I've been told that this new encoder is much better than CEE and TMPGEnc. Is it worth to download and
install?

Has anybody tested Canopus Prcoder? is it true that is better?

Thanks!!

It is a very good encoder. The quality is at par with CCE (which is better than TMPG, no doubt).

If you have the full working version, you're in luck. The version you can download from the net is limited and crippled, and the crack that's supposed to enable it, does not solve the time limit problem.

the quality from procoder is very good and it has some features that cce does´nt have like converting to many fileformats and resizing among others. the speed is not nearly as fast as neither cce or tmpg though.

i encode in cce through dvd2svcd and make the image in vcdeasy (gives me both chapters and fast forward) i havent gotten the fast forward to work with dvd2svcd, and nero does fast forward but not chapters so vcdeasy wins the match in images i think. anyway back to procoder. if the full version of procoder gives better speed i could consider using it but it has not impressed me until now at least. im also VERY interested in a WORKING full version of procoder

Hi,

don't advertise it, post the Download-Link to the fully working Version.

The crack for version 1.0 is still not ready?
Canopus replaced demo version 1.0 of procoder with version 1.02!
May be the crack for it will be a success

i really hope so

the crack it's ready for procoder 1.0

download from:
www.souxin.com
by by
cobra...

I have been useing ProCoder for about 2 months now and as for the Plain avi to mpeg2 encodeing goes CCE-SP-2.64 still Has Superior Quality compared to ProCoders Mpeg2 encodeing..But Procoder Can"t be beat with it"s versitillity and the range of file types that it encodes to and from..It is the only encoder I have heard of the Will encode RM Files to Mpeg, and it does good NTSC to Pal and visa versa conversions..But the mpeg2 quality isn"t sa good as CCE In my opinion....

Luisifer, I can't judge Procoder against CCE since I haven't used it. I do wonder if the more powerful version only accepts AVI files as the cheapie version does, because if so, it is a great limitation.

I can say this, that Procoder produces very sweet MPEG2 in my tests. They certainly look every bit as good as the originals I produce on my DVCII...which does a very fine job indeed.

As for converting RM to MPEG, I think you are mistaken there. I think you probably meant MPEG to RM, as virtually NO encoder will do the former. Oh yes, there are solutions, but their cludges.

I'm also learning to convert MPEG2 to MPEG1 with Procoder. So far the results are mixed because of some minor flaws, but when it works it is very sweet MPEG1 too...very nearly as good as SVCD.

mark

NTSC Default CQ dvd output from TMPGEnc used as a source in procoder and converted to VCD (Nero says its non standard)looks great. I have been using DVD2AVI with VFAPI to create .d2v and wav as input to TMPGEnc for movies. Is there a way to use vfapi with procoder? I would like compare the the two endcoders with a large avi File 6 gigs
CaptKrunch

I checked Doom9 and found out that the VFAPI release has a vfapi convert.exe that will serve up the *.d2v file from DVD2AVI. Procoder recognises this as an AVI Source then I select ntsc dvd as target. When I hit convert a second target is created which is wave. I think great its see's the wave file with the same name as the source d2v file and is creating a separate audio file that I can mux in spruceup. When the conversion is over the mpeg2 file plays fast for a few seconds hesitates and speeds up again for the entire movie. It seems like vfapiconvert is not seving up the psudo avi file fast enought. The wave file that is created is the right size but an hour and a half of silence. Any ideas on how to correct this? I would really like to do a comparison between TMPGenc and Procoder
TIA
CaptKrunch

I believe luis has described the method you are looking for a couple of times in this forum. Do a search.
As I recall it involves saving the whole film as a TMPGenc project first and then importing this PROJECT as an (pseudo)avi in Procoder, or others for that matter.

Hope this helps.

I have used the D2V to Vfapi and the D2v to tmpgenc to vfapi methods and they both seem to work fine for me, the d2v to vfapi is faster but encodeing at 10 fps on a 1.7ghz is pretty lame..

luisfer:
I have no problem with dvd2avi to tmpge using vfapi and .d2v. I tried dv2 to vfapi convert and then to procoder and have the problems in previous post. Any ideas? I assume I would get the same results if I use vfapi between dvd2avi and tmpge. Any ideas?
TIA
CaptKrunch

That effect you are getting is from the Field order not being set properly, for some reason with the Vfapi converter it seems to reverse the field order on you and it gives you than effect, what I do is run the D2V file into Tmpgenc and use the De-interlace filter then make a Project file in tmpgenc then load that into the Vfapi converter, yes the Vfapi converter" accepts tmpgenc project files...

