Thanks Brian. And thanks again for the help.

Mark,

Great job! Very very helpful. Thanks for all the hard work.

Tom

Excellent tuts however, may I make one suggestion that will prevent a lot of confusion? You need to change your generic Mpeg 4 to Mpeg-4 H.264 AVC and not leave it as Mpeg-4. The reason being they are really two completely different monsters and the frame rates are much faster for Mpeg-4 ASP than for H.264 AVC naturally.

Thats the only thing that stood out about the tut was that there will be some that will say that Divx and Xvid are Mpeg-4 and are much faster than the slower frame rates that H.264 AVC produces.

Also, with regards to wm9, in my testing I used WM9 Advanced profile for a more fair peformance test and while Wm9 still lacked the quality that H.264 AVC produced, it did slow the frame rate even further than Recode did.

Overall, your tut was excellent and were the same things that other beta testers along with myself noticed during the beta test last summer/fall with Nero/Ateme. It definitely is the future of video delivery and once they finally implement the ability to secure files with DRM, I predict it will become the de facto delivery method.

P.S. I am not trying to dump on your hard work, just trying to head off the possible confusion of users thinking the Mpeg-4 you refer to is the same as Mpeg-4 ASP (i.e. Divx, Xvid, 3ivx, etc..)

Great tut. Mark.

After reading both parts and your conclusions I'd like to make a couple conclusions myself to see if I'm digesting all this correctly:

#1. At this moment, we are NOT able to play an AVC encoded HD file on a computer/media player and get the viewing experiance (frame rate) we are accustomed to. Especially if the HD file is to be played on someone elses computer. meaning Joe Blough's WinXP computer that we cannot tweak for him. Meaning AVC is NOT ready for HD distribution via DVD-rom that would be played on a PC of substance.

#2. Although WMV did not have the quality of the AVC encoded file the WMV file was able to play back at a full frame rate at 720p and 1080p. So WMV would be a better choice for HD distribution AT THIS MOMENT since it should play back on PCs of substance AND because it should play with WMP 9 or 10.

I bring up WMP because this player comes installed on every WinXP machine. Even though WMP 9 or 10 is not the most loved player on the market, it should play a WMV HD video which means an aweful lot to someone looking to distribute HD via DVD-rom.

Did you try playing your AVC files in WMP? I have had mixed luck with this (AVC & WMP or Showtime) and am waiting on AVC to improve or just wait for DVD HD.

Your thoughts on the my above conclusions would be much appreciated.

Thanks
jack

#1 - you can play AVC files at full frame rate even on an average (say 2.4ghz) machine if you use an alternate player and your hard drive is not to frag'd ... Ive had mixed results playing right off a data dvd -- it depends a lot on the DMA setting and ide interface you have .. even the media . It also depends on what audio compression you use and which codec you use for playback .. You still have to step through hoops to play it back on some machines .... but this of course will change as time goes on ..

#2 wmv still requires that you install the wmv9 codec pack - plus the WMP is so awful - you would be best served to just include a proper media player .. It is a very accepted playback format though ..

xvid also is a good alternate that has very low cpu requirements and machine requirements to play back -- even at higher fps if required ... the quality is extremely close to H264 .. Ive been using this codec a lot lately for HD ... I sent a sample to DSE - ask him how it looked ..

A good read! I wanted to toss in a link:
DVD player. Euro model, as far as I know the only DVD player that will play back Nero Digital encoded files.

EDIT - Just pulled this from the manual:
Please note that files not created using the NERO Digital "Standard Profile" may not play properly, or only with certain restrictions.

Great tutorial, I can't wait to have the time to play around w/ the different options presented. Also, I think the test clips were shot with the FX1, not the Z1.

Indeed they were, Gabe! Thanks for that!

1) h.264 is not ready for primetime because of the lack of software players that work correctly... as the review proved.
2) yes, it should have been called h.264, NOT mpeg4... similar roots, but not the same.
3) "Since WMV is only a progressive format all three videos were deinterlaced in Vegas to remove that variable from the equation." ummm, wrong: "Where WM9 fell down in competition with MPEG was on the interlacing performance. This is understandable, as Microsoft came from the progressive technology of the PC display. Over the last year, the interlacing has been completely rewritten to provide real time performance, and this new version of the WM9 Advanced Profile will become SMTPE'S VC1. This is set to be the main codec in the future, says John O'Donnell, chief technology officer of Equator Technologies." -http://www.engineerlive.com/cgi-bin/articles.pl?action=display&id=3277&subsection=480&t=1&section=11

i don't think that interlaced encoding with wm9 is available via vegas, which is how the reviewers did their encoding.

