no CQ in newer versions?

[Battsman]

Granted, I'm new to all this. In fact, I've only used trial versions of CCE and an older TmpGenc, and I'm trying to decide on which program to buy. CCE has the advantage of speed, but I've heard so many good things about TMPGenc's quality, so I'm not sure.

But I'm confused about the settings. I've read that TmpGenc's CQ can be nearly as fast as CCE, and nearly as good quality, but a friend of mine (who opted for CCE) says CQ isn't in the newer versions - he's telling me I should get CCE for its speed and quality.

So, I was wondering how fast the latest TmpGenc is and how good it's quality is, and what setting would now be used if not CQ (I'm wanting to convert my old home movies to dvds, and I'm using Nero 6 for the importing, via firewire, and authoring).

[Video Dude]

Your friend is correct. CQ seems to have been removed from 3.0. You only have the option of cbr and a 2 pass vbr. 2 pass vbr will provide much better results but will also be almost twice as slow.

CCE is much faster than TMPGEnc. TMPEGnc will give comparable quality but it is slow, even in CQ compared to CCE.

Since purchasing CCE Basic I have entirely stopped using TMPGEnc.

[Battsman]

Thanks, Video Dude - that helps a lot. My only concern has been that the quality of CCE might not be as good. Last I'd heard from my friend, he had gotten some "shimmering" from a CCE encoded home movie, but perhaps he's learned some more since then, how to use it better. I'll check with him.

In your opinion, though, since you've used both, does the quality of CCE equal that of TMPGenc?

thanks again!

[Encoder Master]

TMPGEnc in CQ mode has a very very nice Quality and in MPEG-1 and low bitrates there isn't any encoder which you can compare.

CCE is very good in Q modus and higher bitrates then 2000kbps.

[Battsman]

Master - I'm very new to this, so I hope I have the steps down right.

In my case, I'm wanting to convert my old family vhs and hi8 movies to dvds. I have a digital-8 camcorder, so I'm able to get the movies to my hard drive in DV format (I forget whether I selected DV-1 or DV-2), using Nero Studio 6.

Then, I'm to encode the files to MPEG2, right? I tried using Nero to do that, but it was so slooow. After I have mpeg2 files, I can use studio to splice, cut, join, etc, add chapters and all, then burn it to dvd.

Do I have those steps right? And if so, given what I want to do, I'd want to encode with an average bit rate of 6000-8000, right?

Given that, would the quality of CCE be as good as TMPGenc (or, at least, close enough, given the huge speed differences)?

In fact, would the older TMPGenc, using CQ be better than the newer CCE, at higher bit rates, or would the differences be minimal?

Thanks for the info!

[Video Dude]

I personally think that CCE's quality is much better than that of TMPGEnc for MPEG-2 (DVD).

TMPGEnc seems to have better quality than CCE with MPEG-1 (VCD).

6000 or a higher is a good average bitrate for high quality encodes.

[erratic]

TMPGEnc 3.0 XPress does have CQ if you make a custom MPEG Output template. There are three modes:

1. CBR (Constant bitrate)
2. VBR (Average bitrate)
3. VBR (Constant quality) with maximum/minimum bitrate and quality (0-100) settings.