MainConcept vs. CinemaCraft Basic

3rdnormal wrote on 1/15/2004, 10:56 AM

Hi All...

I'm new here - just getting into DV and NLE's, so I thought I'd try and get some of the board's regular's opinions on these two encoders.

There has been a lot of discussion about these two MPEG encoders, with the consensus being, for the most part, that the CinemaCraft encoder is "better" than the MainConcept.

While I agree it certainly seems faster, I'm not seeing a whole heck of a lot of difference in the video quality when output to DVD.

I've rendered to DV-AVI at the best quality setting from within MS and having this file be the input file to CinemaCraft. I've tried CBR (6000 kbps) and VBR (2000, 6000 and 8000 kbps) - two passes each - and outputting to elementary and system streams. I've set the quality setting to complex (took significantly longer to two-pass on my system). I've burned the resultant DVD at max speed and reduced speed using MyDVD. Not a huge difference, if any, when compared to using MS and MyDVD only.

I think I'm probably expecting way too much from these software encoders, but wanted to get the member's comments regarding their settings using CinemaCraft. Or, specific areas of the Video I should be looking at in order to compare and judge quality. Perhaps CinemaCraft excels at "action" shots and that's where I should be looking to see the difference.

In closing, I have not calibrated my TV for optimum viewing. My thoughts are that if the TV is essentially "not optimally set up" for both output DVD's (from MS/MyDVD and MS/CinemaCraft/MyDVD), then all things are equal right?

Thanks for listening.

Mike

My video comprises mostly "at home" shots for the purposes of evaluating CinemaCraft.
Athlon 64
1 GB RAM
120 GB HD
ATI Radeon 9600 XT
NEC Burner
Canon Optura 20
36" Sony Trinitron XBR TV
evaluating CinemaCraft Basic

Comments

IanG wrote on 1/15/2004, 2:46 PM

The two areas you're most likely to see a difference in are movement and detail. Things like grass and leaves are a good test for the detail.

Possibly a stupid question, but are you sure MyDVD isn't rerendering?

ian G,

3rdnormal wrote on 1/15/2004, 4:41 PM

Thanks for responding IanG.

I'm pretty sure MyDVD is not re-rendering - at least according to the messages MyDVD flashes on screen during a burn, I don't see any indication of re-rendering. However, I think I might have seen a message indicating MyDVD was rendering (transcoding) audio after I had output VBR encoded video/audio to mpg and wav files respectively

I'll be sure and shoot some detail and run some more tests to see if I can see a difference.

Meanwhile, I'm having loads of fun learning as much as I can from the folks in this forum and generally just diving into MS and playing.

Thanks again for your insight.

Cheers

Mike

IanG wrote on 1/16/2004, 12:43 AM

As a separate test you could try downloading a trial of DVDLab. This NEVER re-renders (though transcoding is an option) and it will give you warnings if it's not happy with any of the inputs.

There's an interesting thread in the DVDLab forum about various encoders. Mainconcept, CCE and TMPGenc all have their advocates.

Ian G.

3rdnormal wrote on 1/16/2004, 1:51 PM

Thanks for the link. Most informative. I had surfed to MediaChance before and concluded that DVDLab was indeed a potential choice for authoring, although probably not for video rendering as I don't believe that capability is included in the product.

My concern, if you can call it that, is getting the best possible output within the constraints imposed by my hardware/software. Interestingly, output from either encoder is by no means "bad looking".

Still haven't had a chance to shoot detailed DV yet and run it through CCE and MainConcept. I gotta do it sooner rather than later though so I can lay this one to rest - at least in my subjective opinion <grin>.

Thanks again for your help.

Cheers

Mike