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View Full Version : HCEnc 0.15A mentioned on FOUR PAGES in the german PCMAGAZIN


Amnon82
7th October 2005, 22:37
Congrats Hank,

you did it. With the newest issue of PCMagazin whole germany knows now about HCEnc. HCEnc is even better than TMPGEnc3XP, almost CCE-Quality!!!

Here the beginning of the article:

Bisher erreichten Freeware-MPEG-2-Encoder nicht annähernd die Bildqualität der kommerziellen Konkurrenz. Mit Hank's MPEG-2-Encoder HC 0.15A scheint sich das Blatt erstmals zu wenden: Bereits in dieser jungen Versionsnummer ist die Freeware zu einer qualitativ hochwertigen Konkurrenz gereift.

Ok, not all can german, so I translate for you all :)

Normaly no freeware mpeg2 encoder reaches the picture quality of the commercial competitors. With hank's mpeg2 encoder hc 15a the leaf turns the first time: Even in the early state this freeware is grown to a high quality competitor. (Sorry for the bad translation. I'm tired ...)

The article mentioned FreeEnc and QuEnc shortly, but tells everybody that these encoder produces bad quality. So they stick to HC and compare it with TMPGEnc3XP and CCE SP 2.70. TMPGEnc loses the tests and HC wins the second place. CCE produces minmal better quality (only if you disable all filters in picture quality). The normal and best mode of HC is almost the same.

Then they mentioned the lost features, such as MPG1, MP2-Audio, import of several files. Also they didn't like that the user have to setup HC and tell it that the source is progressive or interlaced plus the fieldorder.

The fourth part of the article discribes the using of hc. They use DGIndex plus AVISynth as frameserver. Telling the user how to setup/using DGIndex, AVISynth (in a extra box) and HC.

In the fazit they tell everybody that hc is the first freeware which win a place in the top 10 of the best mpeg2encoders. On their wishlist are integration of filters, scaling/cutting of the sourcematerial, converting of the audio tracks, support for mpeg1 and (S)VCD/DVD-Profiles.

M7S
8th October 2005, 00:28
The article mentioned FreeEnc and QuEnc shortly, but tells everybody that these encoder produces bad quality.
Is this a common belife or is it only this magazine that holds this opinion? I haven't seen any big differences in quality between quenc and HCenc, but I haven't compared the two very deeply either.

Download the four pages in png: PCM_HCENC_AMNON82.rar (9647960 Bytes)
Is this legal? (I'm not judging, I'm asking.)

Regards,
M7S

Pookie
8th October 2005, 02:22
Quenc and HC are both great.

Koepi
8th October 2005, 07:32
Please remove the links, it is illegal to provide this copyrighted material!

And: PC Magazin isn't quite a "serious" magazine. It is only this magazine which believes freeenc and quenc aren't good. (They judge a codec simply by looking at PSNR and related "qualitry matrices" -- they even use PSNR twice, there's another value which behaves like 1/PSNR, just turn that graphic around and it perfectly matches PSNR *eg*)

Mug Funky
8th October 2005, 08:22
i've found quenc and HC to deliver very similar quality. but i like quenc's 1-pass mode better.

i've not used freeenc, but i suspect when people talk about getting "poor quality" out of encoders based on ffmpeg (which is an exceptional base to work from), it's probably because they don't really know what they're doing.

but i don't want to take the gloss off Hank's amazing achievement - to build such a great, fast and high quality encoder from the ground up just in spare time is truly amazing.

Amnon82
8th October 2005, 19:03
I removed the link.

@M7S: remove also the link. You quoted my post.

p.s.: I also deleted the file form the server.

P.s.2: The funniest thing was, they linked to doom9.org: http://www.doom9.org/Soft21/Encoders/MPEG2/QuEnc.zip

... guess what you're downloading ;)

Revgen
8th October 2005, 23:21
PC Magazin isn't quite a "serious" magazine. It is only this magazine which believes freeenc and quenc aren't good. (They judge a codec simply by looking at PSNR and related "qualitry matrices" -- they even use PSNR twice, there's another value which behaves like 1/PSNR, just turn that graphic around and it perfectly matches PSNR *eg*)

Why is PSNR important anyway? Can't people just use their own two eyes and make a judgement?

dragongodz
9th October 2005, 03:36
They judge a codec simply by looking at PSNR and related "qualitry matrices"
do they provide any proof QuEnc is bad or do they just say that ? because if they are going by PSNR then that seems a bit inconsistant with this.
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=98633

HC is a very good encoder for sure and knowing some of the things hank315 is working on shows it should get even better. i dont think anyone here needs a magazine to tell us these things(yes i know its not written for us, sheesh). ;)

Amnon82
9th October 2005, 10:43
In the article they only mentioned QuEnc and FreeEnc. They told everybody in this article to keep on HCEnc and leave the others alone. After they did it they start to write the article for HCEnc. Maybe the author of this article needed a badboy to become a goodboy ;)

If setup QuEnc right it will produce also good quality, but I think the author is an beginner ...

LigH
10th October 2005, 23:54
... guess what you're downloading ;)
Most probably, the leech-stop page... Fools. :sly:

Well, it could have been a good article; but with such glitches, once again the PC-Magazin degraded itself to "yellow press".

Nevertheless, it shows that good quality does not need to be expensive in price, maybe just a bit more expensive in efforts to learn and understand the options.

Kika
11th October 2005, 15:44
@Koepi

Guess you are mixing up PC Magazin and c't. As far as i know, PC Magazin never used PSNR.