The H.264/AVC/MPEG4 discussion thread

[Milvus]

Originally Posted by Kurth

This Hayate no Gotoku HDTV released by Eclipse is a pain in the ass to decode even using CoreAVC 1.3 with Overlay Mixer on my Athlon XP 2400+ I cant play it the processor usage stay at 100% all the time.
How much Ghz do you think that can be able to play this heavy release?

My Athlon XP 2600+ play them perfectly with FFDshow. CPU use is 70-80%, but the playback is still flawless, without jumpiness. You definitely should be able to watch them. If you're getting them thru BT, don't forget to stop seeding before playing it. Playing and seeding at the same time seems indeed too much for this kind of CPU. And if you watch Hayate as soon as possible like me, it's just too esay to make this fatyal mistake.

[Nicholi]

Originally Posted by Sylf

By saying "Xubuntu," I implied I was playing it on a lean linux machine. I don't know how much difference there are, but between linux/mplayer and windows/coreAVC, I don't think there's much difference.

The difference is about the same as between ffdshow (libavcodec mplayer/ffmpeg) and CoreAVC on Windows...which is to say, alot. Being on "lean" zomg *nix is unlikely to breach the speed difference between the two decoders. You could do a test if you ran a benchmark with mplayer under *nix then used Haali's timecodec with CoreAVC under Windows. It would be interesting to actually see this lavc decoding which somehow is equivalent to CoreAVC.

I've done a mplayer benchmark (with my own win32 builds) and compared to ffdshow, which seemed to show ffdshow being only a few fps slower. But that wasn't under a "lean" OS, so zomg it must be Windows still just slowing apps down for the hell of it. There haven't really been any updates in FFMPEG concerning H.264 optimizations either since the last few which are about 9+ months ago. So I'm fairly sure libavcodec has pretty much been the same slowness compared to CoreAVC it has always been, whether you are on Xubuntu or not.

[Kurth]

This HDTV Hayate no Gotoku from Eclipse is H264 1280x720 with 29.970 FPS and SoftSub it is worse to decode because it is 29.970 FPS and have SoftSub.
6 more FPS need more processing power and SoftSub eat some good amount of processing power.
Video with 1280x720 at 23.976 FPS and HardSub I can play it fine on my processor even if I use FFDshow.
The problem on Hayate no Gotoku is the 29.970 FPS and the SoftSub.

[martino]

Originally Posted by Kurth

This HDTV Hayate no Gotoku from Eclipse is H264 1280x720 with 29.970 FPS and SoftSub it is worse to decode because it is 29.970 FPS and have SoftSub.
6 more FPS need more processing power and SoftSub eat some good amount of processing power.
Video with 1280x720 at 23.976 FPS and HardSub I can play it fine on my processor even if I use FFDshow.
The problem on Hayate no Gotoku is the 29.970 FPS and the SoftSub.

That's where mplayer comes in, and the CoreAVC patch is just a nice sweet topping on the cake.

[edogawaconan]

Originally Posted by Kurth

This HDTV Hayate no Gotoku from Eclipse is H264 1280x720 with 29.970 FPS and SoftSub it is worse to decode because it is 29.970 FPS and have SoftSub.
6 more FPS need more processing power and SoftSub eat some good amount of processing power.
Video with 1280x720 at 23.976 FPS and HardSub I can play it fine on my processor even if I use FFDshow.
The problem on Hayate no Gotoku is the 29.970 FPS and the SoftSub.

IIRC, it is a VFR video, which mean it's not 100% 29.970fps. 29.970 is only the norm chosen by the decimating program. I'd say most part of it is 23fps and only rises in opening and ending part (not so sure though since I don't own the timecode of it).

[TheFluff]

you are recalling incorrectly, it's not VFR, it's constant 29.97

[Trail]

Athlon 3000, 1GB ram here on Ubuntu. The aforementioned Hayate 1280 H268 runs variably well depending on system status... freshly out of a reboot it will run smoothly, but on a normal working environment (beryl, firefoxes, wine+dc++, and a gazillion other stuff), it is on the edge of staggering. (switching to VLC pushes it over the edge in fullscreen mode?)

It's rather a monster consumer of CPU power

[Zero1]

I suspect most of you know of this already, but I thought I'd copy pasta the doom9 thread and see what response it gets since it's relevant.

Basically it's Flash player 9, and it supports H.264/AAC/TTXT/MP4 as well as the usual stuff (the MPEG-4 stuff is all I care about here, I'm sure there are other improvements beside these). It seems to support a good amount of profiles, so it's not gimped like Apple's decoders. I hear it's a little on the slow side (no CoreAVC by any means), but other than that, I don't have much to report.

Original doom9 thread:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=129134

Flash 9 Installer:
http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/flashplayer9/
http://www.adobe.com/shockwave/downl...ShockwaveFlash

A nice test:
http://somestuff.org/flashAVC/flvplayer.php


Probably won't impact fansubbing much, if at all; but it's nice to see H.264 support becoming more widespread, and hopefully it means that web video will soon become less of a blockfest (here's hoping youtube and the like make the change sooner rather than later).

I'm a little surprised at what is supported. They claim 3GP timed text which I find strange, and also Main profile AAC (which is nice, but unfortunately no one uses it, or rather there are no good encoders using it).

