The best encoder?

[Donny661]

I don't believe most people on these forums buy cce, but there are still some that do and i'm not going to try to figure who has and who hasn't purchased it. The demo vesion gives you all the features of cce for an unlimited amount of time but on every thing you encode it puts a watermark on it, kind of similar to watermarks on tv shows.

Lite version is a lot cheaper($250 US compared to almost $2000), but you don't get all the features, the main difference being you can't use VBR which is a big disadvantage when you try to make SVCDs, CVDs, etc.

WeedVender: You don't need to put in your avisynth script ConvertToRGB32, just leave it at YUY2 because cce accepts other color spaces unlike TMPG where you can only feed it RGB. It should speed up your encodes

[jolo]

Donny,

First the thing with accusations werecaused by some misunderstandings between crahak and I. I should have send him a private message, if I felt attacked and/or offended, but I allowed my button to be pressed. So I would like to apoloize to the group for that. This has been a great string.

Great comments and I'll certainly give them a try.
It appears that all of the encoders have some real strengths and some real weaknesses and that there isn't one that really has it call together. It does appear that one chooses to use the one which fits their style. I know for me TMPG is fantastic but ........ I hate how slow it is and theo sound issies. CCE, face, crappy interface. Puzzlingly bad. LSX - fast, but I struggle with how the screen looks, it is always full screen, sometimes stretched, plus if it bombs, it is over with, all gone.

I would like to learn some about two I haven't tried, Mainconcept and Honestech encoder.

Jon

[Nelson37]

I find if I am making VCD, or anythng under 1500 bitrate, which is pretty much the same thing, TMPGenc gives better looking output. Built-in filtering and other features is nice. Use TooLame for better sound.

Anything over 1500, mostly CVD and SVCD, CCE (2.50) looks better to me. It is also dramatically faster. I set number of passes at 3, which makes 4 passes in total. Few tools and bad interface, but that's like complaining about the paint job on your Maserati.

LSX and Panasonic I only tried briefly, Panasonic -old version- OK for VCD, but I make few of those, and TMPGenc better tools, interface, and equivalent output. Did not like LSX output, though I hear it has improved.

MainConcept made a very bad impression with an extremely buggy video editor, but I do keep hearing good things about their new encoder.

One anomaly worth mentioning is that TMPGenc may be better at handling interlaced input, I mostly IVTC captured movies, DVD rips would be similar. TMPGenc has successfully done videos where CCE gave crappy output, interlacing a factor.

[vitualis]

The Panasonic MPEG encoder (old = 2.51) is excellent for standard VCDs. I personally prefer it over TMPGEnc. However, it is slow -- but the Adobe Premiere plugin is really extremely handy... If they only made an Adobe Premiere plugin version of TMPGEnc...

With the Panasonic MPEG encoder, you have to be a little bit careful though. The encoder (with the VCD templates) is only optimised for NTSC. For PAL, make sure you change the GOP sequence to 12-12-3 (third from the top in the drop down list).

Also, keep the colour space on "PC" rather than "TV".

And, you need to remux the actual MPEG file before using it for VCD.

Regards.

[kitty]

If you are a low output hobbiest then using the cost of $1950 for CCE to buy a P4 3GHz machine might make more sense. If you are a production house then buy the best. Anyone in between will need to judge their finances themselves.

[SpeedBump]

For all You who are complaining about the GUI for CCE. I have no idea how to Launch CCE, yet I have done, hundreds, of perfect DVD, AVI, and DV encodes with it, including subtitles, chapters, title picture...etc.

Now you must be asking yourself, How?

One word DVD2SVCD

[jolo]

I've used DVD2SVCD, had it bomb out on be a few times, I'm, always looking for a simpler answer, researching better products.

If I'm going straight from a DVD, I usually use Eazy VCD which now works for both VCD and SVCD and has given me incredible quality with one click and is free.

The only negative for me is that it used TMPG which is sooooo slow. Truthfully, there has to be one product that can successfully handle all this stuff.

What an amazingly market of products. There seems to be a new one every day and with every new one, it seems the same, some good stuff, some bad stuff.

I have to admit though, for stability and the ability to find answers, especially in this forum, TMPG is the best for encoding, until I see something different.

Jon

[Racoty]

I have had very good results using uleads videostudio 6 it uses the main concept mpeg encoder....You can encode files or do direct capture to mpeg 1 or 2 .....It is also a great editting program...The cost ranges from $79 to $99........As far as pinnacle goes i will never buy another product from them again there support sucks.

[NightWing]

Did, like all, a bunch of test a while back. Something faster would be nice.

Was wondering if anyone has put WinCoder from interVideo through some test? Looks like a simple file converter.

The only bug in Tmpeg I have found that is some what bad is putting a large { as in 3+ hours } file to it will crash. Else it just works!