mp4 Format and SAPs
 

EDIT: Splitted from the mpeg2 challenge Thread
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Maybe you gonna HATE me all now but ....

.... on a first test/view I maybe understand ffmpeg/mplayer team why they did drop their interest on mpeg2 and ac3.

I just encoded for testing the whole movie KillBillVol1 to an mp4 container using the MeGUI.exe incl. suppoted chapters.

- 704x288 @ PAR 1:1
- using ASP Codec (ffmpeg mpeg-4)
- CQ Mode
- Quantizer = 3
- No Bframes
- Keyfr.Interval 250!
- No Qpel
- No 4MV
- No trellis
- default matrix
- All other @ default, so no other optimization - my first own encoding workout encounter using this technique/codec


The GUI uses mencoder for encoding

No Avisynth filtering, just loading the source (source Quality is VERY good)
The speed was impressive! 75fps! Where in this case for mpeg2 I would need about 55-60fps.

An average bitrate of 1250kbit/s resulted in the final mp4 container which takes about 1GB space.

The Result: 8O quite impressive

http://www.digitalfaq.com/archives/i.../2005/09/1.jpg

http://www.digitalfaq.com/archives/i.../2005/09/2.jpg

http://www.digitalfaq.com/archives/i.../2005/09/3.jpg

http://www.digitalfaq.com/archives/i.../2005/09/4.jpg

http://www.digitalfaq.com/archives/i.../2005/09/5.jpg

This last frame at mpeg2 using common settings DID result in more significant blocks at such a bitrate.

I think for a first step using not ONE optimization this really looks good.
However, these days I gonna buy a XORX 4000 DVD Player which is capable playing back mp4 incl x264 and AAC even at 5.1. So I gonna have a look how it results on my 16:9 Panasonic.

If that container supports anamorph, means if the decoder of the zoran chip in the XORO 4000 is capable to play back anamorph coded mp4s at PAR 128/117 correctly than this would be very interesting.

If just encoding at 704x288 PAR 1:1 that would mean the height would be sized up internally by height=height *(128/117) to fit the PAL TV PAR. That causes shurely a little blurrier result then a native 576 height mpeg2 stream.

This do not surprise me. New codec generation are really very good and that's normal : things never last forever. It's time for new codecs aimed to HD video.
No matter to hate you for having "discovered" that today ;)

??? Really ?
Things are going a lot faster than I thought !

Edit: and fairuse now supports H264 and VP7 ! Really, really fast...
(GordianKnot already supported H264 BTW).
http://www.fairusewizard.com/

@incredible,

Now try that with Theora ( http://www.theora.org ), with a bitrate of around 800Kbps, and compare the results ;)

Edit: And why would we HATE you :mrgreen:

-kwag

*lol :lol:

Its cause the mpeg4 thing ----- ähm
.... "Could someone gimme a hand on building an XVID from XYZ"
.... "You're here at KVCD, our goal is to get most on media using mpeg1/2"

:lol:

The XORO 4000 is quite new (well is 2 month old really new?) and it supports full nero digital specs in standard profile? or how is it called mode, but in that std mode you can also mux aac 5.1! which is normally only allowed in cinema...bla bla bla mode.
When using the MeGui you can set Chapters manually.


BUT! When seeking almost to the end a typical mega-smearing playback effekt occurs I saw that some time befor in other not properly encoded mpeg4s (xvid/divx). Seems the file is corrupt.

I always consired that as a normal side effet of having I frame every 10 seconds. Logically, when you seek, you should have to wait up to 10s before to have a "normal" picture.

Can you give me a link where to have more info about this XORO sap ?

Well the next try was the x264 via AVC Codec option in ABR (not CQ) Mode.

The resulted whole video file is about 650Mb! I think KillBill takes about 2h.

