Hardware vs. Software encoding?

Mad Dog Mike

Mad Dog Mike

We've been talking to a couple replication companies, and the subject of encoding came up. This one sales guy said not to go with his competitor because they don't offer hardware encoding. He says that going with software encoding is risky because the chance of discs glitching in people's players is greater. Also, this guy said not to go more than 70 minutes per disc unless you want to step up and go dual-layered.

This makes me want to scream. We thought we knew what we were doing... We were even doing the software encoding ourselves. Now what?
 
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Im confused. Work with me on this. Are you talking about compressing a software program you created or are you talking about Using A CoDec to make the data size smaller for your Movie file?

Because I was told never to use a CoDec either when making a DVD because you lose resolution quality. Cinepak is nice but i dont know if thats DVD ecoding.

The guy told me if I ever wanted to transfer a movie to 35mm film that the want you to use uncompress as an option.

Please explain what you mean by encoding. without a CoDec the DVD will be choppy and without a CoDec your movie would take up a whole 4.7 or 6.3 gig disc with just a couple of minutes of movie.
 
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Technically hardware encoding is supposed to provide a nicer picture but it doesn't provide a more stable disc. If you are happy with the (MPEG I assume) coding you can do with your software then there isn't really any reason to go hardware.

70 minutes is a good idea. It depends on what the disc will be used for and the data rate you encoded the file at.
 
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King Goldfish said:
Please explain what you mean by encoding. without a CoDec the DVD will be choppy and without a CoDec your movie would take up a whole 4.7 or 6.3 gig disc with just a couple of minutes of movie.
Click to expand...

I'm talking about making an MPEG 2 (or M2V) using a software program like TMPEG. TMPEG takes my uncompressed video and crunches it down into nice DVD ready MPEG 2 files. No codecs involved, as far as I know.

Hardware encoding is something where whole drives or computer systems optimize the video instead of using a cheaper software product.

...

So are there folks here who've put out a feature with extras on DVD? Did you fit it all on a 4.7 disc without a problem? Cuz 70 minutes just ain't enough for us.
 
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You should be able to fit at least 90 min on a disk with good quality, if you use a good quality encoder (either hardware or software) & use it properly. You might be able to get that up to 120 min if you use a hardware encoder.

The skill & attention to detail that the compressionist brings to the table is much more important in the long run than what product or method they use.

That said, a hardware encoder should produce a better looking encode at a lower bitrate to fit more footage on the same disk. If the compressionist knows what they're doing...
 
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Mad Dog Mike said:
King Goldfish said:
Please explain what you mean by encoding. without a CoDec the DVD will be choppy and without a CoDec your movie would take up a whole 4.7 or 6.3 gig disc with just a couple of minutes of movie.
Click to expand...

I'm talking about making an MPEG 2 (or M2V) using a software program like TMPEG. TMPEG takes my uncompressed video and crunches it down into nice DVD ready MPEG 2 files. No codecs involved, as far as I know.

Hardware encoding is something where whole drives or computer systems optimize the video instead of using a cheaper software product.

...

So are there folks here who've put out a feature with extras on DVD? Did you fit it all on a 4.7 disc without a problem? Cuz 70 minutes just ain't enough for us.
Click to expand...


See thats what i want to know. Im told they dont make 6.4 burners. I know they make double side DVD burners. I havnt bought a DVD burner in over 2 years. I got a new computer last year that came with one. But what I want to know is how do you buy a commercial size 6.4 DVD burner and disc? Im guessing they dont sell them because people will just pirate movies easier.


I've seen Harddrive storage used on some the professional Cini camcorders on Panasonic.com I was wondering is it easier to use a HD when filming vs tape? I know its not for the average guy who mobile but in 10 years do you think CamCorders will get rid of tape all together and just build in HD which by then will be in the size of terabites?
 
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You've got questions about HD I can't help with.

I've never heard of 6.3 discs. I believe dual-layer discs are 8.5 gig. Yes, they've recently put out dual-layer burners, but I'm not into that. I know if I wanted to submit my content to a replicator for dual-layer output, I've got to do it on DLT tape, not DVD-R. A whole new can of worms.
 
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Yes I think tape will become obsolete in the near future - especially when things start going HD. We now have the transfer/storage speed to handle the necessary bandwidth. In fact I know several people who are making their own HD cameras at this very moment that record to a RAID array. I have seen these listed at possible prices of $3,000-$5,000! And that is 4:4:4 uncompressed, lossless recording! So much for $60,000 and up HD!

>> I believe dual-layer discs are 8.5 gig. <<

Actual usable space is something more like 7.9 I believe.
 
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