Ulead DVD plugin

[Rob100]

I am wondering how good the MPEG2 encoding quality is? What "engine" is it based upon - please don't say Ligos...

Can it do VBR or CBR only?

Thanks....


Rob.

[AndrewDV]

When you install the DVD Plugin, you get the update Ligos engine. The quality is very good, but TMPGEnc 12a edges it slightly.

The MPEG settings are very basic. For some, that is a good thing
.

[Dr Mordrid]

Yes, it is the Ligos engine but it's now a new beast. It now does interlace properly (much nicer quality) and both VBR and CBR.

The quality is good enough so that during some tests I ran during the MSPro 6.5 beta it actually delivered better Q scores than did TMPGEnc 12a in MPEG-2. Q = compression ratio. Lower is better and the DVD Plugin's Q was often 20-30% lower than TMPGEnc's.

The only weakness with the new engine is that Ulead chose to set the max bitrate for MPEG-1 at 2000 kbps. This is silly, but they did it anyhow. MPEG-2 still has the 14,648 kbps max it had before.

At any rate myself and others have hit up Ulead's product manager about this and it may well be changed judging from all the heat they took

Dr. Mordrid

[Rob100]

Thanks for the replies. Hmm, those limited bit rates are crazy. I will wait until this is addressed before I get it I think.

Doc M, can MSP6.5 write segmented AVI's?