Yet another contest-related post

Some time ago I teased you all with a reference to TMPG’s MPEG editing tools, as these are the tools we are using to import all of our contest entries into our system. We have had particularly good luck with these tools over the course of the past couple of months, as they provide highly-optimized DVD-compliant output.

First off, a criticism: TMPGEnc 4.3.1.222 Xpress and TSUNAMI-MPEG Media Editor 1.3.2.98 will only show frame addresses as fractional seconds instead of by frame numbers (e.g. if you were at 0h 32m 43s 15f, these programs would report 0:32:43:50 as the clip position.)

Of the entries we’ve accepted thus far, we’ve had only one clip that was sufficiently mutilated that Media Editor didn’t like it. We encoded that one with SUPER instead, which is a free encoder suite that does a reasonably good job and handles a wide array of formats (both incoming and outgoing), but has a highly-annoying download process that forces you to read many screens before you can pull down the file.

TMPGEnc 4 Xpress also appears to be quite adept at performing video standards coversion. We converted a QuickTime H.264 720p entry to widescreen DVD format with no issues at all (and got gorgeous output), and a conversion from PAL to NTSC went quite smoothly as well. It takes some time on our old machine, though; if you need to do your encoding in a hurry, you want something faster than our conversion machine (which uses an Intel Pentium 4 2.4GHz with 400MHz FSB.)

For the days when we get multiple entries, both programs make our lives easier by including batch rendering capabilities. You set up your videos for encoding and add them to the batch for processing, then when you’ve got everything ready, hit the render button and walk away. Your files land where you want, and you’re ready to drag those files into your DVD authoring software of choice.

If the free conversion tools on the Internet don’t do it for you, we wouldn’t have a problem recommending these affordable and high-performance tools from TMPG. (Though you will enjoy them even more if you have a more-recent computer.)