Hi y'all, I got a simple(?) question. At the same *average* bitrate that allows for 50-60 minutes of video on a CD-R, would the MPEG-2 codec produce better results? I understand that the MPEG-2 is somewhat more efficient and I would like to be able to achive atleast NTSC broadcast quality (330 lines), if not S-VHS (420), with the full vertical resolution/60 feilds per second.

ps Any good tricks or tools out there useful for getting the smallest average bitrate with the highest possible quality? Working with JPEG files I know it's possible to get extremely high quality with very low artifacting at codec ratios higher than 10:1 if you deal with the raw file data in a somewhat "manual" fashion during encoding. I'm willing to work with individual frames if need be to enhance the quality (I'm anal like that ). Just wondering if there's any knowledge out there about how to "prep" your raw video source so that eventual encoding to MPEG is more efficient (or any tools that automate the process).

TIA, Mark

-- Mark (ChinpokomonSan@aol.com), February 23, 2001

Answers

MPEG-2 is used in the SVCD format and indeed produces better-looking video because the H res is increased from 352 to 480, and the full interlaced frame 480 or 576 is used as well. In terms of VBR efficiency, however, gains can only be had at average bit rates above 5MB/s, which approaches the type of MPEG-2 used for DVDs. Typical SVCD bitrates hover about 2.5MB/s, and as Ross McC amply points out in his site http://www.geocities.com/aussie01au, at that level, there is little difference to be noticed, quality-wise, and playing time- wise, between constant- and variable-bitrate.

-- Mehmet Tekdemir (turk690@yahoo.com), February 24, 2001.

Darn. Thanks for the heads up Mehmet (and the link). Oh well, I think I'll still be working with the MPEG-2 format as the interlaced support is really needed for the video sources I'll be working with (I think it's the "movie look" applied to 60fps video that makes VCDs look tacky to most people). Anyway, while I'd LOVE full 10Mps DVD- VIDEO (I WANT A $500 DVD-RECORDER!!! NOW DAMMIT!!! LoL), "VHS" resolution aint THAT bad... if you can take advantage of the digital domain.

Thanks again

-- Mark (ChinpokomonSan@aol.com), February 24, 2001.

hi sir i need the the comparision algorithm of mpeg. if you have some knowledge about it , plz help me . i am wating for your mail. thaks byue

-- arif malik (malikarif@gawab.co), May 06, 2004.