As most of us have already or are in the process of trying the new tmpeg. I had a question for those who capture as i do (in mpeg format). I keep hearing how the tmpeg provides better quality then the panasonic. Well i did a little test and in my case the panasonic still made a better picture. Here is why --becasaue of the filters it includes. i have been told by Ross that the tmpeg does have filters as well,but that you literally have to program them in (or something to that extent). So when comparing, yes the tmpeg kept better detail, however i sitll saw a lot of "noise" and some brickiness that i do not get when i use the filters with the panasonic. If a future edition of Tmpeg does include easy filters then maybe i will switch over, but until then im sticking with the panasonic. thanks

-- Doug (mazinz@aol.com), August 12, 2000

Answers

I've only tried the trial version of panasonic which allow only 30 sec for each encoding job. I learnt to used tmpeg from the Q&A in this forum (thanks to those enthusiastic people). So far tmpeg is doing a great job for me although it takes a long time to convert for 'super high quality'. So I think the difference is freeware and a commercial sofeware. If panasonic performs better than tmpeg as you said, then people just have to make a choice of paying or mot.

By the way, Doug, could you tell me the speed of panasonic? If it is much faster than tmpeg, then I would rather pay the get it ('cause tmpeg is really slow!!).

-- U2 (u2hk@yahoo.com.hk), August 12, 2000.

Those of you who can't be bothered to take the (5!) minutes nessessary to learn how to use the fantastic filters in TMPGEnc, are well advised to stay with Panasonic. You don't deserve to get the great results it produces over Panasonic, CCE or any other encoder. "Program" them in.... hhhhhaaaaahahaaahaaa. "Slow"..... hhhhhhaahhhahahaaaaaa.

I think Xing encoder may be your answer Doug, give it a try.

Sheesh

-- Sheesh (norespect4u@here.net), August 12, 2000.

Really Doug, if you cant be bothered to click on the Filters tab and hit check boxes, maybe you shouldn't be working with video in the first place.

Also: You shouldn't capture in MPEG. MPEG no matter what rate adds artifacts (expescially if you're using a lack-luster real time system). These artifacts cause more artifacts when you re-encode. Just capture to something like HuffYUV and then encode off of that.

-- FunOne (FunOne@tyler.net), August 12, 2000.

Lets see, here we have two jokers i will call them A and B (shhesh and funone) who i more or less suspect are one in the same. Well the version i have DOES NOT have a filters tab. And from where i got it from it appears to be the latest version., the only thing that resembels a filter on mine is the "noise reduction" and even by checking that it does not say how little or more it will reduce by. yeah im sure the Xing gives great results (HAHA), im sure thats what you have been using before the tmpeg. God i hate dealing with idiots like you two(?). You dont even have the balls to use your own name. I can also guarentee you that the results i get from doing my methods will kick the shit out of anything you two jokers have even dared tried to crank out. The forum is open and i await your reply. Have fun

-- Doug (mazinz@aol.com), August 12, 2000.

U2,, Ok first it is good to respond to intelligent people on here and not half assed children like two of the posters above my name. ok, well when i tried super high quality on the tmpeg it said it was first going to take 4hrs for a 22min clip within 10-20mins this dropped down to about 2hrs 40mins. Roughly about 10mins longer then what the panasonic would take. I still do not see such a vast improvment in results that this should be praise like the second coming. However most i know prasing it are doing stuff with dv anf fire wire so maybe it is more so better suited for their needs. But then again it is still a very good encoder and i am not knocking it. But until they get those filters better, im sticking with panasonic. thanks---

-- Doug (mazinz@aol.com), August 12, 2000.

Two tests I did (yes, I did test MANY more encoder) Toy Story 2 Trailer, resized to 352x240 Here are the quant values Enc AVG PEAK TMPG 1 8 PAN 1 2 2nd Test (I cant honestly remember what video) ENC

-- FunOne (FunOne@tyler.net), August 12, 2000.

Whoops.

2nd Test (I cant honestly remember what video) ENC AVG PEAK TMPG 8 24 PAN 8 28

Also, using Super high quality, Floating Point DCT, and macro-block softening I can get about 6 minutes of encode per minute of video.

I would suggets re-running TMPG with the Macro-block softening on. If you're looking for a good noise reduction running the filter with a radius of 2 & about 25 spatial & temporal will get good results, though I usually pipe my stuff through a 2d cleaner in VirtualDub before encoding.

