BitVice Lite for (X)SVCD

[havema-1]

What are your experiences using the $56 BitVice Lite for (X)SVCD encoding?

I have been quite happy with (X)SVCDs encoded with MediaPipe but I have been looking for a simpler app so I just briefly tried BitVice Lite demo although its FAQ said that "BitVice does not support MPEG for VCD and SVCD". (ffmpegX is also nice but AFAIK it doesn't currently support interlaced output and the aspect ratio isn't exactly preserved with 704 or 352 horizontal target resolutions).

The first thing I noticed was that I must set the average bitrate at the very minimum 2000 kb/s so the highest bitrate is 2600 kb/s which is still slightly more that the highest allowed SVCD video bitrate 2499 kb/s with 224 kb/s audio. My Pioneer 444 DVD player doesn't like XSVCDs which exceed this bitrate so I guess BitVice-encoded disks are currently a no-go for me?

Another thing: I also tried to encode 720x576 DV as 352x576 MPEG2 but I think that the BitVice slightly distorts the aspect ratio with this resolution. AFAIK the correct thing to encode 720x576 as 352x576 is to 1st scale to 360x576, then crop to 352x576 and obviously BitVice just scales straight to 352x576, right?

BTW, there is a nice page describing Digital Video Resolution and Aspect Ratio Conversions at:

http://www.iki.fi/znark/video/conversion/

A built-in multiplexer would also be nice (I used MissingMpegTools).

And finally: Based on this brief test, I found MediaPipe's XSVCD quality somewhat better than with BitVice and BitVice's XSVCD slightly stuttered, maybe due to the 2600 kb/s peaks in the stream. So I'm still keeping my $56 although I very much like BitVice's GUI. Obviously BitVice is tuned for higher bitrates and proper DVDs.

http://www.innobits.se/

p.s. my SVCD on a Macintosh memo and cookbook is at:

<http://www.sjoki.uta.fi/~shmhav/SVCD_on_a_Macintosh.txt>

There are preconfigured MediaPipe DV-to-(XS)VCD and (XS)VCD-to-DV templates at:

<http://www.sjoki.uta.fi/~shmhav/MediaPipe_templates.sit>

[havema-1]

I was happy to see that BitVice Lite 1.3.3 Lite now has support for (X)SVCD so I was eager to try the demo version.

http://www.innobits.se/

I set the aimed bitrate by looking at the top bitrate because my Pioneer 444 DVD player stutters if the XSVCD bitrate is more than about 2500 kb/s. (AFAIK 224 kb/s audio leaves a maximum of 2499 kb/s for video if the maximum CD speed is 2x or 150 sectors/s). Hmm, does BitVice use 1024 or 1000 as a multiplier when converting b/s to kb/s -- its logs seem to indicate that the multiplier is 1000?

I set the upper bitrate limit slider to 2.45 kb/s because it was reported to be precisely 2475000 b/s in the encoding log (2.50 sets the upper bitrate to 2525000 b/s which may be just a little bit too much for my DVD player). This automatically set the lower limit to 1.35 kb/s and the target to 1.875 kb/s. It seems that it isn't possible to make the bitrate target window smaller, only larger with the low and high bitrate limiter sliders. I checked Interlaced input and High Precision boxes for my 720x576 DV input test file. I encoded 480x576 SVCD as well as 352x576 and 720x576 XSVCD. I encode all my XSVCDs with 48 kHz audio but for this test I used 44.1 kHz.

So how did 2-pass BitVice compete with my current 1-pass favorite MediaPipe? Well, I still like MediaPipe better. In still scenes the BitVice quality was OK but in moving scenes there were bursts of coarse blockiness even with the 352x576 XSVCD. MediaPipe also had some blockiness but not as severe as this. BitVice had also some artifacts that seemed like interlace combing although otherwise the output on a TV was smooth and the field dominance OK. Maybe BitVice just isn't tuned for these ultra-low bitrates? Would it help if one could adjust BitVice's target bitrate window somewhat smaller because MediaPipe's files are somewhat bigger which may explain the quality difference?

For some reason the 720x576 output produced Frame data under-runs while multiplexing with MissingMpegTools0.9.1 and BitViceHelper multiplexed only half of the file. 352x576 and 480x576 files multiplexed without any errors.

Another thing: BitVice still doesn't seem to preserve the 4:3 correct aspect ratio when converting 720x576 to DVD resolutions like 704x576 and 352x576 (apparently the same error affects also corresponding NTSC resolutions).

p.s. my preconfigured MediaPipe DV-to-(XS)VCD and (XS)VCD-to-DV templates are still at:

http://www.sjoki.uta.fi/~shmhav/MediaPipe_templates.sit