should I hire someone to do the Encoding/Authoring

P

Paunch

Well-known member
Hi,

I'm nearing completion on a surfing film and really wonder if I should just hire someone to do the encoding and authoring for me. I use premiere to edit, cce to encode and encore dvd but the results aren't exactly spectacular.....

I've put a lot of time, effort and money into this project and don't really know where to go from here....hire someone, or do it myself.?
 
i did it myslef
and i'm on my 2nd feature
encoding is quite simple actually...
use MEDIA Encoder in pro... encode as mpeg2 or whtever it is.
Also when u do audio....change it to AC3 format..its smaller and quality is great, i belive DVD's Require audio to be in AC3. AT leat the ones i've seen
 
thanks, I wasn't sure about the encoding thing and if it would benefit me any to go to a dub house to ensure quality results....

I have Cinema Craft Encoder, which can do just about anything, (10-pass encoding anyone?) but just wanted to make sure i'm not gonna end up with something that could have looked alot better if handled by a pro. This is a low budget project (100k) but it still pays to pay for specialists to make it as good as possible. If its like you say and doesn't make a significant difference then i'd sooner do it myself anyway.

Yes on the AC3 audio, but before that i have someone doing the Post Audio work, which is the one thing I don't mind paying for.
 
I think it depends on what you're doing with the finished product. If you're going to sell it, having good quality authoring (nice menus, maybe some bonus features such as outtakes, stills, etc) can make the product a little more attractive to retailers and help get better reviews.

If you're distributing it to a closed community who will buy it anyway, then you can do simple authoriing without any special skills.

We do authoring (and the encoding for it, of course) for our own DVDs in-house and occasionally take on other projects depending on our own workflow. Our authoring person is fast and does very good work, from basic simple menus to full motion graphics, so if you're looking for someone, PM me and we can talk about details.
 
Hi,

I might also add it depends upon how long the overall project is, too.

If you have a project length that is under two hours, you're at an everyman limit. Over that, you might want to take your investment to a specialist, in for penny, in for a pound.:laugh:

I've never found the encoding software in Adobe particularly stellar, although CS3 is the best they've produced in years I've been teaching their software. Grass Valley formerly known as Canopus Procoder is good.

http://professional.grassvalley.com/products/procoder_3/

Tmpgenc (Tsunami from Pegasus) is terrific, possibly a bit better than Procoder and cheap (although a bit slow).

http://tmpgenc.pegasys-inc.com/en/product/te4xp.html

Either of these should out perform the MPEG rendering of Adobe's media encoding. I use TMPGEnc for a lot of encoding. It's a $100 well spent. It is likely the best encoder at any price. I use it for just about all my encoding and it works very well. The Flash encoding is done by Adobe off the Premiere timeline - that seems to be the best on my system, but the rest is done by Tsunami.

In the case of TMPGEnc, you can practice your Latin verbs, do a little Internet surfing, make a few phone calls with the relatives, revisit the New Year's ''To do List'' - it probably isn't that bad, but it some times seems like it.

Hope this helps.
 
Mike, I'm curious if you've ever used Sorenson Squeeze.

I've worked with Sorenson and the native encoder that Encore calls. I used tmpgenc (or perhaps an earlier incarnation of it with a similar name) years ago. My experience seems to be that the Encore native encoder seems to work better than either of Sorenson's MPEG encoders, but I'm curious how you'd compare the quality of tmpgenc to either Sorenson or Adobe's encore encoders.
 
Hi calchip,

I've used Sorensen mostly for QT, where I think it really shines, so I really haven't done a lot of comparative testing, so most of what have to say is impressions; so please don't take it to the bank.

Sorensen is on a par with Canopus's Procoder as offering serious suite of compression tools to do a ton of options to the user for manipulating settings for maximum quality output control. There have been some bugs reported in audio clipping and fixes issued. I've been pleased with the results I've seen in the encodes I've got and the batch tools are sweet. The upgrade paths they have are reasonable. I haven't really jumped on their MPEG conversion bandwagon. I think other tools offer sightly better results.

To say the Adobe's Encoder (prior to the CS family) was clunky is to be generous. The output from the early versions took a mother's love to like. (I think it created the need for third-party encoding software.) It's much better now (it has improved over the years, of course), but so has third-party software.

Sorensen and Canopus cost 5 times more than Tsunami (TMPGEnc) and both offer more options - and they should. MPEG output from TMPGEnc (even 2.5 at under $40) is just terrific.

There's so many conversion tools out there that do such a crackerjack job at decent prices right now it's pretty easy to get the right tool for the right job.
 
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