[Nicholi]

Which brings up the question again...the only people I know who are streaming H.264 is Joost. But what resolution/other specs?

[Zero1]

As far as I know, there aren't any framerate or resolution limitations imposed decoder side; so while you may not want to do so, I would guess it's possible to play HD stuff through it (CPU permitting).

On the other hand, I would expect such limitations to be put into force encoder side, say for example a site like youtube would automatically downscale (and presumably decimate) a video, then encode it.

- AVC: A software based H.264 codec with the ability to decode Base, Mainline and High profiles...Extended, High 4:2:2 and High 4:4:4 profiles are not officially supported at this time. They might or might not work depending on what features are used. We have no artificial lower limit on B-frames or any problems with B-pyramids like other players do. We also decode field coded streams...the H.264 decoder is...provided to us by MainConcept. It weights in at less than 100KB of compressed code
- AAC: An AAC decoder supporting AAC Main, AAC LC and SBR (also known as HE-AAC). The corresponding ISO specification is ISO 14496-3.
- MP4: An file format parser implementing parts of ISO 14496-12. In terms you might understand this means a very limited sub set of MPEG-4, 3GP and QuickTime movie support.
- TTXT: Support for the 3GPP timed text specification 3GPP TS 26.245. Essentially this is a standardized subtitle format within 3GP files...Any number of text tracks are supported and all the information, including esoteric stuff like karaoke meta data...Language information in the individual tracks is also reported. That means you can have sub titles in several languages.

A H.264 decoder at less than 100KB is pretty nifty, but it needs work speed wise. As you can see, Baseline, Main and High profiles are supported, so it should (I'm always weary of saying "will") play stuff encoded specifically for iPod, PSP, mobile phones, all the way up to your average MP4 fansub. I would like to see this first hand though, as you can see there seems to be a frame order error in the unofficial samples page. They also claim 3GP timed text support including features like karaoke which I'm very surprised about.

Well either way, it's good news for the people already streaming H.264 because it means they no longer have to intentionally gimp their encodes for Quicktime compatability, likewise it means people don't have to install that awful player.

[Zabi]

Of all the different formats that's the one that sounds the most fun but I haven't heard of anyone else using it for fansubbing.

[Heibi]

Originally Posted by Zabi

Of all the different formats that's the one that sounds the most fun but I haven't heard of anyone else using it for fansubbing.

Our Cross Game episodes are mp4.

[Zabi]

Originally Posted by Heibi

Our Cross Game episodes are mp4.

But are they hardsubs? So far every use of .mp4 I've seen or heard of are softsubs.

[Dark Shikari]

Hardsubbing wastes a ton of bits. There's no good reason to do it except to provide device compatibility, in which case you might as well just go iPod-resolution Baseline profile.

[totoum]

Originally Posted by Dark Shikari

in which case you might as well just go iPod-resolution Baseline profile.

Or you could go with HD high profile for xbox360/PS3 compatibility only.

But are they hardsubs? So far every use of .mp4 I've seen or heard of are softsubs.

Really??All the mp4 files I've downloaded are hardsubbed,though it is true I havn't downloaded many.

[Daiz]

Originally Posted by Zabi

Of all the different formats that's the one that sounds the most fun but I haven't heard of anyone else using it for fansubbing.

hardsubbing [...] most fun

You sure have some weird definition of fun. In either case, the general consensus is that console compatibility is stupid and hardsubbing is stupid. Both degrade release quality notably. Your main release should always be a softsubbed MKV.

[Heibi]

Originally Posted by Zabi

But are they hardsubs? So far every use of .mp4 I've seen or heard of are softsubs.

Um, that would be the general reason why I said our Cross Game episodes where in .mp4, in response to the subject line of the thread.

[Kristen]

Originally Posted by Dark Shikari

Hardsubbing wastes a ton of bits. There's no good reason to do it except to provide device compatibility, in which case you might as well just go iPod-resolution Baseline profile.

Or if you want your subs to only be used on your release and not remuxed/re-used.

And to hardsub specific sections that need it, such as complex karaoke effects or afx typesetting, or some of the more intense .ass typesetting.

Or if a group wanted cleaner support for crappy players, like VLC or something.

AKA, there are reasons why hardsubbing can be useful, but most fansubbers are starting to not support the reasons (i.e., "Karaoke effects are stupid" or "VLC is stupid").

[Daiz]

Well, you can use "because stupid people" as an excuse for doing pretty much anything, which means it's not much of an excuse for doing anything either.

[rook_]

Originally Posted by Linkthe1st

---h.264---


---MKV---
I can understand This containers advantages but I can not understand why anyone would want to use it at all. The cons out weight the pros here. My main complaint is that I have to use Windows Media Player 10 which I don't like at all. Cripe WMP10 has no easy access controls and the space bar dose not play and pause the movie not to mention those annoying top and bottom borders that take oh so long to disappear and cover subs in the process of being sluggish. Also MKV is not very size friendly I have Comic Party Revolution (5-13) on my HDD and its sucking up 2.28g because of the extreme file size the MKVs generate (I’m waiting for someone to release AVI copies of the episodes). I find MKV to be the least desirable form of encoding for any video file.

You should be using VLC or the media player bundled with CCCP for all video files anyway lmao. As for space 1TB drives are ~$80 right now, HD space is becoming less of an issue as well.