Edius 4.5 DVD Encoder performance

[pjsssss]

It is not the same as PCE but the quality will be at least as good. It is very impressive

[Bassman]

Sorry for my ignorance, I have yet to move to 4.5 due to to Imaginate, but does the new DVD authoring module not use Procoder Express for the encoding?

I was hoping to get the same quality I am used to from PCE but now be able to make a disc straight from the timeline with AC3 to boot.

Thanks

[Ron Evans]

Time to encode is important in a program over 2 hours. These are stage productions so not a lot of movement. Biggest problems I have seen is the way the encoders deal with scenes changes going to and from black ( that is about the biggest change!!!) In the past the Panasonic dealt with this better than any of the software encoders. The DVD Creator also deals with this change to my eyes and does so with an encode that is shorter than realtime on my Dual Core AMD 4200 X2 ( not the greatest now). Procoder Express takes more than twice realtime and then I have to re-encode the audio to AC3, TMPGenc 3 encodes AC3 but is just as slow as Procoder Express and needs a DV file too. For my program material the difference is difficult to see.
Anyway I am reasonably happy with the results.

Ron Evans

[GrassValley_KH]

I'm not sure on the specifics, but my impression is that the encoder for DVD Creator is the same as the encoder used in the "MPEG (Generic)" and "MPEG (HDV)" exporters, and that this MPEG encoder is different to ProCoder (Express/3).

I'd say that the ultimate in precision and quality would still be in ProCoder Express for EDIUS' favour (and definitely for PC3). This would be due to ProCoder's motion estimation with highest/mastering quality encoding. The tradeoff is of course, the time taken to encode.

[Ron Evans]

I have just done a few comparison between outputting a 2 hour 15min project with the built in DVD program in Edius 4.5, an encode with TMPGenc3 from the DV output of the same project and from the timeline record to my Panasonic E15 DVD recorder. Apart from the time I had always preferred the Panasonic output at these low bit rates ( about 3.8 Mbs ). I have to say I am impressed with the encode from Edius this time and seems to be fast as well. I have still used DVDLab to author though, just import the VOB's. In comparison to DVDLab the authoring seems clumsy and more confusing than even Vegas DVD Archictect!!!!!. Looking at the DVD's from all these methods I may well now use this approach, its faster too. Is this encoder different to Procoder,( other than having AC3) seems to be?

Ron Evans