitrate for SVCD and 704x480 from 4000 to 8500 for DVD, I paid $199 but some places are selling them out for $99.

[coops75]

I have played around with a lot of encoders and while I am no expert, I find little or no difference in picture quality on any of my tv,s (13" to 36") between any of these encoders. Speed is an issue and I like the ligos premiere plugin for that reason. Cce and Procoder are outstanding also. However, I have a 60" widescreen tv and here I can tell the difference and so will be buying Procoder because I find it to be the better one, and I cannot afford cce. Tmpg is good but slow and I don't think it handles fast movement well.
For what it,s worth.

[mol3000]

thanks.... where can i dl Procoder from.... to test it out

also is there a mpeg2 encoder out there (no matter the price) where i can get my stuff as clear a a regular dvd?????

[ric499]

Downloaded the Canopus encoder. Haven't tried it yet, but the price seems pretty outrageous at $699. Quality/speed will have to be pretty amazing to justify giving up on TMPEGenc. Was also looking at CienemaCraft. Looks like the company/program is going through some changes. I can't find a price or even how to get a price? Any info on current CCE?

[sdispun]

AVI to Mpeg1 (highest bitrate) by TMPGenc
then Flask http://www.flaskmpeg.net/ from Mpeg1 to Mpeg2 DVD.
Not the best way, but hey! it's free.

[ToeCutter]

Downloaded the Canopus encoder. Haven't tried it yet, but the price seems pretty outrageous at $699. Quality/speed will have to be pretty amazing to justify giving up on TMPEGenc. Was also looking at CienemaCraft. Looks like the company/program is going through some changes. I can't find a price or even how to get a price? Any info on current CCE?

If you haven't used CCE, be prepared for big disappointment. CCE is very...well, bitchy is an accurate description. It simply refuses to work about 90% of the time for no apparent reason. The error messages are useless, giving no indication what went wrong. The interface is completely whack. Quality is outstanding, when it works. I've found TMPGEnc to be much more accomodating. CCE is priced at around $2000, hardly affordable. IMHO, it simply isn't worth that for what it does. It can't accept any file wider than 720 pixels! For $2000 it should do everything but take out the trash.

Canopus ProCoder seems pretty good too. Although it has spit up on me a few times, it has a very simple, easy to understand interface. The output quality is great, on par with TMPGEnc, but much faster.

I've had great luck with the MPEG encoder boxed up with Ulead DVD Workshop. I believe it's MainConcept. My MiniDV to DVD transfers look great. The DVD-Rs burned by DVDWS have worked in every DVD player I've tried. Unless I'm working on something that requires some very complex conversion, I use DVDWS almost exclusively.

That said, Hori-san needs to get hot on optimizing TMPGEnc. It's a great product, having only a single, but very serious weakness: It's too damn slow. I'd pay twice what he's asking for it if it were only a bit faster.

[BJ_M]

thanks.... where can i dl Procoder from.... to test it out :wink:

also is there a mpeg2 encoder out there (no matter the price) where i can get my stuff as clear a a regular dvd?????

a lot of the "regular" dvd you see - well some of them , and a LOT of speciallity dvd's are done with software encoding now ... cce and tmpgenc . i use tmpgenc more often as i can frame serve targa files to it .. which are being spit out of rayz. so in answer to your question .. sure .... but it helps a lot that i am working from anywhere from 2k to 4k Cineon Kodak scans or original source material shot on High def. the source material makes a heck of diff. as is the fact if you capture over even s-video , it does not come close to componet capture which isnt as good as sdi capture (and dv isnt all that great either really) .

[coops75]

In response to your question mol3000,the quality of your dvd is dependant largly on the source. Don't forget that a movie you may buy was shot on film at $1000 a minute, encoded on $100,000 hardware often a frame at a time by professionals.
However, if you have say dv, you can get excellent dvd reproductions with procoder or cce and to a lesser extent, tmpgnc. Each has drawbacks sure, but if picture quality is your concern then try each one out. I can really tell the difference on a large screen tv.
People having the kind of problems they report with cce for ex are either not using it properly or are using a cracked version which in itself may cause all kinds of problems.
Bottom line is, experiment yourself with a short clip (2 mins is ok) with each program using the same parameters. If you cannot tell the difference, then go with the cheapest.

[ToeCutter]

[quote="coops75"]
People having the kind of problems they report with cce for ex are either not using it properly or are using a cracked version which in itself may cause all kinds of problems.
quote]

Come on, coops, how can I resist such juicy bait?

I'll agree with your comment, although it doesn't apply to me. CCE has HUGE limitations. If my experience was due to a crack or a case of not RTFM, I'd capitulate. The simple fact remains that CCE is by no means robust. Some encoding sessions failed after several hours, giving no indication why the job failed. I have used the uncracked trial in hopes of some excellent results. I have successfully encoded some great footage with CCE, just not consistiently.

The quality provided by CCE's output simply cannot outweigh it's difficult nature. There are plenty of MPEG encoders out there that can work far bettter than CCE at marginal expense in quality, TMPGEnc being the most visible.

Summary: CCE is not the panacea that most assume it is.

[ric499]

The $2000 is for the CCE Pro right? Does the CCE Lite or whatever the mid-range one work at all? What are the price ranges for them? Starting to sound like just stick with TMPEGenc for a while and hope for the next release to contain some optimization of the speed.

