If you want it done MUCH faster, use the MainConcept standalone MPG2 encoder, version 1.4.

They have a downloadable demo.

www.mainconcept.com

It is very, very good, and fast.

The demo though puts a watermark on stuff. Uou can also try TMPGenc (www.tmpgenc.com).
Why do you need a seperate mpeg conversion plugin? Does the Vegas one not do something you need?

If you want it done MUCH faster, use the MainConcept standalone MPG2 encoder, version 1.4.

kentwolf: If the settings are identical, is the commercial version that much faster? This is the first I've heard of this. I have looked at the PDF file for the Mainconcept standalone encoder and have a pretty good idea of what additional features it has, but I didn't know it was significantly faster.

Any idea of how much faster?

>>...Any idea of how much faster?..

It converts a little faster than real time.

Whatever the length of your video, it converts faster than that.

You ought to try the demo. Yes, it leaves the water mark, but that's pretty decent that it's not an "obscuring" watermark. You can see how well the program really works on your own PC.

I went with the extra expense because I was archiving 11 years of video. It was just taking an incredibly long time with either DVD-A encoding or Vegas. DVD-A/Vegas did a fine job, but we are talking bulk conversions required. The MC 1.4 batch conversion abilities are really nice.

Well, I'm glad I went to the extra expense.

MC 1.4 does an outstanding job of MPG2 conversion, but it seems to be about half the time of Vegas or DVD-A, maybe better.

MC 1.4 converts to MPG2 faster than DVD-A, Vegas, (new) Premiere Pro, or Adobe Encore; even though they *all* use the Main Concept encoder. Beats them all hands down.

The MC1.4 has the ability to actually capture in MPG2. Not that an editor would want that, but that is how fast the conversion is; faster than real time.

To me, a very worthwhile expense. I love it.

Thank you.

MC v1.4 does true 2-pass encoding and it also does real-time DV capture to MPEG2 transcoding (if your machine is fast enough.)

James

Why wouldn't the Main Concept encoder that comes with Vegas 4.0 be as quick as the stand alone unit? I thought that I read somewhere that the two programs are the same, only one is a plug-in.

>>...Why wouldn't the Main Concept encoder that comes with Vegas 4.0 be
>>as quick as the stand alone unit?...

That is a good question.

I really don't know why, but I have not seen any of the plug-in/built-in encoders work as fast as the standalone.

I don't know if it has to do with the extra program overhead or what. All I know is that they're not.

(Conspiracy theory: I wonder if that is "by design," so as to promote sales of the stand alone encoder.)

I really don't know.

They may work as well with respect to the final product, but they are not as fast.

The Main Concept version in Vegas 4.0 is 1.0. Is a plug-in update available to your knowledge?

kentwolf,

I have downloaded the demo version of MC's stand alone encoder. I get underflow errors when I select MP2 or MP1 formats. Seems to work fine when selecting DVD though, any ideas what causes the errors?

burchis,

"Why wouldn't the Main Concept encoder that comes with Vegas 4.0 be as quick as the stand alone unit? "

The standalone version is updated more frequently, with constant improvements. The plug-in version was current at the time of contractural delivery to Sonic Foundry, but that was some time ago. Sony may not be willing to buy another version until Vegas 5. (They could even go with another vendor.) By that time Main Concept's version may have incorporated even more improvements. Probably will have.

The contractural version of the plugin for Vegas 5 will entail yet another configuration freeze and the process will start over again, with the standalone version getting better than the plug-in because the plug-in's configuration is frozen. There for a while a new version of Nero was coming out about every month. I doubt that Main Concept will improve at quite such a "breathless" rate, but their programmers are always making improvements. The field of MPEG conversion is very competitive and nobody does a perfect job yet. There remains much room for improvement.

-- Seeker --

Okay... Now I see that I was wasting my time trying to get the Vegas Plug-In to trigger the 1.4 encoder (someone told me to just install it in the C:\Program Files\Sonic Foundry\Shared Plug-Ins\File Formats\MCMPEG directory, but it didn't seem to make a difference).

Yes, the standalone version seems to encode faster, but I think that the default settings also sacrifice a tiny bit of quality for the greater speed. I encoded the same bit of video both ways, and I can see a very slight difference. Unfortunately, there are so many "nerd knobs" for tweaking the standalone version's parameters, I found it really difficult to determine what setting were different. It is substantially quicker (by a good 25% if my memory serves me correctly).

If anyone knows how to fool Vegas into using the 1.4 version, please let me know. Since, as we all know, Vegas isn't the quickest NLE when it comes to encoding (although the results are pretty good).

>>...any ideas what causes the errors?

I never use the MPG1 or 2 settings, but it looks like if your audio mode is not set correctly, that will cause the errors; especially on MPG1.

Set the audio to Layer 1 or 2. Other N/A modes will be greyed out.

Worked for me...

Thank you.