What's going on with Ateme beta test 2?

[Kostarum Rex Persia]

???. Is beta test 2 over,or...

[ChronoCross]

No it isn't.

[acidsex]

Are we still with the 2nd part of the beta or have we moved on to round 3 and I just havent gotten my email or deleted it by mistake?

[Sirber]

still in stage 2 IIRC.

[Kostarum Rex Persia]

Details,details,please... When beta 2 test will finish,I hope that soon will be ready final version of ateme AVC codec.

[ChronoCross]

Details,details,please... When beta 2 test will finish,I hope that soon will be ready final version of ateme AVC codec.

There are no details but there will be a beta 3 I think since all the bugs in beta 2 have yet to be fixed. Why are you so damn anxious. it'll get done when the ateme people get it done. I don't particularly like it when people act like it's a requirement that they get it done now. Why don't you just wait patiently and it'll be announced when it is released. Mainly by the amount of $$$ you'll have to pay to get it.

[Kostarum Rex Persia]

Well,I am not anxious,just curious,nothing more or less.

[Doom9]

well, annoying would be a more fitting description. And I could dig up a couple more threads that fit the same criteria.

[Kostarum Rex Persia]

That's not true,I am simply asking a question.If anyone consider that he is ofended,that's his problem,not mine.

[TheResonator]

The released product is already pretty good, but there should be some urgency in getting the next version out since many highly capable rivals are working on making fast H.264 High Profile 8-bit software encoders, using hardware acceleration in some cases such as the ATI 55x.

Also, rather than creating a "propriety" format like "Nero Digital", these rivals will author HD-DVD compatible discs with DVD-5 and DVD-9 physical layers. Except for AAC-HE, I'm not sure what the point of Nero Digital will be. There should also be several DVD settop recorders this time next year with H.264 SD single-chip hardware encoders capable of burning HD-DVD compliant DVD-5 and DVD-9 discs. So Nero has a narrowing launch window. I don't know if there is an analogous XVID vs. Divx dynamic (in this case x264 vs. Ateme/Nero) also.

[bobololo]

The released product is already pretty good, but there should be some urgency in getting the next version out since many highly capable rivals are working on making fast H.264 High Profile 8-bit software encoders, using hardware acceleration in some cases such as the ATI 55x.

We've learnt by the past that making noise and spreading too anticipated announcements never brought really positive feedback. Just remember that 1 or even 2 years ago many companies were claiming to have a killer AVC codec. And consider how many really good codecs are actually available today.

Also, rather than creating a "propriety" format like "Nero Digital", these rivals will author HD-DVD compatible discs with DVD-5 and DVD-9 physical layers. Except for AAC-HE, I'm not sure what the point of Nero Digital will be. There should also be several DVD settop recorders this time next year with H.264 SD single-chip hardware encoders capable of burning HD-DVD compliant DVD-5 and DVD-9 discs. So Nero has a narrowing launch window. I don't know if there is an analogous XVID vs. Divx dynamic (in this case x264 vs. Ateme/Nero) also.

I'm pretty sure a future HD-DVD compliant standalone won't have any difficulties to playback ND contents :)

[TheResonator]

I wasn't advocating pre-release buzz. I was suggesting launching it ASAP if you want to establish a habit of use. The current coding quality is already good enough, but making tiltles that are future proof is more important (especially giving piece of mind so user's can start the process of encoding discs playable on al HD-DVD players now, rather than later).

Divx caught on before the dross of MPEG-4 ASP encoders hit the market because it was there and mostly did want users of that time wanted. It will soon die as a format as a larger, more main stream crowd (not the minority of skilled users who are already content with Divx), who are mostly unaware of DivX today, will adopt H.264 as the next thing after MPEG-2, and start exchanging streams and convert content over to the new format. PSP has already started this large-scale trend.

The notion that ND can be played on HD-DVD consoles (or losslessly transcoded to HD-DVD compliant discs if needed) is absolutely critical and should be widely advertized. And don't get me wrong: I think it was a great mistake of HD-DVD not to include AAC-HE as part of the video spec. This way, for example, broadcast streams could be directly burned to HD-DVD without transcoding. Oh well.

It is refreshing to hear a company care about video quality / bitrate efficiency. That should take care of the inevitable XVID/x264-style quality-over-speed squeeze from the other flank. Good luck.

[temporance]

It will soon die...

Sorry, TheResonator, but what are you saying will die: DivX or ASP?

[TheResonator]

I believe ASP (MPEG-4 part 2) will fade away within a few years, much like VCD was largely displaced by ASP. I don't know what DivX will do. If they insist on sticking with ASP and their proprietary DRM scheme that isn't gaining any further traction than any other DRM, then they will probably die. CE mfg and content distributors have already decided the future, motivated by their patents and desire for control. If Sony, Philips, et al plus the 7 studios have no personal stake in the standard (which they don't with Divx), then it won't fly. I haven't heard Divx or ASP even mentioned seriously by them within the past year. It remains a checklist item for the time being mostly in DVD players sold in Asia.

