The best DVD player that plays higher bitrate VCDs

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I am looking to buy a new DVD player specificaly because I want to be able to create and play higher bitrate higher resoltion fully interlaced VCDs.

I have encoded using the Panasonic encoder at 2276 video and 224 audio (2500 total) at 704 x 480 resoltuion and gotten it to play on the Pioneer 525. When it worked it was beautiful, it played back interlaced video with hi resolution, minumum artifacts and blockiness, and it really almost looked like a DVD rather than a VCD. The only problem is that the Pioneer only played it correctly 50 % of the time. The other 50% it would screw up the interlaved fields, resulting in jerky motion on fully interlaced video.

To fix this you CAN de-interlace before encoding or tell Panasonic to de-interlaced but I don't WANT to do that because I want to get full VIDEO playing.. which is 29.97 frames per second but really 60 interlaced fields.

Has anyone else experimented with this? What is the best player to buy. I know the Pioneer works sometimes but what about the Riate avphile, or the Apex... any other brands?

Also.. anyone have an idea on how to make sure the video ALWAYS plays back correctly? Currently.. if I start playing back my high bit rate 704 x 480 interlaced vcd and I see it is screwing up, I just restart it or track skip foward and back untill it plays it correctly.

I think it has something to do with which field it choses to display first.. if it choses the upper field firt it plays back correctly but if it choses the lower field first, I get choppy interlace artifacts.

This is the closest I have come to getting laser disc/DVD type quality playing back full screen on a TV from a stand alone DVD player.

Please, anyone else who has info, post or e-mail me!

- Blackout

-- Blackout (blackout@blackout.com), March 19, 2000

Answers

i know this might not help you too much, but i make highrate vcds all the time and play them on the pioneer 525, and i have never had a problem with them. This is more so becasue my capture card does them in mpeg format to begin with (Dazzle dvc).

But i can answer your other question to some degree. i have the apex ad600a also. The video cds play on that quite nice (and yes highrate and super vcds it plays as well up to the 2500bitrate). Although a lot of people seem to have had problems with video cds on the apex, i can say on my player they look pretty damn good.

-- Doug (mazinz@aol.com), March 19, 2000.


One other player that I have heard a lot about but not been able to get my hands on is the Raite Avphile series. Does anyone have one of these like the 715 or 713? Do they play high bitrate VCDs? Does anyone know of any player that can play a 704 x 480 mpeg1 at a bitrate of HIGHER than 2500 total? I'd like to go up to 3000 and I think that the results would look almost exactly like a DVD with almost no artifacts.

Currently, at a total bitrate of 2500 on the Pioneer 525, I get a pretty good picture but complex interlaced video scenes still get artifacts (like a waterfall or the ocean) and I STILL can't figure out why it only plays interlaced video back correctly 50% of the time and screws it up the other 50%.

Help!

-- Blackout (blackout@blackout.com), March 19, 2000.


I think your assessment of what causes the problem is correct because what you describe is exactly what happens in analogue/DV NLE editing, if you get the fields back to front the result is as choppy as hell and un acceptable.

I do not know what editing system you use but have you actually tried preparing your source material without a dominant field. In DV I capture with a dominant field and encode the edited version in "no fields" and use the "none" option in the Panasonic encoder and seldom if at all do I have interlaced problems. It has proven a better option than actually using the programs de-interlace options. I cannot use my Philips DVD player to play high rate VCD's but it actually works very well with the normal rate small frame vcd mpeg- 1. I use the RealMagic mpeg decoder card to play from the computer to my studio monitor and high rate vcd's show no signs of dominant field problems from the Pioneer 104 in the computer. Surprise, surprise the same comment appies for playing back DVD compliant VBR mpeg2 files. Maybe worth a try if you have the NLE program available.

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), March 19, 2000.


Blackout, you claim that you are doing interlaced "VCDs" that are MPEG1 based? That's simply not possible because MPEG1 doesn't handle interlaced fields, only progressive frames. You can get off doubt by reading the spec at www.mpeg.org. So, I don't know what's causing your failure, but to start with, it's impossible what you claim.

-- Matias (mpetrel@fi.uba.ar), March 21, 2000.

