geek OS

[Roger Merchberger]

{{{

 > Gordon JC Pearce wrote:
>>Roger Merchberger wrote:
>>>As I have to, at both work and home. Work: Peachtree. Other than that, I 
>>>SSH into all of my linux servers. ;-)  Home: MPEG transcoding software 
>>>from my TiVo to SVCD. Linux just doesn't have the (inexpensive) software 
>>>yet. Good stuff is $$$$$, free stuff isn't worth dealing with.
>>
>>Are you on crack?  Mencoder does the job admirably.

Having never even smoked pot, I *should* be offended by that... but I won't.

'Course, having been xcoding MPEGs from my TiVo for almost 4 years, and 
having seen the output of Mencoder compared to TMPGEnc, I *should* be 
offended by that...

As I do *many* shows (for my wife, mainly) I also rely heavily on AviSynth 
-- a most excellent tool for assembling, resizing (it even supports Lanczos 
resizing, and has plugins for *everything*), and scripting -- and as it's 
all text, I have a custom GUI Python program for determining the commercial 
breaks & final bandwidth to just fill an SVCD,

And is there a decent tool similar to VirtualDub that can help me *find* 
the commercial breaks to cut them?

=== Just because your tool works good *for you* certainly does not mean 
it's not suitable for me due to a drug habit.

}}}

and rumor has it that Zane H. Healy may have mentioned these words:

>I've got to agree with Roger, the free encoders just aren't worth messing 
>with.  The interesting thing is that $50 gets you TMPGEnc Plus on Windows, 
>which is one of the best encoders around.  Given the choice between that 
>and the Compressor (Pro Apple software) on my G5 PowerMac, and I'll take 
>TMPGEnc Plus, at least for VCD or SVCD.  I have used Compressor to do 
>Anamorphic Widescreen home movies, and for MPEG2, it is probably better.

SVCD is MPEG2 -- and I've put TMPGEnc head-to-head with Premiere 6.0, and I 
saw little difference; certainly not to justify the difference in price.

Once I found and learned AviSynth, I'll put the combo of the 2 against 
darned near anything for speed, ease of use and quality.

AviSynth is one of those tools that it takes a bit'o'learning to use, but 
once you do, resizing, deinterlacing, decimating & whatnot are childs play.

Anyway, that's all I have to say. Thanks, Zane!
Laterz,
Roger "Merch" Merchberger

--
Roger "Merch" Merchberger   | "Bugs of a feather flock together."
sysadmin, Iceberg Computers |           Russell Nelson
zmerch at 30below.com          |