MPEG-4 the future?

p@mast3rs wrote on 2/14/2004, 10:54 AM
Is it me or is this format just freakin awesome? I have been using 3ivx for the last week while testing which format/codec I want to use for web distribution and it just seems like Mpeg-4 is more flexible for the future.

I was going to use WM9 because of future high def support but man, Mpeg-4 supports high def as well. Not to mention, you can use menus with Mpeg-4. Anyone know why MS didnt include menu support in WM9 especially since the content is combined into one file? With MS' goal of being the industry codec for HD-DVD, you would think that they would have menu support to go with a DRM wmv file.

So far, that is the only short coming of 3ivx/Mpeg-4. No DRM currently. But the quality is outstanding.

Anyone else care to share thoughts?

Comments

farss wrote on 2/14/2004, 2:34 PM
MPEG-4 IS the future, no question about it. The M.P.E.G. have declared MPEG-2 dead. I'd also point out that the IMX cameras from Sony record in MPEG-4, seems to mean you can ingest broadcast quality video down firewire, no expensive hardware needed.

But moeg-4 is more, much more than just a codec, it is a whole way of describing an image, so the one mpeg-4 stream can in theory be displayed in different ways depending on the capabilities of the diplay device. But all thing wonderous it's one thing to write a spec, it's quite another to work out how to use it, in this case even a small subset of its capabilities would be very complex to utilize..

Consider just someone reading the news, on a HiDef TV you get all the res, on a SD TV you get the SD res image, but maybe the HD images contain something that wont look too good at SD, the display device can be told not to include it. Watch the same broadcast on a mobile phone and you could get a animated giff of the newsreader. Problem is how to generate that content.
p@mast3rs wrote on 2/14/2004, 2:38 PM
i totally agree. I can only wonder what is in the specs for Mpeg-7
jester700 wrote on 2/14/2004, 7:58 PM
I thought WM9 was one of many variations of MPEG4...
bakerbud9 wrote on 2/14/2004, 8:24 PM

Yes, it was. It's called the microsoft version....

-nate
p@mast3rs wrote on 2/14/2004, 9:26 PM
Actually I believe MS was developing their own version. However, I am not sure if they quit developing it when they developed WM9. Its hard to tell since no one knows whats inside the actual code to tell if its an Mpeg-4 implmentation. I do know that no mpeg-4 codecs currently playback WM9 which is a pretty good sign that its not a compliant Mpeg-4 implementation.

I do reserve the right to be wrong.
farss wrote on 2/15/2004, 12:26 AM
Well we should soon be seeing the first batch of DVD players that play HiDef off WMP9 red laser DVDs.
Bill Ravens wrote on 2/15/2004, 10:01 AM
Thanx for the tip. I've been playing with various forms of MPEG4, but, didn't realize that it could do Hi-def. I just rendered a 3ivx .avi file at 1280x720. By jove, it looks great. There's a few players on the market, now, that will play Divx. Perhaps, one of these days, a set-top box will play 3ivx. That would be too cool.
p@mast3rs wrote on 2/15/2004, 1:36 PM
Actually, the players from Kiss Technology that play Divx also play 3ivx as well. I think 3ivx lists in their FAQ section the players that currently support 3ivx.

The Bravo D3 is what i want. Supports WMV9 SD/HD, Divx, XVID, and 3ivx. For $350, its not a bad deal..
riredale wrote on 2/15/2004, 4:46 PM
In my explorations on this topic, I've come to conclude that, currently, WMV9 is the king of the compression competition, leaving MPEG4 pretty easily in the dust. The latest challenger is something even more exotic, originally called H.26L (now formally called H.264), which is supposedly about a factor of 2 better than even WMV9 in terms of bitrate for a given image quality. The catch--it takes something like 10 times longer to encode, so it may not be practical for at least the next year or so unless some sort of "helper" card is used in the PC.

I'm not sure if H.264 is an entirely new standard, or if they've kind of folded it into the official MPEG4 family.
bakerbud9 wrote on 2/15/2004, 6:08 PM
i think that's true. from what i remember, wm9 is a completely proprietary compression technology, although loosely based on MPEG-4.

typical microsoft... take a great industry standard, bastardize it and make it proprietary. they would prefer the whole world be at the mercy of thier formats and proprietary technology than open standards.

on the flip side, open standards goverened by groups such as MPEG and ISO can't always evolve and develop fast and freely enough to be competitive. but that's the price to pay for open standards.

--nate
p@mast3rs wrote on 2/15/2004, 8:28 PM
I wouldnt necessarily say WM9 has left Mpeg-4 is the dust. While quite popular, Mpeg-4 has its fairshare of followers. Divx and Xvid were very popular among the dvd ripping crowd for years. The Mpeg-4 variants have hardware player support and it wasnt until last month that MS even announced any hardware support for WM9.

The only problem I have with MS is their ability revoke your license to produce content using WM9 at any time. I could not imagine building a business model using WM9 only to have the license revoked someday. With an open standard, you are free to adopt any of the implementations. When you put your eggs in MS' basket, you play MS' game and they call the shot.
Bill Ravens wrote on 2/16/2004, 6:39 AM
I think Bill Gates is taking lessons from Steve Jobs. This is not good.
corug7 wrote on 2/16/2004, 7:40 AM
I went to an MCAI meeting last year where compression techniques were discussed. MPEG-4 looked promising, but MPEG-7 and the projected MPEG-21 sounded just phenominal. Imagine watching TV and seeing an outfit on one of the actors that you liked, then being able to call up an on-screen pointer and pointing to the outfit, and getting information on the designer, price, places to shop for the clothing, etc. That is all going to be possible very soon. Of course there would be other applications for this as well. The mind boggles. I'm sure by then you will just be able to click on the screen and order the outfit from Amazon or something while you are still watching the program. Credit card addicts, beware!
corug7 wrote on 2/16/2004, 7:46 AM
On a side note, there are grey market mod chips one can put in their Playstation or PS2 to allow them to play back some forms of MPEG-4 including DiVX:). They run about $75 US and are available online. Cheaper than a $350 player. Some of these chips have the added benefit of playing back all regions, too (a luxury we in the Good Ole' US are not afforded by mass marketed DVD players).
TVCmike wrote on 2/16/2004, 7:45 PM
"I'm not sure if H.264 is an entirely new standard, or if they've kind of folded it into the official MPEG4 family."

The MPEG-4 standard is actually a group of different standards designed to address different video needs. H.264, or MPEG-4 Part 10, is one of them. It's the joint effort ITU-T and ISO MPEG standards groups. Interestingly enough, it uses the Discrete Cosine Transform which is also used by MPEG-2, but it has a lot of encoding enhancements (obviously). There are other MPEG-4 parts, such as wavelet-based compression, AAC audio that Apple iPods enjoy ingesting, DRM, and even the ability to describe and place objects in media to compose an image similar to VRML.

As for using H.264 for video, I personally think it will become a destination rather than an editing CODEC. You're right about the real-time decoding of HD H.264 streams - they require rougly the power of a 3GHz P4, and that's *just* decoding them. I shudder to think of the quality hit and generational loss you'd get with it if you were editing H.264 unless there's some sort of I-frame only solution using it. Come to think of it, that's what MJPEG2000 was supposed to address but we haven't seen a whole lot of solutions with that CODEC, have we? :)