The H.264/AVC/MPEG4 discussion thread

[Eeknay]

From what I understand, you're better off leaving the CQMs when it comes to anime. I think Lunar used them for one or two encodes, but I could have just made that up.

[Zero1]

So there I was, just checking x264.nl to see if there was anything new and interesting, and I see Jarod has put up a little poll.



My initial reaction was, "God, that's a lot more people than I expected using the VfW", but after thinking about it for a second, I thought while there are a lot of people using the VfW, even more people are using the CLI/GTK, which also took me by surprise when I realised it.

Having said that, I wonder if people using frontends/encoders like mencoder or MEGUI included themselves in the CLI section (not that it matters, since we are still getting compliant streams via the CLI).

It makes you wonder what percentage of fansubs are hacky VfW versions
I'd also be interested to know what percentage of those VfW users output to MKV or AVI.

Everyone reading the thread will no doubt know the site in question, but just in case, go to www.x264.nl and vote

Discuss.

[jfs]

With newer versions of mkvmerge straight out refusing to put VfW mode x264 in (without an override switch) and there being no sane way of going from VfW x264 to MP4, I doubt there's that many VfW x264 encodes in other containers than AVI.
Unless of course people are using old mkvmerge versions (deliberately or because they're too laze to update). Do anyone know what AviMuxGUI does about VfW mode x264?

[Zero1]

Originally Posted by jfs

With newer versions of mkvmerge straight out refusing to put VfW mode x264 in (without an override switch) and there being no sane way of going from VfW x264 to MP4, I doubt there's that many VfW x264 encodes in other containers than AVI.
Unless of course people are using old mkvmerge versions (deliberately or because they're too laze to update). Do anyone know what AviMuxGUI does about VfW mode x264?

With MKV, I was thinking more of the Virtualdubmod route. Drop source in, select VfW x264, encode or add audio, save as MKV.

As for MP4, MP4box allows importing of MPEG-4 in AVI, and unhacks it IIRC. I'm not entirely sure how it deals with H.264 in AVI importing, or if the unhacking of the streams is default or not, but I would guess that YAMB would let you import H.264 in AVI and spit out a MP4.

[checkers]

Originally Posted by Zero1

Having said that, I wonder if people using frontends/encoders like mencoder or MEGUI included themselves in the CLI section (not that it matters, since we are still getting compliant streams via the CLI).

Yes, this is the case (the guy who put it up was talking about it in a thread on doom9 I think, he really just wanted to see vfw vs. non vfw

[Nicholi]

AVIMux GUI lets you add the h.264 to the muxing list, however I can't seem to mux it with an audio track of any kind. You can remux the AVI you already have though n_n. So I guess VDubMod is the only way for newbs.

God I'm sick of the word VirtualDubMod and hearing it get recommended left/right as though it is new and improved over VDub (I know you aren't recommending it Zero1 n_n). I wish people would really just stop using VirtualDubMod, it serves no purpose whatsoever. Everyone should just stop mentioning it and only recommend VirtualDub. Hell I mean the developer purposefully gave up on it almost 2 years ago because he did not want to keep up with the VDub updates. It is extremely old, no one uses OGM anymore, and for gods sake no one should be using it for MKV muxing. The only purpose it ever really served was muxing for newbs, however there are much better muxers for both MKV and AVI nowadays (they existed then as well too, people are just CLI-phobes as Zero1 said). The Mod does not make it better anymore![/madness]

[Ronbo]

I thought now might be the time to discuss which codec works best in which container.

Here are my recommendations based on my own personal observations and preferences.

DIVX/XVID
No preference.
Pretty much any container commonly used for these codec’s works without causing any problems and if need be can easily be re-encoded to work in stand alone players.

H.264/x264
MP4 only
To my knowledge this is the only container that is an industry standard for the H.264 codec. MKV may eventually become a standard as well for this codec, but at this time it is relegated to the PC only.
MKV also poses a few problems when trying to re-encode H.264 codec files into something that will playback on devices other than the PC whereas MP4 files do not.