Personally when you add it all up, the slight occasional quality superiority of Panasonic isn't enough. TMPG has audio & video correctional filters. (including color) TMPG has customizeable multi-proccesor settings Quality settings like FPDCT, Macro-block noise reduction, half-pel detection (detects if half-pel will cause worse quality) Besides, Panasonic is known to cause bitrate problems and costs MONEY. TMPG is free, under constant develop, has a large user base, works with OpenDML (>2gig files), works with AVS, works with VirtualDub, uses dynamic I frames, and comes with a whole suite of MPEG tools. I really dont know why anyone would not use it. Its ties for highest quality with panasonic, but comes with more and is free.

FunOne

-- FunOne (FunOne@tyler.net), August 12, 2000.

1) One and the same, nope.

and

2) It's obvious that you don't know how to access the filters ( it's not a matter of just checking the box ).

Someone will eventually clue you in as to how you use Tmpgenc and then you will have what is called a "revelation". I won't spoil the surprise for you, though the answer has been posted at least twice that I know of. Consider this your hazing before you are allowed to join the "order".

-- Sheesh (norespect4u@here.net), August 12, 2000.

Ok, as another serious Tmpeg user. I use virtualdub for all pre- filtering, and then pipe it into tmpeg for encoding using the frameserver mode. VirtualDub can accept mpeg1 video input, but I prefer huffyuv ( if you have a spare 40-75GB for temp files ). I get 10x-15x realtime on my PIII700. I use vdub temporal cleaner, smart de-interlace, and smart softening for really noisy source.

I have found that tmpeg is great for vcd and svcd encoding. I use it mainly for svcd encoding, and it works great. Approaching SVCD limits, it's better to use CBR rather than any of the VBR modes, as it's not good at capping it's video rate.

Happy encoding.

-Eric

-- eric (eric@snowmoon.com), August 12, 2000.

Jesus, Sheesh you still sound like a child. Ohh to i have to do a drive by as well to join the tmpeg gang?? At least Fun one was intelligent enough to give a proper resonse (ti which i emailed him). You on the other hand. And no i still did not see such a huge enough difference between the two that i will see a revelation. Sorry

-- Doug (mazinz@aol.com), August 12, 2000.

you also have to keep in mind my captures are not in avi form, for whatever reason when i do have to convert, i too use virtual dub with the intel indeo 5.04 codec set to 100% quality. my results look great when its finally done. And from this for arguments sake i do not think that tmpeg will give me such a monsterous improvement over the already very good results i yeild. yes i have the program, and no im not going to get rid of it. Majority of people using it as i said are doing fire wire dv stuff or capture in avi to begin with. With this in mind the results you get with the avi could and will differ slightly with the captures i get using mpeg format. I have sent demo cds out to people before and they can vouge that i do get some damn nice results. thanks

-- Doug (mazinz@aol.com), August 12, 2000.

May I make a quick suggestion?

When you transcode /w VirtualDub into AVI I would suggest using HuffYUV (If you have the hard drive space ~100megs a minute). Its fast and a lossless codec. I would suggest the settings (in HuffYUV, Convert to YUY2 & Predict Median) http://www.math.berkeley.edu/~benrg/huffyuv.html

Here is a quote as to WHY from the HuffYUV webpage: If you capture video in order to edit it and output it back to tape, then Motion JPEG is probably perfectly adequate. It's also a good archival format. However, if you're producing MPEG video (or any lossy format), you should avoid using MJPEG (or any lossy format) in your intermediate files if you can. The reason is that JPEG was designed for viewing, not image processing. JPEG achieves its compression by exploiting known weaknesses in the human perceptual system, but computers don't see images the way people do: an MJPEG clip which looks fine to you may not look so good to an MPEG encoder. As a rule, MPEG encoders are very sensitive to noise, and MJPEG is basically an avoidable source of noise.

-- FunOne (FunOne@tyler.net), August 12, 2000.

Funone, i am always willing to try anyhting with methods, but yeah i do not have the hard drive space to supoort that, despite the fact i am running two droves now (a 20gig and a 27gig). thanks again

-- Doug (mazinz@aol.com), August 13, 2000.

for arguements sake i will run the same test clip i did previous with tmpeg, but with the added filters recommended by funone in one of his previous post. I will post the results here tommorrow and if it is indeed better, i a m not afraid to tell you so. Till then

-- Doug (mazinz@aol.com), August 13, 2000.

ok, i did a test. And for the record the test clip was lifted from a 17year old Beta video tape and is a cartoon. I used the filters mentioned by fun one and i did the test a few times with the filters set at different levels(more or less macroblock filtering)and then i did the same clip in the panasonic with its filters set to "noise" strong" and video "adaptive and strong. Ok also i should mention that each test i only let it encode for the first 20-40 seconds. And once again the panasonic gave me a better picture. The tmpeg did get rid of alot of the noise, But it sitll made a lot of brick noise, i do not get at all with the panasonic. Again maybe it works better when you use an avi clip with it directly? I could always convert this clip to an avi and then re try the test again and see what that does. Actually i might have to since i think my sound might be off by a micro of a second . Well i will then tell you how that test went. thanks

-- Doug (mazinz@aol.com), August 13, 2000.