Blackout, I have the Raite, and it's played all VCD's I've burned without issue. If you got a disc you want me to try in it fo you, email me and we can set up a file transfer, or you can mail it to me...

Murph

-- Murph (beepblip@hotmail.com), March 23, 2000.



Matias,

I am telling you that I took a DV avi, and I encoded it with the panasonic mpeg1 encoder at 704 x 480 at a bitrate of 2500 total, and then it played back in the Pioneer 525 in full interlace video!

I am NOT making this up. The normal VCD spec is 352 x 240, so if you double that, you are getting sharpoer resoltuion in the first horizontal, and when you double the verticle, you are including the INTERLACE fields. Perhaps the panasonic encodes it progressivly but when thw Pioneer 525 get it and decodes it and sends it out analog to the TV, it turn the 720 x 480 into two interlaced fields.. it has to because 480 is too much info for one field on a TV, so it distributes the video in two fields like it should, but sometimes it messes up and does it backwards.

I am trying to get some other people to expoeriment and duplicate this and tell me how we can get it so that it ALWAYS works. Currently.. say if I burn one track and set the pioneer 525 to repeat that track... it will play it right the first time, then the next time it will look like crap, then it will look right, then crap... ect ect...

When it works, it's AWESOME... almost DVD quality. Footage from my Canon XL1 dv camera looked almost identicle playing off a cd-r!!!

-- Blackout (blackout@blackout.com), March 23, 2000.


Matias

I find interlacing and how to control the effects is difficult to understand, but critical for VCD quality.

Is it not possible whilst Mpeg-1 does not handle interlacing direct that presumably something happens in the DVD player processing of the file to re generate interlaced fields for use on the TV? If the combed images exist in the VCD Mpeg-1 file what then on the TV?

Therfore it seems to me that one can get an interlaced motion image which clearly shows the comb effect on a computer but does not on the TV.

I think an interlaced computer screen would give the best images for fast motion video sources.

These comments are more of an observation than being supported by any theory.

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), March 23, 2000.


Yes, this is exactly what I am talking about. When playing the 704 x 480 mpeg1 back on the computer, you can see both fields at once which looks like a comb problem, but when playing them from a cd-r on the Pioneer 525, it plays it back as full motion interlaced video.

-- Blackout (blackout@blackout.com), March 24, 2000.

Ok Blackout, I surrender before the evidence. It seems that this 525 model is capable of playing almost anything that you feed in. Well, I can buy into the idea that the player does the interlacing from the 480 line progressives. Still, I'd like to ask, how can you be sure that it's not taking only one field which is being duplicated? This can only be definitely asserted by making a motion from a still with, for instance, interlaced blue and red lines. That way you can be sure that you are (or not) watching the 2 fields. My second thought, and I'm only speculating here, how come the player know the correct order of the fields in time? Since MPEG1 doesn't store them as separate fields but as complete frames, there is the possibility that the player picks the fields in the wrong order which would cause trembling. Now, I find this 480 line MPEG1 is quite interesting and therefore my interest in the details.

Ross, about the theory vs practice issue, I agree that practice is very first because theory in itself won't teach you how to reach a good final product. But it's very useful to shortcut the process and helps to understand some results along the path, especially the weird ones.

I just love it when the forum gets interesting! BTW Blackout, I know I can't ask you to do the test of the red and blue lines ;-) but in case you do it, please share your result. One final delirious idea: Could your crashing problem be anyway solved by splitting the video 3 or 4 shorter tracks?? G.Luck!

-- Matias (mpetrel@fi.uba.ar), March 24, 2000.


Well Matias, I have done some more testing and the Pioneer 525 is definately not throwing away any field or duplicating just one field. I know this because I encodes two types of video onto a cd-r and then burned it at 704 x 480 at 2500 bitrate. What I encoded was some progressive scan video (which uses full frames instead of motion in every field) and I also shot some normal 60 field per second video. What I shot was all done on the Canon XL1 DV video camera. When played back in the pioneer 525, it plays back correctly as fully 60 field per second interlaced video! However, it only does this 50% of the time. You were correct in noting that it doesn't know which field should go first.. it seems to just randomly chose, so half the time, it plays back interlaced video perfectly (it takes the 704 x 480 and plays the first 240 as field 1, then the second 240 as field 2) which gives GREAT results.. WOW, INTERLACED video on a CD-R!