4) "If all of your video contains the same types of video don’t bother wasting your time with two-pass encoding!" -this statement is so bogus that it simply defies explanation, so i won't even try.

We'll see if VC1 is even ACCEPTED this time by SMPTE, particularly now that Philips and Sony have jointly filed suit against Microsoft.

"this is set to be the main codec in the future, says...."



one word:

hahaahahaha (fat chance)

the point is that this frameserver article has some rather blatant errors in it, as i pointed out.

among other things, it appears that the author was bashing two-pass encoding because he does not understand the differences between it and variable bit rate encoding.

smpte owns vc-1, and microsoft is but one of 12 patent holders of vc-1 technology.. the vc-1 licensing fees are going to be set by mpeg la, not microsoft.

phillips and sony have been trying for years to keep microsoft out of the consumer electronics field... they teamed up to buy a company called intertrust, that was suing microsoft over a drm issue that ended up being settled last year... so there is a long history there, with many competing issues.

=========================================

"Another speed bump on Microsoft’s road to digital media dominance

Published: Thursday 24 February, 2005

First Thoughts: Whether Sony or Philips decide to take legal action against Microsoft’s alleged use of their patents within the Video Codec inside Windows Media Player, it’s pretty clear that this is a major speed bump to Microsoft’s dominance of digital media markets.

The big consumer electronics companies in the world, mostly not American, have a major problem in building systems that contain a piece of software that belongs to Microsoft for fear of ceding control. Studios and Record labels sit in the middle wanting their products delivered on the safest digital technology and wishing the battle would go away.

There are many potential outcomes for the VC1 standard, it could be merged into the H.264 standard, it could fall by the wayside, it might survive, but with many more companies as beneficiaries than was originally expected. But what is clear is that there will be no rush to include the technology in any equipment if it means dealing with the same licensing terms as H.264 for what is a virtually identical technology.

Six month ago the DVD Forum agreed to include the Windows codec in specifications for the next generation HD-DVD which the Forum is pushing, ahead of Sony and Philips Blu-Ray format. Sony and Philips will be smiling now at the prospect of having some say in the competing DVD format.

Final Thoughts: Whichever markets Microsoft pursues with its vision of software dominance, outside the PC segment there is no slam dunk and it will have to fight for every inch gained in digital media, mobile phones and networking."

i missed the part about 2 pass encoding -- so blame me for not catching it ...


wonder when they will be getting around to approve dvd+r as a real thing ?

its clear that the big boys will give people whatever the push is .... and with sony in control of 43-47% of the films , its clear who has a lot of say in this ..

So, is Nero Recoder the cheapest way to access h264 output currently? What I mean to say is that I see it's not currently in the dropdown box in the Video rendering tab in Vegas 5, so I'm thinking I'd like to add it and Recoder at $60 looks to be a good deal.

Relatedly, I'm working on a film criticism journal and we're looking to transcode multiple sources to smaller file sizes for upload/download and I'm wondering -- would h264 be the best option to preserve visual quality while shrinking file size? The workflow will essentially be several filmmakers from around the world uploading works toa central server and then I will be tasked with recompressing the footage into FLV/SWF -- given that, for the moment I'm advising people to put their works out to QT 3mbit/sec which should bring the files within a reasonable size without destroying too much quality as to make the pieces unwatchable when they get re-encoded to FLV. Would h264 be a wiser choice?

Thanks,

- jim

the cheapest H264 option is free ... a couple to choose from ..

H264 has interoperability issues and still in 'teething" mode -- wouldnt stop me from using it for a lot of things - but i could see an issue in your application, many of your people prob. only on mac . QT would still be more compatable in this case ..

but if going the H264 route - x264 and recode the best choices most likely .. read here or more info .. http://forum.doom9.org/forumdisplay.php?s=75920205451f0184930d23c221e617bc&forumid=54


see here for options and issues (5th post down) + add core as a decoder codec ..
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=75920205451f0184930d23c221e617bc&threadid=73022