Thanks John for the information. Nothing beats actual experience with an app. Thanks again for heads-up.

"Tho, I think we all will be reviewing our power usage with the never ending increases of the energy bills."
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Tell me about it.
It's -31C here now with a -51C windchill. I can hear the furnace kicking in/out/in/out and every time it does I can see my more and more of toshiba A3 money getting eaten up. And my van of course which gets at least 600Km to a tank in the summer, sinks down to a measly 350Km in this weather.

Tomorrow it gets colder.... February weather.... here we come!

Another annoyance is that Encore will not accept HD MPEG2 files that have been encoded in Procoder 3.
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John,
I was thinking about buying Procoder 3 because I find the Mpeg 2 SD renders from Vegas too soft. I use a CBR of 8,000,000 so I am getting about the best I am going to get out of the Main Concept encoder built into Vegas. I have even encoded at 25 MBps on an HD DVD and I am still not satisfied.

Despite the limitations you described, do you feel that Procoder 3 is a worthwhile purchase?

John

It's -31C here now with a -51C windchill. I can hear the furnace kicking in/out/in/out

Not bad. Here in L.A. we've had some cold records too. It's been so cold that I've been tempted to look for the lighting instructions for my heating furnace. Haven't used it since 2001, so I don't remember exactly how to turn on the pilot flame.

Brrrr!

And my Prius gets barely 624 miles (1004 km) on a 12 gallon (45L) tank., when driven on the freeway at about 62mph (100 km/h), roundtrip, same day.

Despicable.

:O)

"And my Prius gets barely 624 miles (1004 km) on a 12 gallon (45L) tank.,"
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WOW!
I got a 100L tank....and we're paying 1.10 a liter now.

Our temps aren't really records here... the norms in Manitoba will hit around -35 or-40C in February. That temp isn't so bad.... but then throw the wind chill temps in on top of that and it gets expensive. In February my heating bill is around $550

Coursedesign, what was your GPS coordinates ------- maybe a little arctic weather by special delivery ------------------------------------------- ;-)

Blink, here in the Midwest, not as cold as you are facing, but energy cost are out of control and things break really easy in this cold weather. My favorite 4x4 truck that I use for plowing out our 3/4 mile driveway seems to be in use way too much at 5 miles to the gallon; snow, rain, ice,...etc.... crazy Midwest weather, really should move,---but too much sun in FL and too smog in L.A.--plus expecting the big one------my wife wants Japan for 5 years then maybe Hawaii but too much sun in my younger years, with REX and Dinos, has made me sensitive to average UV levels. Exposure to some exotic metals didn't help either. Of course, those asteroids are a big bang too. ;-)

Well. I'll tell ya.... Every so often when crap happens and I have to get out and change a tire or something at -40, I swear at our Manitoba Winters and wish for a warmer US temperature. But then I've been living here for long enough so that it just wouldn't feel right any other way. There is nothing more beautiful than the Manitoba prairies in the dead of Winter with the Northern lights flashing overhead!

> mpeg...... better quality, AVCHD..... longer running time. Pick your "lesser evil"

Ok, I see. Almost all my projects are over 90 minutes, and often 2 hours+ long. So my quality is always affected by the maximum bitrate that I can fit on the disc.

For that length, you should use real Blu-ray format on BD-R discs.

What's cool about Ulead MF6+ is that it will write all the formats: DVD, VCD, HD DVD, 3x DVD, AVCHD and Blu-ray, all from the same application!

John,

Yes, I can say without reservation that I feel it is a worthwhile purchase. In my opinion, Procoder produces the best looking MPEG2 output of any encoder I have ever tried, particularly with video sources. I use Procoder for a variety of other encoding tasks, including WMV, VC-1 and h.264. The batch encoder function is quite nice, too.

To clarify, it is only HD MPEG2 files that Encore complains about, it will happily ingest Procoder encoded SD MPEG2 files. Virtually every DVD project I have done over the last four or five years (which amounts to hundreds) has been edited in Vegas, encoded with Procoder and authored in Encore.

Despite that I am such a huge fan of Vegas, I've never completely wrapped my head around DVD Architect. I would probably try harder if it had the flowchart function of Encore. Being able to visualize the layout of a DVD or BluRay disc using the flowchart is invaluable. That and the fact that Encore is basically a front-end for the Sonic DVD engine makes for some highly compatible discs.

John

John,

Yes, I can say without reservation that I feel it is a worthwhile purchase. In my opinion, Procoder produces the best looking MPEG2 output of any encoder I have ever tried, particularly with video sources. I use Procoder for a variety of other encoding tasks, including WMV, VC-1 and h.264. The batch encoder function is quite nice, too.

To clarify, it is only HD MPEG2 files that Encore complains about, it will happily ingest Procoder encoded SD MPEG2 files. Virtually every DVD project I have done over the last four or five years (which amounts to hundreds) has been edited in Vegas, encoded with Procoder and authored in Encore.

Despite that I am such a huge fan of Vegas, I've never completely wrapped my head around DVD Architect. I would probably try harder if it had the flowchart function of Encore. Being able to visualize the layout of a DVD or BluRay disc using the flowchart is invaluable. That and the fact that Encore is basically a front-end for the Sonic DVD engine makes for some highly compatible discs.

John
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Thanks John.
I am sold. One more question if you don't mind. Are you frameserving from Vegas to Procoder 3? After you edit in Vegas, how do you get it into Procoder?

John

...And my Prius gets barely 624 miles (1004 km) on a 12 gallon (45L) tank., when driven on the freeway at about 62mph (100 km/h), roundtrip, same day...
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I hit a Prius in my Dodge Ram truck. Almost killed a family of four. Awful. It only broke my plastic license plate frame. I wouldn't get that thing on a highway if I were you.

John,

I will either frameserve from Vegas to Procoder using Satish's frameserver or use a HuffYUV or Lagarith intermediate file.

John

I hit a Prius in my Dodge Ram truck. Almost killed a family of four. Awful. It only broke my plastic license plate frame. I wouldn't get that thing on a highway if I were you.

The Prius is U.S. Gov't classified as a Midsize car, not as an econobox made of paper and plastic. I originally bought it because it was the car that had the lowest 12-month actual repair frequency in ALL 10 areas in a major CR real life study: engine, transmission, brakes, suspension, electrical, etc.

Then I came to appreciate that it was really comfortable for the 400 mile (640 km) long distance drives I do very frequently, in fact every bit as comfy as the E-class Benz I had a while ago. And around town I liked that under the hood I had as much torque as the V-8 in my beloved Chevy Caprice (which needed 350 cubes to muster the same amount).

And then I became simply astonished over how much I could load inside the car, from 9-foot surfboards to two dozen C-stands plus heavy lighting gear + much more.

As for crashworthiness, I simply don't know how it compares to other sedans and hatchbacks, but I'll try to find out.

I wouldn't expect it to win a head-on collision against a Dodge Ram, but I have a reasonable expectation that I would be safer in my Prius in most other, far more common real life accident situations.

Rollover, for example, is a very low risk for me, but a leading cause of death for SUV and truck drivers.

So I wouldn't get that thing on a highway if I were you. :O)

John,

I will either frameserve from Vegas to Procoder using Satish's frameserver or use a HuffYUV or Lagarith intermediate file.

John
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Got it.

Thanks again John.

John