Hardware Vs Software Encoding for DVD

[amirkhan]

I read somewhere that hardware MPEG2 encoding is always better than software. Now I find this hard to believe but can someone please post personal experiences?. I wish to compare to CEE TMPEGENC for DVD (PAL) 352x576 or 720(704?)x576. Failing that tell me about your local TV rating, NTSC, SECAM etc etc..

I've got a hardware encoder on order to arrive today but I'm interested to hear from other people before I do my own conclusive test.

Amir

[Milkman Dan]

Due to the nature of software encoding, it generally has an edge. It can run multiple passes, thus being able to target either a given quality, or a give filesize.

What hardware card did you order? Will you tell us about it's performance after you test it?

[auenf]

uhh, hardware encoding can have multipass, im sure at least of the top end encoder cards can support multipass.

the site who own/distribute the bitrate viewer tested a lot of mpeg-2 encoders, hardware and software, you can download the encoded file for each and the bitrate view graph (or create your own graph if you want), so make a choice from there if you are looking to buy, or even just to satisfy a curiosity (yes i know this sentence is way too long, you should have taken a big breath beforehand)

Enf...

[Jestorius]

Hardware encoders can do multipass encoding but you don't because you can't buy the setup you need to do this. The player must support timecode and the encoder must support device-controll. The video is analog so only component signal is good for this job.

Some promissing cards - vbr but not multipass encoding:
I've just heard abouth the FusionMpeg card. http://www.dvico.com/
Canopus MVR1000 http://www.canopuscorp.com/ppm_mvr1000.htm

[Jestorius]

Has anyone used DVD Fusion(PC)? It is a some kind of combination of Avid hardware and Sonic software?!. It has a RS-422 machine controll and timecode. I just wonder what it can do with the Sonic encoder card?
------------------
I've just read it is an accelerated software encoding.

[amirkhan]

Originally posted by Milkman Dan
Due to the nature of software encoding, it generally has an edge. It can run multiple passes, thus being able to target either a given quality, or a give filesize.

What hardware card did you order? Will you tell us about it's performance after you test it?

Sure will... when you say performance you mean quality though right?.

I wish I could have got the KFir solution from MPEGTV (Linux). Only discounted it at the end as it seems it was not quite as polished as i wanted. Although I am good with Linux I dont have the time to play; need a working solution. Thats also why I avoided the DVC II ;-)

Amir

[TRILIGHT]

I have the Pinnacle DVD1000 card. It captures directly to DVD-compliant MPEG2 format. I can tell you from my personal experience that the card is GREAT for CBR encoding. While it says that it does VBR, it will never be as effective as software for that. The problem is that, while encoding realtime, it does not have as much information available to it to make the best determination for increasing or decreasing the bitrate. Ultimately, you end up with a VBR file that does not vary in bitrate very much and the filesize is about what you'd get using CBR anyway.

That being said, I can't say enough good things about this card. I use it with Adobe Premiere 6 and it works flawlessly. I've not really noticed any difference in quality between the DVD1000 and CCE when it comes to CBR. I have to give the upper hand to the hardware solution in this case though since it captures in DVD-compliant MPEG2 in realtime. It's ready to burn right off the bat.

As for software (and VBR encoding), I can't say enough good things about CCE. The CCE encoder is, by far, the fastest, most reliable, and highest quality software encoder I've ever worked with! Since the hardware solution has it's limitations when attempting VBR, I suggest the software solution if you just really can't spare the bits needed for CBR and have to have the best VBR solution you can.

[Milkman Dan]

Thanks alot for that info. I've got lots of cards I can choose, and everybody's opinion helps.

I've been really wary of Pinnacle hardware, mostly because I thought Impression 'Pro' wasn't all that pro, and wasn't very well-designed software.

I know, I know, software and hardware are different departments. But still, if QC let that software by, what are they letting by hardware-wise?

[TRILIGHT]

I can't speak to the software. Honestly, I haven't tried it since I've been able to do everything I want in DVD Maestro and it works fairly well. As for the card, it's a really nice card. Does a great job on capturing especially since it's directly to DVD-compliant MPEG2. I can edit it without having to export and encode again. Some people say the Pinnacle hardware is hard to install and set up. Personally, I think it's more that they just don't know what they're doing or they have cheap no-name brand cards in their systems causing conflicts. For me it was nothing more than putting the card in and loading up drivers. No problems at all. Oh, and in case you're wondering what I have running with it...

Asus P4B Systemboard
Intel P4 1.4Ghz o/c'd to 1.7Ghz
512MB PC133
ATI Radeon 7200 64MB AGP
Adaptec 29160 Ultra160 SCSI Controller
Intel 82557-based PCI NIC
Matrox brand Firewire card (I think it's a Lucent Chipset)
and more USB devices than you can shake a stick at! :)

[Milkman Dan]

Heh. Good ol' overclocking action.

Does the card have WDM drivers? Can you access the capture funtionality in VirtualDub? I'm not so keen on using Premiere for capture, as that seems a bit like overkill to me.

[Milkman Dan]

I just thought of something: If you're on broadband, (and you have the time of course) would you be willing to upload to my FTP a clip or two that you captured that shows off your 1000? Something with a decent variety of motion or scene-types at the card's highest bitrate and at 6Mbps? I'd greatly appreciate it. If you're okay with it, PM me and I'll give you my login info.

[TRILIGHT]

I just sent you a PM so you can check that. As for your question, it does not work in VirtualDub. (The "Capture to AVI" thing, right?) I never tried until just now but it said there was no driver available. Anyway, I always use Premiere. The card is set up to run all sorts of realtime effects (ie. no rendering time) in Premiere. Also, like I mentioned before, it allows for direct capture and editing of video while in the DVD-compliant MPEG2 format so there's no encoding time.

I know Premiere may sound like overkill but it's really not. It's every bit as good at video editing as Photoshop is for photo editing. If you're familiar with Photoshop at all, there isn't TOO terribly much of a learning curve. I found it rather easy to pick up on though I was a bit worried at first that there might be a lot of crap to learn.

[Milkman Dan]

Yeah, I picked up some Premiere to do motion menus in Scenarist. Took me a bit to figure it out, but I got the hang of it.

I'll check my PM now.

[amirkhan]

Originally posted by TRILIGHT
...It's every bit as good at video editing as Photoshop is for photo editing. If you're familiar with Photoshop at all, there isn't TOO terribly much of a learning curve.

I'm ok with PS so might give this a go... So does this mean if my card has WDM drivers I can use it with Premiere?, what does "use it mean" exactly?, you mean like a RT2500?. I thought that a capture card captures to a file and thats it?.

Is there more to it than that?