Gleitz
10th December 2004, 16:58
Up to the present moment encoder tests suffered from the fact that you had to rely on the subjective judgement of the person conducting those tests. The interested reader had no influence on the selection of the chosen scenes. So you could always ask: was this selection always done objectively?
Moreover, people perceive and judge details indivdually, e.g. certain influences are considered disturbing by some viewers whereas others don't even take notice of them.
That's why we decided to do a blind test and leave the visual judgement up to you, the users. Blind means that you watch & vote without knowing the encoder used for a certain clip.
For this session, we took some lowcost encoders and tried to find optimal settings for our test video clip. The encoded files can be downloaded and judged.
Our test clip is a PAL DV-Avi file saved using the Canopus dvsd DVC/DV Video Codec. The clip consists of 5 parts with different demands for the encoder.
Test settings
Bitrate: min. 3.000 kbps, avg. 6.000 kbps and max. bitrate 9.000 kbps.
2-pass VBR
Scene Change: on
The intention of using that bitrate is to fit a 99min DV avi on a DVD. At the same time we want to check if the encoder stays within the borders of the minimal and maximum bitrates set.
2-pass VBR was set as a least common denominator of the encoders used in the test even though some participants also support other possibilites.
Scene Change was activated to check whether the encoders correctly identify scene changes and set I-frames accordingly.
Another requirement was the flawless acception of the clips in professional authoring tools.
All other settings were set to achieve the best visual result. The exact settings for each participant will be published after the evaluation period is over since these settings shall not have an influence on your evaluation.
Watch & vote!
The visual evaluation will be done by you!
Download the test clips, put them on a PAL DVD (RW) and watch them on your TV.
When creating the DVD and TMPG DVD Author (TDA) reports an error you have to use a newer TDA version since the files aren't faulty.
Ulead shouldn't be used for authoring since it corrupts the files.
The current TDA version (1.6) and the current DVDLabPro are fine for authoring (but not older TDA versions and neither DVDLab Standard).
You can cast your vote on a provided form (see below). Feel free to post your opinion and your comments, too.
When enough votes and comments have been collected, the test will be terminated and we'll reveal the encoders (and their settings) used for the different clips. In a final review we'll cover the topic from a technical point of view.
The test clips are provided via the P2P file sharing tool BitTorrent. We can't offer a download via http or ftp since we can't afford paying the required bandwidth. eMule and other P2P tools don't allow us to control which files are shared through our Server (http://gleitz.info:6969) and thus aren't an alternative. BitTorrent is also the most effective way for such a kind of distribution.
You'll need a BitTorrent client to download the files. Popular clients are ABC [Yet Another Bittorrent Client] (http://pingpong-abc.sourceforge.net/) and Azureus (http://azureus.sourceforge.net/). You can restrict down- and upload speeds in both tools if you want to surf the internet while downloading.
Important notice
Please keep the files shared for a while after downloading - that's the whole point of a Peer2Peer network or else it won't work. Please wait until the files have been uploaded at least once or better twice. The first downloaders will possibly experience delays until the files have reached a decent distribution level.
If this first test of its kind fulfills our expectations more tests will certainly follow.
Credits
Special thanks go out to mb1 for his support. He has cut the test sources and furthermore created two files for the test on his own. Furthermore, the german DVD-SVCD-Forum (http://www.dvd-svcd-forum.de) deserves credit since its members provided the scenes for the test clip and supported the project in general.
Another "thank you" goes out to my team members that supported me actively in the realization.
And of course I also want to thank you - the hopefully numerous testers/voters - for your efforts!
-------------
Vote now (http://www.gleitz.org/index.php?id=94)
Moreover, people perceive and judge details indivdually, e.g. certain influences are considered disturbing by some viewers whereas others don't even take notice of them.
That's why we decided to do a blind test and leave the visual judgement up to you, the users. Blind means that you watch & vote without knowing the encoder used for a certain clip.
For this session, we took some lowcost encoders and tried to find optimal settings for our test video clip. The encoded files can be downloaded and judged.
Our test clip is a PAL DV-Avi file saved using the Canopus dvsd DVC/DV Video Codec. The clip consists of 5 parts with different demands for the encoder.
Test settings
Bitrate: min. 3.000 kbps, avg. 6.000 kbps and max. bitrate 9.000 kbps.
2-pass VBR
Scene Change: on
The intention of using that bitrate is to fit a 99min DV avi on a DVD. At the same time we want to check if the encoder stays within the borders of the minimal and maximum bitrates set.
2-pass VBR was set as a least common denominator of the encoders used in the test even though some participants also support other possibilites.
Scene Change was activated to check whether the encoders correctly identify scene changes and set I-frames accordingly.
Another requirement was the flawless acception of the clips in professional authoring tools.
All other settings were set to achieve the best visual result. The exact settings for each participant will be published after the evaluation period is over since these settings shall not have an influence on your evaluation.
Watch & vote!
The visual evaluation will be done by you!
Download the test clips, put them on a PAL DVD (RW) and watch them on your TV.
When creating the DVD and TMPG DVD Author (TDA) reports an error you have to use a newer TDA version since the files aren't faulty.
Ulead shouldn't be used for authoring since it corrupts the files.
The current TDA version (1.6) and the current DVDLabPro are fine for authoring (but not older TDA versions and neither DVDLab Standard).
You can cast your vote on a provided form (see below). Feel free to post your opinion and your comments, too.
When enough votes and comments have been collected, the test will be terminated and we'll reveal the encoders (and their settings) used for the different clips. In a final review we'll cover the topic from a technical point of view.
The test clips are provided via the P2P file sharing tool BitTorrent. We can't offer a download via http or ftp since we can't afford paying the required bandwidth. eMule and other P2P tools don't allow us to control which files are shared through our Server (http://gleitz.info:6969) and thus aren't an alternative. BitTorrent is also the most effective way for such a kind of distribution.
You'll need a BitTorrent client to download the files. Popular clients are ABC [Yet Another Bittorrent Client] (http://pingpong-abc.sourceforge.net/) and Azureus (http://azureus.sourceforge.net/). You can restrict down- and upload speeds in both tools if you want to surf the internet while downloading.
Important notice
Please keep the files shared for a while after downloading - that's the whole point of a Peer2Peer network or else it won't work. Please wait until the files have been uploaded at least once or better twice. The first downloaders will possibly experience delays until the files have reached a decent distribution level.
If this first test of its kind fulfills our expectations more tests will certainly follow.
Credits
Special thanks go out to mb1 for his support. He has cut the test sources and furthermore created two files for the test on his own. Furthermore, the german DVD-SVCD-Forum (http://www.dvd-svcd-forum.de) deserves credit since its members provided the scenes for the test clip and supported the project in general.
Another "thank you" goes out to my team members that supported me actively in the realization.
And of course I also want to thank you - the hopefully numerous testers/voters - for your efforts!
-------------
Vote now (http://www.gleitz.org/index.php?id=94)