Goal

To convert a wide variety of source materials to MPEG for the Deluxe iMac Edition of the Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia.™

Problem

Grolier Interactive has set very high standards for video quality.  Yet the material had to be encoded to aggressive (lower) bit rates in order to fit the large volume of multimedia materials onto two CD-ROMs. In addition, the source material came from a wide variety of sources such as black and white and color video as well as 8mm and 16mm film.

Solution

MPEG Power Professional software is used in conjunction with Media Cleaner Pro and HEURIS MPEG Export Engine Pro to provide a seamless preprocessing, filtering and encoding solution for the Multimedia Encyclopedia. HEURIS’ powerful MPEG encoding software allowed Ben Waggoner at Journeyman Digital to meet Grolier’s high standards for visual quality while maintaining bit rates of 135-155 Kb/s.

Benefits

• HEURIS Export Engine allowed Ben to access MPEG Power Professional directly from Media Cleaner Pro.
• Advanced tweaking features in both MPEG Power Professional and Media Cleaner Pro allowed Ben to manipulate the many different video and film sources to optimize specifically for playback on the iMac system.
• MPEG Power Professional’s powerful software encoding engine created MPEG files of stunning visual quality at very low bit rates.

Quotes

I needed to pull a lot of this source material in and out of Media Cleaner Pro, so HEURIS’ MPEG Export Engine Pro was a big time saver. I could access MPEG Power Professional from Media Cleaner Pro without having to constantly switch between programs. Also, since MPEG Power Professional is a software codec, we were able to give it pure digital input. This allowed us to create images with much better contrast and richer blacks than would be possible if we used a hardware solution with video inputs. So the Media Cleaner/MPEG Power Professional solution gave us a simpler and better looking result than we could have gotten out of a hardware solution at ten times the price.

Ben Waggoner, Journeyman Digital

"The Grolier Multimedia Encyclopedia has always had the best looking videos in the interactive encyclopedia field. We don’t compromise on image quality in our own video work, so we were very impressed when Ben Waggoner of Journeyman Digital was able to create low-bit-rate MPEG streams for us that meet our standards. They look great, despite being created from archival sources. That’s really a tribute to Ben’s knowledge and experience, and to using the best tools for the job—including MPEG Power Professional.

Dan Kinoy, Grolier Interactive