Another transcoding option: MediaEspresso

Laurence wrote on 11/13/2010, 7:18 AM
nVidia's Badaboom is incredibly fast at transcoding video to h.264, but there are problems: it wont work with Cineform or uncompressed source material and it only works with certain graphics cards.

Because of this, I spent quite a bit of yesterday reading reviews, installing demos, and putting them through their paces. As a result of this I just bought http://www.cyberlink.com/products/mediaespresso/overview_en_US.htmlCyberlink MediaEspresso 6[/link].

It uses a combination of CPU and GPU and is (amazingly) even faster than Badaboom on conversions on my system. It will also work with my Cineform masters. I expect it will work with uncompressed lossless codecs like Lagarith as well. Quality seems appropriate for whatever bitrate you use, certainly on par with a Vegas or Badaboom render. You can also transcode to other formats like wmv. You can preset formats and call them up later. You can batch convert files. You can preview them and examine their properties from within the interface. The main thing though is it is screaming fast! I tried a bunch of different transcoding programs yesterday and this was the one that was the best.

If you are interested in it, download and install the demo. It will let you do 50 conversions. Then, if you decide to buy it, use the link from within the demo instead of going directly through the web page because this will give you an extra 20% discount.

Comments

bsuratt wrote on 11/13/2010, 7:50 AM
Interesting!

Will it downscale HDV to SD? (Web page doesn't mention it)
Laurence wrote on 11/13/2010, 8:13 AM
Yes it downrezzes nicely. Another thing that the web page doesn't mention is that it deinterlaces quite nicely. I was worried because their is no deinterlace option, so I isolated a bit of video with prominent interlace artifacts and transcoded that. It deinterlaced very well. Still sharp but no comb. I don't know what algorithm they use, but it looks very much like a handbrake decomb (which I really like).

A program like this may not be that big a deal to the i7 crowd (though it should be amazingly fast for them), but on my lowly Core2Duo the difference between a program like this and a Vegas render is just phenomenal. It's the difference between having the computer tied up all afternoon doing a render or just having it take the time of a coffee or bathroom break.
craftech wrote on 11/13/2010, 12:44 PM
I am presently using Procoder 3 for a lot of my transcoding. I am wondering if this would be better at the biggest issue - HD to SD with the least loss in quality and the least artifacts. It's certainly cheap enough. You say you are using a Cineform intermediate. Have you tried any other intermediate?

John
Laurence wrote on 11/13/2010, 1:18 PM
I haven't tried any other intermediates yet. You can download the demo and do 50 conversions before you register, so I would recommend trying it out to see what you think. I really like it. Like I said, it just flies through the transcodes amazingly fast and the quality still looks excellent. If you are starting out with interlaced HD, it will deinterlace automatically and downrez to whatever your target resolution is. I really like this software.
reberclark wrote on 11/13/2010, 3:01 PM
Are the mpeg-2 files this produces from HD footage better than Vegas' MainConcept? Are those mpeg-2s usable on a Vegas timeline (I suppose they are)? Will they be re-compressed when making a master file for DVDA?

Please share any experience with this.
John_Cline wrote on 11/13/2010, 3:23 PM
Cyberlink has a very welll regarded MPEG2 decoder in their Power DVD software, so I assume that they also know how to write a good MPEG2 encoder.

Also the MediaEspresso software only uses CUDA for h.264 encoding. At this point, I still use MPEG2 more often than h.264. Since encoding h.264 and MPEG2 use similar processes, I wonder why no one has yet written a CUDA accelerated MPEG2 encoder? Perhaps there is one out there of which I am unaware?
farss wrote on 11/13/2010, 3:33 PM
" I wonder why no one has yet written a CUDA accelerated MPEG2 encoder?"

I'd sure buy one. I oftenly get asked for copies of my EX footage on tape as HDV. The transcode time using Vegas is plain silly. Took me almost 4 hours to convert 1 hour and then there's the time to print to tape. I think Vegas is actually faster at rendering from EX to SD mpeg-2 with FXs added.

Bob.
jabloomf1230 wrote on 11/13/2010, 4:16 PM
I could be wrong here, but I think it has to do with the differences between existing MPEG-2 and h.264 encoders. Generally, an MPEG-2 encoder expects as an input a complete picture repeating at the frame rate whereas an h.264 encoder handles the graphic instructions directly. This is because the h.264 standard is newer and the encoders have been written from scratch. No one wants to fully rewrite an existing MPEG-2 encoder from scratch.

