emazur
25th May 2005, 15:40
Did you know that in Japan they sell a TMPGEnc DVD Easy Pack? It comprises: Encoder Xpress 3.0, MPEG Editor, DVD Author 1.6 in one package for about $50, with printed manual and NO product activation. I bought mine over 2 weeks ago and I'm pretty happy with it. And it's hardly watered down (at least not what I do with it).
For Xpress, you can import .avi, .mpg, unencrypted dvd, .wmv, .avs (even though .avs isn't an advertised feature) and freely crop, resize, denoise etc. And you're not overly restricted in profiles- bitrate and resolution can freely be altered, ac3 or mp2 output can be chosen, 1 or 2 passes are OK. It only outputs mpg (no avi), and I tried to alter the vcd profile to 48 khz, but it wouldn't let me. But for me these aren't really limitations- I didn't buy it for avi encoding, and I wound up choosing 1150 kbps max vbr MPEG2 instead of vcd, which looks quite abit better to my eyes, especially the macroblocks are smaller. Up til now I'd been using "vcd on dvd" mpg1 48khz (for tv caps) from an older ver of tmpgenc, but this limitation of the "watered down" version caused me to change my behavior for the better.
MPEG Editor I only used once, but it worked fine. Edit out commercials, press ouput and you're done. Not much to water down here, and even if there was I don't care, it's good enough for me as is.
DVD Author worked great for me, I'd used the full commercial version before and nothing seemed different to me in the Easy Edition. Select mpegs (mixing mpeg1 & 2 is OK, if on different tracks), trim if desired, insert chapters (manually or auto), select menu theme and rename chapters, motion menu is OK if desired, press Output and burn when finished.
If the above mentioned actions sound like what you do with these program(s), but you haven't legitimately purchased them yet, I highly recommend this DVD Easy Pack. At about $50, it's a very good value. The advertisement says it is only sold in Japan, so you might have to moan at Pegasys to release an English version. I use J WinXP Pro so no problems for me. I'm not sure about eng versions of xp, but I can change some region settings on my system to Eng, Jap, (or a crapload of other langs). If Eng is chosen, it shows question marks instead of characters in the programs menus, but if Jap is chosen everything looks correct (assuming you can read it, of course). homepage is here:
http://www.pegasys-inc.com/ja/product/te_dep.html
For Xpress, you can import .avi, .mpg, unencrypted dvd, .wmv, .avs (even though .avs isn't an advertised feature) and freely crop, resize, denoise etc. And you're not overly restricted in profiles- bitrate and resolution can freely be altered, ac3 or mp2 output can be chosen, 1 or 2 passes are OK. It only outputs mpg (no avi), and I tried to alter the vcd profile to 48 khz, but it wouldn't let me. But for me these aren't really limitations- I didn't buy it for avi encoding, and I wound up choosing 1150 kbps max vbr MPEG2 instead of vcd, which looks quite abit better to my eyes, especially the macroblocks are smaller. Up til now I'd been using "vcd on dvd" mpg1 48khz (for tv caps) from an older ver of tmpgenc, but this limitation of the "watered down" version caused me to change my behavior for the better.
MPEG Editor I only used once, but it worked fine. Edit out commercials, press ouput and you're done. Not much to water down here, and even if there was I don't care, it's good enough for me as is.
DVD Author worked great for me, I'd used the full commercial version before and nothing seemed different to me in the Easy Edition. Select mpegs (mixing mpeg1 & 2 is OK, if on different tracks), trim if desired, insert chapters (manually or auto), select menu theme and rename chapters, motion menu is OK if desired, press Output and burn when finished.
If the above mentioned actions sound like what you do with these program(s), but you haven't legitimately purchased them yet, I highly recommend this DVD Easy Pack. At about $50, it's a very good value. The advertisement says it is only sold in Japan, so you might have to moan at Pegasys to release an English version. I use J WinXP Pro so no problems for me. I'm not sure about eng versions of xp, but I can change some region settings on my system to Eng, Jap, (or a crapload of other langs). If Eng is chosen, it shows question marks instead of characters in the programs menus, but if Jap is chosen everything looks correct (assuming you can read it, of course). homepage is here:
http://www.pegasys-inc.com/ja/product/te_dep.html