I've been reading a lot of threads in a lot of forums lately about this. Most people say CCE is the best at any bitrate, but some say it's not as good with low bitrate interlaced material. Stuff like tv show dvd's. Lot's of episodes per disc with no extras to cut out. I've read HCEncoder and Procoder are better at low bitrate, but that Procoder tends to smooth the picture out a bit. I love anime so it sounds like Procoder would be good to use for animation only. Use CCE for higher bitrate dvd's and HC Encoder for the low bitrate dvd's. Does that sound about right? Mind you I have Dvd-rb free so I can't use custom matrices and what not. I just installed this software a couple days ago so I'm trying to learn about it quickly. Let me know if I'm on the right track. Thanks.
I use CCE regardless of what target bitrate is needed just cuz of its sheer speed. I see the same thing that people say about using different encoders for different compressions and I just think what BS that is. Rebuilder uses avisynth, and there are filters out there that will make compression better no matter what the bitrate is...people just need to learn how to use them. I don't see it as low bitrate will produce "horrible" quality. Of course re-encoding will reduce quality. But I see it as to achieve the best possible quality at your target bitrate. That's just me though.
ProCoder is known to smooth the picture, which generally won't look as good to most people at high bitrates, but some people definitely prefer it at lower bitrates. From what I've read, HC gives similar results to ProCoder at low bitrates, so I'm sure quite a few people would prefer it for that purpose. As always, the only eyes you can trust are your own. If you want to know for sure you'll have to do your own comparison.
It's not that CCE isn't good with low bitrates and interlaced material, it's just that Canopus Procoder seems to be a bit better. There's always room for debate, and the reason that there is debate is that the differences between them in quality in those circumstances cannot be said to be decisive in favor of one over the other. I use CCE most often and even in situations where I am faced with low bit rate material, but for TV which is often interlaced, I will defer to Procoder. Since I have 5 dual core desktop systems and 1 dual core laptop, Procoder's slower encoding time is of no concern to me.
I think they are both great encoders, but in my experience the low bitrate stuff seems to do better with ProCoder. Although you are going to have to wait for that extra bitrate. I know many here are CCE fans no matter what, and to be honest with you I don't use either one of them unless the compression rate is WAY up there 50 or 60%...I just don't see the difference. Of course I know I will probably get blasted for that statement, but it's just my opinion. Mostly I use Recode2, that with Ri4me or DVDFab ripper. D
I would really like to hear more people share their opinions about this. Unfortunately, I don't have time to encode every dvd with 5 different encoders (CCE SP, Procoder, HC, Quenc, AutoQMAtEnc), choose the best copy and then burn it. I tried to find out which encoder is the best by shrinking The Shawshank Redemption and comparing the screenshots, but couldn't clearly pick the winner. I would really appreciate if someone shared their experiences about the following: 1. Which encoder provides the best "overall" quality no matter what the bitrate is. 2. Which encoder is the best (in terms of quality) for low and high bitrates 3. Which encoder is the best for DVD series (Friends, Monk, etc.) Thank you.
On my equipment, a 52" RCA widescreen HDTV, I can't tell the difference between CCE, ProCoder 2, and HC. I don't watch movies zoomed in at 2 or 3X, so, artifacts at that magnification are irrelevant to me. Maybe when I upgrade to a larger screen differences may become apparent. That being said, I primarily use CCE as my overall encoder because of speed. I still use the others occasionally since I own them. HC has been making some pretty decent speed improvements as of late.
Thank you for sharing. I guess I will just use CCE for regular movies and ProCoder for very low bitrates.
HCEnc is an excellent encoder...but CCE is faster. For me, at least. Also, when using Procoder with DVD-RB to encode darker (nighttime) scenes at lower bitrates, I've gotten pixelation that I don't get when using CCE or HCEnc. I'm pretty sure it has to do with there being no (easy) way to adjust min. bitrate, matrices, quantizer, DC precision, etc. in Procoder via DVD-RB. You just kinda have to choose from a list of presets qualities and hope for the best. I prefer to dig a little deeper, myself. Don't get me wrong though, I KNOW Procoder is great. I've used it many times to convert misc video to MPEG-2. I love how it softens video. With DVD-RB though.....no go. So IMO, CCE with DVD-RB. All the way. If you need your low-bitrate video softened, use an Avisynth filter. If you don't know how to use those filters, learn. It WILL be worth your time, trust me.
If it doesn't need much compression DVDShrink with AEC is the way to go. better results, truer to the original. No reason to re-encode the whole thing if Shrink is showing >90%.
