x264 yeah or na

[Shazzy]

I prefer h264 because the quality is way better, but when I released my video in it I got such helpful QC's as "h264 sux!!!" so next time I'll probably release both Xvid and h264 versions. Of course, I can sympathize with not having a computer with good enough specs to play h264 well

Agree. I'm on a year-old laptop right now and cannot properly view 90% of H.264 vids. Editors should provide a supplementary XviD version for those of us lacking buff systems.

[Streicher]

I watched about all my AMVs and fansubs on a P3 (840 MHz). I would call that thing ancient. As long as the settings and resolution stayed in a sane level, ffdshow could handle some and CoreAVCbeta most if not all. Even "Ayumix" and "Demon Within" worked fine.
The legend of needing a high-end computer for h.264 probably mostly origins from those l33t-fansub encoders who make their huge "High Quality"-Encodes.

[Knowname]

Has anyone tried dual video track releases?

I've thought about this, but not in the way you are
thinking. My idea is to make an AMV which can sync
with two separate audio tracks, all in a single MKV.
For extra effect use contrasting songs: one is a drama
AMV, the other comedy. Have yet to see that done. I'd
be impressed if anyone can pull that off successfully.

I had that same idea actually lol. I'll keep this in mind if I ever pull it off.

[Streicher]

I put the "Live Version" of the song from my latest AMV as extra audio track into the mp4. It's no big deal to do and you don't need mkv either. Encoding the video in h.264 even saved me the needed bitrate to still get it to a reasonable filesize (51,2 MB for 4:53min at 480p and nice quality). There's just no reason for me anymore to ever release an xvid again.

Trying to make two completely different tracks match might not be all to difficult if you use Pop songs, they often match up good enough that it's outright scary.

More interesting would be if the video could reticulate (spread apart) into different versions of the video/song. Or even be interactive.

[DJ_Izumi]

I was actually shocked to find that the lyrics and beat of the dance version of Somebody Told Me matched the original version. All I had to do get them to both start at the right point and they'd remain in sync.

I did some toying with both tracks but I decided that the dance version suited my needs better.

[Zero1]

i'm borderline on it. i've been putting thought into switching from xvid.

what makes me hesitant is that some people don't have enough machine to play it.
on the other hand, do i want them to see my video? fuck the surpluss population, and all that -

Decoding H.264 with CoreAVC now uses the same or less CPU than decoding XviD with XviD.

The high CPU usage stuff was mainly because the FFDShow decoder was unoptimised, and that's because there is only 1 guy (AFAIK) dealing with the H.264 decoding in libavcodec, and that's pengvado who also does the majority of the work on x264.

So it's about priorities really, and personally I'd rather have the best encoder around and have unoptimised decoders. Fortunately FFDShow/libavcoded are closing in on CoreAVC

[Zero1]

lol im in the same boat as AMV_4000 here i just dont get it lol... x264 is great if only i could use it right and get it to run right on my computer.... they do have to fix some bugs tho ...but all around its fucking awsome

Please elaborate what bugs these might be. I plan to update my guide soon (hopefully) and it would be handy to know about them, because I've never encountered any. Also I can give the x264 team the heads up if there is a problem and you can replicate it. If not, then it may be a case of user error...

I use an h264/vorbis/mkv combo. My target is about
3-4MB per minute of video. Plays OK, looks OK, users
with slow connections should be happy.

If transparency isn't of concern, you might try HE-AAC, it's particularly good with low bitrates (more so than Vorbis). Also, for what it's worth you could use MP4 since it has lower overhead and is supported by more hardware and software. The biggest factor in quality isn't directly bitrate, it's the quantizer you use. One video might be very compressible and get an average of Q18 at 500kbps, which will look great. Another video might have more complex scenes, more changes and generally less temporal redundancy (that one is the biggest killer), and might get Q26+ at 500kbps. Not a disaster, but it won't look very nice. You have to think of it like still images, how jpg images of the same resolution can vary a lot in filesize. Encoding a video to a set bitrate is kind of like saving jpg images so that they are all at the same filesize, to do this you would have to lower the quality level of the images that are complex/large in filesize. If you are going for low filesizes, what I'd suggest is you pick your lowest quantizer and do a one pass at that quantizer but using the CRF mode. See how it looks. For example if I was not willing to go any lower than Q22, I might do a CRF 22 encode as a guide for filesize (the quantizers will fluctuate either side of 22 depending on you IP and PB ratios). Basically you set yourself a minimum quality level, run the CRF and that gives you an idea of the minimum filesize you can get away with for your minimum quality, it's then your call if you want to up it or still go for a lower filesize at the expense of a quality that does not really please you.

