Tonight I have carried out some testing with these two encoders on my 233mmx Pentium:

(1) The source file was from d8 PAL captured with an analogue card (DC20) giving a frame size of 720 x 540 (cropped TV down from a full frame of 768 x 576) at a data rate of 2.95M/s.

(2) I selected a 60 second long section of my latest project currently on the premiere 5.1 timeline and rendered two files to the hard drive. One at full frame size of 720 x 540 (took 2minutes) and one at a frame size of 352 x 288 (took 10 minutes).

(3) LSX encoder using the 352 wide avi took 13 minutes to encode the vcd compliant mpeg-1 file.

(4) the Panasonic encoder has the ability to re-scale a file during encoding so I used the 720 wide avi file to produce the 352 wide vcd compliant mpeg-1 file in one operation and that took 28 minutes.

(5) The Panasonic encoder using the 352 wide avi as the source, took 19 minutes to prepare the mpeg-1 file.

TIME SUMMARY FOR A 30 MINUTE VCD: From a 352 wide avi source: LSX 6.5 hours Panasonic 9.5 hours. Additional rendering time using premiere 5.1 to produce the 352 wide file 5 hours. The Panasonic will take 14 hours to produce the compliant mpeg-1 from the original 720 wide source in one operation. Compared to the LSX taking 5 + 6.5 = 11.5 hours or the Panasonic using the correct size file taking 5 + 9,5 = 14.5 hours. The LSX is the faster of the two by quite a margin, but since I use overnight as I sleep encoding, that really is not a problem.

IMAGES: Played back on the computer full screen at 1024 wide (image enlarged 1024/352=2.91) using the Cyberlink PowerPlayer (not the Cyberlink VCD Power Player - gives the same result without all the trimmings) - LSX is just the winner with a better image.

The files were burnt to a CD-RW disk using winoncd 3.5 and played in my Philips DVD 725 player - there was no noticable difference in the Panasonic images generated by the two methods, however the LSX image was better to look at on my German Loewe 24" TV using only composite video connections as it is not a svideo TV. Quality judged as "VHS tape".

GENERAL COMMENT:

I have, since I started this exercise in VCD's 3 months ago, always had the problem that I could only play 2 tracks from a multi track VCD.

The computer still refuses to play anymore than 2 tracks, but for the first time, I could play all three in the DVD player. The reason for this appears to be that I have not been supplying a file with the correct pixel aspect ratio of 0.9150 for PAL and the option in the Panasonic Encoder to add black around the frame and resize the image during encoding allows me to correct the error. I have, I now realise, been using a pixel aspect ratio of 0.977 as generated in Premiere 5.1. My guess is that my stop in the middle of a track will now disappear from the DVD player and if that is so then I can start all over again archiving 40 years of photography to CD.

Thank you Mr Martinez for pointing us all to a web site that allowed me, at least, to obtain the trial version of the Panasonic Encoder without limitations to perhaps solve all of my problems. I must now change the size of my captures so that I can make my square pixel analogue system produce the correct pixel aspect ratio and maybe I can then continue to use the best encoder - LSX.

Thanks a lot - Cheers!

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), September 23, 1999

Answers

Lsx a better quality?????? Try it on a regular tv set, with a dvd or vcd player, and you'll be surprised how bad it is compared to the Panasonic. The Lsx has colors that seems garbage and the pixels .... please, just try and forget the pc monitor: movies has to be seen on a tv set, everywhere, withouth the approval of Bill Gates & co. All the best, Luigi

-- Luigi De Angelis (dean@mclink.it), September 24, 1999.

Thank you Luigi - I would suggest that if your ability is as good at comparing images as it is in reading postings then you have a problem.

Actually the comparison was also done on a Professional Sony studio monitor with the DVD player connected to both svideo and composite so that during playback of the images I could look at both. The monitor is capable of resolving only 450 lines at the centre as against nearly half that on a "regular TV" and if you read the posting you will note it was based on digital source material. Guess you would not even see that there was a difference between single chip or 3 chip cameras, vhs, hi8, svhs, d8, minidv, dvcam or betacam sp as source material for the encoder and how all of those effect the quality of the vcd. Never mind the effects of capture rates and the fact that you can actually see the difference between a 2M/s or 3M/s captures on professional quality equipment.

