Wild compression claims

[oddball]

http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=SVBIZINK2.story&STORY=/www/story/12-08-2003/0002070862&EDATE=MON+Dec+08+2003,+04:00+AM

"The first product to be distributed using Payshare is ANNO 2X,
video-compression software from ANNO 2003. ANNO 2X can squeeze four hours of
DVD-movies into just 630 MB at broadcast television standard."

[DevilsChild]

From their website:

ANNO 2X can squeeze four hours of DVD-movies into just about 700 MB at S-VHS-quality

To me, "S-VHS quality" means "VCD quality," in other words horrible.

[Kedirekin]

I believe the quality progression goes like this.

vcd . VHS ... SVCD . S-VHS .. DVD ........ HDTV

VCD and VHS are considered comparable (as long as you're not working with aged tapes), with VCD being a little worse.

Similarly SVCD and S-VHS are considered comparable (again, as long as you're not working with old, degraded tapes), with S-VHS being a touch better.

If they're truly talking 4 hours of SVCD quality on a single CD, that is a pretty wild claim. I believe it boils down to about twice the performance of divx, and about 6 times the performance of MPEG2.

[Doobie]

ANNO 2X is advanced compression software that can shrink a movie file two times more efficient than traditional codec such as DivX or Microsoft Media Player 9 or Real at the same time and playback quality.

VP6? H.264? Who claims to have a significantly better codec than Divx or WMP9?

[unmei]

yeah, and im the king of mars :)
no seriously, if there were a company in switzerland that could design and program a mpeg-4 rivalling codec i would know of (its not done overnight after all). And the location (zug) indicates rather marketing/economics oriented than math oriented people behind this.
The only thing i can think of is this being a clone of another codec or licensed or plain out just "warm air" (not competitive at all).

(collapsed counties of cheesedom = switzerland)

[sh03z]

Just a dumb reporter trying to get his big debut

[lazyn00b]

I installed this software just for kicks and tried it out on a chapter from X2: the quality was AWFUL, totally unwatchable. Postage stamp sized video at about 256kbps with lots of blurry postprocessing. I had the feeling that they were using the WMV9 VCM codec, not sure though.

[auenf]

Originally posted by Kedirekin
I believe the quality progression goes like this.

vcd . VHS ... SVCD . S-VHS .. DVD ........ HDTV

VCD and VHS are considered comparable (as long as you're not working with aged tapes), with VCD being a little worse.

Similarly SVCD and S-VHS are considered comparable (again, as long as you're not working with old, degraded tapes), with S-VHS being a touch better.

If they're truly talking 4 hours of SVCD quality on a single CD, that is a pretty wild claim. I believe it boils down to about twice the performance of divx, and about 6 times the performance of MPEG2.

with a good hardware compressor, and good source, you can get VCD looking almost exactly the same as S-VHS (in more than a few peoples opinions).

Enf...

[Sirber]

It's very doubtful that a noname codec can beat recent codec. Every codec have a past, every codec took years of research and tweaking. This is BS IMHO.

[SeeMoreDigital]

It's all a very subjective argument again!

VCD (Mpeg1) has an max resolution of 352x288 pixels at around 1100kbps.

VHS tape max's out at around 240 lines. However resolution is very dependant on tape type, tape speed, tape head type (1, 2, 4, 6 etc) and the quality of the electrical signalling components.

S-VCD (Mpeg2) can be encoded using non defined image pixel frame sizes (but usually 352x480/576) at just about any bitrate (but usually 2500kbps).

S-VHS tape max's out at around 440 lines but it's image quality is dependant on the same factors as VHS tape.

The weird thing is Mpeg1 can be made to look way better than Mpeg2 when you encode at say 352x480/576 @ 2500kbps.

Mpeg1 is far from dead. Even low bitrate Mpeg1 is able to knock at Mpeg4's (DivX & Xvid's) door. Take a look at www.Kvcd.net!

When you compare VCD today, to when it first came out. It looks a lot better. Despite being 'locked' into a specification!

Cheers

[sh03z]

very nice site SeeMoreDigital, I will be going there in the future...

[Ramirez]

Yep, KVCDs are amazing, I've spent quite some time on it during last 3 weeks and I'm very much impressed by the quality of the KVCD templates (mainly I'm using the "SVCD-352-576_Pal_120min" matrix) the only downside I can see is lack of Philips stile embedded subtitles support in standalone DVD players (only few of them can display them, like some JVC models)

Anyway back on topic, yes ANNO2x uses WMV9 VCM codec(or its very limited implementation)
3 encoding modes are possible, LOW/ MEDIUM/ HIGH, max rez 352x240.(in high mode)

This is coming from ANNO2x documentation.

Here you select the quality of your resulting video. The bit rates have been predefined to meet the most Common usages of compressed video. :D

LOW 60Kbit/sec
MEDIUM 120Kbit/sec
HIGH 350Kbit/sec

Hint: Use LOW quality to prepare small files for distribution via Internet e. g. for a small video of last Christmas via e-mail to your family.
At ¼ of your screen’s size you will still have good quality.

MEDIUM will provide good results ½ of your screens size and may be used for storage of your favorite private clips on a memory-stick or flash-RAM.