Now I have made a test encoding with Procoder 1.0.1.35. I captured from a VHS tape at 704x576 resolution 25 fps (PAL) and saved as segmented huffyuv AVI files. Did filtering and resizing to 352x576 resolution with avisynth, with added black borders (with some help from the program FitCD) for macroblock optimization.

To open the avs file in Procoder I converted it with Link2 (http://www.videotools.net) avi-wrapper. I could have used vfapi as well but I had Link2 so I used that because it's faster. I had to include raw audio in Link2 to make it work.

I made custom settings to get the right format. I set the source to 4:3 aspect ratio and the target to 352x576 resolution with 4:3 aspect ratio. It worked well, there was no problem creating a 1/2 D1 MPEG-2. There is no template for it but it is possible to make my own template.

I set it up for 2-PASS VBR, average bitrate 2200 kbit/s and max bitrate 3100 kbit/s. I thought this would make it fit 50 % of a DVD-R. The movie was 131 minutes long. I used 128 kbit/s mono audio because it was an old tape recorded with a VCR without stereo.

I encoded with mastering quality and it took 15 hours and 30 minutes to complete. I will encode the same movie with TMPGEnc and the same settings to compare. I just started it and will report the comparison later.

The Procoder result looked very good on my PC. What worries me is the result when I analyse the MPEG-2 stream from Procoder with bitrateviewer. The average bitrate is perfect, it reports 2148 Kbit/s which corresponds to 2200 kbit/s. Bitrateviewer Kbit/s equals 1024 bit/s. So this mean that procoder kbit/s equals 1000 bit/s, this is good to know. It's the same kbit/s as TMPGEnc and CCE use.

But now to the bad part. There was no setting for minimum bitrate in Procoder, only maximum and average bitrate. When analyzing in bitrateviewer it seems that the minimum bitrate is very low. At some parts it's as low as 200 kbit/s. This will probably cause problems on many standalone players in SVCD-mode. Many players have problems to play bitrates below 1x CD-speed which corresponds to VCD bitrates (1.15 kbit/s video and 224 kbit/s audio). With an audio bitrate of 128 kbit/s I would like to stay above 1300 kbit/s video bitrate as minimum. I will burn it to DVD-R and see if it plays correctly. I guess there is a risk of choppy playback, at least if I burn it as XSVCD. So for SVCD creation it could be best to stay with CBR encoding in Procoder to avoid playback problems on standalone players. PC CD-ROMs seems to play anything so it may work in the computer but not in the standalone player.

The peak bitrate was 3789 Kbit/s in bitrateviewer which corresponds to 3880 kbit/s. It's like TMPGEnc, it gets higher than what you set. My standalone player can play up to 4000 kbit/s maximum peak and when I set TMPGEnc max to 3100 kbit/s it use to be OK. So the maximum peak is not different from TMPGEnc.

My first impression of Canopus Procoder is that it's a good encoder which give excellent results. But it lacks a lot of settings like minimum bitrate, quantizer matrices, linear or non-linear quantization, zig-zag or alternate scan order. But as long as the end result is good I should not complain. Perhaps future versions will get more options in the advanced settings, let's hope so!

Ronny

Hey Ronny, if I were you I'd skip the Mastering level and try "Highest Quality". Indeed the manual recommends not using Mastering unless your goal is to store for later output for duplication. For purposes of burn and edit I've seen no discernable difference in quality between master and highest quality, and the latter is much faster.

Since Mastering uses extra algorithms you may find that Highest Quality doesn't product as low a min bitrate, and your encode will be much faster.

On the 1.0 issue, I agree its got some things missing. In the advanced section many settings are greyed, and they don't have some of the presets I'd like, such ast 1/2 D1. They're fixing that soon I believe.

cheers,
mark

OK, thanks. But I don't mind the extra time because I have 2 computers and I can work on one and encode on the other one. I usually set it up to encode before going to bed and it is completed when I come back from work next day. I always want best quality possible. But I will try high quality also, because it may be better than mastering quality (you'll never know for sure until you have done some tests).

I found that there is a lot more options to tweak if I start the Procoder main application instead of Procoder Wizard. There was no problem to encode half resolution, just set the target options to the resolution you want and the same aspect ratio as your source (normally 4:3 or 16:9). Don't forget to set correct aspect ratio on the source settings also.

Hopefully my DVD-player will play VBR with low bitrates valleys in DVD-mode. I haven't had time to test it yet. I'll do it tomorrow night when my TMPGEnc Encoding is completed so I can burn both on the same DVD-R disc to compare them on TV.

Ronny