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Telestream vs. CS4 vs. Compressor
I find myself in a really nice quandary except that it’s making my head spin a bit. I own FCS2 and the other day, I won both CS4 and Telestream Episode with Flash although they aren’t in my possession yet.
I have a 2 x 2.66 Dual-Core Intel Xeon running Leopard. Most of my work to date has been really simple stuff. DV only. Making dvd’s or exporting Quicktime files to the web. However, I may be doing some DVCProHD to web soon. I edit in FCP exclusively (although I must say that some of the features of CS4/Premiere Pro look kinda cool).
What I’m wondering is for those people that may own all these programs, when do you use one over the other? Or do you tend to just use one because the workflow works better for you? Do you feel you get better results with one over another depending on the export format? (I know that’s quite open-ended as it encompasses many diff factors.)
I know that Episode gives me the capability of exporting Flash and WMV (among other formats) that Compressor can’t do. But now that I have CS4, I assume I can do that in there as well. Do any do h.264 better than?
I sent a post over in another group (Telestream Episode) but it doesn’t seem to get much traffic. I also searched this group but none really answer the question that I’m posing.
Thanks in advance. If I should be posting this somewhere else, please let me know.
Paul
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12 Replies
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From all accounts and reports from folks I know that own it, Episode is hands down the best overall compression tool out there.
I really like bitVice for MPEG-2 DVD compression.
When you say CS4, what do you mean? There are multiple product bundles so what is the actual bundle?
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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Thanks for the quick response. I have seen other posts that you have made regarding your preference for BitVice. Good to know if I ever win that!
Regarding CS4, it’s the Production Premium Bundle.
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[Paul Kondo] “Regarding CS4, it’s the Production Premium Bundle. “
That would just be a comparison to Final Cut Studio, not just a compression tool. You can certainly export from Premiere and make Flash files using Flash, but that’s a full post production suite that if you got it for free I would not give that away for anything.
Walter Biscardi, Jr.
Biscardi Creative Media
HD and SD Production for Broadcast and Independent Productions.STOP STARING AND START GRADING WITH APPLE COLOR Apple Color Training DVD available now!
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Yeah, certainly not going to give it away. Pretty excited to get it. Just having a new version of Pshop is great and Encore if I ever need to create a Blu-Ray dvd.
I was just looking at the encoding part of the suite for now since I use FCP to edit. I was wondering if I could take a full res file from FCP and if I needed a Flash file, would it be better to use Episode or Adobe’s encoder.
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Paul,
Compressor, when working properly is a good tool, but Episode is a much more user friendly interface, and it does everything and does it well. Even m2v encoding for DVDs, better than Compressor. Lately though, Compressor seems to be full of bugs.
Regarding which tool to use when, I often use Episode and Compressor and see which works best.
BTW you can set up presets in Compressor for things that aren’t native in there.
Have a wonderful day.
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Thanks Chris. I’m going to give Episode a long look and do some comparisons with Compressor. Lots of learning to do.
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I have no experience about Adobe Media Encoder CS4 but my opinion about other packages:
Apple Compressor
– Ok quality MPEG2 encoding
– Quite good deinterlacer but slow (for me this is one the most important point because I want high quality also from SD clips).
– Overall I find Compressor okay although there are some strange behavior / bugsTelestream Episode
– Great interface
– Deinterlacing got better in 5.01 but is still bad
– Encoding quality is quite good with all codecs I’ve testedIf you want the ultimate quality H.264 you should check Mainconcept Reference. It does terrific job especially with low bitrates. My choice for H.264 and WMV encoding is Mpeg Streamclip powered with Flip4Mac WMV Studio Pro HD. Mpeg Streamclip is very fast (and free =), it’s deinterlacer is one the best I’ve seen and it’s interface is much more robust almost all the time compared to other packages.
My two cents
Tapio -
Pardon the stupidity but if the deinterlacer is bad in something like Episode but the rest of the encoding is good, is it possible to use something like Mpeg Streamclip strictly for deinterlacing and then move that file into Episode? I know that becomes a lengthy process but at times, it may be worth it.
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Yes you can of course deinterlace in another program and then bring clip to Episode. But if you’re encoding H.264 for example (or WMV if you have Flip4Mac WMV Studio Pro HD) it doesn’t make any sense. I find Mpeg Streamclips H.264 (and WMV) quality similar to Episode.
And if you’re scaling clips down to some small resolution then the quality in deinterlacing doesn’t matter.
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I have no complaints about deinterlacing in Episode.
Have a wonderful day.
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