[MPlayer-users] The best quality OSS mpeg2 encoder?

[Joe Friedrichsen]

I've started to make films recently using linux and I've been trying to 
find the best mpeg2 encoder for making DVD compliant video. After 
reading the news groups for a while, I realized this is one of those 
never-fully-answered, and always-asked questions. I decided to at least 
do some looking around beforehand to help alleviate the eye-rolling.

First, to find the possible encoder candidates. A few months ago, I 
thought the main encoding utilities were mjpegtools, ffmpeg, transcode, 
and mencoder (please tell me if I missed any leading ones). But reading 
more deeply into the matter has raised a few questions for me. Please 
clarify things for me if you can.

Transcode 
(http://www.transcoding.org/cgi-bin/transcode?Building_Transcode) and 
more importantly the ffmpeg home page 
(http://ffmpeg.sourceforge.net/index.php) suggest that ffmpeg is built 
off of (and I suspect develops...?) libavcodec. libavcodec is also used 
by mplayer/mencoder. Given that ffmpeg has admitted having bitrate 
problems with mpeg-2, does that hold true for mencoder? The mplayer docs 
(http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/codecs.html#ffmpeg) say that 
mplayer uses ffmpeg's libavcodec (which version?). How intertwined are 
these tools?

I found a basic comparison between ffmpeg and mpeg2enc here: 
http://www.transcoding.org/cgi-bin/transcode?FFmpeg_Vs._Mpeg2enc
that confirms ffmpeg's bitrate control problem (and a more brief 
description in the newsgroups: 
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.video.ffmpeg.user/481). Both pages 
also suggest that transcode can use either ffmpeg/libavcodec or mpeg2enc 
when encoding. Yet, transcode lists neither as a dependency (from what 
I've seen)... Does it include its own libraries from these utilities? If 
so, which versions?

So, if I'm reading this correctly, the truly 'base' utilities/libraries 
are ffmpeg and mpeg2enc, while transcode and mencoder are 
front-ends/re-branders of sorts. Is this accurate?

Second, evaluate the encoders. The first step here would be research - 
look for others' work to avoid rehashing known facts. I've done some 
googling and haven't found much quantitative information comparing the 
stream quality of streams encoded by mpeg2enc and libavcodec (the 
FFmpeg_Vs._Mpeg2enc page offers some good starting information, but I 
fear that it's a little old - last edited over a year and a half ago). I 
found another site that compares many other encoders, but libavcodec and 
mpeg2enc aren't included: http://www.tecoltd.com/enctest/enctest.htm . 
Do you know any sites that have done any comparisons? What are your 
personal experiences with the two?

If comparisons haven't been made, then I should do some. Which are good 
video types to test? What content do I want? I like tecoltd.com's choice 
of fast motion, edges, and details. What types of video will show how 
encoders differ?

Joe