QT7 Pro doe support H.264 and streaming as well. I have been having a heck of a time getting it to work with Vegas. Everytime I try to render a H.264 file from Vegas, it stops and says the file cannot be rendered (and I have the Pro version.)

It may be my Vegas is borked because I also get the same error when I try to use FFDSHOW's x264 to render as well.

That said, H.264 AVC is awesome. Personally, I prefer Nero/Ateme's offering because the quality seems to be much better. Also, QT7 Pro for PC is only a preview version currently and doesnt work that well under Windows, hopefully that will change with the final code release this summer.

But to answer your question, this does relate to H.264 AVC. Beauty of it is, this is the codec that we will have on our HD-DVD/Blu Ray players due this year. Isnt life beautiful? It sure is in the digital world.

PMasters -
not to be dense, but clearly your knowledge of these matters outstrips mine tenfold -

in a word, is there any way to create streaming media like the demo I originally referred to using Vegas or some other software, that you know of?

Also...
You mentioned Nero in an offhanded way, and I've also heard passing comments on it - what gives in that quarter?

best,
v

If you want it today, then I'd start taking a look at what you can do with Windows Media 9/10 and its HD capabilities:

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/content_provider/film/HDVideo.aspx

One advantage that WM has is that it's entirely possible to put 2 hours of HD content on a -R or +R DVD. No waiting for BluRay of HD-DVD; no waiting for burners & burnable media that don't exist and when released will likely be pretty expensive.

Just my 2 bits.
--Scott

Vic, you can use Satish's Framerserver and feed it into Nero's Recode application. (www.nero.com) Thus far, that is the only way I currently can encode to H.264 AVC from a Vegas timeline. Hopefully the final code release of QT7 Pro will address whatever the bugs are that prevent encoding QT7 H.264 AVC from the timeline.

<not to be dense, but clearly your knowledge of these matters outstrips mine tenfold ->

I appreciate the compliment and that says alot about you because I am sure you have forgotten more than I will ever learn :) It also helps too that I am part of the H.264 beta test team for Ateme/Nero.

www.nerodigital.com has more information regarding H.264 AVC and a wealth of knowledge can be found on the forums of doom9.org as well.

WRT to the WM9 HD, nothing MS offers at this point competes with H.264 AVC IMO. WM9 was good for the last couple years but like MS, they rested on their laurels and did nothing to improve their coding or efficency while companies like Sorenson, Ateme, and yes, even Apple put in extra time on the H.264 AVC implementations and its divedends are just now being seen. WM9 is softer in appearence and doesnt retain as much sharpness or details. Its not a bad codec in any sense, but it has been passed by H.264 AVC, even the open source x264 codec.

Victor, you musta missed the frameserving to Nero at the HDV event.... but Mark Dileo has a great 2-part tutorial on how to do it from Vegas. I'm with Patrick on this, the Aetme/Nero implementation is very, very good. MPEG 4 is a huge part of the future of vid. Cameras will/are acquiring with it, and we'll only see that grow for delivery too. Blu-Ray supports it, as does HD-DVD, and we'll likely see more and more implementation of it in addition to the scaling for cell phones and other devices.

Victor, the trailers on Apple's site were all compressed using Sorenson media codecs. These are the same codecs used in Squeeze. This is the program I use for compressing web video--far superior to what Vegas is capable of. It's worth every penny!

Victor, the trailers on Apple's site were all compressed using Sorenson media codecs. These are the same codecs used in Squeeze. This is the program I use for compressing web video--far superior to what Vegas is capable of.

That depends. The biggest issue with QT from Vegas is that the DEFAULT settings are way off. The result of using these default settings is a huge file with mediocre quality. Set keyframes to 250 or so, you will see a big difference.

I use Squeeze also, but only for Flash. The old Sorenson codecs are mostly of historical value today...

Has nobody succeeded in accessing the Ahead/Nero H.264 codec from Vegas yet?