Has anyone tried dual video track releases? In an MKV you can have entirely seperate and paralelle video tracks so you could have an MKV containing both the h.264 and the XviD or DivX and select between which you want to view.

Thats a bit silly, since it only doubles the filesize for everyone, which in turn puts more load on the servers and is totally defeats the objective of switching to H.264. At least if they are seperate videos people can pick off the one they want. A better use would be a mix and match AMV, either one AMV that syncs to two different audio tracks (that would be fucking hard), simply dual language versions of the same track, or one track with two different AMVs edited to it so you can switch as you are playing. Trouble with that is that people might rush their AMVs just to make use of a "gimmick". Seriously though, it's nothing innovative to MKV though. It's been available in VOB and MP4 for 6 years each at least.

Also there is a funny bug in VLC, where instead of being able to switch tracks, it just plays them both at once in seperate windows... Now if this was actually a feature and not a bug, that could be VERY interesting (multi screen AMVs anyone?).

Now, to be the devil's advocate, I'll bring up VC1 (aka. WMV9/WMV3). It is supposed to have similar quality compared to H.264 and wide support via Microsoft (since it is their baby). It is also less demanding on hardware compared to H.264 so owners of older computers will have less problems on playback.

Don't belive the hype, it's still only on XviD level. In fact I'm not even convinced it would be better unless they gave VC1 a major overhaul, but as far as I knew VC1 is to WMV9 what MPEG-2 is to MPEG-1. A few syntax changes, support for interlacing and better scalability (supposedly).

i havn't taken the time out to read up on the codec, but i hear people say h.264 and x.264
are they the same codec and people just can't agree what to call it, or is one of them a modified version of the other (like xvid,divx)

H.264 is the name of the standard, x264 is the name of an encoder that employs that standard, similarly Nero Recode is the name of an encoder that employs the H.264 standard. Now to go back to XviD etc. The standard is called MPEG-4 ASP, XviD is the name of the encoder that employs that standard. DivX is obviously the name of another encoder, and it too employs the MPEG-4 ASP standard. Don't forget MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 (these are the obviously the names of the standards). How many MPEG-1 and MPEG-2 encoders are there? Hundreds, yet as long as you have a compliant MPEG-1 or 2 decoder, you will be able to play MPEG-1 or 2 encodes by any compliant encoder. Again, people refer to the standard names for these, rather than calling it TMPEGenc or Adobe Premiere version.

This means that videos encoded in XviD or DivX are interoperable because although different quality and different encoders, they still stick to the same blueprints. If a decoder supports MPEG-4 ASP, it will play DivX or XviD encodes. In short x264 & Nero Digital are the new XviD and DivX. People now refer to the codec as the standard rather than individual encoder names, because it doesn't matter what encodes it as long as it's spec compliant.

Do you use h.264 to make your AMVs smaller than you would had you used XviD/DivX, or to make your AMVs the same size but aim for higher quality?

This is something. You see over the years, the average filesize of an AMV hasn't changed much has it? Whether it's MPEG-1, Quicktime, WMV, ASP (XviD) or H.264, they have never really been leagues different. Sure you have some small WMV AMVs and such so perhaps WMV isn't such a good example (you are only given limited quality options and most people will just go for the default). What I'm getting at is that it's not like we once had 100MB MPEG-1 AMVs and we now have 10MB XviD AMVs (that's partially because the resolution and framerates have also risen in the past years). The efficiency has been offset with a rise in quality, or where there hasn't been an obvious rise in resolution for instance (352x240 XviD encodes), people tend to stick at around the same bitrate and enjoy a better encode quality using lower quantizers and higher bitrate audio, basically because yes; 50MB or so is reasonable for an AMV, so there isn't much reason to decrease the filesize.