I agree with the other comments too. A lot of it is the quality of the source. High quality DV gives good results almost regardless. Plus, we'll never match the scene by scene or even frame by frame encoding of commercial films unless we do the same thing, which most of us aren't going to do.

I am amazed that some of the consumer targeted products aren't significantly better though. It really shouldn't take much to improve them considerably. Guess they sacrifice everything for speed and ease of use though.

[BJ_M]

a lot of comercial stuff is flying spot or ccd telecined directly to 525 line only (unlike the 2k - 4k files i work with) -- though they are color corrected (ussually) on the fly with DaVinci - the quality is a lot lower. But the cost is on an order of magnitude lower also.

[adam]

Toecutter cce definitely has some bugs but they are extremely easy to bypass them. If used correctly it is just as stable as TMPGenc or any other encoder for that matter. There are plenty of FAQs on cce which explain how to set it so that it is stable. Sorry but if you are having compatibility/stability problems then you are doing something wrong. Sure for the price you shouldn't have to implement workarounds to get it to work correctly, but like I said, its not hard to get it to work right.

I had problems with cce at first. I read some faq's and made some very minor changes. After literally thousands of encodes since then I have not had a single crash, and this is on several different pc's all with varying hardware and software configurations. CCE is perfectly stable and the only limitation I can see is that its mpeg1 quality is poor. Other than that it is an exceptional encoder in my opinion and beats TMPGenc in quality on most sources, and in speed in all cases.

For the money TMPGenc is the clear winner but if you have access to cce its a great alternative.

[BJ_M]

yes i have to agree w/ adam .. cce is wonderfull encoder, but downside (in my case) is that i can not frame serve jpeg's or tga or any thing like that to it .. with tmpgenc i can ..

if there is a way to serve to CCE or have CCE do encoding from tga files - i would like to know ..

[ToeCutter]

Toecutter cce definitely has some bugs but they are extremely easy to bypass them. If used correctly it is just as stable as TMPGenc or any other encoder for that matter. There are plenty of FAQs on cce which explain how to set it so that it is stable. Sorry but if you are having compatibility/stability problems then you are doing something wrong. Sure for the price you shouldn't have to implement workarounds to get it to work correctly, but like I said, its not hard to get it to work right.

I had problems with cce at first. I read some faq's and made some very minor changes. After literally thousands of encodes since then I have not had a single crash, and this is on several different pc's all with varying hardware and software configurations. CCE is perfectly stable and the only limitation I can see is that its mpeg1 quality is poor. Other than that it is an exceptional encoder in my opinion and beats TMPGenc in quality on most sources, and in speed in all cases.

For the money TMPGenc is the clear winner but if you have access to cce its a great alternative.

Adam, I can appreciate your comments, and perhaps I am doing something wrong. I've obviously made no effort to mask my frustration with CCE. I too have read countless FAQs (doom9, Derrow, etc.) and have still been unable to achieve decent, consistent results. I'd love to know which FAQs you have read as CCEs documentation is horribly lacking. We both seem to agree that for the cash, CCE offers little value for the average video amateur.

Please list some of the FAQs you mentioned. After all, I think that's why we both use this forum.

[BJ_M]

looks like new version out today also CCE-SP 2.64.01.10 Trial and CCE-Lite 2.64.00.24
http://www.cinemacraft.com/eng/home.html

[BJ_M]

oh yea -- new users manual ... much better also http://www.cinemacraft.com/files/doc/ccs_264e.pdf

[trekkermaster]

Though i'm not an expert, i just wish to say that TMPGenc is a pretty good encoder.

I use it to encode to mpeg2 my dl mpeg1 from the net. It has all the options and the filters i need. True it takes a long time to encode, i don't really care, i leave my comp run overnight while i hit the sac

I have great results at 2-pass VBR, 352x480 CVD resolution and an average of 2050b/sec to fit a 45min episode on a 80min CD.

[kik]

CCE runs for about $1800usd, btw

[Deisel Weisel]

Re: CinemaCraft

Is multi-pass VBR a new feature of CC-Lite, I thought it was restricted to CBR? What are the restrictions of Lite over SP and Pro, is it purely speed?

[BJ_M]

http://www.cinemacraft.com/eng/spec.html

differences between dif versions

price is now $1950US btw

[Deisel Weisel]

From the confusing layout of the individual Lite page, it looked like Lite could multi-pass VBR. From the spec page (thanks BJ), it's clear that it can't VBR. They got me all excited for second

[DigVidLab.com]

Used both CCE lite and pro, major disappointment in most every aspect.
Not only is it extreamly picky about source video, its not that fast or
that good.

IMHO, TMPGEnc is the only choice. Use it for *all* my MPEG1 and 2
encoding, never disappointed!

HTH, Good luck!

[jentre]

What about Cleaner? anyone tried it?

[BJ_M]

cleaner is one of the worse encoders ive ever seen or used and i am being kind to it .. takes the longest time also --- even using it with mpeg charger ..

of course this is my opinion and other mileage may vary ...

[mol3000]

your are right DigVidLab.com, it is very shitty when it comes to certain video.... thats one thing i hate about it ..... but tmpgnc takes any kind of avi file..... i hope they fix that in the future