Seriously, does anyone care about quality anymore?

[Pwolf]

This has been grinding my gears for a while now and I'm just bored enough to bring it up for discussion:

What the fuck happened to only submitting a high quality MPEG2 or loss-less encode to a contest? Pick any random contest thread in the contest forum and you'll see xvid, h264 and, thanks for giving me a heart attack, wmv on it's list of acceptable formats! Nothing shouts "THIS IS A BAD IDEA" more then that! seriously people?! why?! am i just that old and jaded that I get ticked off about these things? *shakes cane*

[Tsunami Jones]

I care.

[NS]

I care to :3

[mirkosp]

WMV9 isn't as bad of a codec as you think, it's just not that efficient. Same works with all the codecs. It all depends on the settings that you use. As long as who is in charge of the contest can deal with those files, I think it's fine.
Also, h.264 is a much better codec than mpeg2, heh. Try to see what a 2000kbps 480p mpeg2 encode looks like and compare it to a 2000kbps h.264 encode.
Like seriously, BRDs use MPEG4-AVC and not MPEG2 for a reason. >_>

[CrackTheSky]

Pisses me off too man

[Pwolf]

WMV9 isn't as bad of a codec as you think, it's just not that efficient. Same works with all the codecs. It all depends on the settings that you use. As long as who is in charge of the contest can deal with those files, I think it's fine.
Also, h.264 is a much better codec than mpeg2, heh. Try to see what a 2000kbps 480p mpeg2 encode looks like and compare it to a 2000kbps h.264 encode.
Like seriously, BRDs use MPEG4-AVC and not MPEG2 for a reason. >_>

[lynit]

People are lazy bastids. What can you do

[godix]

I've been wondering awhile if this sort of thing is because cons have to lower the bar to get submissions. The org is definately in a decline and the hobby as a whole seems to be as well. So perhaps if contests required editors to know how to use mpeg it would limit submissions too much. I'm not involved in any contest so I don't know though, but given the quality of winners at cons I think they've had to lower the bar on non-technical quality issues so it wouldn't surprise me if they had to lower the bar on tech as well.

That plus is mpeg really superior these days? Compare a nice quality MP4 and a nice quality mpeg and I think the MP4 actually looks better. I know part of requiring mpeg was the output cards required it, but is that still true?

[Pwolf]

WMV9 isn't as bad of a codec as you think, it's just not that efficient. Same works with all the codecs. It all depends on the settings that you use. As long as who is in charge of the contest can deal with those files, I think it's fine.
Also, h.264 is a much better codec than mpeg2, heh. Try to see what a 2000kbps 480p mpeg2 encode looks like and compare it to a 2000kbps h.264 encode.
Like seriously, BRDs use MPEG4-AVC and not MPEG2 for a reason. >_>

The problem has nothing to do with how good the resulting video looks, hell I could make a fine looking mpeg1 video if I wanted to. The problem that annoys me is that all these contests seem like they don't care so they just accept everything in hopes that they will either 1) re-encode everything to another format or 2) play everything back as is...

1) Probably the best thing to do, but when you are dealing with a million formats, you are going to have issues. audio sync, artifacts, decoding problems. You're already compressing a compressed source, thats idiotic. if you only allow for one known good format that can be converted and/or played back easily with little or no problems and loss of quality, you minimize issues and the contest shows it's content they way it should be shown.

2) If you decide, hey! i'm just gona play everything in VLC AND IT'LL BE A OK!!!, you're an idiot. Mirk, you're h264 argument doesn't fly here, IMO. bitrate can take a backseat. h264, being as nice as it is, still uses up a lot of resources on playback. If MPEG4-AVC decoder cards become more main stream or people start buying bluray burners and players, i'll listen, but thats not gona happen any time soon. and only if contest coordinators say "hey gimme lossless video so I can convert it to MPEG4-AVC for Bluray playback"

MPEG2 works great if encoded to a set standard. You don't have to re-encode to play through an mpeg2 decoder card or put on a dvd (think back-up?). If you submit lossless, it can be converted by the staff with little loss in quality with no issues.

[Pwolf]

I've been wondering awhile if this sort of thing is because cons have to lower the bar to get submissions. The org is definately in a decline and the hobby as a whole seems to be as well. So perhaps if contests required editors to know how to use mpeg it would limit submissions too much. I'm not involved in any contest so I don't know though, but given the quality of winners at cons I think they've had to lower the bar on non-technical quality issues so it wouldn't surprise me if they had to lower the bar on tech as well.

That plus is mpeg really superior these days? Compare a nice quality MP4 and a nice quality mpeg and I think the MP4 actually looks better. I know part of requiring mpeg was the output cards required it, but is that still true?

I think part of the problem is that contests want quantity over quality and then they wonder why their contests suck. For the editors to do some extra work and you'll weed out the crap. Don't let crapy videos into the contest. you don't have to fit 9 videos into each category.

Mpeg2 still looks good, it always has. You cannot compare the newer stuff in the same manner. h264 has it's place. it's a distribution codec and it should only be used as such. In an AMV contest where bit rate and disk space shouldn't be a problem, uncompressed or lossless (huffyuv/lagarith) should be the only things allowed. and if you are going to compress everything anyway then only allow MPEG2 at the same specs you plan on encoding so you don't have to do it latter.