I have stood back from this for long enough!

Gezzzzzzzzz "Dougy" boy we all have a problem here, I thought this site was to share information, and all these "experts" are keeping to themselves the solution. Guys whats so difficult about telling the man the ANSWER as to how YOU all access this filtering in TMPGEnc build 12 and indeed, what settings you use - I ASSUME YOUR ACTUALLY USING THE OPTION - no provided answer, perhaps not?

Doug, here is another codec that TMPGEnc works very well with - Mpeg4 v2, 6000kb/s 100% I frame every 1 second. As an inter file alternative to your intel its excellent and allows a full 72 minute VCD or 36-45 SVCD in one output without joints, usefull unless one wants to keep fiddling about fixing things that is. Old ways are hard to change even when the result is better, but then you need to try it!

Testing just completed and up on my download site to sample the quality but in SVCD only at the moment. Not going to bother putting up my VCD examples.

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), August 14, 2000.

Hey Ross, yeah i was playing around with it more (filters) and although they do work ok, the panasonic filters still give me a better pic then the tmpeg. I do know the mpeg 4 codec and havetested this as well, for the qulaity it produces at its high compression rate it is very godd, BUT it sitll does not give me as good a pic as when i use the intel, which is why i still use the intel and not mpeg 4. thanks though

-- Doug (mazinz@aol.com), August 15, 2000.

Hi Doug, as your aware I dont use a lot of filtering and in MPEG-1 DV based VCD's the MP4 codec (10 months ago) did not produce the goods and so it has not changed since, it works well in SVCD with the TMP encoder.

I think the other difference in this is that Panasonic provide both source and encoder output filtering and TMP certainly does source and presumably "ghost reduction" is the one that does the added artifacts part, its not as user friendly to use and our experts up above are still not saying how they do it.

From a DV base line the image produced by TMP is superior to Panasonic and they have a demo disk at the moment that gives that information, do not think they will like being knocked of the top of the perch in at least one side of the game.

-- Ross McL (rmclennan@esc.net.au), August 16, 2000.

Hi all, especially Ross,: From what I read in your posting above, I am I right to say that you think MPEG4 codec will not be good enough if I want to produce VCD (MPEG-1) ? I am now using Marvel G400 TV (as a replacement for my old Broadway). It uses MJPEG codecs that I am just not satisfied with. Last night I tried to hack the driver to allow YUY2 and Huffyuv 2.1 codecs. The result seems better compared to MJPEG, but the file size is larger than my MJPEG. (1 min uses around 110MB).

I am thinking of using the MPEG4-v2 like you suggested earlier. Will I be looking at smaller file size compared to Huffyuv and MJPEG? Will the quality be better or comparable to MJPEG? (If you have some experience with MJPEG).

Waiting for you "go ahead" indication for MPEG4 :)

P/S: what happen to your Firewire site?

Regards,

Rusman

-- Rusman E. Priyana (priyana@eudoramail.com), August 16, 2000.

Forgot to add: isn't the TMPEG filter setting accessible by double clicking on the filter item in the list? One of the guy above seems to imply that it take too much lines to tell us how to get to the finer setting of the filters. Of course it is not just as simple as putting a tick mark, but double clicking on it is just a little more complicated :)

Rusman

-- Rusman E. Priyana (priyana@eudoramail.com), August 16, 2000.

Hi Rusman,

In the early days of my VCD experience using DV type 1 files I was forced to use an intemediate file with the Panasonic encoder because it would not accept a type 1 file. The only intermediate that came up with quality was MPEG2 at full rate, everything else gave a lower standard.

Then came TMPGEnc build 12 and it does not allow MPEG2 as a real source. I tested again and MP4 was fine for SVCD and got over the joining problem that comes with the digital based line, but I did not do enough conclusive testing with it to say its OK with a standard VCD.

The site crashed because someone thinks I broke the rules and it was deleted lock stock and barrel and I found out this morning when I tried to add an update. RIP.

-- Ross mcLennan (rmclennan@esc.net.au), August 17, 2000.