What encoders do people recommend for Blu-ray authoring?

I've got Sony Vegas, which includes MainConcept's h.264/AVC encoder, but the bit rate and frame rates are quite limited.

At NAB I spoke with a representative at MainConcept. They have a product called "Reference" that includes numerous encoders. You can download Reference for free, and it will encode with a watermark. When you buy a license for a given encoder, the watermark is removed.

The standard h.264/AVC encoder costs $590 and has various limitations. The pro version costs $2290 and can encode to rates well beyond Blu-ray.

* Who are the other companies that offer top h.264/AVC encoders for BD authoring?

* Is the quality MainConcept encoders competitive?

Thanks!

Not sure if it's the same engine, but I use Mainconcept's Mpeg Pro Tools HD Plugin for Premiere Pro to encode AVC/264 at 1080p and it results in excellent quality encodes.

I suggest x264. It can be difficult to learn, and it's slow, but the quality for a given bitrate it very good.

I found the MainConcept engine within Premiere is horible. It is acceptable in high bit-rate. It gets worst when fade from black. Lots of visual blocks. I encode the same video using Procoder 3. Even in low bit-rate, the resulting video is excellent, far superior than MainConcept.