KiSS 1600 MPG/XviD/WMV/H.264 DVD Player

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KiSS 1600 MPG/XviD/WMV/H.264 DVD Player

Postby Zero1 » Wed Jun 06, 2007 3:24 am

Yesterday my MPG/MPEG-4 Visual (DivX/XviD)/WMV/H.264 DVD player arrived, and I've written a sort of mini review here:
http://forums.animesuki.com/showpost.ph ... tcount=842

I basically go over some of the features, what's in the box and what formats it handles. Now you can see your AMVs on the big screen!

Feel free to continue discussion in this thread. Also, if you want me to test your AMV on it, please give a link and I'll do so. The main highlight for me is that it plays H.264 + AAC in MP4, but a lot of the AMVs I have come across do not play unless the streams are extracted and remuxed with [this version of MP4Box, however it seems that MP4's created with Zarxrax's GUI are fine, it must have been a bad MP4Box version that people didn't realise and shared it round.[/url]
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Postby Bauzi » Wed Jun 06, 2007 3:56 am

Awesome!

I hate it when one of the amvs don´t play on my DVD player because of the wrong DivX or XviD version. I always wanted such a player. I always wanted such a player. I guess that I´ll buy one =D
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Postby BasharOfTheAges » Wed Jun 06, 2007 12:30 pm

That looks awesome. Any links to sites selling it? All i can seem to find through google are reviews.
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Postby Zero1 » Wed Jun 06, 2007 2:30 pm

I think it's only available in Europe at the moment, that and it was only released on the first of this month, so people need to catch up and get stocks in. I expect it to hit America soon, America is a damn big market after all.

KiSS are now in partnership with Linksys/Cisco, so look out at the places that normally stock their products. It may even be worth firing off an email to places you shop at like perhaps newegg asking them about it. Raise the awareness and let them know there is a market for it, and they'll be happy to bring some in.

Actually, I think I'll email that nice Linksys guy again and ask him if there are any plans for America.

But come on guys, I'm not seeing a lot of interest here so far, I thought this would be pretty popular with the AMV community (this is one of the reasons we use MP4 after all, for the software and hardware compatability).

Anyway, since I have it up and running (listening to #Anime-Supreme radio on it now, it wins) post some AMVs that you are curious to see if they work. I'd also like to test it out, how about linking your own AMVs for testing, or someone elses?

Formats it takes are:
MPEG-1 in MPG, VOB, TS
MPEG-2 in MPG, VOB, TS
MPEG-4 Visual (DivX 3.11, DivX 5/6, XviD) in AVI, MP4
H.264 in AVI, MP4, TS (AVI is a no no, but it supports it)
WMV7,8,9/VC-1 in WMV, possibly AVI (using the WMV VCM codec)

Which should cover like 95% of AMVs here, but I also want to check out the features used in the encode, so I need links from you guys. I will then post back with comments. You got to admit it, that's pretty nifty for a DVD player :)

If your AMV is in MKV, extract the streams and mux it to an MP4 using the MP4Box I provided in the first post. The command is:
mp4box -add video.264 -add audio.aac -fps 23.976 output.mp4

MP4Box takes MPEG-4 Visual (DivX, XviD), H.264 and also MP2/MP3 and AAC Audio (so if your audio is Vorbis, just convert it).



So come on guys, post some damn AMVs for me to test :D
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Postby NeoQuixotic » Wed Jun 06, 2007 3:02 pm

Looks interesting, but at $400+ with no HD-DVD or Blu-ray support kinda sucks. But it makes that up and more with its features. I would consider getting one if I knew that it would get proper support and be released in North America. I don't have any practical reason to need one, but I'm sure I'd have fun with it ^_^!
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Postby Zero1 » Wed Jun 06, 2007 3:23 pm