Thus, tacking on CUDA parallel processing to an an existing MPEG-2 encoder doesn't speed things up that much. I remember David Newman explaining something similar (but not the same) about Cineform and why their encoders don't utilize CUDA.
Dennishh wrote on 11/13/2010, 5:11 PM
Anyone tried this with 5D files?
bsuratt wrote on 11/13/2010, 6:24 PM
Laurence...

Tried the demo.. M2t files captured from camera loaded and converted fine.

M2t files which were smart rendered via Vegas10a would not load. (After it appears to load an error message comes up "File could not be imported")

16:9 Cineform avi files are detected as 4:3 and convert that way.

Are you experiencing any of this? (Support on their website seems very shallow!)

Perhaps the demo is limited in some way?

Otherwise, it seems promising....
Laurence wrote on 11/13/2010, 6:41 PM
No I haven't run into any of those issues:

Smart-rendered m2t converts fine and Cineform stays at 16:9. The demo worked for me exactly the same as the version I now have registered.
bsuratt wrote on 11/13/2010, 11:47 PM
My problems apparently were that MediaEspresso6 will not run properly under Win 7/64.

I installed on a Vista 32 partition and everything now seems to work properly. HDV to SD downrez quality looks very good!

PeterDuke wrote on 11/14/2010, 2:06 AM
Does MediaEspresso require that the computer on which you are installing it have internet access (as in Cyberlink Power DVD), or can you activate it by phone or another computer as in Vegas?

I am struggling to keep my main editing workhorse internet free so that I don't have to worry about antivirus and security updates. Now Adobe Premiere Elements (and probably more) also insist on having direct internet access in order to activate.
Laurence wrote on 11/14/2010, 1:24 PM
I am running it on 64bit Windows 7 with no problems.

As far as I can tell, they just give you an activation code that isn't dependent on your hardware so you should be able to register it from a second computer.
John_Cline wrote on 11/14/2010, 1:24 PM
I played with it a bit this morning and found that you can't set custom bitrates or image sizes. I was going to use it to convert videos for my DroidX phone which has a native 16x9 screen size of 854x480. Setting the image size is not an option in MediaEspresso nor is it an option in Badaboom. It is, however, an option in the Vegas AVC encoder.

As I suspected, MPEG2 encoding is not CUDA accelerated in MediaEspresso either and in fact, it failed on a simple SD MPEG2 encoding.

The search for a full-featured, CUDA-enabled, stand-alone h.264 encoder continues...
Laurence wrote on 11/14/2010, 4:44 PM
854x480 is a good size. I wish they both had it as well. That or 864x480 (854 rounded up to the next multiple of 16). Yeah, neither program is perfect. It still beats waiting four times as long for Vegas to render though.
Laurence wrote on 11/19/2010, 2:40 PM
You know, I am liking MediaEspresso more and more. I've tried a few more convertor programs, and so far, this is the only one that will handle formats like Cineform. Also, if you use Badaboom with interlaced source material, you lose resolution if you check the deinterlace box. MediaEspresso deinterlaces automatically and the deinterlaces look very sharp. From the looks of it they are using a decoming or smart-deinterlace algorithm that just looks wonderful. The encodes use both the CPU and GPU and are faster than Badaboom's GPU only transcode.
Guy S. wrote on 11/19/2010, 3:40 PM
I've been looking for an efficient way to transcode my Panny 720p AVCHD footage to something that plays more smoothly from the Vegas timeline. I evaluated ME 6 a couple of months ago but was unable to find a supported conversion format that performed any better then the GH1's native MTS files.

Were you transcoding to Cineform, or from Cineform to something else?

Guy



jabloomf1230 wrote on 11/19/2010, 5:07 PM
MainConcept has a CUDA-based h.264 encoder plug-in for Premiere Pro (as does Elemental, the author of Badaboom), but it also has a stand alone transcoder:

http://www.mainconcept.com/products/apps-plug-ins/transcoding/reference/cuda-h264avc.html

Unfortunately, it is terribly overpriced, which indicates that its probably being targetted at broadcast settings.

Laurence wrote on 11/19/2010, 7:35 PM
>I've been looking for an efficient way to transcode my Panny 720p AVCHD footage to something that plays more smoothly from the Vegas timeline. I evaluated ME 6 a couple of months ago but was unable to find a supported conversion format that performed any better then the GH1's native MTS files.

What you are looking for is an intermediate. You need something like Cineform Neo, DV Film Epic, AVCHD Upshift, or a Vegas script to batch convert AVCHD into something more timeline friendly like .mxf.

Programs like MediaEspresso and Badaboom have a different use: that is transcoding your final render into a more compact delivery format without a lengthly Vegas render.

I was converting from Cineform into h264, not the other way around.