Cinema Craft Encoder Vs TMPGEnc Encoder
IM sure most of you here have used or read about these programs but ive been using TMPGENC plus and i like it but a buddy said that some of the major warez scene guys use CCE to encode...

which is better and why?

CCE is faster, much faster than TMPGEnc.
TMPGEnc provides a better Quality if you are encoding interlaced Videos, especialy self made Videos (DV or AV-Source).
But if your goal to encode progressive Video (DVD or something else), than CCE is the better choice.

Actually I've found just the opposite.

TMPGenc's interlaced support may have gotten better, but it was the poor for a while. It just seem to have a hard time ESP on hybrid materal. CCE does a bang up job on both interlaced and progressive, but you need to pre-filter since there are is not filtering ( worth while ) built in.

What Version of CCE and TMPGEnc do/did you compare?
I'm using TMPGEnc 2.58 and CCE 2.66.

CCE is dealing with the Sharpness of the Videos. This MAY look better to much people, but sharpness is very important to me, so TMPGEnc is the better Choice.
And don't forget: TMPGEnc does no prefiltering, it encodes as is.

It is almost never mentioned, but if your source isn't AVI, then CCE will be of no use to you. I understand it uses that as source exclusively.

TMPGEnc will do both...As will procoder, and the latter is at least a match for CCE...or so they say...I'm happy with it.

Well CCE kiks TMPGENC"s ass when it comes to Mpeg2 Quality but Tmpgenc rules in Mpeg1 quality..Tmpgenc has a Lot of very usefull filters were CCE has hardly none and that is CCE"S biggest problem but when useing frame served files then that problem is solved by useing the frameservers filters, you can even use the filters and settings in tmpgenc with CCE by useing Tmpgenc and Vfapi as a Frame server to CCE..I started useing Tmpgenc when the first Beta Came out and it was better in my oppinion that CCE 2.50, but when newer versions of CCE started comeing out and the quality got much better and tmpgenc didn"t really improove on the Speed or Quality very much I quickly switched to CCE and useing frameserver or Tmpgenc filters makes CCE the definate Winner in the Over all Quality and speed as a Package..And you Can use Pretty much any Direct show format to encode with CCE, I have encoded AVI files ,ASF files,Mov files, WMV files, and Even Streaming ASX files..all you need to do to use Other formats to encode with CCE is a Frameserver...any format Tmpgenc can encode CCE can encode....if any one wants to know how just let me know and I"ll explain it....

I have used CCE and tmpge. Tmpge produces a compliant svcd that nero lets me burn every time but it take a long time. CCE is much faster and it produces better quality but it is not svcd compliant with nero. i use pulldown.exe on the produced file and it still doesn't work. sometimes pulldown produces a file that is smaller than the original and other times it just locks up. is there a way to work arond pulldown.exe?

Pulldown Won"t have any effect on Compliance....

I hate to break this to you, but Nero's compliance check is not 100% accurate. Nero will pass video streams that are not compliant. Your compliance problems with CCE might be due to the fact that you must multiplex the video output of CCE with your audio into a SVCD template. If you do that, you will get compliant video. CCE was really designed to encode DVD video and the video stream it produces is not quite right for SVCD. A simple mux will fix that problem.

The compliance problem with CCE is because it only supports data packet sizes of 2048kb were the SVCD data packet size it 2324, that is were the compliance comes in ..But it doesn"t seem to affect the Playback of the File...The way to get arround the Compliance thing in Nero with CCE encode SVCD"s is to use Tmpgenc to put a SVCD header on the Mpeg2 file, then Nero shouldn"t give you the same error...

There are clear advantages and disadvantages of both tools - and you have to decide what you wish to do, and then you have to decide about a best possible workflow.

Both, CCE and TMPGenc, are able to produce supperior quality mpeg-2 streams. Major difference: CCE is much faster, TMPGenc can do resizing at a much lower speed.

1. Step: I generate 480x576 sized material, both from my own videos or from movies - the later one captured via S-VHS by virtualdub, using PIC MJPEG as high-quality codec. For DV Videos I use the mainconcept DV codec, and use virtualdub to resize the 720x576 to 480x576. I do not take care about interlacing at all - since I want to see the movies on my tv anyway.

2. Step: For movies, I take out advertising, and cut the avi file usually into two files - to allow me to work with data rates high enough to generate a good quality in the next step. Typically for cce you can go up to 60 minutes movie length on a 80 min CD, but good quality should not be more then 40 or 45 minutes.

3. Step: Then I use CCE to create the mpeg-2 files that can be burned to cd. Typically I use 3-pass encoding, with a lowest data rate of 1500, an average data rate between 2200 and 2400, a maximum data rate with 2500. For audio I take 224 stereo. Quality matrix ultralow. Encoding with CCE takes about 3 hours for a typical movie.

4. Step: CCE creates seperated audio and video files, that must be combined - and here I use TMPGenc do do that. I do not cut MPEG-2 files with TMPGenc, since CCE has superior skills here (every scene change a full picture, the older TMPGenc versions cannot handle the cutting of MPEG-2 files really well).

5. Step: I burn the mpeg-2 files to SVCD - here I like to use the ulead dvd plugin from videostudio 6, what works fine for me.

All togehter, you have to combine the right tools to achieve the best performance over the whole workflow, performance in terms of time but also quality.

I use a P4 1.8 GHz to get that jobs done.

Accept you Don"t need to Generate Files that are of SVCD Resolution with CCE Cuz you can use the Frame server to re-size the resolution, that way you don"t have to re-render the file just to get the proper resolution...