Yeah, the price isn't set in stone, and like I said, England gets really raped for tax.
Zero1 wrote:As for cost, well let's see. It's certainly cheaper than PS3 and 360, but more expensive than a Wii. Now what with how England gets raped for tax, it wouldn't be right to just say it's £200/$400, so I'll work on the price for the Wii. It costs 11% more than a Wii, so if a Wii costs $250 in the US, then adding 11% gives you around $280. However I merely speculate. It might be that the price bears no relevance but in relation to what the Wii costs here, thats what it is. Having said that, if you were to cost the Wii in USD from here, it would be $360 so it might be that Nintendo really ramped the price in Europe and the real price difference between the 1600 and a Wii is actually greater. This means the KiSS 1600 could be $300-$350; it's anyones guess really


But that really sums it up, it wouldn't be good to make assumptions about the price and forget about it, it's a nice player no doubt. Also, although HD-DVD and Bluray players support the codecs, that doesn't mean to say you will be able to pop in an MP4 disc and play it like you can on the KiSS 1600; the first couple of years, HD-DVD and Bluray players will probably be simple and locked down like the first DVD players, and then of course people will be saying they want to wait for HD-DVD and Bluray recorders; we are never satisfied :)

If you wanted to wait a year or two to see what the other manufacturers were doing, that's understandable (and to an extent I would suggest that), but if everyone waits and no one buys the player, no other players will be produced because they will think there is no call for it.
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Postby Scintilla » Wed Jun 06, 2007 4:37 pm

Zero1 wrote:But come on guys, I'm not seeing a lot of interest here so far, I thought this would be pretty popular with the AMV community (this is one of the reasons we use MP4 after all, for the software and hardware compatability).

I thought the reason we used MP4 was because it properly supported x264, AAC, AC3, etc.?
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Postby Zero1 » Wed Jun 06, 2007 5:41 pm

Yeah, but it all boils down to interoperability is what I'm trying to say. MP4 properly supporting said formats leads to increased software and hardware support, if we for instance put H.264 in AVI, then it's not being stored properly, as a result software and hardware support will suffer.

As for AC3; it's not official, but it can be stored in a private stream (AC3 is stored in a private stream in VOBs for DVD too).

I for one use H.264 + AAC in MP4 because it conforms to well documented standards, that means any competant programmer can obtain copies of the spec, and write software that can decode and play my encodes. There isn't any guess work involved like how does AVI handle B-frames if it doesn't even know what B-frames are.

After all; ASP (or XviD) is properly supported in MP4, yet that didn't stop people putting it in AVI, and that's why it's taken this long until we get good, reliable hardware players, because it's non standard. We've been putting ASP in AVI since 2002 or so. I'd like to get that to change, but trying to get people who use XviD, Virtualdub and AVI to store XviD encodes in MP4 is harder than introducing H.264 + MP4. With H.264 it was somewhat seen as a clean start, but a lot of people will just take the attitude of the damage is done, why change now?

In short, H.264 + AAC in MP4 is the mainstream successor to MPEG-1/MPEG-2 + MP2 in MPG and that's saying something considering MPEG-2 has had such staying power over the years. It also seems weird that despite the popularity of ASP, it never really got anywhere, it was sort of a stepping stone between MPEG-2 and H.264. However I think part of this is due to 99% of ASP encodes being non standard and in AVI.
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Postby Qyot27 » Wed Jun 06, 2007 10:40 pm

A couple of 720p samples here, one 29.97 and the other 59.94 (you didn't say what framerates were supported):
http://rapidshare.com/files/35676842/qy ... 7.rar.html
(previously posted; transmuxed from MKV - 11 seconds; H.264-AAC MP4)

http://rapidshare.com/files/35685158/qy ... 4.rar.html
(38 seconds; XviD-AAC MP4)

Are we supposed to list encoding settings that were used or is that something you would be checking on that end? At any rate the XviD encode is pretty close to the instructions in EADFAG, and set at Target quant 2 (I was kind of lazy and 4000kbps on 2-pass still gave me problems with artifacts). The XviD in particular has more motion to it.
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Postby Zero1 » Thu Jun 07, 2007 7:10 am

Thanks for the samples; for H.264 videos I don't need to know since I can find that out myself, but if you can post the settings for the ASP (or any other encode), that would be great (for example if GMC, QPel or Packed Bitstream were used). Also though non essential, audio and muxing settings would be great too.

