quality of Mpeg-1(VCD) encoders (lsx3.0)

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I found out that lsx2.5 gives better results than lsx3.0 (LIGOS) for Video CDs. Does anyboby knows why? Slightly better results gives the panasonic encoder.

-- Michael Micklinghoff (michael@micklinghoff.de), December 18, 1999

Answers

Hi Michael

Yes I agree and I told LSX the day after I got the update to v3. They are working on it, should be corrected with the first maintenance release.

Apparently something happened in the update that caused a drop in image quality for mpeg-1 when they added the DVD related Mpeg-2 stuff which I use for archiving. The drop in quality was very noticable in stills and transitions - lots of crawling ants on the screen I called it.

I sent them quality comparisons from each version so they could see what the differences were. You will also notice there is a difference in the image quality calculations as well.

They lost the edge with v3 but as I have said elsewhere, Panasonic has some limitations as well and I have had to drop using scrolling titles until LSX gets it right again.

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), December 19, 1999.


Ross,

I have been using Panasonic stand alone 2.3 now (which is supposed to correct the "greeninsh" problem you reported). So far, the scrolling text (like those in credit screen of movie) are encoded properly, even with Panasonic 2.21.

I remember you said you have problem with Panasonic Encoder for scrolling text, but not in LSX Why should you stop using LSX 2.51 if the LSX 3.0 is worse in quality? Or LSX 2.51 has other weakness?

-- Rusman Priyana (priyana@eudoramail.com), December 20, 1999.


How / where can I get the Panasonic encoder vers. 2.3?

-- michael micklinghoff (michael@micklinghoff.de), December 20, 1999.

Rusman hi!

The LSX encoder always gave me an "illegal mpeg packet error" and for ages I could not play anymore than 2 video tracks on any vcd I made. When LSX 3 came out that problem was solved so there was something in v 2.51 that was the cause so I cannot go back to it.

LSX 2.51 gave a considerable better image than v3 and also better than Panasonic 2.21, but they have lost it since. But as posted several times Panasonic 2.21 encodes my "stero" sound as "2 channel" sound and the file is not compliant.

So far Video Pack 4 is handling the non conpliant Panasonic files OK as I want to produce high quality vcd's with interactive menues, summaries, highlights etc which I have so far achieved under test conditions with small files, it will be a pain if the non compliant Panasonic encodes stop that happening when I go live with full length files.

In relation to rolling titles, I did a 30 minute Historical Diving Society job on tape and on vcd for a client and I was forced to use Panasonic instead of LSX for the above reasons, but because the titles broke up I had to delete them from the VCD project material and do the equivalent with page fades. LSX handled the scrolls fine. The vhs tape version was therefore different from the VCD.

As a result of that mess I have opted on other jobs not to use scrolling or crawling titles just in case the problem re-appears, time is money.

I have also had from Panasonic encoding big chunks of several pixels in a block in bright red or blue appearing (half inch squares on a 17 inch monitor) so I have my heart in my mouth every time I spend 4-6 hours encoding an NLE edited job. Gezzzzzzzz I hope LSX get it right next update.

Funny how all problems seem to come out of the woodwork the moment you want to sell the end product.

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), December 20, 1999.


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