stardealer

MP4 (H.264) is a high compression filetype, which needs much more powerful CPU and/or graphics-card to decode than lesser compression and complex formats like MPEG2 and others. I would assume that WnSoft uses a easy decodable format (or less compression in H.264) for the converted AVI to avoid decoding performance problems as much as possible. The tradeoff is higher filesize. Regards, Frank

There was a discussion some time ago about changing the default behaviour from glue to separate. This should significantly reduce the need to make changes that often. Hopefully WnSoft implements it, should be easy for them. Your request goes one step further and is clear enough. But thinking about speed-options I want to ask all others: "For what animation do we need speed options differentiated for pan/zoom/rotate. (If possible, please post a example for what purpose you have used it.) Wouldn't it be sufficient to have only one speed-option form for all three?" Regards, Frank

Please check color profiles as davegee said. Maybe your members use Adobe-RGB or even bigger color spaces, this would explain contrast loss and color shift. It seems to be a matter of color management: ProShow Producer supports color profiles, Gold does not (as far as I know). Photoshop does extensively, many Picture-viewers don't, some (e.g. Faststone Image Viewer) do. For P2E and many many other products images must be in sRGB color space. Regards, Frank

The example shows give a good impression how this feature will deliver more pop pictures, congratulation for implementing it as real time function. I like it for picture 1 to 6 of 7, it really adds clarity and pop. But picture 7 of 7 with unsharp mask has a really ugly look when viewed on 1920x1200. This single picture is much better without sharpening. What's going on there? Same impression anyone? Regards, Frank

Hi Jose, I try to explain what I may know about this area. Whether the dots are shaped round, rectangular or squared doesn't matter, if horizontal pitch is bigger than vertical doesn't matter. The point that matters is: How do you put incoming 1920x1080 (16:9) pixels into 1024x1024 (1:1) dots. These 1024x1024 are asymetrically arranged in a physical 16:9 form to avoid distortion. Imagine how a incoming signal of 1920 pixel width with changing black and white lines being 3 pixels wide must be remapped to 1024 glowing plasma dots. You have 320 black lines and 320 white lines totalling 640 lines. 1024 dots / 640 lines = 1.6 dots per line (or 1024 dots / 1920 pixel = 0,533 dots per pixel). In a simple remap this would result in 1st dot black 2nd dot 60% black / 40% white 3rd dot white 4th dot 20% white / 80% black 5th dot 80% black / 20% white 6th dot white 7th dot 40% white / 60% black 8th dot black (same as 1st) Now move the original signal 1 pixel to the right then you get: 1st dot 53% white / 47% black 2nd dot black 3rd dot 13% black / 77% white 4th dot 83% white / 17% black 5th dot black ...... So every line in plasma is changing between black, white or any shade of gray. And this in a pulsated environment with 50 or 60Hz. Which means we have no continous impression as in nature, we have point to point impressions which are combinated in our brain. We recognize these changing luminosity levels as a submovement in our brain. You can see this effect when you have a image of water with fine structures of highlights and shadows created by small waves (typically may be "swans on the small lake" or "lake with fountain". If you zoom it to 50% (the force interpolation) and pan slowly vertical (assuming that the waves are horizontally) the water comes to life because of this interpolated luminousity levels. The anti-shimmering in PTE softens the image (even out harsh contrast changes between neighbouring pixels) and therby softens these luminosity changes and the resulting shimmering effect. With hard patterns of changing contrast (hardest is black and white patterns) you additionally may get moire which is caused by interference and creates additional patterns in your image and change continually in moving images. Regarding the diffenreces between user manual and your real life experience with 720p/50 and 60 -> It may be the difference between "works as designed" and "works as described". Regards, Frank

