Use Canopus Procoder

[adamr316]

The biggest tip I can give all of you is to use Canopus Procoder. I think it's hands down the best MPEG-2 encoder on the market, even beating out CinemaCraft SP (CCE SP is just too difficult to get good results out of for most of us).

It looks good on LCD HDTVs and projected on big screens. And at low bitrates it still shines. Even if you use a Mac for editing it's still a worthwhile investment (and it supports quicktime reference files!)

Plus, it can cross converter between tons of formats and HDV footage downconverted to SD looks gorgeous.

 

[PrestonH]

It does work well. Although the Express version has problems encoding directly from the Premiere timeline - mis-manages video levels.

 

[sebastian]

Agree. What comes MPEG-2 I found that TMPGEnc is little better...but slower.
Really good thing in Procoder is PAL-NTSC or NTSC-PAL converter. It works very well even if input is MPEG-2...and of course QT REF support! Hard to find software with similar qualities.