>Has nobody succeeded in accessing the Ahead/Nero H.264 codec from Vegas yet?>

Only from frameserving. Thats the only way. Back before Vegas 6 release, my contact told me that Sony and Nero/Ateme were in talks to have Ateme's codec included with Vegas 6 which would have totally rocked as H.264 AVC content would be available within Vegas. Hopefully Sony would see this as an opportunity to further extend output possiblities for its user base and get it licensed and include it in an update.

It seems the natural progression at this point especially with H.264 AVC being included on the HD-DVD/Blu Ray specs giving its users somewhat of a head start with encoding content for the upcoming media/medium.

Nero's program are ok. A lot of positives but also some negatives. Hopefully the new Nero Digital Pro program that is slated to be released this month will address the program's shortcomings, however, I wouldnt hold my breath as the same requests have been there since Recode's inception.

Thanks all for your input - Spot I DID hear references to H264, but I was so transfixed with your "X-men Super Gucci computer "running 4 (FOUR) simultaneous video streams while you fiddled and fixed in Real Time that I was caught like a deer in the headlights - my brain just froze - in other words, I had no idea WHAT you were all chatting so glibly about.
So this is where I try to put the pieces together -

anyhow, Pmasters - you mention H.264 and BluRay - but isn't that strictly for HDV DVD manufacture and display?
Or does it also work on streaming video?

I just want to put out pictures that look the same as what I presented at the beginning of this thread -
BTW - this thread just proves that there are no "newbies" - just all of us mucking about, trying to keep up (except, I admit it - Spot - who seems to cover ALL the damn bases) - oh well, at least he talks to us :>))

v

The old Sorenson codecs are mostly of historical value today.

Simply put, that's not an accurate statement.

>anyhow, Pmasters - you mention H.264 and BluRay - but isn't that strictly for HDV DVD manufacture and display?
Or does it also work on streaming video?>

Vic, H.264 AVC was the codec selected for use with Blu Ray/HD-DVD. However, youll be happy to know that you can do SD as well.

From nerodigital.com's page: "features (8722 Byte )

* From 32 x 32 to 1920 x 1080 (HDTV) resolutions and more. PAL, NTSC, Wide Screen, CIF QCIF, all popular resolutions as well as custom user-defined screen sizes.
* From 16 kb/s to 4 Mb/s bit rate. All widely used bit rates, ranging from very small bit rates for future 3GPP mobile terminals to HDTV bit rates suitable for highest quality video storage."

Theres tons more. http://www.nerodigital.com/enu/Nero_Digital_Video_Features.html

Yes, you can stream it as well.

The old Sorenson codecs are mostly of historical value today.

The old Sorenson codecs are not best at anything. They have simply fallen behind for lack of development. That's why I don't see the point of using them, other than for old Macs that don't have anything better installed.

I have spent quite a bit of time this year on encoding for Macs of different vintages. The old Sorenson 3 codecs didn't impress me even after much tweaking, and the audio support is so inefficient that it takes up so much room for audio that it severely impacts the video for a given file size, assuming you need decent sound.

Perhaps you aren't well versed enough in using them. Too, maybe you should update the software you're using. But just because you are having problems does not mean there is a problem with the codecs.

Coursedesign:
The professional Sorenson encoders/codecs (which you have to pay for) provide much better quality than the free codec that comes with QT Pro and Vegas.

Sorenson3 is the best video codec for QT6 and before. Many people don't have QT7, so sorenson3 is definitely a very good choice right now for distribution.
*I haven't compared sorenson's or other MPEG4 encoders to sorenson3. Apple's MPEG4 encoder isn't very good.

If you look at the trailers on the Apple site, they are still using sorenson3 (albiet with pro codecs and such). They are also using qdesign music for the audio codec (again, the pro one) which dates back to QT3.

I did pay good money for and use Sorenson Pro (4.01), and spent more than 10 hours trying different settings to get a reasonable file size with acceptable picture and music quality from 5 minutes of uncompressed video with a good quality soundtrack.

I'm not BJ_M, but I did quite a bit of research to get the best quality, including spending time with Sorenson's techs, some of whom are quite disillusioned.

I agree there are times when you don't have a choice except to use Sorenson 3, but it's not a fantastic choice.

