HC Encoder
Welcome to the official homepage of HC Encoder, a freeware MPEG-2 encoder. It offers quality comparable to commercial alternatives and the development has a strong focus on DVD compliancy.
HC Encoder is available in two versions:
- Easy to use stand-alone GUI version
- A batch version controlled by an .INI file or command line parameters
Core features of HC Encoder:
- Input via Avisynth or DGIndex/DGDecode projects
- 2-pass variable bitrate (VBR) encoding
- Three quality modes: BEST, NORMAL and FAST
- User controllable GOP structure
- Scene change detection
- User configurable quantization matrices
- Fast encoding speed
HC Encoder is fully supported by DVD ReBuilder, together they make high quality DVD to DVD-R backups, while being a totally free solution.
Building and maintaining HC takes a lot of time, donations are certainly appreciated.
Click here to download the latest HC Encoder!
Latest version v0.23 (06-May-2008).
Changes from version v0.22:
- Added adaptive quantization
- Added panscan
we love you
Is there any reason, why you removed the dymanic “adjusting average bitrate” in HCEnc 0.22 ???
I am getting too large files with too high AVG Bitrate.
I tried with and without SMP, always errornous. I did not get this behaviour in 0.21…
Here is the difference in log files from 0.21 and 0.22:
—————————————–
| HCenc - MPEG2 encoder - rel. 0.21.0.0 |
—————————————–
——————–
| encoder settings |
——————–
profile: NORMAL
[...]
bitrate Kb/s: 7490
max. bitrate Kb/s: 9352
[...]
——————————–
| encoding - intermediate pass |
——————————–
bitrate set to: 7490 kb/s
est. outfile length: 4359816 kB
intermediate encoding time: 0.2 s
———————
| encoding - pass 2 |
———————
*** INFO, adjusting average bitrate: -0.04 %
*** INFO, adjusting average bitrate: -0.06 %
*** INFO, adjusting average bitrate: -0.09 %
*** INFO, adjusting average bitrate: -0.11 %
pass 2 encoding time: 1:00:30 (3630 s)
fps: 32.8
——————
| encoding stats |
——————
[...]
average bitrate: 7482
minimum bitrate: 492
maximum bitrate: 9352
—————————————–
| HCenc - MPEG2 encoder - rel. 0.22.0.0 |
—————————————–
——————–
| encoder settings |
——————–
profile: NORMAL
[...]
bitrate Kb/s: 7490
max. bitrate Kb/s: 9352
——————————–
| encoding - intermediate pass |
——————————–
bitrate set to: 7490 kb/s
est. outfile length: 4359816 kB
intermediate encoding time: 0.3 s
———————
| encoding - pass 2 |
———————
*** ERROR, source mismatch in pass 2 starting at frame: 126
pass 2 encoding time: 0:43:13 (2592.62 s)
fps: 46.0
——————
| encoding stats |
——————
[...]
average bitrate: 8004
minimum bitrate: 530
maximum bitrate: 9351
Hi, i’m using this wonderful piece of software since the first version, but with the current version (0.22) i’m having problems when trying to use it with debug frameserver, crashing every time i load an .avs pointing the premiere time line, has anyone been suffering this? anyone knows a possible solution? Thanx for this great app!
Here’s an unusual problem:
I’m currently making my own DVDs from DV material, on Linux, using a set of scripts that combine several open source tools:
http://florin.myip.org/soft/conv-dvd/
The thing is, the MPEG2 encoder is pretty slow and the quality is not that great.
I tried to launch HCenc with WINE under Linux and it looks like it may actually work under emulation. But I have no way to actually test it since I don’t know how to create .avs files.
So I’ve a bunch of DV files, AVI encapsulation, 29.9 fps, 16:9, NTSC, interlaced. I want to use HCenc to generate the .m2v files (the video tracks). I want to maximize quality, final size is not important, and to keep everything compliant to the DVD standard.
How to create .avs files that HCenc will accept?
