General Questions Thread

[NoSanninWa]

Sorry, but you can't make it italic.

* NoSanninWa glances to the left guiltily and notices a user title that seems to contradict those words.

I mean... you can't make it italic unless you're a moderator. Like me. Being able to have an italic user title is one of the biggest perks of becoming a moderator and if we shared it we'd feel like our lives are being wasted. Or something like that.

[teachopvutru]

Originally Posted by NoSanninWa

Sorry, but you can't make it italic.

* NoSanninWa glances to the left guiltily and notices a user title that seems to contradict those words.

I mean... you can't make it italic unless you're a moderator. Like me. Being able to have an italic user title is one of the biggest perks of becoming a moderator and if we shared it we'd feel like our lives are being wasted. Or something like that.

Ah, thanks. Didn't know that only mods could have italic user titles.

I entered this thread to ask this question and saw you have it, so since you have that kind of signature, I thought the italic Custom User Title was some fancy trick as well.


Another question, I don't think there are but will ask anyway, but are there any other alternative format for gif when it comes to making animated avatar?

[felix]

You could use Flash or Animated SVG.
None of which are allowed on the forum.

[teachopvutru]

Originally Posted by Cats

You could use Flash or Animated SVG.
None of which are allowed on the forum.

Thanks for the answer. I was more specifically interested in this forum, though, and it doesn't seem like there are any free programs that can use Flash either.

(just so if anyone looks at my signature, I was looking for alternative because I didn't like 256-colors limit, not because I want to record voice or anything like that )

[NoSanninWa]

Originally Posted by tiachopvutru

(just so if anyone looks at my signature, I was looking for alternative because I didn't like 256-colors limit, not because I want to record voice or anything like that )

At this time there isn't a good option that will work on most browsers, though there is an animated png format called APNG that works great on the browser that I'm using. If you use a beta of Opera 9.5 or Firefox 3 you might enjoy this little animated png.

However, on current browsers it doesn't animate. It's definitely something to look forward to in the future, but for now you're limited to 256 colors.

This PNG is animated on my browser, but probably not yours->

[Sephi]

Looks interesting. The support of it seems lacking though. The official PNG group also rejected the APNG as official format according to wiki. And there aren't to many programs capable of making APNG either if i check google. Though i'm also rooting for a standard to replace .gif. And the wiki article also mentioned MNG. But it seems to be in just the same position as APNG.

As for a question of my own.
Most people know H.264 requires less higher bitrate than Xvid to give the same video quality. But at the same time it requires more CPU power. Higher bitrate is also demanding more CPU, and larger filesizes. So i was wondering the following.

Assuming higher XVID bitrate is capable of giving the same quality as H.264. Does it require the same CPU power as H.264 than? So is the amount of CPU power used for xvid and H.264 to produce the same quality equal? (of course the xvid will have to be encoded in higher bitrate than the h.264 to give the same quality.)

Also another minor question. Which compression requires least CPU power between XVID, DIVX, and MPEG-4. On equal bitrate, and what is the difference in quality between them? I couldn't really see much difference between the 3. Atleast not as obvious as H.264 is compare to the 3.

[NoSanninWa]

Originally Posted by Sephi

Looks interesting. The support of it seems lacking though. The official PNG group also rejected the APNG as official format according to wiki. And there aren't to many programs capable of making APNG either if i check google. Though i'm also rooting for a standard to replace .gif. And the wiki article also mentioned MNG. But it seems to be in just the same position as APNG.

The PNG group may have rejected APNG, but current browser development is supporting it, so the facts on the ground will determine the future. Of course, Microsoft will basically settle the matter if they support it in IE8. For now, Firefox's decision to support APNG is most important. I'm certainly eager to see a superior replacement for animated gifs.

As for MNG, it has existed since 2001 without ever becoming relevant. I have nothing more to say.

Originally Posted by Sephi

Assuming higher XVID bitrate is capable of giving the same quality as H.264. Does it require the same CPU power as H.264 than? So is the amount of CPU power used for xvid and H.264 to produce the same quality equal? (of course the xvid will have to be encoded in higher bitrate than the h.264 to give the same quality.)

That's somewhat interesting actually. From my own experience I'd say that h264 still requires more processing power. However I'm interested to hear what an expert has to say.

[Ledgem]

Originally Posted by NoSanninWa

Aww c'mon NSW, I've been watching the Opera developer newsfeed for months now, eagerly awaiting 9.5, why taunt those of us who aren't comfortable using the alpha builds (it isn't beta yet, right?)

Originally Posted by Sephi

Most people know H.264 requires less higher bitrate than Xvid to give the same video quality. But at the same time it requires more CPU power. Higher bitrate is also demanding more CPU, and larger filesizes. So i was wondering the following.

