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.
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.