In the beginning within the Miramax intro where the camera flys from below to top over a sparkling watersurface I can see blocks. but up to then ... the quality is fantastic.
Also here just defaults used even Chroma ME was switched off.

http://www.digitalfaq.com/archives/i.../2005/09/6.jpg

http://www.digitalfaq.com/archives/i.../2005/09/7.jpg

http://www.digitalfaq.com/archives/i.../2005/09/8.jpg

http://www.digitalfaq.com/archives/i.../2005/09/9.jpg

http://www.digitalfaq.com/archives/error.gif

www.imageshack.us


@ Phil
heres the link to the XORO 4000
http://www.xoro.com/product/model-134.prod

And here a review from a german mpeg4 community
http://www.movie-player.de/modules.p...rticle&sid=215

maybe a online transl. can "dechiffre" it

I can clearly see that the source is not the same shit than your Titanic ;)

Thanks for the link (that is fast ;))

The screenshots look very impressive Andrej, thanks for sharing your results with us. :D

Hey Andrej,

Could you try those same clips with this: http://www.v2v.cc/~j/ffmpeg2theora/
Download ffmpeg2theora from there, and compare it to the MP4's :)

-kwag

A very good explaining Thread...
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.ph...815#post674815

... including a perfect mpeg standards comparison chart.
http://forum.doom9.org/showpost.php?...22&postcount=4

@Karl
Im just encoding a chunk using the theora codec in ffdshow interface via VdubMod using CBR 1000kbit

EDIT: The quality is much worse :(
Could you make a comparison?

Also Theora is not part of the mpeg-4 standard and so wont be supported by such mpeg-4 comaptible players and thats exatcly the point which made me focussing on that avc h.264 technologiy as finally I maybe could have encodings supported by a SAP and also supporting Chapters ;)

That's not the same build :!:
That's an old version.
Get the command line version ffmpeg2theora :)

-kwag

I have to correct myself!
ISO 14496-10 "AVC" h.264 like x264, Nero, Apple, MainConcept, Sorenson, Moonlight, or NeroDigital AVC is NOT supported by any of the current SAP generation!
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.ph...815#post674819

But ISO 14496-2 "ASP" ones like NeroDigital ASP, XviD, DivX5, DivX4/OpenDivX, ffmpeg/ffvfw/ffdshow, 3ivx, and there you should watch out if using Qpel or GMC.
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.ph...022#post461587
These work if stored in an AVI Container (no chapters/subs etc) or in an mp4 Container (chapters/subs etc).

Hi Inc,
I gave it a try. As it was late at night, I had to abort even before it had finished encoding audio. GUI looks nice and easy to use.
I have two doubts:
- in settings you can set the path to H264.exe encoder. You can choose to encode with mencoder, but I didn't find the place where I have to set the path to mencoder.exe... where is it?
- you say that MP4 supports subs... selectable subs, in the same way as with DVDs?. And I see MeGUI supports two audio streams, how do you select then the audio or subtitle stream when playing, from SAP menu?.

I also tried ffmeg2theora and encoding to H264 or theora through VirtualDub and ffdshow. The avi versions looked nice (maybe better H264 than theora, but I guess theora version in ffdshow may be old). I wasn't able to play ffmpeg2theora (codec issue, sure).
ffmpeg2theora was fastest (but it encodes directly from vob), and I found encoding with ffdshow and VD really slow...

Well, just a little feedback

Mencoder has to be in the same folder where the GUI is.
But you should use x264.exe as its more updated than the included x264 core in mencoder.
The same common way as if you would playback a DVD where no menues are included but a VTS_Stream including several audios/subs = Via Remotecontrol.
For playing back mp4 content in Windows you should use MPC and install the VSfilter.dll (VobSub by gabest) before. Also do install the MKV Mediasplitter as its much more flexible as the native Windows one and it supports AVI, MKV and MP4.

BTW: As you're also known to have skills in Commandlining, you should really use BATs and get a bit into mp4box's, mencoder(mpeg-4/xvid) and x264.exe Commandline parameters.
Then you can be shure everything has been set as you want it.
The MeGUI (imho) doesnt serve all the setted Options from the GUI to the CLI. I figured out IF you do set a PAR other than 1:1(default) in Xvid via mencoder CL, then that "aspect=4/3" or "aspect=16/9" parameter in case of anamorph encoding wont be set in the CL before starting!

Thanx Inc, I see you're a friend. (who?, me?, skilled? :roll: )
I hope they fix it (are they aware of this?), since I have little time to play with this applications and understand their options.

