TMPG produces a wonderful encode. Especially if you use a little
noise reduction. There is no comparison between TMPG and MC
if you talk about quality when everything is tweaked properly.
However, to get the best output you have to pay for it in CPU
cycles. It may take longer to render but it will sure look nice.

I use TMPG for other stuff but how do I use it with Vegas? I divide my timeline up into several tracks to be used as titles in my DVD authoring application and use the Batch Encode script via Sundance to encode my .m2vs and wavs/ac3. Is there a way to use TMPGEnc and still be able to use the batch rendering of the regions?

potato, can you elaborate on some of your settings in TMPG. I would be interested to know what you use to see way better quality than MC. In mine, I see only a slight to moderate improvement with TMPG.

Must say I like TMPGEnc, if for nothing other than that their free lifetime upgrade policy is still holding true.
Main thing I use it for is on poor quality VHS material that gets encoded for VCD, I at times have to do batches of 10 or more VCDs so the batch render is also a plus. On pristine video the difference isn't so noticeable. Also I like the fact that it includes masks to get rid of the jittery lines on the sides and bottom of the VHS frames that eat up bandwidth, sure you could do this in Vegas but adding that in during the TMPGEnc encode doesn't seem to make any hit on encode times.
All I'd add is it's damn good value for the money and its from a company that delivers what they say they do and it does more tnan just encode mpeg-1 and mpeg-2 so why not give the good guys a few bucks and add a useful tool to your kit.

Hmm I don't know what you're talkin about when you say I could do it in Vegas... I wanted to know if there's a way to encode using TMPGEnc the same way I use the integrated MC encoder, that is, encode all of my regions via the batch render script in Vegas?

I was referring to mask the edges.
To do what you wnat from Vegas you need to frame serve from the Vegas T/L to TMPGEnc using Staish's frameserver.
I think you can find it at www.debugmode.com

I needed to take some animation to DVD. I started with sequential Targa files in Vegas at NTSC uncompressed settings...did my edits then used Vegas / Mainconcept version to encode and later create my DVD. It looked pretty good except for an animated cable that comes at you from the distance, winding its way to full frame. The cable looked "blotchy"... everything else looked very good even the heavily graduated background looked good. To me- I needed to find a way to fix the cable since it was the beauty shot of the product. I used TMPGEnc with noise reduction and CQ with the slowest motion search..and it looked great! I never use the Mainconcept encoder because of what I saw in my animation...

I downloaded TMPGEnc 2,5 today after reading your positive posts.
I´m not good at technical issues so I was surprised when my first render from avi to mpeg2 Pal 4:3 came out with a - .m2v file insted of a -.mpg.
Neither VV4 or DVDA recognizes -.m2v files.
I must have missed something here.
Aje

You made an elementary stream. As you found, Vegas & DVDA don't recognize elementary streams. You either need to mux a dummy audio file to it OR re-render but include the audio stream this time.

On the main TMPGEnc screen, select System (Video only) or System (Video+Audio). Vegas and DVDA should then recognize your stream. Try encoding a small clip first, just to make sure.