Storing 30 of H.264 standard-def video on a HD-DVD-15 that can play on any HD-DVD console will be compelling (compared with 8 hours of similar quality on a DVD-5 with XVID today). All new graphics cards within a year will accelerate this new codec. And the gain over ASP will settle out at around 30 to 50% fewer bits. The results of today's NTT/DoCoMo 100-iteration H.264 encoder is a good indicator of the 5 year, 5-pass potential of a PC software encoder running on sixteen 5-GHz Pentium-M class cores .

And then in 8 years, it's the beginning of yet another codec.

[temporance]

At risk of going too far OT (my last word on the subject I promise edit: ok, i broke my promise :devil: ):
- AIUI, the DVD manufacturers asked DivX if they could support their flavor of ASP because that's what consumers wanted
- CE players have a desire for control, but will lose control as more and more consumers move to PC based (and even open-source) platforms which will be capable of decoding anything in software [read no licensing costs]
- ASP is an ideal fit for those millions of people with a slightly older PC that is perfectly adequate for all their other needs... AVC has a slightly narrower audience in this respect
- I'm not sure that 30-50% AVC gain over ASP is realistic. Possibly more like 15-25%.

[TheResonator]

A small percentage of consumers care about low-bitrate codecs. A majority record DVD in the "SP" mode (4 to 5 mbps) yielding 2 hrs on DVD-5. 'legitimate' video downloads are not endorsing Divx. No large content service has asked for it. Only MPEG-2 and H.264, and occasionally VC-1, are mentioned in RFP's, and only those codecs are being committed to hardwired silicon by Broadcom and ST and the like. Yes, there's the oddball company like Sigma Designs, but they are not a volume vendor, and adopted Divx because they got ahead of the game (but integration and cost count more).

It is almost impossible to design a codec that does not infringe upon the basic MPEG and H.264 patents in the MPEG-LA pool. I know it's corrupt, and a majority of the patents are invalid in light of prior art and overlap with other patents in the pool, but it's the system we are currently stuck with. Reform is not likely to be retroactive for existing patents. Alternative codecs will be shot down by patent holders (as has already happened), partly for royalty revenues, but mostly for control.

I've heard the PC would be the multimedia platform for 10 years now.. it never happened. DRM will probably render even less likely. The skilled PC users are small in number compared to the base of consumers who prefer dedicated CE devices.

H.264 is already 15% more efficient than ASP. It's all about the tools -- you get what you pay for in computation and tuned design. H.264 is not that far down the logarithmic computation/gain asymptote from ASP -- there's still a lot of low hanging fruit (perceptual correlation) to be exploited. H.264 encoders haven't reached the maturity of XVID yet. The best, deepest codec experts expect 30% over ASP and are getting it already with exhaustive objective optimization approaches that are "self tuning", but computationally expensive.

ASP will likely remain a format that only, forgive the term, nerds will care about. Only nerds are religous about codecs. Consumers couldn't care less. They buy according to name recognition. "HD" is the emerging name brand.

You will soon be able to play HD H.264 on a 2GHz PC with a $50 graphics card. VLAN H.264 player uses only 60% of a 1.4 GHz Pentium M to play 2 Mbps Main Profile Level 3 streams now -- with no decode hardware acceleration.

XMBC running on hacked Xbox don't have enough horsepower to play level 3 on their 700 MHz P3 celerons, but every PS3 and Xbox360 will have no problem with Level 4.1. These products will eclipse everything else, just like PSP is already blowing away the nascent personal video player market. The market has already chosen the next codec and platforms (or it has been chosen for them by the CE giants).. there isn't a need nor room for a mezzanine solution.

[Sirber]

H.264 is already 15% more efficient than ASP.At 436kbps, I'd say a little more ;)

[temporance]

- Regarding PC entertainment: I didn't say it had to be a PC. People don't know it yet but they need a CE chassis onto which they can easily download a package of open-source software. It's a kind of patent circumnavigation where the device is cheap because the consumer bears the [negligible] risk of being sued for infringement. This could provide tons more features and interoperability than you'd ever get on "works-out-of-the-box" gadgets. For example, the PVR I currently have cannot record the whole series of a TV program at one request thanks to a patent that apparently prevents its manufacturer providing this feature. If the box's software was open source that patent's power would be considerably weakened. I could also enjoy all formats under the sun (not just entertainment: images, documents, DSC movies, etc.)

In any case, PC entertainment is here now. Anyone who owns an iPod or similar is using a PC to enable their entertainment. It's now a small step to the living room with video as well as audio.

- On exhaustively-optimized AVC beating ASP: aren't you comparing apples with oranges? Unless similar effort is given to ASP optimizations and encoding, it's an unfair comparison.

