MainConcept Reference 1.0 (first look)

[Toti]

I have just tried the mainconcept reference with much anticipation. By reading from mainconcept's website it looks like an amazing tool.

First off it works in Vista which is a plus. I have tried H.264 encoders 1.5, 2.1 and both are full of bugs. The quality is great so I was expecting the quality to be about the same but the bugs worked out.

First the good news: MainConcept Reference has improved the quality on AVC encoding. It looks almost identical to the original when encoding any input ATSC/Blu-Ray/HD-DVD at 10Mbps

Second the bad news: still has bugs , even more bugs than 2.1. encoding a video at 23.976 with no pulldown produces a video that plays slower than the original and it does not plays on Blu-Ray player Sony BDP-S1.

MainConcept H.264 encoder 2.1 does have one bug when encoding for Blu-Ray/AVCHD. Even with no-pulldown flags the video DOES gets outof sync slowly. The difference is minimal that you need about 1.5 hours to notice the barely difference.

Please post your experience with MainConcept Reference. Not to be pesimist but I haven't been able to produce a single perfect working video with MainConcept in H.264. MPEG2 encoder works great.

I have Dual-Boot on my computer (XP & Vista) and the only reason is Sonic's CineVision. It only works on XP PRO & MCE 2005. Everything else I rather go Vista but for now I have not seen any app that produces Video for HD-DVD & Bluray with as good quality as CineVision and that works in Vista.

[G_M_C]

[...]
MainConcept H.264 encoder 2.1 does have one bug when encoding for Blu-Ray/AVCHD. Even with no-pulldown flags the video DOES gets outof sync slowly. The difference is minimal that you need about 1.5 hours to notice the barely difference.
[...]

Sounds something like they used fixed 23.976 fps in stead of the correct fraction of 24000/1001 :rolleyes:

[RealTelstar]

Hm funny, 23.976 fps is the "standard" for PAL dvd sold in europe.

[desta]

Hm funny, 23.976 fps is the "standard" for PAL dvd sold in europe.
That would be 25fps.

[Toti]

Well, after using MainConcept Reference 1.0 for months I have found more problems.

1. The video getting shorter than the audio only happens with AVC and only if you hit the "advanced settings" tab. If you select Blu-Ray HD pre-select and encode like it is it does a great job. The only problem is that it will only encode at 29.97.

If you don't mind your video being at 29.97 instead of 23.976 then this tool is for you.

I haven't tested if this video works with HD-DVD.

Quality in AVC is really impressive. One more cool thing is even if you are not going to use MainConcept Reference is always good to install it since it also installs the HD codecs AVC & VC1 and they work great in Media player as if they were natively.

[musicman2311]

i have tested it - looked ok for me (except for watermark lol) - but recently it has problems to decode latest releases or does it with errors

[musicman2311]

i have tested it - looked ok for me (except for watermark lol) - but recently it has problems to decode latest releases or does it with errors

sorry - by that i mean tit has color shades accross the screen or is just black