Anyone Using Episode Pro Mpeg Encoder For Mac
Video encoding apps go head-to-head by Jul 26, 2007 - 10:32 PM CST. Macs having the reputation they do for creative endeavors, there are as many (or more) video and audio encoding tools for OS X as their are file formats in which to encode your media. Some of the tools available are free and open-source, but many of it are shareware, donationware, or fully commercial products. How is a Mac user, especially one switching from another platform, to know which of them, if any, to use for encoding video from one format to another? Keep reading for a comparison of the key players. Foundations: FFmpeg and MEncoder. Before discussing any of the GUI-enabled products, it is important to briefly mention the two most common free, open-source products available: and MEncoder, which is a component of.
While there is much overlap between the two, FFmpeg is more extensible because of its modular nature and its reliance on other open-source software to accomplish tasks. For instance, encoding MP3 files with FFmpeg is usually handled by the. On the other hand, mencoder will, at least in theory, where most other applications fail. The Safe Choice: QuickTime QuickTime, and I suppose some of us even love it, but it has limitations — and many there are. It is as ubiquitous as iTunes, but for the, add another $30 USD to Apple’s treasury. Even then, QT does not encode Windows Media (WMV or WMA) files without the from Telestream: another $49 USD. QuickTime Pro only supports encoding video in selected; non-Pro QuickTime does not support encoding at all.
What about Ogg, Theora, XViD, Flash Video, or even, as I mentioned, Windows Media? QuickTime is a big disappointment. Did I mention it’s slow?
This is one lousy video encoder. The Easy Way Out: EasyWMV Put a face on FFmpeg and reduce the available file formats and options, and you get EasyWMV.
In the case of FFmpeg, that can be a good thing; my self-built version of FFmpeg supports 102 container formats (from 3G2 to YUV4MPEG pipe format) and 183 codecs! Sometimes it really is possible to be bombarded with too many options. The price tag of $15 USD seems reasonable for the value the product adds, provided that all you want to do is convert Windows Media, Flash.flv or.swf, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, QuickTime.mov, Nullsoft Streaming Video, or DVD.vob‘s to iPod or Apple TV compatible MPEG-4 files. EasyWMV is a simple utility meant to do one thing, but it makes doing it much simpler. For Deep Pockets: Episode is the professional video encoding tool from Telestream, the company that brings us Flip4Mac.
Telestream bills it as a powerful desktop media encoding application for the Mac. It offers the highest quality and fastest desktop encoding for content repurposing and distribution to new media channels: Web, DVD, and portable devices including Apple video-enabled iPod®, Sony Playstation Portable®, and mobile phones. It should be: the price tag for the base model is $395 USD. The top-level product, Episode Pro with an optimized Flash 8 encoder, comes in at $995 USD. The Pro level version unlocks MXF, GXF, IMX, H.264 High Profile, MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 Transport Stream codecs; 5.1- and 7.1-channel surround sound; and a few other features.
The real beauty of Episode is that it allows encoding by workflow: If you want a video playable on an iPhone, drag the “iPhone” task into the workflow. For a minority of users (those with Fortune 500 funding), Episode is definitely something to consider. For everyone else, keep reading. Award For Ingenuity: MoviePod On the other end of the spectrum, another tool aimed at users wishing simply to convert movies to iPod-playable format, seems to be a better deal than EasyWMV.
Both use FFmpeg under the hood to do the actual encoding, so quality is likely to be equal or nearly equal, depending on the parameters each application may set. Also, MoviePod is cheaper. Coming in at $10 (compared to EasyWMV’s $15), it appears to be a better value. In contrast to most of the other software I’m reviewing today, MoviePod is also available for Windows.
Another feature of MoviePod is that it doesn’t rely only on FFmpeg for its encoding; it also uses MEncoder. Without seeing the code, I can’t say when which tool is used for what jobs, but that the developers, wrote MoviePod with the versatility to use multiple encoders is a huge plus in my book. Also included (if you dig for it) is mp4box, an extremely useful utility which can bring new life to otherwise unplayable m4a (AAC) files in remote iTunes shares — but that’s another topic. Time-shifting With VideoLAN (VLC) Wildly popular on Linux, is growing in strength with Mac and Windows users alike. As a video encoder, it can be a bit unfriendly, but what makes it uniquely valuable is its ability to time-shift streaming media, especially those pesky mms:// streams.
My Top Choices: VisualHub and iSquint Of all the apps surveyed, these are the most humorous, and is also my personal choice of encoding tools — that is, when I don’t use FFmpeg directly. Also by, is a slimmed-down, free version of VisualHub, geared primarily to users who wish to convert videos to a format appropriate for iPod. VisualHub, on the other hand, has already released an update with presets tweaked for the iPhone. Both tools also use FFmpeg as their engine underneath the hood. The current version of iSquint (1.5) is running with FFmpeg revision 6213, and the latest version of VisualHub (1.26) is based on revision 9226. Like the other tools reviewed here, VisualHub takes a lot of the guesswork out of the settings to pass to FFmpeg.
For instance, I am quite comfortable converting WMA audio files to AIFF or WAV at the Terminal, but when it comes to converting Flash Video ( flv) files into the format needed to burn to DVD, I’m at a loss. Not only does VisualHub step up to the plate, but it tweaks the settings in such a way to produce an amazing video. The output from one recent run converting a QuickTime mov to a DVD-ready vob shows VisualHub running this command under the hood: vh124FFmpeg -y -f yuv4mpegpipe -i - -threads 4 -target ntsc-dvd -b 7500k -maxrate 8000k -s 720x480 -aspect 4:3 -r ntsc -g 15 -scthreshold -flags cgop -flags2 sgop -bf 2 -async 50 -i /tmp/vhtemp//27573.wav -ar 48000 -ab 192k -ac 2 -f dvd '/Users/bsh/Movies/'/'TalkToMe.mov'.temp.vob But perhaps the best thing about VisualHub is its encoding support.