- Nerds blazed the trail with mp3. Mp3 was not pushed by CE manufacturers or content owners, it can thank its early adopters for its success. ASP has thus far followed in mp3's footsteps. Look at the current adoption of AAC - it's popular in closed, managed, DRM-constrained systems but virtually unused by the populous. The same could happen with AVC.


Again apologies for extend the threading with an off-topic post, suggest we start a new thread if we're to continue this interesting debate.

[TheResonator]

On topic: Nero/Ateme are making a tool that could be picked up by nerdom to help it become more mainstream (where the real money is to be made). So far Nero has a great strategy, but need to get moving if they wish to trigger the nerd effect before said nerds become bored and start using x264 and some other open-source tool to author HD-DVD.

As a nerd, the open platform sounds like a great idea to me. Install MythTV after the purchase. I hope it takes off. I can't imagine what draconian counter measures the patent maffia will try (law that requires a Trusted Computing cerfiicate required to run on any device??!?).

The exhaustive supercomputer methods have been applied to about 4 codecs (MPEG-2, H.263 for IMT-2000, ASP, and H.264 High 8-bit Profile). In the loop deblocking, CABAC context modeling in rate control, long term memory prediction, weighted temporal prediction.. all these new tools and more have yet to be properly exploited -- they inevitably will lead to 30% or better results that cannot be emulated with ASP. With codecs, you always get what you pay for.

Mp3 is successful (not that iTunes is not) mostly because of its name brand recognition. It was also championed by big CE mfg. such as Philips and FHG -- it's primary patent holders.

[Sagittaire]

I'm not sure that 30-50% AVC gain over ASP is realistic. Possibly more like 15-25%.

In fact the difference is not constant with quantizer : perhabs 50% with very high quant and no diffirence with very low quant. Perhabs that MPEG2 is the best (who's say ... ???) for very low quant encoding ...


Nerds blazed the trail with mp3. Mp3 was not pushed by CE manufacturers or content owners, it can thank its early adopters for its success. ASP has thus far followed in mp3's footsteps. Look at the current adoption of AAC - it's popular in closed, managed, DRM-constrained systems but virtually unused by the populous. The same could happen with AVC.

HD-DVD and BR choose MPEG2, VC-1 and H264 for the next player generation and not MPEG4 ASP. Other example : for futur french HDTV the codec could be AVC or MPEG2 and not ASP. In fact the most popular codec is always MPEG2 and by far : MPEG2 is the equivalent video codec of mp3 for audio and not MPEG4 ASP. IMO MPEG4 ASP has no futur ... :devil:

[Sirber]

IMO MPEG4 ASP has no futur ... :devil:Well, on handeled devices you can hardly playback AVC, while ASP can playback smoothly. Beside that, AVC kick ass :D

[movax]

Indeed, only ones that are often mentioned is MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 AVC, plus VC-1 for the HD-DVD/BR camps. DivX in all likelihood has its AVC waiting in the shadows for its release time. They're not dumb.

[ChronoCross]

Indeed, only ones that are often mentioned is MPEG-2 and MPEG-4 AVC, plus VC-1 for the HD-DVD/BR camps. DivX in all likelihood has its AVC waiting in the shadows for its release time. They're not dumb.

Well if DivX 6 is any indication of their intelligence then yes they are. It's not only slow but the quality can even compete with the stable versions of xvid. But that's just my opinion from constant testing. Plus I'm not sure if HD-DVD and or BR-DVD will support MPEG-4 ASP or AVC out of the box. *shrugs* on that.

As for HD-DVD/BR-DVD I still think that we are a ways away from actually seeing hardware in the home for it. Remember when DVD first came out? It was expensive as hell, so I assume there will still be quite a bit fo time for small time companies to develop their software for next gen systems.

[temporance]

sThe exhaustive supercomputer methods have been applied to about 4 codecs (MPEG-2, H.263 for IMT-2000, ASP, and H.264 High 8-bit Profile). In the loop deblocking, CABAC context modeling in rate control, long term memory prediction, weighted temporal prediction.. all these new tools and more have yet to be properly exploited.

Do you have any references/links for this, T.R.? I'd be interested to read more.

I'm a little concerned that it will be very difficult to find useful heuristic methods to exploit these new tools in practical implementations.

On ASP support: look in any TV / DVD hardware magazine. In the comparison tables you'll see DivX playback/certification listed as a feature. Manufacturers will not want to lose sales because they don't check this box.

[TheResonator]

http://neasia.nikkeibp.com/neasia/001623

Techniques based upon "iterative quantization" concepts applied to all tools.

[Sagittaire]

1600 hours for 36 000 frames in 1920*1088*60 ... yes perhabs 30-50% with this method but certainely not with real encoding search mode ... lol

[Andrey]

Well, on handeled devices you can hardly playback AVC, while ASP can playback smoothly. Beside that, AVC kick ass
:P
Agree.
It seems that AVC should throw ASP out of market... But will see.