Basically give as much information as you can without going to too much trouble.

Also there are no set limits on what can be decoded, that is no limits (as far as I can see) on framerate, resolution etc. All is specified is H.264 HP@L4, but also there is nothing to say that it won't play higher requirement streams, for example 720p with 16 references would be level 5, but it only increases RAM requirements and doesn't really affect CPU decoding requirements, so it may be that the player has enough RAM to play such a file. Other aspects that can push a 720p encode into level 5, such as number of consecutive B-frames or bitrate are CPU dependant (in as much as more bitrate = more CABAC work = faster CPU required), so an excessive bitrate 720p may stutter, but from what I've seen so far it's quite happy with 20mbps 1080i H.264.

It's basically a similar chipset to what you might find in HD-DVD or Bluray players. It's rated for HP@L4.0, and I believe HD-DVD and Bluray are 4.0/4.1. The only main difference between 4.0 and 4.1 is the max bitrate, for 4.0 it's 20mbps and for 4.1 it's 50mbps (IIRC). The chipset is a Sigma EM8622L. It looks as though their new chipset the SMP8630 are likely to be used in HD-DVD and Bluray. It also seems to have some "security" features, which I haven't looked into, but I guess it's just DRM related stuff and perhaps AACS and the ability to revoke stuff.

All I'm basically trying to do is get a bunch of random AMVs to play on the player and just test the support and formats. Thanks so far.
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Postby Qyot27 » Thu Jun 07, 2007 12:27 pm

Zero1 wrote:Thanks for the samples; for H.264 videos I don't need to know since I can find that out myself, but if you can post the settings for the ASP (or any other encode), that would be great (for example if GMC, QPel or Packed Bitstream were used). Also though non essential, audio and muxing settings would be great too.

Basically give as much information as you can without going to too much trouble.

Alright. With the H.264 I wasn't completely sure since I don't have access to the custom MeGUI profile I used to make it anymore (although from what I remember it is similar to the one I use for my distro videos now, except that the current one uses --crf 18 whereas I know the older one used --crf 15), so I would have probably just been guessing as it were.

On the ASP encode, 2 B-frames, H.263 quantization, Trellis enabled, VHQ for B-frames enabled, VHQ on 4 - Wide Search, Motion search precision on 6 - Ultra High, Maximum I-frame interval of 50, all Minimum quantizers set at 2 and all Maximum quantizers set at 31, and GMC, QPel, Packed Bitstream, and Adaptive Quantization were all not used. Profile@Level was Unrestricted. Initially encoded with Koepi's XviD 1.1.2 VFW build, and remuxed into MP4 with the version of MP4Box you listed higher up on the page to be safe. The muxing settings were simply:
Code: Select all
mp4box -add video.avi -add audio.aac -fps 59.94 output.mp4

The audio used in both H.264 and ASP encodes was encoded in iTunes at 192kbps, and in the ASP encode's case, before getting muxed into MP4 was demuxed from .m4a to .aac by dBPowerAMP Music Converter using the MP4->AAC/AAC->MP4 plugin (I don't know if that really changes anything, I just want to be thorough).
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Postby Zero1 » Thu Jun 07, 2007 5:52 pm

I return with mixed results and theories.

qyot27_foxyhd_720p29.97.mp4
Played with audio only, similar symptoms to a bad mux (like the broken MP4Box builds I mentioned). I then extracted and remuxed the streams and it's still the same. I'm quite lost on this one. The only things that raise any suspicion is that it's CRF15, so there's a slight possiblity it was bitrate related (although it was a simple source so I somehow doubt that).

