Cinema Craft Encoder Lite only supports constant bit rate encoding (CBR) and provides limited control over MPEG compression parameters. The user interface for the stand-alone encoder is a bit confusing. When you launch the program it displays a large icon on the Windows desktop, but provides no controls for actually starting an encode process. To start encoding you need to drag and drop an AVI file onto the Cinema Craft icon, and then an encoding menu is displayed. To set compression parameters you need to click on the "Settings" button that brings up a more detailed menu with tabs for General, System, Video, Bitrate, GOP, and Audio, as shown in Figure 1. Each of these tabs provides control over detailed MPEG compression parameters.
Compression parameters that can be set via the Cinema Craft Encoder Lite user interface include output format (MPEG-1, Half Resolution MPEG-2 and full resolution MPEG-2), progressive or interlaced frames, DVD compliant streams, compressed bit rate, image quality, noise-filtering and audio compression data rates. MPEG-1 Layer 2 audio compression is supported within the encoder, which is not very useful for DVD-Video title development.
I tested the Cinema Craft Encoder Lite on a Windows 2000 system with a 700 MHz PIII processor and 128 Mbytes of system memory. I was not able to get the stand-alone encoder to work correctly on my normal test system, which uses Windows NT 4.0 (SP 4) with a 500 MHz PIII processor. On my Windows 2000 system the Cinema Craft Encoder Lite was surprisingly fast, encoding a one-minute test file in just over four minutes. That makes Cinema Craft Encoder Lite the fastest software encoder I have ever tested. The quality of the MPEG-2 stream created by the encoder was quite good, and at data rates in excess of 6 Mbps it was difficult to tell the difference between the Cinema Craft Encoder Lite generated stream and the streams created by the MPP2 and LSX-MPEG encoders. However, video quality from the Cinema Craft product degraded at lower bit rates, much more so than the other two encoders reviewed. This was due primarily to the fact that Cinema Craft Encoder Lite does not support variable bit rate encoding, which is really needed at lower rates.
The user interface for the Adobe Premiere plug-in version of the Cinema Craft Encoder Lite is identical to the stand-alone interface. Within Premiere you just select the Cinema Craft MPEG output module and the same user interface dialog box shown in Figure 1 comes up. Performance of the plug-in encoder was significantly slower than the stand-alone encoder, probably due to additional processing and memory overhead required by Adobe Premiere. (Cinema Craft recommends 256 Mbytes of system memory when using their plug-in.)
Documentation for Cinema Craft Encoder Lite consists of an Adobe Acrobat file with basic information on how to use the product. There is no built in Windows Help support for either the stand-alone or Adobe Premiere plug-in versions. Using the documentation provided by Cinema Craft I was unable to debug the problems I encountered running the product on my Windows NT system, nor was I able to get any support for this problem from the Cinema Craft web site.
Evaluation copies of the Cinema Craft Encoder Lite product can be downloaded from the Cinema Craft web site - http://www.cinemacraft.com. Cinema Craft also sells several other products including a more expensive, and more powerful, software MPEG encoder as well as a real time hardware MPEG encoder.
In summary I found the Cinema Craft Encoder Lite product to be functional, but lacking in some features that may be important for DVD-Video title development. Support for variable bit rate encoding as well as control over more compression parameters would make this product more useful for DVD development. Of course the low price tag of $250 makes it easier to live with the limited feature set of the Cinema Craft Encoder Lite product. DVD developers with a limited budget should consider using the Cinema Craft Encoder Lite product when a software MPEG encoder is required.
Related articles:
— Video for DVD: Understanding MPEG-2 Compression
— Software MPEG Encoders: Heuris MPEG Power Professional
— Software MPEG Encoders: Ligos LSX-MPEG Suite
Related sites:
— Cinema Craft Inc. (www.CinemaCraft.com)
Ralph LaBarge is an award winning DVD title developer based in Gambrills, Maryland. He has completed over 200 DVD projects to date, including AVIA Guide to Home Theatre, Coral Sea Dreaming, Mars: The Red Planet, StarGaze and the NAXOS Musical Journey series. Mr. LaBarge can be reached via email at rlabarge@alphadvd.com.