Assuming higher XVID bitrate is capable of giving the same quality as H.264. Does it require the same CPU power as H.264 than? So is the amount of CPU power used for xvid and H.264 to produce the same quality equal? (of course the xvid will have to be encoded in higher bitrate than the h.264 to give the same quality.)

While I work with media encoding and such, I'm not and never was one of the crazy fansubber encoders. If one of them reads this thread they can probably give you the exact reasoning, and perhaps correct any errors that I may make. Much of my answer is based on reasoning and past experiences rather than intricate knowledge of each codec.

You asked whether XviD that is bumped up to equal H.264 quality would require the same amount of processing power to play back as the H.264 encode. The answer is no, it would not. The reason for this is that H.264 uses stronger (and better) compression than XviD. In most cases the XviD encode would be larger in file size and would also take longer to encode than if it were at a lower quality setting. When you increase the quality setting/bitrate for XviD, it doesn't use stronger compression, it simply takes longer on each frame and takes care to include more detail (resulting in larger file size). This may bump up the processing power required, but only by a very small amount.

The ultimate comparison would be to compre totally uncompressed video to H.264 and XviD. Uncompressed video doesn't use too much processing power, because your computer is basically just flipping pictures (frames) really quickly - it doesn't need to decompress each frame. The more you compress something, the more power you'd need to decompress it quickly. XviD is a weaker compression algorithm, so it doesn't require as powerful a computer to have good playback with it.

Also another minor question. Which compression requires least CPU power between XVID, DIVX, and MPEG-4. On equal bitrate, and what is the difference in quality between them? I couldn't really see much difference between the 3. Atleast not as obvious as H.264 is compare to the 3.

To encode? XviD and DivX are probably comparable - they're different enough now, but they were both based off of the DivX 3.11a codec (there was a split as a corporate group wanted to have DivX become commercial, while the developers behind XviD wanted to keep it free and open-source). H.264 will require more power/time. Think about using WinZip or WinRAR: if you tell the program to compress at the highest setting, it'll take a lot longer than if you tell it to just do weak compression.

If you're talking about decoding, it's pretty much the same between DivX and XviD, and H.264 will again take some more. Quality differences are somewhat subjective. For example, if you're using a CRT monitor, they'll probably all look about the same. If you're using a big LCD or HD-TV for your playback, every single encoding error will stand out at you.

I used to be a raw provider for fansub groups. I'd basically download a dozen (or more) raws and scan through them, looking for those encoding errors that I just described. Back then all raws were put out in XviD and DivX; nobody was using H.264. XviD and DivX are largely equivalent, and any differences will be due to the settings that the encoder used. I used to feel that DivX was superior for dark scenes and XviD was superior for everything else, but it's probably not true. However, that reveals another fact: you need to go through a variety of scenes to really determine codec performance.

If you see screenshots that are bright scenes with not a lot going on, everything will probably look about the same. The only thing you can really examine there is sharpness of lines and color quality - chances are that they're all going to look the same. For my raw evaluations, I also sought out and compared a dark scene as well as a scene where there was a lot going on. Dark scenes were notoriously bad with the XviD and DivX codecs: you'd see "blocks" within the scene, or too much detail might have been lost and it'd be hard to see what was going on. Blocks also seemed to pop up in scenes with a lot of activity. I haven't been able to compare how H.264 stacks up in those situations, but I'd be very surprised if it weren't much better.

I feel like I didn't answer your questions exactly, but I hope it helps.

[Aoie_Emesai]

Originally Posted by Sephi

Looks interesting. The support of it seems lacking though. The official PNG group also rejected the APNG as official format according to wiki. And there aren't to many programs capable of making APNG either if i check google. Though i'm also rooting for a standard to replace .gif. And the wiki article also mentioned MNG. But it seems to be in just the same position as APNG.

As for a question of my own.
Most people know H.264 requires less higher bitrate than Xvid to give the same video quality. But at the same time it requires more CPU power. Higher bitrate is also demanding more CPU, and larger filesizes. So i was wondering the following.

Assuming higher XVID bitrate is capable of giving the same quality as H.264. Does it require the same CPU power as H.264 than? So is the amount of CPU power used for xvid and H.264 to produce the same quality equal? (of course the xvid will have to be encoded in higher bitrate than the h.264 to give the same quality.)

Also another minor question. Which compression requires least CPU power between XVID, DIVX, and MPEG-4. On equal bitrate, and what is the difference in quality between them? I couldn't really see much difference between the 3. Atleast not as obvious as H.264 is compare to the 3.

Same. I can't stand the 256 color of gif, but that does make the file size smaller.

[NoSanninWa]

Originally Posted by Ledgem

Aww c'mon NSW, I've been watching the Opera developer newsfeed for months now, eagerly awaiting 9.5, why taunt those of us who aren't comfortable using the alpha builds (it isn't beta yet, right?)