Fansubbing is a totally different matter, using H.264 can mean the difference between a 233MB episode or a 140/172MB episode. That saves you time, especially if you are on a slow torrent (and we've all been there) and saves the distro team a lot of time, or in the same time we are able to distro more copies. 60MB might not seem a lot (in video terms thats an incredible saving), but when you are distro'ing to tens of thousands of people, that racks up to tens of Terabyte savings, multiply that saving over a 26 episode show and it really goes to show you how it helps out. I think at the moment, there is a tradeoff with H.264, people are balancing a quality increase with a slight filesize reduction, and in my opinion, that's ideal for something like AMVs, however as we inevitably move towards HD (unfortunately), I expect to see people on their quad core machines maxing out x264 settings and producing 60MB HD AMVs or something of the sort.

Agree. I'm on a year-old laptop right now and cannot properly view 90% of H.264 vids. Editors should provide a supplementary XviD version for those of us lacking buff systems.

My 2nd desktop is 3 years old and it can play H.264 AMVs no problem. A 1 year old laptop should handle that fine, unless you have some serious configuration problem. What have you installed? I suggest going to cccp-project.net and installing that. Unless of course you can't play 90% of H.264 videos because you have an ancient decoder or you just didn't bother to install anything, then those are different matters...

More interesting would be if the video could reticulate (spread apart) into different versions of the video/song. Or even be interactive.

Yes, MP4 has had working menu support for ages, though until recently you had to hand script the BIFS text for the menu, which is not exactly easy unless you are a programmer and are familliar with the syntax and stuff. There is a doom9 user making an MP4 menu GUI. I haven't used it, but bond produced a full working menu from his Star Wars DVD. It looks awesome just to see it working. Unfortunately there is only OSMO4 and Envivo that play MP4 menus at the moment, but hopefully if MP4 menu gets even better, Haali might be able to be talked into supporting them. Menus would be awesome for MEPs and stuff. Also you can also write interactive games in MP4... Perhaps you could do something like memory where you had to match some to be able to watch the video (lol that could be annoying) or one of those images which is divided up into tiles but has one missing (I forget the name of it).

[Willen]

I think part of the reason why people refer to XviD and DivX MPEG-4 ASP encodes by the encoder name is that the FourCCs are labeled as such. Whereas x264 encodes use the H264 FourCC. I'm supposing that DivX started this (or was it Microsoft?) since they wanted people to remember the name 'DivX' instead of MPEG-4 ASP/H.263. Or are fansub encoders to blame? Or are we?

I find it curious that Microsoft somehow pushed VC1 onto SMPTE and got widespread usage from the movie industry in HD-DVD and Blu-ray. Especially since it was added into the specs of both formats late in the game to get Microsoft's support (at least HD-DVD did). I would have thought that the next-gen optical formats would have wider usage of H.264/MPEG-4 AVC. It might be possible that the encoders are still not mature enough? Many companies are still using high-bitrate MPEG-2. Plus, I'm surprised that Microsoft didn't try to foist multi-channel Windows Media Audio as an accompanying audio codec.

[Qyot27]

I would have thought that the next-gen optical formats would have wider usage of H.264/MPEG-4 AVC. It might be possible that the encoders are still not mature enough? Many companies are still using high-bitrate MPEG-2.

It thoroughly surprised me when I looked at the back of the X-Men 3 Blu-ray release and right there in the spec box was 'AVC'. Of course, seeing as how I don't have a PS3 or other Blu-ray player, I can't see how good it looks.

Plus, I'm surprised that Microsoft didn't try to foist multi-channel Windows Media Audio as an accompanying audio codec.

Speaking of audio formats, do either of the HD disc formats support using AAC for the audio track, or is it still largely PCM, AC3, DTS, or variants thereof?

[Zero1]

AAC support is not mandatory, but not including it would be a stupid move (look at all the CD and DVD players that support MP3 discs now).

Sigma actually do a HD ready chipset with VC1, MPEG-2 and H.264 decoding, in addition to that they also have AAC and quite feasibly the other weird formats.