These are other codec’s and containers used as well but these two seem to be the ones most commonly used and favored by fan-sub groups and fans of Anime.

[Sylf]

This type of discussion is covered in this thread.

Just be warned - you'll hear earful of error corrections on the points you made in your post.

No preference for the container used for divx/xvid? We do have preference. Those are usually mkv or avi these days. OGM is hard to come by anymore, because of the limitation the container has. You don't want to see xvid in realmedia container, do you? You don't see it in asf container? "Any container" opens up too big of a door for any obscure containers out there. MP4 container can be used for this as well, but hardly anyone uses it for xvid.

And I still fail to see why you prefer mp4 over mkv, especially for current fansub releases. It's not like you can take any of those mp4 releases to portable devices like iPod or PSP - the video encoding specs used far exceeds what's allowable by those players. To make the video compatible, you'd have to reencode them yourself. At that point, having mkv or mp4 as the source wouldn't matter at all. (The only reason might be some proprietary software only allowing certain media types...)

[Ronbo]

An ear full of error corrections would be most welcome at this point. I need something, anything to help me understand why MKV is more popular than MP4 when it comes to encodes using H.264.

The reason why I prefer MP4 over MKV is simple! MKV is not supported as an industry standard whereas MP4 is! Why encode files in a non-industry standard format?

Just make a list of all the devices that support MP4 and then compare them to those that support MKV and I think my point will have been made.

[SirCanealot]

Make a list of devices that would play back ZX encodes, if they were placned into an mp4 container.

Someone can answer better than me, but just off the top of my head:

Mp4 doesn't share near the same amount of development as MKV, and its tools are badly supported and developed;
Mp4 has far inferious support for VFR;
Mp4 doesn't support SSA/ASS;
Also less video/audio/chapter support???

Things like that.

Also, supporting mp4 now in the VAGUE hope that they will play back on future devices is silly. I mean, there's a VAGUE (I'd say equal chance) that devices will come out that support MKV+AVC. I'd say it will be at least a couple of years before anything comes out that can play back current mp4 encodes, if at all.
Remember how much trouble "avi players" suffer trying to play back DivX and XVid when certain features are enabled?

[Quarkboy]

Originally Posted by SirCanealot

Also, supporting mp4 now in the VAGUE hope that they will play back on future devices is silly. I mean, there's a VAGUE (I'd say equal chance) that devices will come out that support MKV+AVC. I'd say it will be at least a couple of years before anything comes out that can play back current mp4 encodes, if at all.
Remember how much trouble "avi players" suffer trying to play back DivX and XVid when certain features are enabled?

There is one, very large, very... um... probable possibility of hardware playback quite soon. It's called the Playstation 3. Point 1: It will playback Blueray discs, and blueray standard includes h.264 as part of the standard. Point 2: Chances are really high it will be able to play UMD type video files, i.e. video in an mp4 container. Combine those two facts, and it's a decent bet that the PS3 might very well play back avc in mp4.

[DryFire]

However you don't know which profile and level it will support or if sony will make any crazy restrictions like they did for the psp (i.e. the framerate had to be 15 or 30 fps, 24 fps would not work).

What if you're limited to 4 ref frames (avc)? No b-frames? etc...

You're flying blind right now.

Blu-ray also uses .ts iirc, so why not use that?

[Zero1]

I'm sorry to pull you up on so many things dude, but that's just plain out of order!

Originally Posted by SirCanealot

Make a list of devices that would play back ZX encodes, if they were placned into an mp4 container.

Considering that Bluray players "support" (I use this term loosely since we are dealing with Sony here) level up to level 4.1 H.264; it ought to play back all of them if they are ISO compliant.

