CCE Vs HC at low bitrates and a Interlaced source

[gizzin]

I read somewhere jdobbs was giving praise to HC at really low birates. And we already know CCE is terrible at using interlaced sources. So I had a DVD perfect for the occasion Dawson's Creek S4 D1. The HIGH/LOW/TYPICAL Bitrates:2,258/400/1,618 Kbs (1,618 is a really low bitrate personally I wouldn't use anything under 3000kb). For CCE I used 4passes and HC the best setting. I was expecting both to be really bad quality. First, I looked at the CCE encode first and it was very blocky with tons of noise. Second, I looked at the HC encode and I was very surprised almost no blockiness but the noise was close to just as much as CCE encode maybe alittle less. HC is clearly the winner here especially it being free this is the icing on the cake :)

CCE SP trial v2.7
HC v19

On a side note HC was faster but only because I have a dual core processor in which HC supports utilizing 2 instances. Wow... $2000 or free I wonder

[feedback]

Just curious, what Matrix did you use?

Regards,

[cobo]

Try QuEnc while you're at it. Takes longer, but I think it does best for low bitrate encodes.

[Pulp Catalyst]

but at normal bit rates, is CCE superior,

as CCE is used by many well known and big video multimedia companies, and i find it hard to believe that these profesional companies would use expensive codecs, when free codecs do jus as well, or even better,

is it just people being bias towards free codecs over expensive codecs,

or is there some truth in free codecs are better then comercial versions,

also i heard that for speed, CCE is the fastest on the planet (with high degreee in quality)

as for CCE acheiving good results at low bit rates,
in CCE's defence, CCE was never designed for low bit rates, in fact MPEG2 was never designed for low bit rates, that's why MPEG4 was designed, as there would of been no point designing mpeg4 standard otherwise,

what i am concerned about really that CCE is inferiror now at normal bit rates, the bit rate that CCE was designed for,

just wondered if anybody can offer there view, as i've only done a few tests (and from what i can tell, CCE still rocks at normal to high bit rates, to me it seems CCE always puts a nice hollywood filter effect on the image, that makes the image look smooth, but acheiving a high degree in sharpness at the same time)

reason i'm worried, is i actually brought CCE sp1 about 13months ago, only cost me $899 though, and the company as always supported the codecs, even now there still bringing a update out from time to time,

[gizzin]

At first I found it hard to believe a piece of software that is so expensive that something free to be even close to the quality. For Progressive sources and higher bitrates CCE is really high quality. But between these encodes theres no comparison HC is just better. I've done encodes with HC at higher bitrates using progressive sources. Its comparable to CCE in my opinion maybe better is some cases. The higher the bitrate the better the output so it gets harder to tell whats better. If you are doing interlaced encodes I highly recommend HC. Quenc is good quality too but it's slower and I also find it tends to smooths thing out. This is my opinion though I haven't done enough encodes with Quenc. Plus theres been newer version that are improved since I last used it

PS. I didnt use any matrices but the defaults.

[dragongodz]

as CCE is used by many well known and big video multimedia companies, and i find it hard to believe that these profesional companies would use expensive codecs, when free codecs do jus as well, or even better,
you can believe all you like but the simple matter is expensive and comercial doesnt always mean its the best.
for example hank315 and i were looking at some things to improve HC. he ran some tests with CCE to see how it handled motion vectors with different footage. we came across 1 case where CCE did NOT follow motion that great. QuEnc did much better at following the true motion of the scene.

also consider that most companies actually just look for comercial solutions. they do not go looking for free programs that do not have money backed support to do the same job.

If you are doing interlaced encodes I highly recommend HC. Quenc is good quality too but it's slower
yes hank315 has specifically looked at interlaced encoding to make that better and QuEnc does have specific intelaced motion etc automatically used. i have also heard procoder is pretty good with interlaced encoding but have not tested that myslef.
as for QuEnc being slower than HC .... depends on the settings. for example using trellis and "extreme&slow" settings are BIG speed killers and can not exactly be compared to doing the same as HC is on its "best" setting.

Try QuEnc while you're at it.
people may want to wait a week or so before this though. ;)