You may
rank a mere format converter pretty low on your
software shopping list – but after reading this I
think you might change your mind.
Picture the scene. Client strolls into the edit suite yesterday clutching a Sony consumer mini-DVD camcorder and handful of discs expecting me to transform them into a marketing video (?!) Camera turns out to have no Firewire or other outputs. I was just about to panic when I thought of the Canopus ProCoder 3 software I had just installed on the edit suite computer ready to test out for this review. I copy the .vob files on to the hard disk, load them into ProCoder 3, which instantly identifies them as MPEG video with AC-3 embedded audio file and we're ready to go. Phew! All I had to do then was select the output target as Microsoft DV .avi and we were immediately confronted with a nice big preview screen which converted the footage at about twice normal speed, enabling the client to start picking out the clips he fancied while the conversion was in progress. This is the kind of everyday emergency we all face these days with the vast range of competing digital video formats, not just for ingest but also for outputting.
In summary, Canopus ProCoder 3 is the Swiss Army knife of file conversion software. It will deal with anything including MPEG-1, MPEG2, Windows Media, RealVideo, QuickTime, Flash, Microsoft DirectShow, Microsoft Video for Windows and Microsoft DV and turn them into any of the others which you need – whether it's an editing or web format or MPEG for DVD authoring. So, having agreed we need it, what enhancements are there in version 3 for existing ProCoder users? New sources include H.264, AVCHD (the new HD camcorder format) and Dolby Digital AC-3 audio - and new target formats such as H.264, AC-3 audio and Ipod video (MPEG-4). There is now grid encoding support for MPEG-2 (Transport Stream) which provides greater encoding speed on modern multi-core and multi-CPU computer systems. This feature is automatically engaged when you choose the 'Preview DVD Target' or 'HDV Target' formats for encoding. (I have found that for technical reasons this is available only on CBR MPEG-encoding, not VBR).
The biggest improvement from my point-of-view is the Premier Pro 2 plug-in as the previous version only supported version 1.5 and didn't seem to work properly anyway. The good news is that this version does – the only downside on my system was that there was no timeline preview in the Canopus software, which is a bit awkward if you want to add crop and filters. But this isn't too much of a problem because you get to know what you use and can add them without needing a preview. I've always liked the quality of Canopus's MPEG encoding. It seems to generate a file with fewer MPEG artefacts and better-looking video that the Adobe Media Encoder at half the data rate. In standalone mode you have two different options – an Express wizard-driven version which is ideal for those of you who don't want to get too hung up on the technicalities. It just needs a few mouse-clicks to generate a file. It's quick and easy to set up and use and, although the options are limited, Canopus have included the ones you are most likely to need which default to the commonest working settings.
Or you can load the full version aimed at inveterate tweakers like me which provides limitless advanced features including NTSC/PAL conversion and multi-pass processing, Another bonus for registered Canopus users is the opportunity to sign up for their forums which are useful and informative and you are likely to get worthwhile responses to technical queries. Canopus ProCoder 3 is valuable and useful in its own right in standalone format but, now they've sorted out the plug-in, I'd go so far as to call it indispensable for Premiere Pro 2 users.
Picture the scene. Client strolls into the edit suite yesterday clutching a Sony consumer mini-DVD camcorder and handful of discs expecting me to transform them into a marketing video (?!) Camera turns out to have no Firewire or other outputs. I was just about to panic when I thought of the Canopus ProCoder 3 software I had just installed on the edit suite computer ready to test out for this review. I copy the .vob files on to the hard disk, load them into ProCoder 3, which instantly identifies them as MPEG video with AC-3 embedded audio file and we're ready to go. Phew! All I had to do then was select the output target as Microsoft DV .avi and we were immediately confronted with a nice big preview screen which converted the footage at about twice normal speed, enabling the client to start picking out the clips he fancied while the conversion was in progress. This is the kind of everyday emergency we all face these days with the vast range of competing digital video formats, not just for ingest but also for outputting.
In summary, Canopus ProCoder 3 is the Swiss Army knife of file conversion software. It will deal with anything including MPEG-1, MPEG2, Windows Media, RealVideo, QuickTime, Flash, Microsoft DirectShow, Microsoft Video for Windows and Microsoft DV and turn them into any of the others which you need – whether it's an editing or web format or MPEG for DVD authoring. So, having agreed we need it, what enhancements are there in version 3 for existing ProCoder users? New sources include H.264, AVCHD (the new HD camcorder format) and Dolby Digital AC-3 audio - and new target formats such as H.264, AC-3 audio and Ipod video (MPEG-4). There is now grid encoding support for MPEG-2 (Transport Stream) which provides greater encoding speed on modern multi-core and multi-CPU computer systems. This feature is automatically engaged when you choose the 'Preview DVD Target' or 'HDV Target' formats for encoding. (I have found that for technical reasons this is available only on CBR MPEG-encoding, not VBR).
The biggest improvement from my point-of-view is the Premier Pro 2 plug-in as the previous version only supported version 1.5 and didn't seem to work properly anyway. The good news is that this version does – the only downside on my system was that there was no timeline preview in the Canopus software, which is a bit awkward if you want to add crop and filters. But this isn't too much of a problem because you get to know what you use and can add them without needing a preview. I've always liked the quality of Canopus's MPEG encoding. It seems to generate a file with fewer MPEG artefacts and better-looking video that the Adobe Media Encoder at half the data rate. In standalone mode you have two different options – an Express wizard-driven version which is ideal for those of you who don't want to get too hung up on the technicalities. It just needs a few mouse-clicks to generate a file. It's quick and easy to set up and use and, although the options are limited, Canopus have included the ones you are most likely to need which default to the commonest working settings.
Or you can load the full version aimed at inveterate tweakers like me which provides limitless advanced features including NTSC/PAL conversion and multi-pass processing, Another bonus for registered Canopus users is the opportunity to sign up for their forums which are useful and informative and you are likely to get worthwhile responses to technical queries. Canopus ProCoder 3 is valuable and useful in its own right in standalone format but, now they've sorted out the plug-in, I'd go so far as to call it indispensable for Premiere Pro 2 users.
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