HIGH is intended for best quality and will archive your personal DVDs and AVIs to your hard disc at good full-screen quality but without a high demand for space. With HIGH approx. 4 hours of video will still fit on a normal CD-R.

So far for the big mystery :P

[Boulder]

Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
S-VCD (Mpeg2) can be encoded using non defined image pixel frame sizes (but usually 352x480/576) at just about any bitrate (but usually 2500kbps).


That's CVD. SVCD is 480x480/576, looks a lot sharper on TV than a CVD. Requires more bits too, though.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Boulder
That's CVD. SVCD is 480x480/576, looks a lot sharper on TV than a CVD. Requires more bits too, though. Yep, the S-VCD image pixel frame size I listed was in fact 'half D1' and not 480x480/576 as you correctly stated.

The good thing that has happened recently is that many of todays DVD players are now able to spin RAW mpeg1 and 2 encodes. Meaning that you don't have to be tied to VCD or S-VCD compliance standards.

For instance. To my eyes, a half D1 (352x576) Mpeg1 encode at 2500kbps looks better than a 352x576 Mpeg2 encode at the same bitrate!

Thanks for keeping me on my toes. Cheers

[Boulder]

Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
For instance. To my eyes, a half D1 (352x576) Mpeg1 encode at 2500kbps looks better than a 352x576 Mpeg2 encode at the same bitrate!


I've also noticed that MPEG-1 is better at lower bitrates (something like max 2500-2700) than MPEG-2. I guess it has something to do with better bitrate scaling. That's probably one big reason why KVCDs turn out to look very good, they simply take MPEG-1 to the max. MPEG-1 also produces slightly smaller files than MPEG-2 when the same CQ value is used in TMPGEnc.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Boulder
I've also noticed that MPEG-1 is better at lower bitrates (something like max 2500-2700) than MPEG-2. I guess it has something to do with better bitrate scaling. That's probably one big reason why KVCDs turn out to look very good, they simply take MPEG-1 to the max. MPEG-1 also produces slightly smaller files than MPEG-2 when the same CQ value is used in TMPGEnc. Well, the reasons are a bit more complicated than bitrate scaling. In fact there have been many discussions (often heated) about low bitrate Mpeg1 -v- Mpeg2 on the forum!

I've been using Mpeg1 at all kinds of frame sizes and bitrates for many years. As it used to have many advantages over Mpeg2, the main one being, most Macs and PC's could play the encodes without the need to install codecs, filters etc.

That said, Mpeg2 is far easier to play than it used to be. Especially now we have tools such as the excellent MediaClassic Player.

Cheers

[Xesdeeni]

Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
VCD (Mpeg1) has an max resolution of 352x288 pixels at around 1100kbps.

VHS tape max's out at around 240 lines.Note that the "240 lines of resolution" for VHS refers to vertical lines and that those lines are the same width as the screen height. I.e. 240 lines on a 4:3 image are equivalent to 320 vertical lines across the entire screen. Also note that these lines of resolution are not directly equivalent to the horizontal resolution of a digital format. The vertical lines in an analog format do not have to line up with specific horizontal locations, as they would with a digital format. Obviously if the 320 lines specified above lined up correctly, a 320 pixel wide digitization would deal with them correctly. But if they are moved by half of a pixel, which is perfectly reasonable for an analog media, the digitization will miss every single pixel. A higher resolution digitization will eventually catch all the lines, regardless of their horizontal position (phase). The ratio of the digital resolution necessary to represent a number of analog lines at any phase is called the Extended Kell Factor. The value of this is always in debate, but it is generally accepted to be in the neighborhood of the squareroot of 2 (1.41). Note that none of this applies in the vertical direction, where a VHS tape uses lines, just like a digital representation. So a rough equivalent digital resolution to a VHS analog resolution is about 450x480.However resolution is very dependant on tape type, tape speed, tape head type (1, 2, 4, 6 etc) and the quality of the electrical signalling components.True. So it may not be always necessary to capture at that resolution.S-VCD (Mpeg2) can be encoded using non defined image pixel frame sizes (but usually 352x480/576) at just about any bitrate (but usually 2500kbps).SVCD is defined as 480x480 (480x576 for PAL). Any other resolutions are coloquially referred to as xSVCD and are not standards.S-VHS tape max's out at around 440 lines...Using the same math as above, a rough digital equivalent for S-VHS would be above that of DVDs (440 * 4/3 * 1.41), or about 830x480.but it's image quality is dependant on the same factors as VHS tape.Same as above.The weird thing is Mpeg1 can be made to look way better than Mpeg2 when you encode at say 352x480/576 @ 2500kbps.I've heard this a number of times, but I don't think I believe it. My understanding is that MPEG 2 is a superset of MPEG 1. Anything that can be encoded in MPEG 1 can be encoded identically in MPEG 2, with only some minor syntactical changes. I believe the differences people see are in the specific implementations of the encoders they are testing. E.g. TMPGEnc encodes MPEG 1 a great deal better than CCE does. So even if CCE used the same approach for low bitrate MPEG 2, it would be inferior to TMPGEnc's MPEG 1. Comparing those would give the erroneous indication that MPEG 1 was superior to MPEG 2 at low bitrates.

Xesdeeni