MPEG2 Plugins

mobass1 wrote on 2/27/2008, 10:47 AM

Does anyone know if there is a better mpeg2 plugin to use with VegasPro8?
Also, can someone enlighten me as to how major studios compress their files to fit on a single DVD? Software? Hardware? If hardware, what do they use?

Finally, what architecture do they use that enables their DVD's to run on everyones stand alone players. Every single release works no matter what player its run on. My research has led me to the conclusion that DVD-r is what works on most players. But not all. I would love to be confident that when I place a product into the hands of a customer, it will definitely play on whatever machine they have. Or, maybe I'm still naive. *S*

Thanx
Steveo

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Comments

TLF wrote on 6/27/2008, 11:18 PM

@Lyris - what settings are you using in TMPG? I tested it and found the resulting mpg file to be very little different from the Vegas MC mpg.

Source footage was DV AVI, frameserved to TMPG, using the default TMPG settings.

Thank you,
W

ECB wrote on 6/28/2008, 3:55 PM

I have not looked at alternative mpeg encoders for years so I tried the new TMPGEnc Express 4 with a DV clip that stresses the encoder and compared the results with the Vegas 8 MC encoder. If I looked very close I could 'see' less artifacts with the TMPGEnc encoder. I was surprised to find when I used Debugmode frameserver and TMPGEnc on my quadcore, TMPGEnc ran faster than the Vegas MC native encoder. I tried downconverting HD to SD but I could not find an alternative to Vegas "Stretch video to fill output frame size" with TMPGEnc short of pan & crop in Vegas.

Ed B

riredale wrote on 6/29/2008, 12:19 PM

I'm coming late to this thread but can attest to the value of CinemaCraft.

Last year I did my own empirical tests with CC and MainConcept. Both results were surprisingly similar but CC was much faster in the render. Alas, my current workflow involves tying CC to Vegas via frameserving from the m2t timeline, and this really puts the brakes on CC's speed. Still, I like the flexibility CC provides. You can do up to 10 passes, though ~3 passes are probably all you'll ever want to do. Also, you can go into your finished render the tell CC to re-render a portion of the whole at a higher bitrate, if desired.

My recently-finished project used CC and 3 passes at an average bitrate of just 4.1Mb/sec. Resulting video looked just like the original in all but just a couple of spots, and those spots were then tweaked with a higher bitrate.

ECB wrote on 6/30/2008, 5:30 AM

I reran the tests with TMPGEnc Express 4 and Vegas MC with identical settings as before. This time I compared the images simultaneously on the same screen rather than A B. The MC image definitely sharper with better contrast and color. Artifacts was a toss up.

Ed B