Hi all,
I am going to build some dvd's and would love to take advantage of your experience, so, what is the best encoder available now to achieve the best mpeg2 quality from avi files?

This is a good question, but it's kind of subjective. In my opinion, CCE can't be beat. It will give you an incredibly sharp picture, but the downside is that if your bit rate isn't high enough, it is prone to blockiness in fast motion scenes. TMPGenc doesn't have the sharpness of CCE, but the upside is that it is less prone to blockiness as a result. Procoder is another option, but I've never used it. Most encoders are ridiculously expensive, with the exception of TMPGenc which is very reasonably priced. If you don't have $700 US or more to spend on something like CCE, you might want to look for some, ahem, evaluation copies that never expire, if you know what I mean. CCE version 2.50 can be downloaded from http://www.doom9.net (it may be on the related site http://dvd2svcd.doom9.net - not sure) as an eval copy and it is not difficult to find patches on other sites that make it fully functional.

What bit rate would you say is minimal to prevent blockiness in CCE?

Slarti

I personally use CCE also But I don"t have a Problem with Blockyness at all, But then again If I am useing a Low Bitrate I Generally use Multi-Pass as Opposed to "One-Pas VBR" or "CBR"..For Instance When doing SVCD I can use a Bitrate of 1800kbs and Do 2-Pass with Version 2.66 and Not Get ANY Blockness in High motion scenes, But I will If I use the "One Pass-VBR" or "CBR"...This allows me to get close to an Hour of SVCD on a Single CD-R.....

I've tried all of the above, and I've found Procoder to produce the best quality. CCE is consider to be very good too, but its only useful if your source is AVI, whereas Procoder is very useful with MPEG.

Mark

That IS Not True, You can encode Pretty Much ANY Format With CCE, Includeing AVI,Mov,WMV,ASF,DV,Mpeg1, Mpeg2,ect, anything accept Real Media Can be encoded With CCE You just need to use a Frame server, You can encode any Format that Tmpgenc can encode with CCE Useing Tmpgenc and Vfapi as a Frame server or AVISynth or V-Dub..You Basicly have to use a Frame server with CCE anyways Cuz CCE does Not Resize the resolution or have any Effective Filters...

I do got the crack version on Procoder By SSG but I also been inform of Version 1.25 is much better, some how this version uncrackeable. Pretty good quality.

Mainconcept Encoder V1.31 is also good encoder, quality much better than Ver1.1. Somw how this encoder can't encode Canopus file. Any idea on this??

Thank in advance,
Senifoto

because my version will only accept an AVI, or MOV file. No MPEG at all as source.

Nope, Every Version Of CCE SP Can encode Pretty much any Format, But Like I said you have to Use a Frame server which you have to Use Anyway if you want to add filters or Resize...I guess you Just haven"t figured out how to do it yet..I Use it for encodeing VOB and Mpeg2 files from DVD Rips..

If CCE will except other than AVI, MOV files, then why does their open dialog box only indicate AVI, and MOV files? Also, if you attempt to open anything but the above it gives error feedback.

You are certainly correct that I've not tried to frameserve with it, but find it odd that it will accept AVI, MOV files, but only accept other formats in frameserve mode. You may be right, but that would be an excentric interface at best.

If you are building DVDs from camcorder avis, then I would argue that you'll nwant to use smoothing filters, artifact and colour correction filters, etc etc if you want the very "best" quality.

That means learning avisynth scripts and frameserving, and if you are doing that then CCE must be a contender for being the best combination of speed and quality for the final encode.

However, for an all-in-one solution, Procoder is very versatile, gives good quality, although its a bit slow. (Frameserving is still possible with Procoder of course, but you'd need to then include something like the Link2 wrapper since it wont accept avsynth scripts directly.)

CCE will accept other formats. When you frameserve, you create a small, bogus AVI file that essentially points to what you really want to encode. It's enough to trick CCE into encoding other formats. As was posted earlier, CCE does an excellent job of encoding MPEG-2 from DVD down to lower bit rates, you just have to trick it with frameserving to do it.

Yes,Mark, It seems that you don"t Understand the Concept the Frame serveing,Frame serveing is a Way to fool the encoder in thinking that what it is encodeing is an AVI file when it is actually encodeing any Number of formats.What you do is install a Simple DLL file that sends the Video information from the File you are encodeing to the Encoder useing a Fake AVI file .. The Encoder has to actually support Encodeing from a Frameserver which CCE does, well not all versions But versions 2.50 and 2.64.01.10 and all the 2.66 versions support frameservers, Namely AVISynth and Virtual Dub...

"Frame serveing is a Way to fool the encoder in thinking that what it is encodeing is an AVI file when it is actually encodeing any Number of formats"

This is not quite the definition as I understand it however. What I understand frameserving to be is a way to reencode a file from one format to another without having to create an intermediary file. One application serves the file as an AVI to a dummy file, and the other application reencodes to another format.

So for instance, one might use Virtual Dub to frameserve an MPEG1 file to a dummy AVI file and then have it read by CCE and reencoded to...whatever.

The file is actually being converted frame by frame to AVI for usage by the encode, yes? In which case CCE is actually receiving an AVI format for encoding.

That's my understanding, although I've never actually done it.

cheers,
mark

Actually This is Not Quite true, The Frame server Does Not encode the File to AVI then feed it to the Encoder, if it did then any Program that accepts AVI files would accept Frame server files..The encoder has to Specificly support Certain Types of Frame server files like AVS and VDR,(Accept VFAPI) and to Have the Frame server encodeing to AVI while the encoder was encodeing to Mpeg would really slow down the System and the encodeing which it doesn"t, the Frameserveing Takes Very Little CPU to do, I can encode VOB files to SVCD/Mpeg2 with CCE and AVISynth while Resizeing at 1.7 times Real time on a 1.7ghz CPU, so a 2 hour movie only takes a Little over an Hour..But I guess It don"t matter how it works as Long as it works which it does very Well..Anyways You should give it a Try some time I"m sure you would find it very Usefull...Cheers