Hi Jose, I wouldn't go the route 1280x720 50p as base file for 1920x1080 24p with Nero and I also wouldn't expect that BD-Players have problems with playback of your formerly created NERO BDs. Because playback on your PC is good and we eliminated restrictions of your BD-Player (we now get native output 720p/50 and not limited by decoding performance), it comes down to the scaler of your plasma which does its job in this special situation well, except creating some sort of heavy shimmering and a little loss in sharpness. Remapping 1280x720 (or 1920x1080) regular dots to 1024x1024 rectangular dots works good with static images, but will create more or less shimmering when moving images across the screen. With my plasma (1024x768, also rectangular dots) I get more shimmering when using 1920x1080 than with 1280x720. Shimmering shouldn't be a issue with all TVs (LCD or Plasma) that have square pixels. As far as I know only plasma was produced with such uneven pixels but only in the HD-Ready era not nowadays in the Full-HD times. You have to decide what's the best output format for your purpose but keep in mind -> other playback equipment may result in different experiences. Regards, Frank

Hi Jose, thanks for running these extensive tests. Regarding the last point. Maybe your BDP7300 only delivers 720p/50 and no 720p/60. I would be interested in one last try. Original MP4 1280x720 50p 100% Quality but I will fully understand if you have lost interest in testing again and again. I'm sorry that you have put so much effort in it and got no pleasing result with untouched PTE-MP4s. Regards, Frank

Hi Jose, now your BDP7300 can play PTE-MP4s directly. Isn't it fantastic! But no audio? We now really have arrived in the mysteric space of hard-/software design. I have done some research. Your player supports audio in mp2, mp3, ac-3 and dts. But no AAC (Advanced Audio Coding) LC (Low complexity). AAC (MPEG-2 Part 7) is designed as the better or follow up version of MP3 (MPEG-1 Part 3). It has been defined several years ago and is common in use with H264 codecs. Why philips decided not to implement it, I don't know. So where do we go from here now. I will tell you what you have to do to make your MP4 compatible to your BDP7300, but I think you will find it too complicated. But it really is not that complicated as it seems. 1. You have to extract the audio part (AAC) from your MP4. You need a tool e.g. tsMuxeR, choose the audio part and select demux 2. Now you have got the audio of your show in a seperate file named <your show>.aac 3. You need another tool to convert it to a format your BDP7300 supports. e.g. Free M4a to MP3 Converter from maniactools.com 4. Now you need a tool to put the video part and audio part together in one container e.g. mkvtools. There you open your original MP4 and your newly created MP3 together. Deselect the audio section of the MP4 and create a .mkv-file (you can also name it .mp4) from the video section of the orig mp4 and the new created MP3. 5. Now you have a MP4/MKV which contains only formats which are supported by your BDP7300 I have tested this procedure with a medium show (700 MB) and demuxing, converting AAC to MP3, muxing MP4-video and new MP3, test with VLC on PC, transfer to USB-Stick and playback test on my BD-Player took about 10 minutes in total. There is only one conversion done in this process AAC to MP3, so no loss in video quality will occur and I think you won't hear quality difference in audio. So you can see. Most of the time there's a solution, whether it's comfortable or not I don't mind, but don't blame me, blame the developers. One additional hint: In my resaerch to your BDP7300 I have found (Thank Philips for their good FAQ) "Make sure that your mkv-files do not exceed the following level standards. 4.1 for High Profile files with a maximum bit rate of 20 MBit/second" As I understand it -> higher bitrates may (not always) exceed processing capabilities of decoding software in the player. Regarding point 1 further down in your post: You deliver 60p but your BDP7300 converts and delivers 50i to your plasma. Not a good combination, I would try to generate MP4 with 50p. Shimmering may be the result of higher sharpness and some moire-effects -> you can try "anti-shimmer" in PTE on O&A-screen, properties tab, but you will loose sharpness Image stop -> I think it is a sign of not enough processing power, not a sign for to less transfer speed Point 2: If I remember correctly my advice was 1920x1080 60p High Quality. To change the frame rate you first have to choose 1920x1080 High Quality and then change to user defined where you can alter the framerate. When I consider your BDP7300 and your plasma with 1024x1024 I would think 1280x720 50p or 60p 100% Quality should result in a really good output. So please give it a try (directly with USB, forget about audio in the first place, just test video quality). Regards, Frank P.S.: If you find this post confusing I apologize, but it's a confusing complex area of some horrible programmers paradise where some of them think that complexity has it's own beauty.

