Using Canopus Procoder 2

troppo · Post by **troppo** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 7:08 am

Has anyone used this? And is it good. And also, does it work with MSP8.1?

paulw · Post by **paulw** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 8:08 am

It's great. I use it all the time as a stand alone encoder rather than a plugin with MSPRO. The down side is that it doesn't encode AC3 audio only Mpeg and PCM..

Devil · Post by **Devil** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 8:42 am

It has a good reputation, but is very expensive. I'm informed the cut-down version, at a reasonable price, is not so good.

I don't use either, because of the AC-3 problem.

troppo · Post by **troppo** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 9:04 am

What is the advantage of AC3 audio over mpeg or PCM, and can it decode from AC3?
Thanks.

Devil · Post by **Devil** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 9:24 am

AC3 is good quality audio at, say, 192 kbit/s for stereo 2.0 but can also do 5.1, which the others can't. LPCM hogs about 1500 kbit/s so pinches an enormous amount of DVD space and MPEG is between them but with poorer sound quality. The latter cannot be played on all NTSC players. A FEW, very old, PAL players cannot play AC-3, but I think that all made in the past 8 or 9 years can and AC-3 is now in the PAL DVD standard.

I use ONLY AC-3

Gorf · Post by **Gorf** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 3:48 pm

Devil wrote:...I'm informed the cut-down version, at a reasonable price, is not so good.

It's possible that Procoder Express's abilities vary depending on the source footage, but I've never had problems with the quality of its MPEG encodes from DV, or its cross-conversions between NTSC and PAL.

THoff · Post by **THoff** » Mon Jul 03, 2006 5:15 pm

The Express version doesn't have a "Master Quality" output option, which squeezes a little bit more quality out of the video. Unless you are pixel-peeping at extremely complex scenes, I doubt you'll see a difference.

troppo · Post by **troppo** » Wed Jul 05, 2006 1:32 am

Got the pro version, and it's great. I love the queue feature. And output quality is fantastic. Pricey, but great.