For your reference, level 4.1 defines up to 30.1FPS at 1920x1088 (progressive).
Most fansub encodes fall within level 3.1 or 3.2 (3.0 for encodes with less references or B-frames).
I once downscaled 720p to 720x576 (anamorphic, not that it makes much difference), used around 5 B-frames and 16 references and this only requires level 4.0 (level 4.0 is after 3.2).

Originally Posted by SirCanealot

Mp4 doesn't share near the same amount of development as MKV, and its tools are badly supported and developed;

You are completely wrong. MPEG is comprised of over 300 A/V experts from all over the world and the specs for are often hundreds of pages long. It is fully documented and supported. As for open source software; If you aren't scared of CLI apps, check out MP4box (mp4 muxer).
http://ffdshow.faireal.net/mirror/gpac/dev/

It supports menus etc. and the player has working menu support. Check out all the other features here:
http://gpac.sourceforge.net/feat.php
(This is not an MP4 feature list, but what is implemented in MP4box and Osmo player).

There is also a fuck ton of commercial software for people who don't know jack about encoding.

If however you meant by that, that it doesn't support as many features as MKV, that is true, and intentional. By keeping it linked with MPEG standards and codecs, it means they can keep a strict eye on interoperability.

Originally Posted by SirCanealot

Mp4 has far inferious support for VFR;

It's as good as, if not better than MKV. Unfortunately, I've been told that MKV timecodes already contain slight inaccuracies; so you don't benefit from the NHML format when using MKV timecodes. If however there was a tool that writes directly to NHML, it would probably be more accurate.

Originally Posted by SirCanealot

Mp4 doesn't support SSA/ASS;

This is true, and is unlikely to change because it is public domain, rather than an ISO standard. MPEG will only implement things that are "official" or standardised. It does have its own format; 3GP timed text, but support for this is lacking in things like Haali's and Gabest's filter (presumably because they would rather work on an existing project like .ASS, rather than start from the ground up).

Originally Posted by SirCanealot

Also less video/audio/chapter support???

Chapters can be stored in 2 ways; there is an official way by creating a BIFS script, or Nero's user data hack (which is non standard).

As for audio and video support, here are the things that MP4 supports off the top of my head:

MPEG-1
MPEG-2
H.263
MPEG-4 Visual (includes SP, ASP (ie DivX, XviD))
MPEG-4 AVC (better known as H.264)
JPG and PNG images

MPEG-1 Layer 1
MPEG-1 Layer 2
MPEG-1 Layer 3 (MP3)
MPEG-2 (various layers. eg Layer 3 for MP3+SBR aka MP3pro)
AAC (LC, LTP, HE, HEv2, Main, SLS)
MPEG-4 ALS (lossless multichannel audio)
AMR/AMR-WB
CELP
TwinVQ
ALAC (Apple Lossless)

Sure the list will be nowhere near as extensive as MKV, but these are the codecs that matter. Boohoo you lose Vorbis; but everyone seems to be using AAC now anyway. It's a case of "everyone else is doing it so it must be right". If for some retarded reason you wanted Vorbis in MP4; it can be done; but just like muxing DVD subpictures, it's not standard (heck it will probably work just as good as MKV but software is not obligated to support it by any means).


Protip #1: Only iTunes AAC encoder was neck and neck with AoTuV Vorbis in the last HA public listening test, some sources Vorbis was better, some sources AAC was better. If you are using an AAC encoder that isn't quite up to iTunes standard, you will be doing yourself a disservice if you are using AAC because all the cool kids are doing it.
Protip #2: Research stuff for yourself and decide what is better for you rather than taking it for granted.

SirCane: those aren't aimed at you; I know you are an audiophile, but they were (hopefully) for the benefit of people reading.

Originally Posted by SirCanealot

Also, supporting mp4 now in the VAGUE hope that they will play back on future devices is silly. I mean, there's a VAGUE (I'd say equal chance) that devices will come out that support MKV+AVC. I'd say it will be at least a couple of years before anything comes out that can play back current mp4 encodes, if at all.