Actually, there is some news worth reporting, so I'll post it in our thread on Opera 9.5.

[Dxon]

I have been trying out Firefox 3. But.. I also had firefox 2 installed and there were some strange problems going on so I just deinstalled firefox 3 again.. Should I choose firefox 3 or 2? Which one is better??

[NoSanninWa]

Obviously Firefox 2 is better. Firefox 3 is full of bugs. That's why it is in beta. You should never use beta software unless you are willing to deal with strange problems.

[Sephi]

Originally Posted by Ledgem

....................

I feel like I didn't answer your questions exactly, but I hope it helps.

It does, much thanks for taking your time to write itl.

[Riker]

Originally Posted by Aoie_Emesai

Same. I can't stand the 256 color of gif, but that does make the file size smaller.

There are ways to overcome the 256 colors limit of the GIF format.

Originally Posted by Copy Pasta from Wiki

True color

Although the standard GIF format is limited to 256 colors, there is a hack that can overcome this limitation under certain circumstances.

GIF89a was designed based on the principle of rendering images (known as frames when used for animation) to a logical screen. Each image could optionally have its own palette, and the format provides flags to specify delay and waiting for user input between them (the latter is not widely supported by viewers). This is the feature that is used to create animated GIFs, but it can also be used to store a 24-bit RGB (truecolor) image by splitting it up into pieces small enough to be encoded into a 256 color palette and setting up the GIF to render these with no delay on the logical screen.[7][8] However, most web browsers seem to assume that this multi-image feature will only be used for animation and insert a minimum delay between images. There will also be some file size bloat from doing this. There are few tools around that can easily produce 24-bit GIFs (e.g. AniGif or SView5) - however it is rarely an appropriate format unless there is absolutely no other option.

For an example you can vist this site: http://phil.ipal.org/tc.html

[Aoie_Emesai]

Originally Posted by Riker

There are ways to overcome the 256 colors limit of the GIF format.


For an example you can vist this site: http://phil.ipal.org/tc.html

Humm... yeah. The size difference do rather present a problem. But I didn't know that. Interesting. . .

[felix]

What does the :o / suppose to represent? More specifically what does it mean when people use it on this forum, since the meanings I know of for it aren't particularly pretty.

[KiNA]

it means .. I told you so ... at least that what I usually use it for

[Rurik]

Originally Posted by Kira_Naruto

it means .. I told you so ... at least that what I usually use it for

We can pretty much agree that's the popular use around here…I think I have use it for other purposes, like after making a flattering comment….or when I don’t find a smiley face suitable for the comment I’m making ….


What I would like to know is what kind of other meaning it could have that are not pretty…

[Aoie_Emesai]

Originally Posted by Cats

What does the :o / suppose to represent? More specifically what does it mean when people use it on this forum, since the meanings I know of for it aren't particularly pretty.

Is that wat it means? I actually don't see users using that smilie.

[felix]

Actually on the forum it's official name is "Red Face", represents a blush of shame. (look at the post title smilies)

Originally Posted by Rurik

What I would like to know is what kind of other meaning it could have that are not pretty…

Masturbating, gay sex rituals... and More! (if we're talking about that icon version)
General definition: (nasty) sexual arousal.

Other meanings, of the :o text version...

• Talking. Basically replaces: blah blah blah; "Big" words with little substance.
• Surprised. Something like " :O " as in with capital O. When used with this meaning the smaller version, becomes...
• A censorship smilie. Basically it replaces any words which are bad (not to confuse with vulgar) like the camera was jumping to someone in your target audience Oooo!-ing when you were speaking the words. (it's meant to be used in humor)
• Surprise = * Oooo!
• "To have something shuved ones <censored>" <<< Guess where our current one comes from.

For the first I can't find the equivalent in the forums current yellow set, which I think is one of the many un-amed extended sets out there; here's a blue version: . For the Surprise/Shock version:

Q. Which is the anime version of the smilie?

A. "Surprise"; arguably there is none, since kaoani should be used instead of actual smileys, since we're not on a chat channel nor is this place a discussion board Instant Messenger programs or e-Mail.

(kaoani are the japanese equivalent of smilies/smilyes; examples: much more...)

Q. Are these the original Vb smilies?

A. No. This non-anime extended yellow set (it's actually several yellow sets) and the other random ones were added replacing the original Vb ones, most likely since they fit better with the FamFamFam icon set of the Animesuki skins.

Q. What's the diffrence betwean smilies and anime smilies?

A. Anime/Japanese smilies are bigger (n_n).
Western style copy: ^_^
Japanese style: (^_^) (=^_^=) *(^O^)* (*^*) (*O*) (>x<!) (^-^)b etc