Few Questions.

While I've been reading all the comments from this board I've noticed that people tend to like the panasonic encoder over the Xing. Why?

Which is better the plug-in or the standalone?

Also when everybody talks about encoding to the VCD compliant mpeg format at a high bit rate (2000-2500 using the panasonic) are they choosing the MPEG1 or the VCD option? When I try the VCD option I am only able to enter around 1500 for the bit rate.

If you can only encode high bit rate in th MPEG1 option which burning software will take it as VCD compliant?

Thanks

-- may (mlea@uswest.net), March 31, 2000

Answers

Hey May,

Whewn i refer to the pansonic, i use the standalone version ,not the plug in. If you dont mind me saying so as far as my testing went with results, the panasonic kicked the shit out of the xing encoder. The xing is quicker but the results are not that nice. Concerning high rates yes you have to make it an mpeg systyem file, but ANY video cd burning program that accepts highrates will burn this file made with the panasonic with no problems. So far Nero, NTI and video pack 4 allow highrates. Im sure thier are others out there that do this as well.

-- Doug (mazinz@aol.com), March 31, 2000.

Hi May

I concur with Dougs comments. One only has to do a test using the same source material and as he says it "bolts in" the quality against all others. It lacks mpeg2, DVD and SVCD settings because it is only a mpeg-1 encoder.

To make HR VCD's yes you must do a fiddle and use the Mpeg stream and not the VCD stream which locks into a maximum of 1150 + 224 = 1374 total (for example 1246 + 128 = 1374 is allowable for the vcd stream). You need to look closely at the defaults in the VCD stream and reproduce them manually in the mpeg stream to produce the higher data rate encode that will be accepted in the burning programs mentioned. Also as Doug has suggested several times in his postings on this subject you must increase the VBV setting to 150.

The plugin is designed to use primarily with Premiere but is used as the basis for Flask and maybe others. It lacks the options of the standalone but produces similar results minus the add black/crop/dominant field features of the standalone.

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), April 03, 2000.