Anyone tried LSX yet ?

[fruitbat]

Looks an interesting little program complete with decentish
help file and DVD encoding templates but has anyone here
tried LSX as an alternative to CCE or Rempeg and is it any
good ?

[Arky]

Yes, LSX is well known in this forum, and is a decent-enuf little encoder - and I agree, it does have a nice helpfile which is very informative. However, those seeking absolute quality prefer Cinemacraft, as it is in another league, and allows faster and more precise encoding. LSX is pretty nifty at doing mid-range encodes of >VERY< lowbitrate, but does not have correct colour balance when encoding DV-AVI files (Firewire), rendering them with an almost bleached look. TMPGEnc has a richer and smoother appearance, in my opinion, and is more flexible if you need to encode to or from non-standard frame sizes. If you have a P3 or upwards, and want absolute quality, go for Cinemacraft, every time. You will, however, need to read a little before you can get the best out of the complex Cinemacraft interface. A good starting point would be www.Robshot.com, although this is not the only way of encoding with the encoder.


Arky ;o)

[goemon]

Originally posted by Arky
LSX is pretty nifty at doing mid-range encodes of >VERY< lowbitrate, but does not have correct colour balance when encoding DV-AVI files (Firewire), rendering them with an almost bleached look.

Is there any way to correct the color balance of DV before sending into LSX, so that it looks correct?

TMPGEnc has a richer and smoother appearance, in my opinion, and is more flexible if you need to encode to or from non-standard frame sizes.

The problem is that TMPGEnc interlaced is really shit! Motion artifacts all over the place... it doesn't do good motion estimation with interlaced material :( progressive is fine though...

[jdobbs]

Just a comment... if you're disappointed with the output you get from TMPGEnc -- you're really going barf when you see LSX's output.

[goemon]

Originally posted by jdobbs
Just a comment... if you're disappointed with the output you get from TMPGEnc -- you're really going barf when you see LSX's output.

I've compared the output of LSX and I've shown the output to other non-techie people. Everyone agrees the output of LSX is much better than TMPGEnc. This is also confirmed by several other sites on the net which have reviewed TMPGEnc and LSX.

TMPGEnc simply barfs on interlaced material, while LSX does a very good job, almost as good as CCE.

[Arky]

well, you make your own choices. Personally, now that my CPU supprts CCESP, I will be using CCESP for the most part, but if I fall back on anything, it'll be TMPGEnc, not LSX...


Arky ;o)

[goemon]

Originally posted by Arky
well, you make your own choices. Personally, now that my CPU supprts CCESP, I will be using CCESP for the most part, but if I fall back on anything, it'll be TMPGEnc, not LSX...


Arky ;o)

As long as youre encoding progressive material, TMPGEnc is fine. But its interlaced encoder is just shit...

I hope they fix TMPGEnc's shitty interlaced encoder... until then LSX is a million times better...

[jdobbs]

It's possible they've done some improvements to LSX recently, but I tried LSX Suite 2.0 when it first came out, and I just couldn't stomach the pixelation. I guess it's just personal opinion -- and anyone's is as good as mine. Maybe I've been spoiled by CCE.

There is a pretty good side-by-side feature/quality comparison at VCDHELP (http://www.vcdhelp.com/comparison.htm).

I can say that the Ligos folks have come up with some really fast realtime encoder plug-ins for other products that seem to work pretty well when you have a lot of bandwidth to burn

[goemon]

Originally posted by jdobbs
It's possible they've done some improvements to LSX recently, but I tried LSX Suite 2.0 when it first came out, and I just couldn't stomach the pixelation. I guess it's just personal opinion -- and anyone's is as good as mine. Maybe I've been spoiled by CCE.

There is a pretty good side-by-side feature/quality comparison at VCDHELP (http://www.vcdhelp.com/comparison.htm).

I can say that the Ligos folks have come up with some really fast realtime encoder plug-ins for other products that seem to work pretty well when you have a lot of bandwidth to burn

The VCDhelp comparison is in complete disagreement with several other comparisons on the web.

There was a german tech site which illustrated the very real problem of TMPGenc with interlaced material... they used footage from a roller coaster, the difference was very obvious. Wish I could find the URL again.

Also LSX seems to make much better use of SMP than TMPGenc. LSX really flies on my dual athlon while TMPGenc only slightly gains an improvement from SMP.

BTW where did you buy CCE from, and which version did you pay for?