As far as my 17" computer monitor goes it easily resolves 525 lines in a test chart from an mpeg2 file created in LSX and not only that, it is setup so that what I see on my computer is very close to what is on the TV monitor, otherwise what is the point of manipulating images on the computer if they are not seen the same way as the end product on the TV even a "regular one". A good investment is to obtain colour bar charts and actually learn to use them to keep your equipment consistant and comparable.

All of this is subjective and I am glad you like the Panasonic as so do I, it has some very good features which will allow me to salvage some problems until I can change my capture sizes to make the end product more compliant and get back to using LSX - I will put up with the lesser image quality as most viewers will not see the difference.

Good viewing!

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), September 25, 1999.

I have also been comparing the LSX and Pansonic encoders. The summary: The actual mpeg of the LSX is significantly better, but the Panasonic has an excellent noise filter (not the video filter) that does a very good job with real life noisy videos.

The Panasonic has some problems. It seems to do a poor job on I frames. If you set the GOP size to 60, the picture will get very green as you get further from the I frames. Even at 15 I notice color shifting. I recommend the 12-size GOP. However if you look at a still of an I-frame it is quite "blocky" I even tried it at 15000 Mbs and it was still blocky.

The quality of the LSX encoder is, I think, the best of any encoder out there. However if you give it a noisy video it will faithfully encode the noise that some "lesser" encoders seem to though out. I find though that after watching it for a while - I tune out the noise (after all TV is very noisy). The picture from LSX seems sharper.

Randy

-- Randy French (rgfrench@nothanksmidwest.net), September 26, 1999.

Randy thanks for your posting, actually further testing with the panasonic encoder has resulted in its non use from here on.

I wonder if you have experience these problems:

1) I use scrolling titles or scrolling end credits and the Panasonic encoder could not handle the movement at all. The picture broke up on both the computer and on the tv when played via my dvd player. Not a problem with LSX which also doesnot block step the font in the same way that Panasonic does.

2) I tried to adjust an incorrect pixel ratio by adding black around the frame, on the computer it played nice and centered on the screen. On the dvd player it neglected the fact that the black was there and played the file as though there was no black at all and of course with less resolution as the pixel ratio was even further out. Would love to have tried a different color but...

Have a good day!

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), September 26, 1999.

I hadn't noticed those problems Ross. Actually I haven't tried VCD on a TV yet! I only played with the Panasonic for a couple of days. I thought I might use just the video noise filter by recording at a very high data rate, but the encoder seems to have problems no matter what data rate you give it.

I am currently developing a method for improving the quality of movies converted to VCD. The improvement is significant but it is extremely time consuming. Basically I record at 352x480 29.97 fps. I use Virtualdub to make two movies, field1 and field2 at 352x240. I use Videdit to remove the telecine and get back the original 23.976 frames/sec. Then I load both fields into Premiere and blend them together into one. Finally I use Virtualdub to do some final adjustments to contrast and sharpness. There are several "gotchas" involving audio-video synchonization mostly.

Randy

-- Randy French (rgfrench@figureitoutmidwest.net), September 27, 1999.

Thanks Randy - wow that is some process your using. getting image quality is quite a problem, obviously you can "see" the problems and want the best from your equipment.

You do not say what your using for capture. Sound sync problems have been part of NLE for years now and the only capture program I know and use is AV_IO as that locks sound to the vision, I have had no lip sync problems since using it and a 52 minute movie (limit of my current hhd capacity at a capture rate of 3M/s) has total lip sync at the end.

Not sure thats relevant to your situation and or methods but it does work for anyone using NLE capture cards and doing editing in premiere with tape and or a vcd as the final output. Not sure what would happen when you cut it up into its component bits like your process involves.

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), September 29, 1999.

Just a note to anyone who hasn't yet compared VCD/MPEG1 quality on a CRT/TFT and on a TV set: Do it!!! You will be surprised on how good a video can look on the TV set, even though it's fairly bad on the CRT or TFT display. Most TV sets have quite an amount of analog signal processing built-in to optimize the video display, which the "perfect" PC monitor doesn't. That's why professionals have both - the PC monitor and a "true" video monitor.

Happy comparing Steve

-- steve (spaudio_@_hotmail.com), September 17, 2004.