Let me tell you that there is a hell of a lot more chance of MP4 support on players than MKV; and it boils down to interoperability again. If there was an MKV player too many people would be whining that such a video doesn't work because it has VfW H.264, or the firmware doesn't have a certain decoder because of patent issues or that the codec is proprietary like WMV or Real media. Then you have softsubs and processing power. How the hell do you chose a sane level? There are too many factors for MKV hardware support to work effectively. You might see basic MKV support like an ISO H.264 stream and AAC audio or something, maybe Vorbis; but that defeats the objective of MKV if all the whacky formats aren't supported.

On the subject of hardware players, you of course have the PSP and iPod already. Technology is improving all the time, who's to say the next iPod or PSP won't be able to play fansubs as they are distributed? For example my Nokia N91 can play 24fps 320x240 H.264. That's not bad for a mobile phone.

Originally Posted by SirCanealot

Remember how much trouble "avi players" suffer trying to play back DivX and XVid when certain features are enabled?

Yes, thank you for bringing up my favourite subject. Begin the DivX longquote:

Originally Posted by longquote is long

Then you get hardware. Since MPEG-4 ASP has effectively been partitioned as DivX and XviD, almost implying that they are different codecs, or somehow incompatible, you get "DivX" players, not MPEG-4 ASP players, but "DivX" players. You might say, "hang on, what about the incompatibilities I've seen", well that's a combination of people using AVI and VfW, and DivX disregarding the specs somewhat, and creating their own unofficial profiles. One of these was due to DivX's half assed GMC decoding implementation which only used to support 1 warp point, if you know XviD, you may know it uses 3. I believe (though I might be wrong) that a compliant decoder should support all the features of a selected profile, that would mean that the DivX decoders and players would be able to decode up to 6 warp point GMC (the maximum available). In other words, if a decoder claims to be an ASP decoder, it should support ALL of the features of ASP fully, and not partially implemented.

Again, this goes back to DivX's name and disregard for the specs.

Players that are not obligated to decode XviD encodes, because they are made to DivX Networks specifications. That means they are only guaranteed to decode DivX encodes (which means that there is only partial implementation of ASP decoding features). If it was a MPEG-4 ASP player, it would have to play any compliant MPEG-4 ASP stream, meaning that there should be no issue of compatibility between DivX and XviD encodes, barring the fact that they use hacks for VfW compatibility. That would mean (if DivX, XviD and libavcodec decoders follow the spec) that you could use any ASP feature you wanted without worry, be it GMC, QPEL or B-frames. It's an excuse for opensource, since they are only people doing it in their free time, but a company should do things properly, especially when they expect people to pay for their products.

In my opinion, since DivX3.11a, the knock on effect of MPEG-4 in AVI has been damaging. Given that DivX 3.11a was a hack, it didn't do or require anything particularly undesirable specs (AVI/VfW) wise (as opposed to ASP which uses B-frames and requiring hacks). Maybe SBC's/Nandub's Low/Fast motion DLL switching was a bit naughty, I don't know, it was before my time .

Why do I think DivX3.11a had a damaging knock on effect? Well basically (I guess) people was labelling the encodes as DivX, or DivX SBC to differentiate from MSMPEG4 (which I believe is a non standard simple profile implementation). Then comes natural progression, DivX (several versions later) eventually moved to ASP (which means B-frames, yay!). So as not to upset their userbase, they thought it wise to stick with AVI and just develop a hack called packed bitstream, which basically packs P and B frames together so two frames get forced through and read at once, since VfW has a one frame in, one frame out limitation (you need multiple frames to decode B-frames).

Even later on down the line, we see the .divx format, which is nothing more than AVI with even more hacks. These hacks are even more evil though in my opinion. Yes, I'm talking about dual audio and menus in AVI. Yes, about dual audio, it is possible with AVI, but the default splitter supplied with Windows does not support it AFAIK (which accounts for like 99% of people using Windows). I think you will probably just get 2 audio streams playing at once. I don't know, and don't care to find out if Haali's splitter has the capability; I'm content with MKV and MP4.

