Best MPEG2 encoders???

patreb wrote on 5/8/2004, 12:16 PM

I mighte be off asking this question here but anyone knows how Vegas' encoder compares to that of other applications? Would i be better of getting another program to encode MPEG2 files? If so what kind?

Comments

pb wrote on 5/8/2004, 12:32 PM

I've had great success with Main Concept 1.4; however, I think that technology is incorporated into Vegas 5 so there is no prize otehr than a reduction in overall render time. You might look at Canopus Procoder, bit pricey but some people like it.

Peter

John_Cline wrote on 5/8/2004, 4:35 PM

I have evaluated the output quality of Canopus Procoder, TMPGenc Pro, CinemaCraft SP and both the standalone and built-in Main Concept MPEG2 encoders. To me, Canopus Procoder produces the best looking output at any given bitrate. Your mileage may vary...

John

farss wrote on 5/8/2004, 10:03 PM

The other thing I'd add is encoders no matter how good will never produce a better output than input, so no matter what encoder you've got you can usually get much better results by taking care with what you feed into it. And that's not really possible unless you've got the gear to clearly monitor what you're doing. I don't and nor do my clients so I just stick to the MC encoder that comes with Vegas and for mpeg-1 for VCDs use TMPGEnc as I find it handles the crud from off air VHS best.

patreb wrote on 5/8/2004, 10:13 PM

I just some test with Cinema Craft SP and it looks good but the colors look washed out. Is there some kind of preparation procedure you guys do for encoding? (boost the saturation a bit, crush blacks?)

riredale wrote on 5/9/2004, 6:25 PM

There are reports out there on the Internet that compare encoders. I don't have any URLs handy, but do a Google search.

As of last year, some reports said CinemaCraft and TMPGEnc ranked very high on the quality scale, and CinemaCraft had the added advantage of being very fast (greater than real-time encoding speed on a decent computer) while TMPGEnc was like a snail.

But things change. I have no idea how the latest MainConcept encoder does, for example. I would assume that they've narrowed the gap.

Are you seeing "washed-out" colors, or is the overall contrast too low? Perhaps you've changed the setting that encodes to a wider range (0-255) rather than a narrower range of 16-235.