Charles Simonson
Forum Replies Created
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For the absolute best in software MPEG-1 encoding on the mac, I still have to say that I prefer MainConcept. However, with the release of Compression Master 3.1, the gap has greatly narrowed, and if you’re looking for a great all-in-one encoder as well, then Compression Master 3.1 is an excellent choice. The only differences you’ll notice between Compression Master’s MPEG-1 and MainConcept’s is minor, mostly because MainConcept offers 2-pass encoding vs. CM’s 1-pass only of MPEG-1. Note though, that like SV3, because the preprocessing in CM is so good, the lack of 2-pass is mostly offset. BTW, for MPEG-2 encoding, Compression Master 3.1 now offers 2-pass encoding. As far as speed, MainConcept is still the fastest on the mac for software encoders. It will beat Compression Master’s encoding times quite easily pass-for-pass, but that isn’t too bad when you consider that MainConcept beats all others too, and Compression Master will most often beat any other encoder for most other formats in encoding times.
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Compression Master 3.1 does not support 2-pass VBR Sorenson Video 3 encoding with the SV3 Pro QT plugin. It only supports one-pass VBR SV3 encoding with the SV3 Pro QT plugin. But here’s the thing, because Compression Master’s preprocessing and filters are so strong, the quality of the output from CM 3.1 easily rivals that of Sorenson Squeeze and Cleaner 6 doing 2-pass, believe it not. Especially if you need to scale your video any, the results look even more impressive. Plus, because CM is multithreaded, the speed of encoding to SV3 and other codecs is very fast and makes you feel very good about your G5 purchase.
As far as the slow playback, can you post here or email me your settings? Also, the Popwire support staff is very good, and I would suggest writing them an email about your issues.
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Cleaner is quite outdated when it comes to most streaming formats and codecs comparing solutions from other makers today. On the mac, excellent MPEG-1 and 2 can be achieved with the MainConcept Encoder, and Squeeze (with Flip4mac plugin) and Compression Master can both give you high quality WMV-9 output among other formats. On the PC, ProCoder is an excellent all-in-one solution, with Squeeze doing a good job as well.
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Canopus does have a good product in the ProCoder Station. You may also want to look at Compression Engine from Popwire. Its not a pre-built solution like Procoder Station, but it does offer similar features and network assisted-rendering encoding. The upcoming 2.1 release will offer much enhanced MPEG-1 and 2 encoding as well.
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It could be a muxing issue that you have with the movie. First thing I would suggest, is to demux the movie, then remux it with a tool such as ffmpegX on the mac, or a similar tool on the PC.
Also, what extension are you using for the MPEG-1s? I have found some versions of WMP to be very picky with the extension, and I would not suggest .mpeg. Use .mpg instead.
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You probably want to use Compression Master and some G5s then. As you noted in Popwire’s WMV export plugin, the gamma issue isn’t there, mainly because Popwire has the best filters and preprocessing on the market. Popwire’s Compression Master 3 will allow you to do the batching you need to do that you could with Cleaner, only it would be more stable (Cleaner’s fault, not the encoder’s), and you would be able to do two-pass WMV encoding.
Actually, if you have that many files to encode, you probably should be looking at Popwire’s more robust encoder called Compression Engine. It links with Compression Master and offers network rendering among other advanced encoding features. If time is of concern and these encodes have to meet a deadline, then I also suggest looking into a hardware WMV encoding solution, like that from Inlet Technologies and their Fathom board. Fathom can process two-pass SD to WMV encoding in or near real-time from disk-based files. For HD, two-pass is around 3 times real-time.
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You could try the Flip4Mac QT decoder. It allows WMVs and some AVIs to open in QT on the mac. What codec is the AVI using? Canopus ProCoder might be able to help as well, if you are willing to spend some money.
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I think the workflow is fine and manageable, and is really quite easy to pick up for most users. But, the interface appearance does need some work. The default skin is horrid. I often feel as though I am using a Linux app when looking at Squeeze. These can be somewhat minor gripes however if the app can accomplish its real purpose though, which for some formats, Squeeze does quite well. So all is not bad.
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Try saving as Targa.
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It doesn’t really, you are just perceiving it that way because by default, QT displays DV at a low resolution. If you go into the DV movie’s properties in QT, you can change it to a high quality display, and they should match.
On the otherhand, if you shoot DV, but then edit it an Uncompressed timeline, your final titles will look better, because when you import the titles, there is no compression on them, versus DV’s very high compression. As has been said many times before here, “DV25 should only be treated as an acquisition format, not a post format”.