Hi Ray, big size is a perfect reason to use BD. Regarding data transfer rates: USB2.0 Full-Speed has 12MBit/s - may cause bandwith problems on high data-rate MP4s USB2.0 High-Speed has 480MBit/s - should be sufficient for any MP4 data-rate It may be different from model to model what USB-standard ist supported, I can write with 4-5MByte/s (30-40MBit/s) to my usual USB-stick and read speed normally should be higher, but it should be sufficient for any required data-rate anyway, except you have only USB2.0-Full and not USB2.0-High. (DVD-standard is 9.8 MBit/s, obviously slower than USB 2.0 Full, BD-standard is 36 Mbit/s) I have faced problems on PC and also on BD-Player when using 1920x1080 60p medium quality, but it doesn't seem to be because of transfer-rates. Same show with 1920x1080 30p high-quality and therfore higher data-rate => no problem. It seems to be a lack of decoding performance. Calculate 60 nativ frames seems to be much more demanding than calculate 30 nativ frames and scale it up to 60i output. In your last statement you refer to "loss of quality for one reason or another". If you use 24p you compromise quality in panning, rotation and when moving framed images across the screen. You further compromise quality when your presentation equipment is not fully 24p compatible. We have had "Black crush" until 6.5.7 and only one user claimed about it. My statement is: You always have to compromise. Best animations and sharpness of moving subjects => 60p; Best color differntiation especially in images with low dynamic or shadow scenes => highest data-rate per frame; Highest detail => 1920x1080 and high data-rate; and so on. Everyone must decide which is the qualityfactor he/she wants to focus on. Going one step further, I wonder whether everyone who claims "I want best quality for TV-output" 1. has a calibrated TV 2. makes sure to set every digital filter off (in TV and Media-Player) 3. takes care of best quality connection between Media-Player and TV 4. takes care to have nativ output of the choosen format in the media player without additional conversion and so on. As Igor said in another topic, "Indeed the picture sharpness should be exactly same for video as for executable file for same conditions" and "Even if video file has excellent quality, sharpness of video picture depends on video player software". Regards, Frank

Hi Jose, 1. Install latest firmware-update for BDP7300 (should be 1.026 or something) 2. Try again with the unchanged MP4s from videobuilder (try 1920x1080 but also 1280x720) Regards, Frank

Hi, I can't really understand the reason why Jose, Ray and some other put so much effort in burning BluRay-Discs. Every actual BD-Player has at minimum one USB connection and mostly can playback the MP4s generated by PTE Videobuilder directly. You can attach a mobile harddrive or a USB-stick, it's so easy and in no way so time consuming as converting again and burning a BD. If you don't like harddrive or stick you can also burn a data DVD or for smaller MP4s (<700MB) a data CD, put it in the player and playback in best quality. It's also the cheapest way to give your shows to friends or family and you can burn the EXE as additional version on the same CD/DVD for best viewing pleasure if someone likes to playback on PC. Is it about having a menu to start the show or what else? Maybe someone can shed some light on this? Regards, Frank

Why do you think that 1920x1080 50p/60p in VideoBuilder is interlaced? I know that actual official BD standard only contains 1080p24, but H.264 should be capable of any resultion, progressiv/interlaced and framerate combination. HDMI specification contains 1080p60 with "Category 2 HDMI cables" and also some TVs are specified for accepting 1080p60. I didn't check what Media- or BD-Players are specified accordingly for MP4-playback in 1080p60 from any other media than BluRay-Disc. Please let me know how you analyzed the MP4 created by videobuilder. Thanks, Frank

