I\'ve been looking around and test-driving just about every file conversion program ever invented over the past several months, in a seemingly vain attempt to find ONE single encoder/transcoder program that would do everything I wanted. I like TMPGEnc (both 2.5 and 3.0) a LOT but I also needed something to convert RM video files to MPEG. I\'ve tried the small and cheap (boilsoft) and the big and expensive (Main Concept, Cinema Craft) but none of the them were quite right. What I ended up doing was using EO Video to convert the RM files to AVI, then TMPGEnc to convert AVI to MPEG2. I know that EO will do RM to MPEG but the options available for MPEG conversion, especially for MPEG2 output, are very very slim. And although EO is VERY slow converting RM to AVI, it\'s twice as slow going from RM to MPEG.
Then today, everything brightened up! Just today I\'ve tried AVS Video Converter 3.3, DVD Santa 3.4 and Win-AVI 5.8 and I think I\'ve finally found a winner! AVS is okay but the video quality just isn\'t up to par and DVD Santa works fast and does a pretty good job, but, in my opinion, the output quality from Win-AVI is simply better: audio, motion, color, crispness of images...it appears to do a much better job than one would expect from a $30 encoder...additionally, it fulfills my inner control freak by giving me a few more choices regarding ouput. And most surprising of all, it is BLAZINGLY FAST! It just processed a one-hour video in about 10 minutes!! Interestingly, it\'s the fastest of the three I used today yet still produces the highest quality results. So I\'m ready to gladly hand over a little currency to those fine people over at ZJ Media and hppe they\'ll kick out some more gems like this one in the future.
