My impressions:

http://aussie01/freeservers.com

Some great and worthwhile improvements, still not fully faultless in PAL with DV type 1 files

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), July 09, 2000

Answers

What makes the panasonic encoder even better is that as a registered user, getting an update of the encoder is easy and fast. Using the updated encoder, now we can adjust the RGB as well as joining several avi's into one mpeg with the standalone encorder. This obviously removes the difficulties when joining MPEG files and the 2 gigabyte avi barrier. Now I can use the freeware DClip (does not recompress the AVIs only make the cuts so that there is no render/recoding) to make cuts from the AVIs for the segments I want. Make titles AVIs (I like my titles on black background so I make separate AVIs for this) from videowave then use the batch command from the encoder to assemble all of the various avis into one MPEG file for VCD as along as all avi clips have the same codec and size/frame rate. Works great.

Also the new encorder has encoding testing so that it will encode 30 sec of the settings you choose and show it to you so that you are able to see the cropping, filtering effects.

Concering the color, the TV mode still washes out the picture but the PC mode works fine. As above, you can adjust the color balance and save up to 12 user settings.

If only the encoder can be faster bu in this case slower is better.

-- klebsiella (klebsiella@visto.com), July 10, 2000.

Thanks for that update, I wonder why you did not post this before, a site like this is hopefully also to help people with shared information, funny how someone must start it off before others join in.

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), July 10, 2000.

Having said that can I ask: have you actually tried 2G+ input files?

I have been testing with a 2.6G DV Type 2 VfW avi source file that loads in 2.5 OK but it has crashed out way below the 2G limit during the encode and not in the same place every time. Problem? I assume your NTSC and things may work for you that do not work in PAL. Panasonic, last night asked me for files to demonstrate the problem with PAL DV type 1 avi's so maybe there will some answers shortly to that problem that does not exist in NTSC.

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), July 10, 2000.

Your comment about slow is interesting.

I always begin tests with the default settings and I have had to actually use more filtering than in previous versions of Panasonic, for the same source material and that slows the encode down also.

By comparison the TPMGEnc encoder that gave a better image with its default settings is much slower than Panasonic, I will not quote actual times but the ratio on my computer was 1.6 times as long as the Panasonic using the same source material and when I added gamma corrections to get the same colour saturation as Panasonic it has gone out to just over 2.0 times as long. No filtering at all in the TPMGEnc to begin the destruction of quality. It does handle the same source material that at present I cannot get the Panasonic to fully encode, I have encoded a 2.6G file with TPMGEnc so its limit is at least over 2G with W98SE.

Have you accurately checked batch capture to one file to ensure no frames are lost over the joint? bbMPEG has had this option for a long time and is accurate over a joint so that one can actually carry over music without loss.

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), July 10, 2000.

The reason I did not post anything about the new updated panasonic encorder before is because I have only been using it for three days and I previously only tested it on a few small avis. Your topic on the forum just inspired me to mention the new changes which I haven't tested out completely. I have just tried the batch command to link several large AVIs which I captured using AVI_IO to see if the resulting MPEG is seamless. Since AVI_IO does not drop frames between its capture avis, when I encoded the MPEG file, it was seamless and there was no stuttering or skipping. It produced a better MPEG with an accurate union then if I joined it together with other programs. I very impressed with this ability to batch and join files. Also the panasonic can automatically shut off the computer if your motherboard is ATX which also is great.

Concerning TMPEG, I have always had problems with the program locking up in the middle of encoding an avi and I now avoid using the program because it is fustration for this to happen. Using the panasonic, I usually set its video filter to adaptive medium and noise filter to off or weak.

I have no experience with PAL or DV.

-- klebsiella (klebsiella@visto.com), July 12, 2000.

Thanks, DV and Pal is quite another story.

I have not tried batching as I have been to busy with Panasonic in Japan trying for a DV update to fix the PAL fault, the problem again turns out to be Bill Gates, just as a lot of problems with Ulead's MSP6 have proven to be, god knows when we will get any fixes, be cheaper for me to buy an NTSC camera.

When Panasonic loaded a greater than 2G avi I was thinking "new era" but sadly not so, (my site was updated this morning). Another site has given me a fix to stop making longer than 2G files for use in Panasonic, hows this for a result that is truly amazing.

The Panasonic accepted a 2.6G avi file and began encoding. At exactly the equivalent of 2G it aborted the encode, "no frame data available".

How do I know it stopped at 2G in the souce file? Well this later version does not delete the aborted file and I placed it on the timeline of my edit program and looked at the thumbnails.

1) length 9 minutes 15 seconds - 2G source point in a total of 11 minutes 45 seconds.

2) this is amazing, the sound stopped at 1G AND the associated frame at that point in the file was repeated as a still all the way to the end of the encode - not exactly what I wanted OR expected.

The moral, do not take new updates at face value test them fully and, as a result, do not use more than 2G as an input to the Panasonic v2.5 even though it will accept them without error it seems.

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), July 12, 2000.