best compresser software

[Pascal Payant]

i'm using procoder 3 to encode my short. the image quality is great but the sound is always cheap. i'm using quicktime mpeg 4 compressor and 4:1 for sound. is there a better program to achieve better image and sound. h264 it dosne'T work at all for me. for PC is seems to be extremely hard to have something great. i don'T get it when you watch reel from people, teaser etc.. and the quality is just perfect. anyhelp?

[OSV]

the pc platform has far more encoder choices than the mac platform... but navigating thru the choices is kind of bewildering... the first thing to do is to dump that qt encoder.

procoder has a killer mpeg2 encoder, it's the best choice for dvds and such, but the h.264 options are not so good... for h.264, the mainconcept encoder is what you want, and squeeze 5 has it, along with a great vp6 two-pass vbr flash encoder.

the nero software package is much cheaper, tho, and it includes an xlnt h.264 encoder that encodes into what they call nero digital.

the first big question, tho, how did you want to serve your video up? your own website? youtube? etc... you have to know that first.

[EIREHotspur]

What is the best encoder for each of the main file types then?
I bought Imtoo MPEG Encoder 3 and am disapointed with it....hate the interface too.