final bbMPEG released

[Walrus]

dgcom:
Thank you for the info about max bitrate. I guess that definatly dictates that I have to be sure nothing I encode exceeds 9mbit/sec (for a safety margin). Actually, I should probably just stick to a max of 6mbit/sec for SCSI tape playback.
MPEG-1 VBR is definatly experimental... but if I can fake out my new Apex to play it, I may just start using it as my preferred archiving format. Right now I'm doing 2 test encodes of MPEG-1 VBR in parallel..
I'm encoding both the last episode of Futurama and a widsescreen laserdisc capture of Star Wars: A New Hope. Oddly enough though the processing settings in Virtualdub for both are pretty much the same and I think exactly the same in bbMPEG , the Star Wars transfer is encoding much faster, and the resulting file is about half the size of the futurama file. (I have them both set to a quant value of 3) On the plus side, both files look far better than VCD, and the Futurama file's average bitrate looks pretty equivilent to VCD! (meaning the Star Wars transfer is looking great at ~5megabytes/sec!)
Once the encoding is done, I'll probably try to fake out a VCD burning program to burn the files to a cd-rw as a VCD. (I have heard that Raite and Apexes often can play non-standard VCDs)

[dgcom]

Great! Interesting, what the results would be...

Try Nero for burning those VCDs...

I'm sad. I bought my Pioneer DV-414 too early...

DGCom

[Walrus]

dgcom:
Well only preliminary results, but the files look INCREDIBLE! The Futurama file ended up ~ 20 megs larger than its VCD equivilent (both at 224kbit/sec), but the image was VASTLY superior. There is some slight DCT artifacting around edges and in darker scenes, but absolutley NO break ups with fast movement. (though I think the 30 second opener of the show accounter for a LARGE portion of the final file size) I had trouble muxing it, but finally a modified VCD profile with the forced mux rate thrown up to the 20,000 range, it was finally able to mux the file correctly. Amazingly it plays back perfectly fine through my DVD decoder. The result on the TV is slightly softer than a live broadcast (due to the resolution only being 352x240), and if I look carefully I can see some jagged edges due to DCT issues. That said, the file looks BEAUTIFUL. The noise reduction makes the image rock-solid and the colors vibrant. I actually prefer watching the ep in VBR MPEG-1 than off of live TV! (though to be fair, I only have a 13" TV) For Star Wars: A New Hope, the results are also very interesting. The final file ended up being 220 megabytes. (for the first side of the laserdisc, or 38:40 of video!) And yes, it does look a LITTLE better than a VCD I generated earlier, though it's a judgement call since the earlier VCD looked QUITE nice. I did have to lower the audio bitrate down to 160kbit/sec to fit it in that small, but the idea of being able to get the entire film onto one disc that will (in theory) be able to play on a stand-alone player is VERY tempting. And incidently, this does look a little better than a MPEG-4 transfer I made with roughly equivilent data rates, definatly sharper and more detailed. (the entire film in 650 megs in MPEG-4/mp3)

[dgcom]

Hi!

Walrus: I'm glad you've got those nice results!

I checked out Ligos Premiere plug-in today...

1. It now incorporates field-based compression.
2. Error with incorrect setting of top_field_first flag fixed.

Found another error - it looks like they have a bug in the code check for MMX/XMM (Pentium II/III). This affects both Premiere plug-in and Ulead MediaStudio Pro users.
By renaming appropriate dll, I got performance increase of 20% on P III CPU.

DGCom

[BrianP]

DGCom: I just took a look at the Ligos plugin for Premiere and sure enough, there was the option for field order. The one obstacle to using LSX has been removed!

1) What settings are recommended for SVCD? Use the VBR or the quant value? How about motion settings?

2) Just doing a quick test, it appears that LSX is more than 2x faster than bbMPEG. I know some people think that bbMPEG has superior quality (i.e. you get what you 'wait' for). True?

[Walrus]

Just as a follow up:
I just burned a test VBR VCD disc with the clips I generated a few days ago. The Star Wars sample clip plays PERFECTLY in my Apex AD600. The Futurama file plays somewhat well. However, whenever the bitrate on the clip gets too high, the playback stutters a bit. I think the bitrate limit is pretty high though since it seems to only skip on the opening of the episode, and the bitrate on that part gets into the nearly 1 megabit/sec range.
To put it mildly, I am VERY impressed with this, as I think I can get each Star Wars film onto single discs that will play in (at least my) standalone player in quite good quality. Now if there were just a way to cap VBR bitrates in bbMPEG...
dgcom: Are you certain that LSX is actually encoding the fields though? There are some hints in Media Studio Pro 6 that it supports interlaced encoding, but it still doesn't encode interlaced video. Regardless, the noise reduction/image manipulation functionality in Premiere isn't good enough in my experience. (of course that is just my opinion)
Next.. to finish encoding the SW trilogy for VBR VCD (enough letters?), then experimentation with SVCDs

