MPEG-2 Compressor? (other than Compressor.app)

[ppc_michael]

I don't like Compressor's MPEG-2 encoding. It's not horrible, but it could be a lot better, especially in its handling of darker shades (black shirts look horrible and artifacty no matter what the bitrate or GOP, for example).

Are there any other Mac OS X based MPEG-2 compressors you can recommend? Free would be ideal, but not necessary because I know "free" and "good" are rare. As long as I can have control over GOP structure, bitrates, passes, keyframes, etc (so not just "presets").

Linux encoder would be interesting too.

I used to use TMPGEnc back in the day on Windows to do MPEG-1 stuff, I liked the controls, so that's the kind of thing I would like most.

Sooo to sum up, what OS X or Linux MPEG-2 encoders do you guys like?

Thanks. :)

[sycho]

FFMpegX is a really handy tool.

http://homepage.mac.com/major4/

[ppc_michael]

Thanks, I do love that app for other media conversions, but for MPEG 2 it doesn't give much control over the compression.

But yeah, thanks for the suggestion!

[SumDumGuy]

Have you looked into Bitvice (http://www.innobits.com)? Good stuff, but not free.

[ppc_michael]

Have you looked into Bitvice (http://www.innobits.com)? Good stuff, but not free.

Oou this looks really good, thank you!!