Apple has realized this also, they were getting laughed at by people who had used WM9. Of course Apple didn't want to push WM, so they started pushing MPEG4, which was a good choice (except for old Macs that are too slow to handle the decoding).

Hey CourseDesign -
So if you're not using the sorensen codec, what are you using.
I'm still looking for the best system (Vegas or other) to stream stuff for high speed delivery.
v

I try to think of it from the viewer's standpoint.

1. For the highest quality that can be played on nearly any PC today, use WM9.
2. For the highest quality with a more compact file size, for a small group of known geeks with very fast PCs, use Nero H .264.
3. For the highest quality that can be played on all Macs, use Quicktime with a suitable codec (there are MANY), encoding with Procoder or even Vegas (using non-default settings).
4. For the highest quality that can be played only on late model high performance Macs, use QT H.264. This should soon be fully released also for PCs.
5. For a shorter clip in a single format that can be played on any PC, Mac or a few others as well, use Flash. This is maximally convenient, as there is no player loading BS, it tends to just work, plus you have a choice of lots of player looks (and please use one with a volume control and mute!).

Amazingly, Flash was never meant to support video, just vector graphics. This led to Macromedia (soon to be Macrobe after the merger with Adobe :O) implementing some odd hacks to support clips longer than 16,000 frames... In practice, this is transparent though.

So Flash is my favorite for site simplicity and user convenience, but the codec choice is primarily Sorenson Spark which is far from the best for a given file size, and the audio options suck. Still, it's not hard to put together with say Dreamweaver and the Flash Video Kit.

Mac owners can install and run WM players, but most won't do it for religious reasons, or because their administrators won't let them (such as in schools).

DivX is also quite good, but is too geeky to suit a majority of the population.

...and the biggest problem with QT6 is getting good sound quality without having the audio take up as much space as the video.

QT7 is a step forward in this regard, as you're not stuck with ye ancient audio codecs as Glenn indicated.

Thing is I used to think Sony were nuts pushing BluRay with its monster capacity and mpeg-2 encoding when there was H.264 and WMV9 but speaking with the gurus from Canopus I learned one interesting thing. None of these 'advanced' codec are capable of high quality, their focus is acceptable quality at low bitrates.
Mpeg-2 (or even mpeg-1) at monster bitrates still blows all of them out of the water quality wise.
Only possible exception to that might be the Cineform codecs.
Does anyone know what the licencing deal is with H.264, the difficulties of licencing mpeg-4 was what drove uStuff to develop WMV 9 which as far as I can find out is totally free.
Bob.

None of these 'advanced' codec are capable of high quality

Hmmm, have you looked at WMV-HD?

Does anyone know what the licencing deal is with H.264, the difficulties of licencing mpeg-4 was what drove uStuff to develop WMV 9 which as far as I can find out is totally free.

No, nobody knows. Not even the licensees know for sure, according to a recent article I can't find just now. Nero made "reasonable assumptions" in order to get theirs out.

Only possible exception to that might be the Cineform codecs.

Do you mean it is good, or not as good?

>None of these 'advanced' codec are capable of high quality, their focus is acceptable quality at low bitrates.>

Wow. wait until you need the High Profile used for Ateme's H.264 AVC. Its still in beta test but once you see it, there is NO WAY you can distinguish it from the orginal source. Perhaps Mpeg-4 codecs like Divx, Xvid, etc.. fall into your line of thinking but H.264 AVC is an entirely different beast.

Naturally I would expect such a response from Canopus since they dont have an H.264 dog in the hunt and their bread and butter is their Mpeg-2 codec. The only way Canopus makes it to the party is if they license someone eles's codec. The beautiful thing is H.264 AVC is still in its early stages with major adoption and the quality is already this good. M$ has had their's out for 3 years and hasnt done crap with it. Thats why they lose this war.

Again, WM9 HD is too soft and smooths too many deatils but it can pass for acceptable viewing.

most of the HD samples on MS's HD website look like crap -- they are full of macroblocks if you blow them up -- the quality is not consistant from clip to clip though, some of these look like they were made from an already compressed source ..