TMPGEnc 4.0 Xpress. Ponderous name, good software
When my favorite band announced a concert to make them a music video, I could barely contain myself. Despite my renowned lack of creativity, I promptly went down to my local university and checked out a Canon HG10 camcorder, all set to start filming my disaster (A note to readers–the finished disaster will be available soon. Eventually. Someday.) An hour and some tedious acting later, I’m all set to get a feel for my editing software.
Unfortunately–and I’m sure the Canon gurus in the audience could have told me this–the Canon HG10 records ONLY in AVCHD.
Now, I’m a man of relatively simple tastes. I like my desktop clean, my music organized, my cereal sugary, and by gum, my videos in mpg. So this situation found me asking ‘can I convert it?’ Lo and behold, in comes TMPGenc 4.0 XPress to the rescue.
Pegasys–the makers of TMPGEnc–have a pretty fair history in digital video, from what I understand. TMPGenc 4.0 is the latest in a line of digital encoding software, and includes a small editing suite as well. The main purpose of the software is to enable you to change any video format into any other video format–from the almighty user’s perspective, a task that should feel relatively simple. Of course, there are times when the almighty user is really worth his salt in the digital video realm–when the almighty user can shrewdly say she or he’d prefer 29.97 fps to 30 fps.
This was not one of those times.
The TMPGenc 4.0 XPress Menu. Streamlined, eh?
Installing the software was a breeze. A quick ~35 MB download from their website (which is, admittedly, a design abortion) and a now-common run through an install wizard and I was in business. Starting up the software pulled up the workspace, a beautiful streamlined little number. See that list of steps up at the top – Start, Source, Format, and Encode? It was as easy as it sounds.
Like a good little engineer, I promptly ignored the clear path to my goal and went to go play in the options and MPEG tools menu. I found out rather quickly that I was outclassed. While Steven Spielberg would probably have a field day with the MPEG tools menu, I wasn’t willing to spend the hours at Wikipedia I needed to get up to snuff on my array of options. The preferences menu, however, was a wonderful, straightforward beast with options that even an educated idiot like myself could decipher:
“What’s this? NVidia CUDA and Multithreading support? Sign me up!”
After a quick five minutes poking around and generally making a mess of things, I proceeded to start a new project. Adding clips was as simple as clicking and dragging from the desktop–a boon in these days of cluttered ‘browse’ menus (which are still available if you prefer, you uncouth barbarian, you). TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress opened those big 2GB mts files like a champ. There was no ‘I don’t have these codecs’ message. No ‘file too big.’ No ‘are you sure? Cause I really don’t wanna crunch that ugly thing.’
Upon loading clips, I was thrown into the editor. I mentioned above that the software involves a small editing suite. Now, the program as a whole is beautiful, but the editing suite definitely leaves a bit to be desired. The ‘right click’ menu is disabled where you want it most–when clicking on chunks of frames. While it’s nice that it SHOWS you a ‘filmstrip,’ there’s no way to click-and-drag to select frame-by-frame (where programs like Acoustica Mixcraft will happily allow you to select chunks of an audio clip and edit them separately). The ability to crop, color filter, and generally mess your video up before encoding is alluring and potentially quite useful, but still seems to operate more as an afterthought. Cutting a few frames from the video was moderately difficult, but nothing a general user couldn’t figure out on their own.
With the source videos selected and subjected to my own ham-handed editing ideas (ooh, I can make the fight scene in high contrast black and white…), it was time to start the “Format” step.
The Format step makes you feel like a wizard. You can convert to any format you desire, with an area for ‘custom formats’ in case you really ARE a wizard. And if you’re just in to make something like a DVD, you can select “DVD standard MPEG” and be done with the mess. TMPGEnc will do the rest. If you’re a boneheaded kid who thinks he knows everything–like myself–you’ll probably say ‘just MPEG, please!’ And this will be your undoing, for upon selection of your format of choice, you are given a PLETHORA of options. DC component precision? Quantization? Rate control mode? VBV buffer size? GOP structure? Thank you, I’ll simply click on the ‘Encode’ button! It is going to take a better filmographer than me to play with these options.
Finally, Encoding. Could this be any simpler? Browse (ugh) for your output folder, hit the ‘encode’ button, and go do something else. This is gonna be a while. Thankfully, today’s multi-core machines work beautifully with TMPGEnc 4.0 XPress–in fact, I’m writing this while the software encodes in the background and foobar2000 plays some wonderful Metric tunes.
What’s the final verdict? Well, a hundred bucks isn’t as steep as some of the products out there, and the loyalty pricing ensures that previous customers are eligible for a discount. Personally, though, I think a program’s worth is determined by whether or not the user desires a DIFFERENT program. To this extent, this user is decidedly satisfied.
(PS: A link to the video I ended up encoding with this software. Watch it in HD!)
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