Which encoder do you like to use?

Question

Hi,
I need to do some high quality encoding and would like to hear some opinions about which encoder you like to use.
Compressor seems pretty good, but there must be some reason the competition is able to charge more for their offerings.
BitVice?
MegaPEG.X?
Hueris MPEG Pro?
What other options are there (besides dedicated hardware encoders) ?
Many thanks.

Answer 1

Hi Phillip - don't get me wrong, Compressor is just fine for a lot of encoding work, but when I go back to thinking about v1 it just wasn't reliable for encoding going to replication - there were far too many glitches and anomalies in the data it produced, notably fairly large bitrate spikes which caused the playback to falter. When you are needing to encode reliably and get things out of the door fast, this kind of issue is way too serious...
On top of that the standard output of compressor was milky - fairly washed out look which needed you to tweak the gamma setting. Whilst easy enough to do, it was another set of mouse clicks.
Finally, Compressor was not very good at CBR encoding - it varied too much from the bitrate for my liking.
Some of these issues can be seen in BitVice - I occasionally do still get spikes in the encode, but it is very rare. The output from the default settings is very good, and with the digital noise reduction tool I can get a super smooth looking encode from most material. The reliability of this makes BitVice a very good option.
Procoder is PC based, which introduces a new dimension. In most tests, the CPU on my PC will crunch numbers happily all day, and fast. The Mac is far better at a lot of things, but in raw grunt my PC is quicker (I need a new Mac, obviously!) This means I can use FCP to be creative, and pass the footage to the PC for encoding, leaving the Mac free to continue what I was doing. Procoder is also an excellent encoder and the output from it is rock steady and reliable, time after time. I happen to like the look of the finished MPEG, too - very clear and crisp and very seldom any glitches. If I set it to CBR encode, that's what I get. It seldom varies from the min and max I give it for VBR too, and there are plenty of post production filters to iron out glitches I miss at editing. It also does a pretty good standards conversion when I need it, certainly far superior to QT based tools I have thus far used (not including the Nattress filters). In short, it knocks spots off Compressor for the way I work.
So, speed, convenience, reliability and quality of output - each of these are important and relying on Compressor only doesn't give me the options I like to have. Compressor 2 is a good enough encoder, but have a look on the compressor forum to see what the issues are! Then head over to Innobits.com and check out the BitVice forums... I have to say that Compressor 2 is a very different beast to v1, and much, much better than it's predecessor, IMO (although not without it's problems).
The thing is, if you are happy with what you are seeing from your encoder and like the way it works then there's no need to change. If you want to have alternative options, or your work flow is a bit different, then perhaps Compressor alone isn't enough.
Quite apart from the technical differences I did create a disc with encodes from different softwares and play it to some colleagues who don't do video work. I asked them to compare the image with the original footage and say which is closest, then to say which image was 'better' to look at. Every time Procoder came top, BitVice second and Compressor last. I guess I ought to repeat this very unscientific and largely unreliable method and include MegaPEG.X in it now, too. I was only hoping for a bit of a straw poll on what an 'average' consumer might think was a good picture, I wasn't looking at in-depth comparisons. It was, however, good to get a range of opinions from a pretty unbiased group and confirmed my own thoughts about the output from the encoders.