Nevermind, I figured how to create an .avs file and I can confirm HCenc works fine on Ubuntu Linux 7.10 under Wine 0.9.46. I installed AviSynth and the Panasonic DV Codec under Wine, then HCenc worked fine.
I like it, it’s fast and the quality is good. I will write a set of scripts to automate its usage under Linux. I’ll post the results when I have them.
Question: Is there any guide or howto about which matrix to use?
I understand that choosing a matrix is not an exact science, but it would be nice to have some guidelines, such as: “use this matrix under these conditions, use that other matrix under those other conditions, etc.”
What is the LUMGAIN parameter? I see the description in the manual - but in plain english what is it good for, and when is it recommended to use it?
Hi,
I haven’t had time to test this properly, but LUMGAIN adapts the quantization matrices used in dark scenes thus increasing the bitrate. When bitrate is increased the overall visual quality of the dark scenes of the video is also improved.
If you think that dark scenes in your video doesn’t look too good, you should try to use this option to boost the bitrate. So this option is good for very dark videos.
When converting some DivX files to DVD with FAVC,
Output is corrupt, ie, the program creates only .VOB files but no .BUP and/or .IFO files.
This is a serious bug !
Peter: HC Encoder is an encoder - it does not author the .VOB files, so the problem is somewhere in FAVC. Check out ConvertXtoDVD for best AVI->DVD solution (see link on the right).
@ljpp: Regarding a tip on the doom9 forum :
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=1105351#post1105351
lowering the max bitrate from 8000 to 7000 fixed that misbehaviour.
quote: This should be fixed with newer versions of HC.
There’ll be a new version out soon that should address this.
Is it possible to run a first pass, without the second pass? So you can run at another time the second pass, without running the first pass?
Thanks for the command line parameter support. I would like to request a “minimize” command line parameter for the initial start of the window.
I’ve got a problem with HCenc 0,22. It creates “overbitrated” m2v files when i encode video from mkv files. Files always has birate over 10000 kbit/s even if I se max bitrate at 9341. Please help
I am using the latest free version of DVD Rebuilder with HC (v. 0.19). Is there any way to upload HC in DVD Rebuilder to 0.22?
Thanks in advance!
Hello
Awesome app! FYI, I haven’t seen reference to this yet, but in v22 the GUI does not save the set field order for interlaced video. It defaults to TFF every session. Saving or loading *.ini files has no effect. If you are encoding from a video camera, filed order s/b re-set to BFF every time.
I also have the problem with the maximum bitrate not being honored — sometimes causing huge spikes in the datarate and amking the file unusable. I can mitigate this problem by setting VBR bias to 90 or 100.
Otherwise a great free encoder. Keep up the good work and please patch this problem!!
Are there any chances to get the source code?
I would like to have HCEnc as a possible Encoder inside QuEnc…
It’s time consuming to do the Video encoding with HCEnc and the audio (AC3) with QuEnc!
Or are there any projects or plans to provide a solution to use HCEnc video and QuEnc audio to produce DVD output from AVS?
[...] a free version you can use. I’d also encourage you to visit Hank315’s tip jar, he wrote HC Encoder, the under-the-hood powerhouse responsible for the quality of DVDRebuilder’s [...]
[...] HC Encoder 0.23 addthis_url = ‘http%3A%2F%2Fwww.techbeta.org%2Faudiomediavideo%2Fhc-encoder-020%2F’; addthis_title [...]
[quote]Raffke on April 28th, 2008
Are there any chances to get the source code?
I would like to have HCEnc as a possible Encoder inside QuEnc…
It’s time consuming to do the Video encoding with HCEnc and the audio (AC3) with QuEnc!
Or are there any projects or plans to provide a solution to use HCEnc video and QuEnc audio to produce DVD output from AVS?[/quote]
There are plenty of GUI frontends that have HCEnc as the encoder and use Aften to output AC3 audio
some of them will even convert to vob files as well,
Try a google search for “The Film Machine” or “FAVC” or “AVStoDVD”