[Steve SpotOn]

I need a good quality, reliable encoder to produce Mpeg 1 (muxed) files for use across a broad range of PC's.

I've tried Compressor with FCP4.5 and the video quality looks crap.

I've tried Cleaner 6 for the Mac and it looks good but is so unreliable (I've been trying to encode a 15 min movie and it's stuck several times... I've given up!). Also Cleaner Mpeg 1 files don't seem to play well in QuickTime on a Mac.

I've tried ffmpegX and I've spent the last 24 hrs trying to get my head around all the settings and I'm struggling. Also it similarly gets stuck encoding my 15 min movie.

I need to do this on other projects in my professional work... any suggestions for a good quality, reliable encoder to produce Mpeg 1 files???

TIA

Steve

[brianb]

Probally to expensive for home use but if you are looking for a work solution, you could try something Like Flip Factory. It is a hardware peice that will take virtually any file and make it into just about anything. Very cool and does a very good job. We use one at my work and get clients that get there conversions done on it all the time

[bmedina]

If you don't mind using the command line, ffmpeg is pretty easy to use. I haven't tested its MPEG1 encoder, though.

Edit: An example of using ffmpeg at the command line for MPEG1 is:
ffmpeg -i sample.mov -f mpg -vcodec mpeg1video -an output.mpg
Of course, you can make things more complicated by scaling, adding audio, etc.