Hi Jose, short answer to your long statement. regarding 1. ...giving him a small (and different) approach to reality You did and many may like it but some won't. I think it should be used less often. regarding 2. You can make shows three different ways interesting for the viewer. Focusing on special effects, focusing on storytelling, focusing on art or surrealism. Every focus has its audience. When you look at film and cinema the ones with really long playtime focus on storytelling. You can substitute a lack of storytelling by interesting effects or artistic photography, but not to any degree. We need to attract our audience, but different audience, different taste. regarding 3. I agree with most of it, but again, it's all about the right dosage and for my taste sometimes too much. Downloading times shouldn't be a issue for most of us. Length of the show - if I don't like it, then any length is too long anyway and vice versa. regarding 4. You claim that some won't like changing their habits. I don't think so, but it may be that you are only ahead of your time with your interprtation of visual show. Surely slideshows can attract viewers for more than 30 minutes and sometimes they pay to see it. Some people finance their journeys with such things. reagarding 5. Last year I have created a show from our travel to china. Containing 439 images in 33 minutes. It did not took 5 months to produce but was viewed with pleasure by all of the other group members and their families. Surely it is not picture after picture, but also not as modern as yours. I played with PictureInPicture, animated and not animated, horizontal and vertical pans, changing between slower and faster paces, etc.. It was fun to use many capabilities of PTE. Regards, Frank

Hi Jose, every BD-Player should be capable to play a MP4-file directly from any compatible media. My preferred way is to burn a Data-DVD or just transfer it to a USB-Stick, put it in the player and playback. When you use NERO to author a BD with menu etc. you have another software component in the game, which means enhanced complexity in the process and as you described it, another format conversion. I have given many shows to friends and family as DVD data discs and everyone was happy with it. The ones that have a BD-Player can play them on TV, the others on PC. The only problem I have faced was when using 1920x1080 60p High Quality because this demands to much rendering power from some of the BD-Players/PCs. GSPOT frame quality is only a simple divide (video bitrate in bits/second) / (horizontal res * vertical res * framerate) and you shouldn't care to much about it. I don't have NERO and I also don't have a BD-Burner, so can't assist on that one, but 1080p 24fps is only playbacked well, when your plasma is able to playback native 24p, otherwise your scaler converts it with 3:2 pulldown or otherwise as described before. Your plasma from 2001 in my opinion isn't capable of 24p native playback. If I understand your post correctly the best result you have reciebed by: - Creating a MP4 with 1920x1080 60p Bitrate 24000 2-Pass - Converting it with NERO to 1920x1080i 25fps by which you may have combined 60/25 = 2.4 frames of original MP4 into one frame of resulting MP4 which may explain the loss of sharpness - Playback on BD-Player which results in a ouptut format of 1920x1080i 50fps - Internal converting of plasma to 1024x1024 pixels Again: My advice is to burn the original MP4 directly as data-disc (DVD with 4.7 GB should be sufficient and is much cheaper) and playback on BD-Player. I would lower the resolution as said before because it should be sufficient for your plasma but first give it a try with the MP4s you already have created. Maybe Ray can offer better advice as it seems he has experience with BD-authoring. Regards, Frank

(To all: The member has joined in 2006, why should he promote another software with his first Post in 2011? I personally don't like M products because once a install of a testproduct corrupted my whole Windows installation. These products install so many components that I question whether they run stable anyway. Interested people can find statements from users at many places in the internet. ) To Frans, first I want to assure you that I cannot see a real difference between my PTE.exe files and generated MP4s played back on PC. But some remarks to your post: When you render your slideshow in other dimensions than the original size of your pictures then resizing takes place and you loose some sharpness. To avoid this, please try to create HD-video (high quality; pan and scan off), select user-defined and then enter your dimensions 1024x768 (lock between the dimensions must not be active). How is the quality now? Quality in watching of HD-video may also differ depending on how it is played back. What did you use for playback, PC or TV? Used the same way to playback videos created by PTE and your other software? Used some filters or effects in your other software? Regards, Frank