IF YOU WANT DUAL AUDIO AND/OR MENUS, CONTRIBUTE TO MP4 AND/OR MKV RATHER THAN WASTING MANPOWER HACKING OLD FORMATS, AND HINDERING THE DEVELOPMENT OF NEWER ONES.

Originally Posted by DryFire

Blu-ray also uses .ts iirc, so why not use that?

Bluray just gets more awsm by the minute. I guess on such huge discs it's irrelevant, but I was doing some muxing out of curiosity this morning.

20/08/2006  12:43       187,914,240 Enter the Dragon.m2a 
20/08/2006  12:43     1,699,060,258 Enter the Dragon.m2v 
2 Files               1,886,974,498 
-------------------------------------------------------- 
20/08/2006  09:36     1,888,395,658 Enter the Dragon.mp4 
20/08/2006  08:55     1,888,628,012 Enter the Dragon.mkv 
20/08/2006  11:18     1,906,994,826 Enter the Dragon.ogg 
20/08/2006  11:31     1,908,052,733 Enter the Dragon.asf 
20/08/2006  09:46     1,946,519,552 Enter the Dragon.mpg 
20/08/2006  09:59     2,131,666,952 Enter the Dragon.ts

TS is the easy winnar! 233.4MB overhead FTW!

Even without hardware support, there is nothing wrong with creating spec compliant streams now, is there? Think of MPEG-1. If you had to encode a basic MPEG-1 (or even MPEG-2) video for someone, would you use MPG or MKV? I'm of the opinion to create spec files unless I have some circumstance that isn't covered by my usual methods. For example if I wanted softsubs, I'd use SSA/ASS and MKV (3GP support just isn't great at the moment). It's nothing against MKV really, just if there is a standard way of doing what I want to, I will use it (unless like TS you get "LOL overhead").

[Eeknay]

Blu-Ray uses a modified transport stream... I forget the exact format. It's not just TS though.

They won't store anything on disc as MP4... no advanced audio support (i.e. DD+, DTS, Lossless, et al). People have already tried to author h264 encodes to Blu-Ray via DVD, and it hasn't worked (could be a limitation of the tools). Same goes with HD-DVD.

MP4 hardware support is very much "ifs" and "maybes" right now. It'll probably turn out like DivX/XviD support, somewhere down the road rather than straight away. It'll be a while before you can just whack an MP4 on a disc and play it.

At least it's better than AVI? olol.

[Zero1]

You mean .EVO?

And can anyone confirm if HD-DVD or Bluray uses MPEG-2 or MPEG-4 systems?

Don't forget that with private streams and user data you can attach anything to MP4... They would probably just hack support for those audio formats as a private stream, just like how they did with MPEG-2.

[Eeknay]

.evo is HD-DVD. Blu-Ray is .tsp or something along those lines.

EDIT: Ah, .m2ts

[Eeknay]

Also, I just transmuxed a .mpg to a .ts (for archival purposes, not to spite you :P) and the TS came out smaller (normally I would have used Videoredo but I was getting some fruity errors, so I used *gasp* VLC). I thought it was interesting, but then again hdtv2mpeg2 doesn't like the file...

[SirCanealot]

Originally Posted by Zero1

Considering that Bluray players "support" (I use this term loosely since we are dealing with Sony here) level up to level 4.1 H.264; it ought to play back all of them if they are ISO compliant.

Exactly, you can't say any of this for sure because it's simply not fact.

You are completely wrong. MPEG is comprised of over 300 A/V experts from all over the world and the specs for are often hundreds of pages long. It is fully documented and supported. As for open source software; If you aren't scared of CLI apps, check out MP4box (mp4 muxer).