I'll follow your suggestions related to installing VSfilter.dll (must be in same directory as MPC?), and MKVmediasplitter (hmm.... is it a kind of player?).

Sorry if I ask before test it, but I have little time that I dedicate to mpeg2. This is just curiosity, in case we buy a HD player, an some new tools to play with... :wink:

No, it's a splitter. That is a Directshow filter that take place between the source and the codecs. It split (demux) the streams and send them to the corresponding codecs (video, audio, subtitles...).
You always need a splitter whatever the source format (avi, mpeg, mkv...).

Thanx Phil. Understood.

So I am supposed to have also installed proper codecs to later decode the AAC audio stream and the x264 video stream to play the video, isn't it?.

AAC codec: was it installed with Nero?.
x264 codec: I think I saw in ffdshow a H264 decoder, will it work?. In x264 package also comes a x264.dll, is it a decoder?.

In the (near?) future, if we are to play this MP4 files in a HD player, it will need to have all this codecs installed, isn't it?. Will then happen as it happens today with divx3, divx4, divx5, xvid,... or is the MP4 format more or less standard?. For what I read at doom links Inc posyed, MP4 and H264 are supposed to be standard, but after what happened with divx... who knows :roll:

Nero Recode does register a lot of needed (and unneeded) dshow filters in your system for proper playback of mp4 container content. means ASP, AVC and AAC.
In Case of using the MatroskaSplitter you must first unregister the Nero Parser in your system so mp4 content will be forced to be splitted by the matroska splitter.

The bat content
AAC content will be decoded by Neros DShow filters in your system or FFDshow via LibFAAC. AFAIK the aac has to be muxed in an ISO mp4 stream to be recognised/playedback by MPC via the matroskasplitter.

Also for ASP and AVC Nero Recode does deliver the neede DS Filters. But you shurely can use FFdshow. BUT do NOT set postprocessing in ffdshow when decoing AVC (h.264) content as the internal decoding routines specs. do use their forced OWN deblocking.

Related to future standard. The mp4 is a "standard" as listed below.

So mpegs as ISO 14496-10 "AVC" or ISO 14496-2 "ASP" can be used together with AAC in a mp4 container.
AVS is h264 where ASP is h263/xvid/divx/3ivx etc.
So Xvid and Divx still will be accepted as ASP codec.

I think the future would be nice when standarding h264 and aac in that mp4 container.

Here's a direct comparisonchart:

http://www.digitalfaq.com/archives/error.gif

BUT h264 (x264) needs more CPU power for decoding and needs also longer to encode.

But now my little statement based on my experiences I made till now (which does clearly NOT mean that these are the real facts!):

- mp4 container standard does not include AC3 support (AFAIK)
- mp4 container standard does not support "forced" subtitles.

Means: Still that standard is not as comfortable like authoring a DVD structure where you can determine forced subs based on a choosen language track which is IMHO a very useful point.
In mp4 and its splitters (matroskasplitter/VSFilter) you can switch subtitles on or off and choose manually while playback in the VSfilter dropdown in MPC.

Till now I didn't buy a mp4 player cause .... I didn't see a page where its proofen that this XORO or whatever SAP does support anamorph playback on a 16:9 TV. Also that evolution of mp4 SAPs is very very young and gots a lot of unsupported potential which should be increased by the next releases of new SAPs. KISS announced an AVC playback capable SAP. So I maybe do wait for such a generation of SAPs.
Or even better: Maybe in the near future a matroska container splitting capable SAP could be released as matroska is much more open to other audiocodecs etc., means more flexible.

But the BEST friend which can support all of those available containers or codecs is a HTPC. So building a little Desktop PC using a standard CPU which is able to decode fast enough h264, including a (mobo)sounddevice supporting digital optical audio Output and a Nice Radeon or Gforce GraCard supporting TVout and a little HD just carrying the OS - will be your "home cinema who cares what comes next machine" ;)

You're right Andrej :)
And BTW, there's a new release of KnoppMyth, if you want to grab it ;)
R5A16, and it's available here: http://mysettopbox.tv/knoppmyth.html

-kwag