adobe encore

[Rich Lee]

hey guys, i need to make a dvd in the next couple of hours.

im having issues with the transcode quality coming out of adobe encore...

all i want is the best settings known to man, to make it look as good as possible.

i have tried the what i think is the highest settings for both VBR and CBR. but im not happy with either...any tips? i will search the forum in the meantime...but i just wanted to put a word out.

thanks!

[Rich Lee]

what is up with "M frames" and "N frames"...do those effect quality?

[Contact_Therapy]

Hey Rich!

From my experience, the Adobe/Mainconcept encoder is just an average encoder. *It's easy to use and it does the job but is not the best encoder. *I always have to lower my bitrates to about 6.5 VBR or else my encodes start to choke on some DVD players.

If you want the best quality encodes, you will need to get CinemaCraft. *That sucker can do up to 9 passes VBR and encode safely using the entire bitrate spectrum from 0 to 9.3.

Let me know how you make out.

[Rich Lee]

ah, sweet, thanks man! i will check it out.

[ransom]

uh let me see. CinemaCraft for $1950 or TMPGEnc for <$100. What should I do??

[Shaw]

just curious but how many passes does TMPGEnc allow you to do? And isn't it free software?

[ransom]

I bought it for about $40 bucks a few years ago. They may have a free version, I'm not sure. I know it will do 2-pass. Not sure if it will do more. Can't check at the moment.

[krestofre]

Cinema Craft Basic is $50 and, in my opinion, better than TMPG.

Also the free version of TMPG doesn't allow MPEG-2 encoding, just MPEG-1.

Chris

[ransom]

Cool I didn't know that. I'm going to check it out now.
Thanks,
Ransom

[ransom]

The $40 version of TMPGEnc I have will do 2-pass VBR MPeg2 encoding.

Is the CBR-only CinemaCraft Basic really better. Not trying to be confrontational. I actually bought the CinemaCraft Basic yesterday because I like the PPro integration. There doesn't seem to be much control with CinemaCraft basic. What settings are best for this version for DVD output.

Thanks.

[krestofre]

"Better" is one of those terms that make it a difficult question to answer. In my experience, the CBR of Cinema Craft is just as good as the VBR of TMPG. The real advantage of Cinema Craft for me is the speed over TMPG. Two hours vs. ten hours, no contest for me. If the output of Cinema Craft is worse, then my eyes cannot tell ... of course I do wear glasses. ;D

As for settings, hopefully someone else will chime in. I've used CCE before, but I don't own it and would have to spend some time with it to remember the settings I used.

Hope that helps.

Chris

[Jourabchi]

i use the Main concept premire pro plugin gives you more options then the bundled version that comes with ppro....and the quality is just as good a cce, 2 pass vbr 7500max 6000norm 1500 min ...it looks good even full res on the computer, minus the grain of the dv format...but it works...and i can render a complete hour of footage in 30 minutes so 2x realtime and quality is quite nice in my eyes....

[Vinnie03]

Jourabchi,
Which Main concept plugin are you using? I saw on their webpage, they offer a distint Premeir pro plugin for $249 I believe, then there is also a Mpg encoder that runs $49.00, but also says that you must have premier 6.5 or pro to use it. From what I can tell the only difference is that the 249 version will allow you to edit mpg in premier pro? So again... what version are you using and getting the good results from? I'm thinking of just going ahead and getting the 49 version...

Also, while I'm here, I've been getting some glitches in my final dvd's lately, the only thing I've changed is my media is 8x, and I've been burning at 6 or 8x. That the problem?

Thanks,
Vince