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MillimeterLigos' LSX-MPEG Suite
Oct 1, 2000 12:00 PM, S.D. Katz
It seems everyone in the entertainment industry is squeezing things onto the Web, or at least onto some digital format from DVD to CD. For a long time that has meant using MPEG with hardware. But Ligos, a company with many, many years of experience with encoders, has developed a software-only encoder that may be the fastest and best quality solution at any price, and that includes hardware-assisted products.
Ligos has quite a few encoding products, but the latest MPEG transcoder that you should know about is the LSX-MPEG Suite for Adobe Premiere 5.0, or higher, for Windows. This all-in-one solution for MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 digital video transcoding uses Ligos' proprietary single-pass variable bit-rate compression that employs three modes of operation to provide higher-quality files than is possible with traditional constant bit-rate modes.
LSX's motion-estimation algorithm is optimized for use with Intel's MMX technology, running on a Pentium II chip. On a very fast Intel board, LSX outperforms hardware-based solutions, but, to be fair, that claim is based on a number of rapidly developing variables. Still, as of this writing, Ligos' quality and speed seems to make it a front-runner and a very affordable solution for Premiere users. It means that a project destined for the Internet or a DVD can be output directly from Premiere, saving time and hard-drive space at delivery time.
New features include field-based encoding and Pentium II SSE support for MPEG-1 elementary or system streams, MPEG-2 elementary or program streams, and MPEG audio layer II streams. Streams range from 4Kb/sec up to 15Mb/sec. Ligos ships with 20 predefined MPEG encoding profiles.
Because the LSX suite works directly in Premiere it has an advantage over stand-alone encoders, including the ability to support video sources and file formats supported by Premiere. Direct cropping and scaling can be performed before exporting the video, and because LSX works directly in Premiere the step of first producing an .avi file and then converting the movie to MPEG is eliminated.
Also included in the suite of tools is the LSX-MPEG Player. This software filter allows users to play back MPEG-2 video and audio through Microsoft's Windows Media Player, which is also packaged with the product. Movies can be played back at full screen or in a resizable window in up to full D-1 resolution NTSC or PAL on a Pentium II 450MHz system with a DirectX compatible video card supporting YUV overlay.
The LSX suite is priced at $399.95 for the entire suite and is available for Windows 95, 98, NT, and 2000. Uprgrades for earlier versions of the product are available.
A lite version of the product (for MPEG-2 only) is being bundled with the Matrox Marvel G400-TV Graphics Card.
Continue the discussion on “Crosstalk” the Millimeter Forum.