Then I noticed the max consecutive B-frames was set at 16; this may be the problem even though in normal sources it's unlikely you will get so many consecutive B-frames, but I would have expected to see a few frames up until a large sequence of B-frames and then just see the player lag rather than not display any video at all. Also it's a long shot, but it could even be a problem that MKV has caused - also whether it was encoded in Virtualdubmod (in other words VfW) or not is relevant (though I suspect you know better than to use VfW).


qyot27-killingbeta-hd_720p59.94.mp4
Slightly better results. Plays fine up until 11 seconds where it stutters and loses the audio - I wondered why since an ASP encode at 720p shouldn't really trouble a player that's been dealing with 1080i H.264 at 20mbps, but the bitrate is the reason why. At this part in the video, the bitrate skyrockets. Overall I think I found a peak of 35mbps, and 11 seconds in is roughly where it reaches 30mbps, which is hardly a surprise that it failed (yet it could even be a fragged HD, so don't discount that possibility).

I pondered it for a while, but then remembered that HD-DVD and Bluray players do not support MPEG-4 ASP, and neither does this chipset AFAIK, therefore I would assume that ASP decoding is done in software and if that's the case then I would assume the ASP decoding is limited because naturally if they have hardware MPEG-2/WMV/H.264 decoding, they would want to keep the onboard CPU low power and cheap. Also for what it's worth, ASP officially supports a maximum of 720x576 @ 30fps with a max bitrate of 8mbps, so it's not like I'm not getting something I should, so I'm not so dissapointed with that.


Since no one wanted to volunteer, I grabbed some AMVs for testing. First (in no particular order) is:

A Winter's Solstice - anubisx00.avi
Pass. Perfect sync and no judder due to framerates. Looks pretty awesome.


Bladebeat Graffiti - Kisanzi - VNS.avi
Pass. Perfect sync and no judder due to framerates. Looks pretty awesome. Would have benefitted from H.264


[BasharOfTheAges[Genkaiten.mp4
Pass. Perfect sync and no judder due to framerates. Looks pretty awesome.


[Decoy]-Bleach_Technique_Beat-_-Curve-_-Chinese.mp4
Fail. Displayed symptoms of a bad mux. Audio played with no video. I then extracted the raw H.264 and AAC, then muxed it back to MP4 using the MP4Box I linked to earlier. Now plays perfectly and get's same comments as previous.


[Koop] Skittles (1280x720).mp4
Pass. There were a few occasions where I thought I saw lag, but that might be framerate problems with my hardware (I have a 25fps PAL TV, but it can also do 29.97 fps NTSC. If a file is 23.976fps, it may judder in either mode due to duplicate frames and such).
Edit- Max bitrate is OVER NINE THOUSAAAAAAAANDkbps (actually 9800, should be no problem) and framerate is 24fps, so it's likely it's just duplicate frame judder (24>29.97 or 25>24)
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I also tested Nero's 1080p H.264 trailer with little success. At first the player refused due to it having an "unsupported Nero Digital profile", which was easily solved by extracting the raw streams and putting them into MP4 by yourself. It plays awesome for about 30 seconds but as it gets complex it slows down and the audio cuts out.

When I say bad MP4Box builds, at the moment I can only assume. I find it strange that the player will not play them, but equally strange that software players do. Is it the player that needs more MP4 support, or are the files incorrect but software splitters are more forgiving?
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Postby Bauzi » Thu Jun 07, 2007 6:00 pm

Scintilla wrote:
Zero1 wrote:But come on guys, I'm not seeing a lot of interest here so far, I thought this would be pretty popular with the AMV community (this is one of the reasons we use MP4 after all, for the software and hardware compatability).

I thought the reason we used MP4 was because it properly supported x264, AAC, AC3, etc.?


zero developed this player and brainwashed us all with his lies! Now with have so many mp4 stuff at home that we HAVE to buy his player.

What briliant plan.

But 400$ is a bit too much for me now. I think that waiting a year would be good before I buy one.
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Postby Qyot27 » Thu Jun 07, 2007 9:10 pm

I might go and fiddle a bit to see if I can get them encoded in a way that they play fine, just to see how well I can do this.
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Postby Qyot27 » Thu Jun 07, 2007 9:11 pm

Erggg, double post...

And no, the H.264 sample wasn't encoded with the VFW. I stopped using that back in 2005, if I remember correctly.
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