Nothing else in my survey of video encoding utilities supports distributed encoding tasks across multiple systems using Xgrid. Have an old Mac mini or iMac G4 collecting dust? At the price of $23.32 USD per seat, you could encode on 16 systems — simultaneously — for the cost of one Episode license. As if all these features weren’t enough, both iSquint and VisualHub claim to be (and are) faster than QuickTime Pro, and they produce higher-quality output. What about iLife?
Yes, there’s iLife, but at its core (no pun intended), it uses the same frameworks as QuickTime: CoreAudio, CoreVideo, and so forth. The only benefit gained by using the iLife products is that the astute user can emulate most of QT Pro’s features using iMovie HD, but it still suffers the same unbearable speed issues and doesn’t support any formats besides those QuickTime does. Rolling Your Own: Compiling from SVN Of course, downloading the source and compiling FFmpeg, MPlayer, or both is always an option, and it’s one that I recommend for anyone who has both the technical know-how and the interest in doing so. I use both VisualHub and self-compiled versions of FFmpeg and MPlayer that are frequently updated from their Subversion repositories. The ultimate answer is that for some tasks, a GUI-based app such as VisualHub or MoviePod is better suited; and for others, it may make more sense to take command for yourself with FFmpeg or MEncoder. A note of caution, though, to those who do wish to go the way of the command line: FFmpeg is relatively easy to compile, but it relies on many other modules, as mentioned before, which may not be so easy. Like printing counterfeit money, you may find yourself spending days encoding what seem to be good files only to find that no media player will accept them.
MPlayer and MEncoder can be even more finicky; with those especially, the best advice is to leave the CFLAGS empty. The Bad News: Tackling RealVideo Because of RealMedia’s largely closed architecture, support for the Real formats (RealAudio and RealVideo) has been all but nonexistent on the Mac. Nonexistent, that is, but for itself. The developers behind MPlayer and MEncoder have taken the open-source version of Real Player, and integrated it within their product.
In my research, MPlayer and MEncoder (and products based on them) are the only applications that can encode to or from Real format. Even so, my success with transcoding RealVideo into anything else has flatly failed. Griff Thanks for the round up of converters. I’m starting to convert my video files to mp4 so i can use on iPod, xbox 360, Apple TV if i eventualy get one. I’ve been succesfull with most formats i’ve come across, except.mkv files. These files play back in VLC fine, i’ve found a number of windows based converters for the mkv format, not much luck with OS X though.
Just before i found this article i discovered that VLC will convert (transcode as they call it) alot of files. But my attempts with mkv conversion haven’t been too successful. Anyone able to provide some info for me to help me? Hey Alec, I’m not familiar with Instant Handbrake, but “regular” HB isn’t too difficult to begin with. Probably the most difficult of all the options I presented (other than command-line encoding) was VLC or iMovie. Totally slipped my mind. Just more evidence that there are a million different tools to accomplish the same task: each a little different, some a little better.
But I’d disagree with you that Sorenson is less expensive than Episode: The pricing chart at the Sorenson site gives a price of $499 for the version that won’t encode Windows Media; and it also puts limits on monthly encoding volume. The Sorenson Squeeze Unlimited which doesn’t restrict encoding volume is $2,500 per year — ouch! And at $2,500 per year, they still consider the On2 codec an add-on. I’m plenty happy with my VisualHub, thanks.:). Kenny, Glad that worked for you! I agree that most site developers don’t intentionally shut out Mac users; they just don’t know better.
Microsoft products are everywhere, and it’s so tempting to use them. They don’t realize they’re cutting off Mac (and Linux) users when they go that route.
Anyone Using Episode Pro Mpeg Encoder For Mac Pro
It’s a bit of work sometimes, but usually you can get to what you want anyway. Another thing that might help is the if you use Firefox or Flock. It can often find the media files for you, saving you all those steps. I don’t know of an equivalent for Safari or Camino, though.
Kenmcn Billy THANKS VERY MUCH! I really appreciate your help.
I’ll pass on your comments about the web site to the developers – I don’t think there’s any intent to keep us out, probably just ignorance about what they’ve done when they set up the site. Both VLC and getting the URL worked fine. It’s easier to get a full screen view in VLC (even though it’s a bit fuzzy), so this is probably what I’ll use when I watch the matches through my TV. I’ll ask them to put the direct link on-line so Mac users can watch in their browser if they wish. Thanks again for your help.
Hi Kenny, I don’t have a fix for you; looking at the raw HTML of the site, it appears as though the developers are actively trying to discourage Mac users. I don’t know whether that’s the case, but it does make things very difficult for people who choose superior operating systems. I do have a workaround for you, though!
I’ve taken and annotated some screenshots. Please follow along with them in order at these links. (All screenshots are taken with Firefox, not Safari, so adjustments may be needed depending on your browser choice.) 1.
Provided you have the plugin, you should be able to watch and/or save the file. Another option Alternatively, once you’ve downloaded the.php file, you can simply drag it onto the VLC icon, if you have VLC installed. Since VLC doesn’t know about.php files, you should either rename it to.asx or hold down Command + Option while placing the file over the icon to force it to open.
Hi Marcel, I know (and love the quality it produces — especially that PAR anamorphic mode) as well, but I didn’t include it for two reasons: First, this article is focusing primarily on converting one file format to another, whereas Handbrake is a DVD ripper; and second, without casting aspersions on what’s otherwise very good software, HandBrake does suffer from some legal issues re: DMCA and DeCSS. There are of course others that I didn’t include as well — ffmpegX, for example — that I simply chose not to for length considerations.