Suggestions for MPEG Encoder

[Karen St Martin]

I would appreciate some suggestions for a good, reliable MPEG encoder either in hardware or software. I currently have the Ligos LSX-MPEG 3.5 encoder but caused quite a few system lockups on my system which only a power cycle can get out of. Ulead MediaStudio 6.5, since it uses MPEG encoders from Ligos, also has exactly the same problem.

I can render AVI files just fine; good quality, reasonable speed, etc. But only very occassionaly can I successfully render either an MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 file. So far, Ligos tech support has been very unhelpful, simply saying that this is usually a problem with "low memory". Their suggestion of using a burn in utility to "isolate the problem" was useless since the only thing that fails on my system is their encoder.

I've looked at other common encoders such as TMPGenc, but they are extremely slow. So I would definately appreciate any suggestions on a good, reliable, reasonably speedy MPEG encoder that I can use to convert AVI (MPEG-4) files to MPEG with.

Thanks!

Karen

[Dr Mordrid]

If you're having that kind of problem with the Ligos encoder then there's a fundamental problem in your Windows installation.

That said the TMPGEnc encoder is a very good standalone encoder, but you have to update it monthly. This is because they can only provide a 30 day license for the MPEG-2 module in a shareware product.

http://www.tmpgenc.com

Dr. Mordrid

[Karen St Martin]

Dr. Mordrid,

Thanks for your advice.

Yes, I realize that there may be something wrong with my system, but unfortunately the "low memory" and "run burn-in" suggestions from Ligos are not very helpful in finding the problem so I can fix it. That is why I am looking for another solution for MPEG encoding.

Karen

[Luco]

try CineplayerDVR 2.51.....

http://www.ravisentdirect.com/store/index.html

http://www.vcdhelp.com/convert.htm

"OO"

[Dr Mordrid]

Low memory?

Have you moved your temp and preview files off the boot drive and onto the capture drive? That'll cause low memory errors in MSPro and other programs.

MSPro has settings to do this in File/Preferences on the General and Preview tabs. To move 'em off the boot drive for other programs add this to your autoexec.bat file;

SET TEMP=D:\TEMP
SET TMP=D:\TEMP

where D is your video drive and TEMP is a folder you create in the root of the video drive.

The way it works is that many programs generate temp files large enough to fill the boot drive. If this happens you get a memory error because the swapfile can't grow large enough.

Dr. Mordrid

[Karen St Martin]

Yes, low memory! As I said, that isn't very helpful.

I just moved the MSP temp file to another drive and will rerun a render and see what happens. In the meantime, I tried the LSX-MPEG encoder and it froze in less than a minute.

I find it sort of strnage that the *only* thing I have problems with is the stuff from Ligos. Weird!

Karen

[Dr Mordrid]

That makes it sound even more like an OS configuration problem. That or a conflict with another piece of software.

Dr. Mordrid