It supports menus etc. and the player has working menu support. Check out all the other features here:
http://gpac.sourceforge.net/feat.php
(This is not an MP4 feature list, but what is implemented in MP4box and Osmo player).

There is also a fuck ton of commercial software for people who don't know jack about encoding.

If however you meant by that, that it doesn't support as many features as MKV, that is true, and intentional. By keeping it linked with MPEG standards and codecs, it means they can keep a strict eye on interoperability.

It's as good as, if not better than MKV. Unfortunately, I've been told that MKV timecodes already contain slight inaccuracies; so you don't benefit from the NHML format when using MKV timecodes. If however there was a tool that writes directly to NHML, it would probably be more accurate.

If this is all true, then why am I simply quoting the things people have complained about before with mp4? Are you saying that all those problems have been fixed over the last few months? If so, fair enough. I haven't actually researched the topic myself (I don't care to); this is what I've seen several other people complain about in the past when comparing the two containers.

Let me tell you that there is a hell of a lot more chance of MP4 support on players than MKV; and it boils down to interoperability again. If there was an MKV player too many people would be whining that such a video doesn't work because it has VfW H.264, or the firmware doesn't have a certain decoder because of patent issues or that the codec is proprietary like WMV or Real media. Then you have softsubs and processing power. How the hell do you chose a sane level? There are too many factors for MKV hardware support to work effectively. You might see basic MKV support like an ISO H.264 stream and AAC audio or something, maybe Vorbis; but that defeats the objective of MKV if all the whacky formats aren't supported.

I think it is more likely that mp4 support will appear and work. However, the same "sane level" choice applies now, with PCs running windows/whathaveyou.

Anyway, WMV/Realmedia don't matter anyway and shouldn't be considered.

And this is another reason why corperate players are always going to suck. It's all about using them for what they are and using something like an X-Box or a PC for everything else. Laptop + S-Video cable (or something better) = daddy.

There is one, very large, very... um... probable possibility of hardware playback quite soon. It's called the Playstation 3. Point 1: It will playback Blueray discs, and blueray standard includes h.264 as part of the standard. Point 2: Chances are really high it will be able to play UMD type video files, i.e. video in an mp4 container. Combine those two facts, and it's a decent bet that the PS3 might very well play back avc in mp4.

Yeah!! Just like the X-Box can play back media formats other than WMV!
And this is Sony! 100x more stingy and power hungry than MS...

[TheFluff]

The point is:

Originally Posted by Everyone

zOMG HARDWARE SUPPORT!?!!111

DO NOT WANT
(or at least, DO NOT CARE)

Originally Posted by Ronbo

MKV is not supported as an industry standard whereas MP4 is! Why encode files in a non-industry standard format?

Why encode to AVI, then? It ceased to be an "industry standard" somewhere around 1998...

Originally Posted by Ronbo

Just make a list of all the devices that support MP4 and then compare them to those that support MKV and I think my point will have been made.

MKV and MP4:
1. PC

That's the only one that matters.

Originally Posted by Zero1

It's as good as, if not better than MKV. Unfortunately, I've been told that MKV timecodes already contain slight inaccuracies; so you don't benefit from the NHML format when using MKV timecodes. If however there was a tool that writes directly to NHML, it would probably be more accurate.

mkvmerge --timecodes-scale XXXXXX

But what's your point? It's not like anyone or anything will care about those 0.3 millisecond inaccuracies...

Originally Posted by Zero1

Boohoo you lose Vorbis

And AC3.

Originally Posted by Zero1

but everyone seems to be using AAC now anyway.

Not me, at least, unless I really need good compression on a 5.1 source.

Originally Posted by Zero1

heck it will probably work just as good as MKV

If someone implements it, yes. Which I doubt will happen.

[SirCanealot]

Yeah, I forgot to mention I use Vorbis too. I love the way it absolutely perfectly preserves the low-end, even at low bitrates. At least for mp3, it trashes it -_- (I'd try AAC out, but ITunes is evil. EVIL!!)