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Canopus Corp. has entered the video encoding and compression market with ProCoder, a $699 application for Windows that features a host of tools to help you transcode and format your video to a variety of output mediums.
It is built around the company's proprietary DV and MPEG-2 codecs and supports output to MPEG-1, MPEG-2, Windows Media, RealVideo, Apple QuickTime, Microsoft DirectShow, Microsoft Video for Windows, Microsoft DV, and Canopus DV video formats. Target users include those who work with Web video and DVD production in entertainment, government, education, and corporate media markets. ProCoder employs two-pass Variable Bit Rate encoding, which makes an analyzing pass of the video before actually encoding. This results in a higher quality file. Single pass VBR encoding, on the other hand, analyzes the file as it encodes. While faster than two-pass VBR, the quality is not as high. [an error occurred while processing this directive]
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| The ProCoder interface. |
The Interface
ProCoder sports a professional no-nonsense looking interface. When you first launch ProCoder, a spartan window opens with several buttons grayed out and an ADD button active. Going to the Tools menu and selecting add source will bring up a window that enables you to select a video you wish to encode. After you place a clip in the Source List, the Remove, Remove All, and the Advanced buttons become active.
The Source Tab
When you add a video, it appears in the Source List. To the right of the Source List is the Source Parameters, which details all the pertinent information relevant to that particular clip, including the name of the clip, the length of the clip, the video frame size and frame rate, its codec, interlacing and aspect ratio parameters. Double-clicking on the video or clicking on the Advanced button brings up the Advanced Window, which offers tools to tweak and customize your video.
The first Tab you'll encounter via the Advanced button is the Setup. This is where you can preview the source video and trim it if necessary. Within the Setup Tab are In and Out buttons that enable you to easily trim your clips. Simply mark your in and out points via the buttons (the duration of the clip as well as the number of frames appears next to the In and Out buttons), and preview your trimmed video in the same window. When you are satisfied with your trimming, you can go on to the next Tabs, which are the Video Filter and Audio Filter Tabs.
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| The Color Correction setting. |
The Video filters include Adaptive de-Interlace, Bitmap keying, Black/White Correction, Blur, Circular Blur, Color Correction, Color Safe, Crop, Fade In, Gamma Correction, Gaussian Blur, Median, and Video Pulldown. The Audio Filters include lowpass, normalize, and Volume.
As you add a filter to the clip, ProCoder keeps a list of filters you add available to you via the Filter list. When you highlight a filter in the Filter List, its Settings window appears below the Original and Result window. This is where you can adjust the parameters of the filter. You can also view in realtime how the filter(s) will affect the clip, via the Original and Result window. If you wish to delete a particular filter or all of the filters, you can do so by clicking Remove or Remove All, and the filter(s) in the list will be removed from the clip. If you apply several filters to a clip and wish to save that combination of filters, you can create and save a preset to apply to other clips. After you are finished tweaking your clip in the Advanced window and are satisfied with the results, your next step is to choose a target medium for delivery via the Target Tab.
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| The Video Aspect Window. |
The Target Tab
The Target Tab is where you specify the name of the clip and its parameters. The Target Tab lets you select your output format: AVI, DV, MPEG, QuickTime, RealVideo, WIndows Media. The Target Parameters is where you give the video that is about to be encoded a name and where on the hard drive you want it saved to. You can also specify ProCoder to save all converted clips to a Global Default Target Folder, or to a Local Default Target Folder. Here you can tweak the video's width and height, the frame rate, interlacing parameters, and aspect ratio. You can also choose your encoder as well as the codec options based on the output format that you choose.
The audio parameters are also listed, giving details on the selected source clip's Channels, Sample Rate, Bits/Sample, and the Audio Codec. Audio parameters include the capability to choose from stereo or mono, sample rates, and Bits/Sample.
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| Click image to view ProCoder output-, QuickTime DSL Setting |
Once you are finished tweaking the parameters, the next step is to convert your video. This is accomplished via the Convert Tab. This is where you press the convert button and ProCoder starts to convert it. You have the capability to encode without seeing the video or preview the video as you encode it. The manual says that for batch encoding or if you are encoding longer clips, to turn preview off to save CPU cycles.
Notable Features
For those who need to automate your encoding sessions, ProCoder has a feature called Droplets, which are standalone presets that you can apply to a single clip, multiple clips or entire folders of clips to start a conversion. Droplets help to speed up the process without having to set parameters to an encoding session because the parameters are fixed to the specific settings that you already have chosen.
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| Click image to view QT LAN video at 24fps |
ProCoder also supports Exporting from the Adobe Premiere Timeline. If you have Premiere installed on your system, ProCoder adds ProCoder Exporter and ProCoder Easy Exporter to the Export Timeline menu in Premiere. When you choose ProCoder Exporter, the full version of ProCoder launches with the Premiere Timline in the Source tab's Source List. When you launch ProCoder Easy Exporter, the wizard launches with your Premiere Timeline selected as the source. ProCoder is also written to take advantage of multiple processors and scales to your CPU, so, the faster your system, the faster the application runs.
Overall Impressions
Canopus has done well with this first release of ProCoder. Not only is the interface very elegant, but it is constructed in such a way that you won't lose your way around the application. Each of the three main tabs, Source, Target, and Convert, are set up in a step-by-step fashion, easing you along the conversion process, enabling you to tweak and refine your clips along the way. ProCoder's Batch processing and the capability to save presets, as well as the capability to transcode between NTSC and PAL and vice versa, only sweetens the deal.
Canopus Corp.
www.canopuscorp.com
Source: DMN
Related sites: • AV Video • Corporate Media News • Digital Producer • Digital Webcast • DV Format
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