[BMV]

This tread is similar to one I started a few days ago, but I didn't get a reply from anyone, so I'm reposting it here. In Premiere, when I add my video clip and attempt to export to the lsx plugin, I can't modify the variable bitrate settings because whenever I click on the advanced button under video settings, Premiere immediately completely closes itself without any kind of error message displayed. Has anyone else had that happen to them? Is it possible to configure the Premiere project settings? The 20 predefined settings that come with the LSX plugin are great, and with a few alterations, one of them in particular would be PERFECT for creating SVCDs. I think only the bitrate and resolution would need to be changed, but I can't figure out how to do it. I think the same person who created the SVCD profiles for LSX also created the SVCD projects for Premiere. I know how to create a profile in LSX, but I don't see any way to create a LSX project that includes VBR settings in Premiere. Help!

[BrianP]

BMV: There was a fake plugin floating around a couple weeks ago, perhaps you got that one? I would uninstall the plugin, and then reinstall or try to find the legit one.

Where can I find SVCD templates for LSX?

[This message has been edited by BrianP (edited 20 April 2000).]

[cjyo~]

http://home.earthlink.net/~jdwolf/

lsx3 SVCD profiles, I haven't tried them yet. I just got my Apex, but I haven't have any time for SVCD experiments yet.

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Please visit http://spincycle.n3.net - My System: Celeron 300a(@450/2v),Abit BH6, 128mb RAM, Win98SE, Marvel G200TV, Diamond MX300, Maxtor DiamondMax Plus 20g system drive, DiamondMax Plus 40 capture drive, IBM 8g Deskstar program drive, Adaptec 2940UW SCSI, 9gb Barracuda UWSCSI video drive, Hitachi GD-2500 DVD-Rom, UltraPlex CD-Rom, Plexwriter CD-recorder, Viewsonic PT775, Soundworks 4.1 speakers

[cjyo~]

BTW, has anyone tried XVCD format? Do you know if it plays in the APEX? Can I burn it with Nero?

It sounds interesting (from the PCDVD forum):

XVCD is a non standard format.. but some standalone players can play some types of XVCD XVCD can have better quality than SVCD at the same bitrate becouse SVCD resulution always have to be 480*480 at 30 fps or 480*576 at 25 fps... XVCD can use what ever resulution you want (but the resulutions that the standalone dvd players can handle may vary)
XVCD uses MPEG1 SVCD use MPEG2 or MPEG1 (not standard but always works) SVCD has a max bitrate of 2600 kps (thats with audio) XVCD has no max bitrate but most players wont play XVCD with bitrates over 3000 kps
a good XVCD reslulution is 480*360 with 23.976 or 25 in fps (ntsc or pal) at bitrates around 1860 to 2000
fits a 1 hour and 40 minuts on 2 cds

SVCD needs bitrates over 2100 to look good and then it still dont look as good as a XVCD made with the stettings shown above.

But SVCD is a standrd so if you want to be sure that your standalone will play it... make a SVCD

[cjyo~]

I played around with XVCD a bit. The video looked great, but there was an interlacing problem I couldn't get around, so I decided to try SVCD.

My film was encoded in max-bit DVD video, so I used Rempeg to squeeze it down to 480x480 2.1 mbit/s (25%). For some reason I had a sync problem, but it wasn't due to frame rate, so I was able to slide the Wav forward to get it in sync before multiplexing and creating a disc image with IAuthor.

It plays perfectly in my APEX. There is some slight blocking in high motion areas, but I am going to try to raise the bits, to see where the APEX starts to stutter.

[Fred H]

I found this, for creating SVCD: http://www.geocities.com/joke2k/svcd/foolproof.htm
but I wonder who can spend $995 only for the I-Author mpg2mps program for multiplexing.
Other solutions?

[Walrus]

Fred H: Supposedly Nero 5.0 will support full SVCD authoring (except for the MPEG-2 encoding)
Considering its list price is more in the realm of < $60, you may want to wait until April 30th for it.

[Phil Pugh]

As I read the Nero 5 info from their site it specifically mentions that it doesn't author SVCD, that is it won't create the MPEG1/2 files - it just creates the necessary file structures (like Easy CD Creator does for VCDs)

[Walrus]

Phil Pugh:
Well, even if it only does the equivilent of Easy CD Creator, that will still allow rudimentary SVCDs, just without fancy menu structures. In my opinion Nero 5.0 will still be worth it for that reason alone. (I don't have time to create fancy menu systems anyway)