BUT...

Alas... the other half of the time, as you have noted, it choses the wrong field first and you get the jerky stumbly effects that you mentioned.

If only there was some way to make sure that it played the correct field all the time. I really believe that this player could be the answer to looping demo applications such as trade shows, supermarket demos, apartment complexes and ect... not to mention keeping optical digital home archives of your own productions. The quality I got was truly amazing, about laser disc quality and very close to DVD quality, definately better than high8 or SVHS. Only very complex full motion interlaced scenes, such as water or lots of moving detail - showed block artifacts. The segments that I shot in full frame mode, showed almost no artifacting whatsoever! They were almost identical to my original DV footage! This has been so far UNHEARD of on a CD-R.

I have done a few experiments with trying to make a SVCD and haven't been succesful yet, but I'll tell you... my panasonic 2500 bitrate mpeg1 at 704 x 480 looks way better than any encoder I have found that does the mpeg2 480 x 480 svcd encoding at about the same rate. It seems that you have to up the bitrate a bit on mpeg2 to get quality out of it.

I urge other people to experiment more with this and see if someone can find a solution to the player chosing the wrong field first 50% of the time. The only current solution I have found is to shoot the whole thing in full frame mode or progressive scan, but of course you then can't get that fluid video interlaced motion or look if you want it. Myself, I prefer the slower frame rate of 24 or 30 frames per second as opposed to the fast LIVE look of video at 60 FIELDs per second.. but for some subjects, the look of video is better. I also notice that interlaced video is slightly sharper than full frame video.. at least on the Xl1. This is most likely do to some internal processing the XL1 is doing.

I think I am going to copy this whole thread and post it to the USENET, because many people have been looking for a way to get high quality video onto a CD-R that can play on a setop box, and this is it. Untill dvd-r is a reality at price that doesn't kill.

EXTRA NOTE: I have tried the high bitrate VCD I made, which is known I believe also as HB-VCD or XVCD, on the following players: The Pioneer 525, and the Apex a600. They both played it back correctly 50% of the time, and stumbled the interlaced fields the other 50% of the time. They both played full frame video back correctly 100% of the time.

I hear the AVphile 715 will also handle this kind of HB-VCD or XVCD but I have not been able to find one to test.

Out of the Pioneer and the Apex, the Pioneer definately looked better and it also seemed a sturdier build. The Apex seemed cheap and flimsy, and the picture looked a little more artifacted although it was only slight. The Apex can play mp3 cd-rs though where as the Pioneer can not. The Pioneer 525 can also play SVCD although it is not listed in the manual. I have not been able to successfully make a svcd to confirm this, but several other people have repoorted they were succesfull in playing a commercial svcd in a Pioneer 525.

Thus ends my report.. I'm out to make some movies.

- Blackout

for a laugh, check out my site

http://www.blackout.com Blackout's Box



-- Blackout (blackout@blackout.com), March 24, 2000.



Hi all,

Sorry this is a question, not an answer. I'm interested in making high-bitrate VCDs. I have a Pioneer 525. What do you use to author (burn) your VCDs? Will EZ CD make high-bitrate VCDs? Also, why not go to SVCD?

Thanks for your time,

-- Michael S. Gilmore (mgilmore@san.rr.com), March 27, 2000.


blackout, at the very top of this thread, u state that u can opt for the panasonic encoder to deinterlace video. what option controls this?

-- ndumu (ndumu@hotmail.com), March 31, 2000.

Blackout, many thanks for the input (it was hard to find again this thread anyway). I don't know if this may help, but when you tell that "after 50% of the time it swaps the order of the fields" are you sure it's 50% of any time and not after a fixed time? What about splitting the long mpeg in shorter tracks in the same VCD, each one ending before the field swaping? Well I can't say much as I haven't research on this, just my 5 cents.

-- Matias (mpetrel@fi.uba.ar), April 01, 2000.

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