Mainconcept V2 Encoder released

[CruNcher]

see official press release
http://www.mainconcept.com/press/h264v2_release.html

for sure the know how of Elecard Encoder is in this "rewrite" hehe :P

Full version costs 499 €$

now understand what Nero does with Nero 7 and why they have so much community support ;)

[Kayser]

I downloaded and installed it but when I try to execute it I get an error message telling me that I don't have "qt-mt334.dll"... Anyone had this problem or know what is that dll? Thank you in advance

[guada2]

CruNcher,

I had the same problem.
Moreover, the code is not sent by mail, very astonishing.....

[Kopernikus]

Heise writes that its a QT Library, and Mainconcept will soon provide an new Package with this lib included.

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/64700

[CruNcher]

i used the library from the KDEPIM package
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/kdepimpi/kdepim334dll.zip?download
works without problems but the mainconcept final version seems to lost alot of options from the preview versions, the gui is not so complex anymore but i can't find where to set the count of B-Frames lol i would say you can't chose it ;) and still only Programm and Transport stream are supported as output like in the Preview versions.

[IgorC]

I heard that Mainconcept H.264 v2 (new Elecard engine) support High Profile, RDO, mutlipass. It must be good.

Max number of references frames is 128. Is it usefull? Difference between 8 and 16 ref is already small.

[708145]

Max number of references frames is 128. Is it usefull? Difference between 8 and 16 ref is already small.

didn't know that AVC supports that even. might be a typo as well.

bis besser,
T0B1A5

[CruNcher]

IgorC yes but i have some trouble i can't find the gop size and have problems with changeing quality every xx frame like i had with snow because of to low gop size hmm where are all the options gone too do i miss something is this because of Demo Mode ?

[guada2]

" It must be good " IgorC.
One can say that it is very good work (mode h264).


" i used the library from the KDEPIM package
http://prdownloads.sourceforge.net/...ll.zip?download " CruNcher

Thanks

[guada2]

I think that It is "normal".
You wouldn't have to forget that it's only a version of demonstration and not the truth (499 $).

[foxyshadis]

I hope they'll give Dimitry a copy so that the MSU folks can give us all some good unbiased results.

Does it support custom quantizer matrices at all? I can't find that on their site.

[Sergey A. Sablin]

IgorC yes but i have some trouble i can't find the gop size and have problems with changeing quality every xx frame like i had with snow because of to low gop size hmm where are all the options gone too do i miss something is this because of Demo Mode ?
CruNcher,
you can use Details->[Video]Advanced->Advanced Video Settings to set up IDR interval (which is GOP size) and Reordering Delay (which is number of B-frame plus 1).
May be such terminology is a bit confusing but it was used for MC mpeg encoder for a long time so there was decision not to change it now.

If you have any questions about settings or whatelse with MC H.264 encoder v2 - feel free to ask me.

[CruNcher]

Ok Sergey thx another issue are B-frames they seem to make the whole scene unstable and flickering is this a bug ?
btw i read the .pdf file that clears alot of things, next time please make a link in the Startmenu Groupfolder for it *g*

Edit: it's even flickering without b-frames hmm strange

[Sergey A. Sablin]

Ok Sergey thx another issue are B-frames they seem to make the whole scene unstable and flickering is this a bug ?
Can you upload a part of such stream to ftp?

[CruNcher]

it's not the fault of b-frames i think and it's only really visible if you near the display device or in a higher distance and fixing 1 point, else it's not really noticeable :)

[IgorC]

There is no video whatever I try.

Settings : *.avs 720x304 23.976 Progressive

[Sergey A. Sablin]

There is no video whatever I try.

Settings : *.avs 720x304 23.976 Progressive
Try to load media file instead of avs script. Maybe there is a problem with avs loading.

[bond]

some questions:
- is .mp4 output supported?
- is the whole encoding procedure again directshow based?
- is the decoder the same as in the old version or also a new one provided from elecard?
- is it worth 499$? ;)

[JoeBG]

There is no video whatever I try.

Settings : *.avs 720x304 23.976 Progressive

Same problem here. I think, there is no Avisynth Import.

[Sergey A. Sablin]

some questions:
- is .mp4 output supported?
- is the whole encoding procedure again directshow based?
- is the decoder the same as in the old version or also a new one provided from elecard?
- is it worth 499$? ;)
- well, currently only in Elecard Mobile converter (http://www.elecard.com/products/mobile_convert.shtml), but encoder in the converter is two weeks older than this one.
- yes sure, why not?
- no, decoder is new. it has some new features but currently it is slower than the old one.
- it's up to you to decide. I have it for free. ;)

[bond]

thx for the answers!

if the encoding is directshow based than there should be also support for avs natively

[JoeBG]

thx for the answers!

if the encoding is directshow based than there should be also support for avs natively

Yes, I succeded to produce a raw Video with it and muxed it into mp4.

[guada2]

It appears that Mainconcept delivers a High mode profiles to 20 Mbit/s.

However, according to results' of the tests of program MPEG 4 AVC / H264 HIGH PROFILE carried out by association BLU - RAY, with a btirate of 16 Mbit/s, the quality of a video program TVHD of resolution 1920 * 1080p (24 images / S) coded with the H264 source / AVC HIGH PROFILES is higher than that same program coded H264/AVC HIGH PROFILES 20 Mbit /s.

H264/AVC would be then higher than H264 Mainconcept v2 (MOS 4.00 vs MOS 3.90)
Knowing that the original without compression accounts for 4.03.

Just a small question:
-I knew High profiles (4: 2: 2 and 4: 4: 4) but what represents High profiles 10. ?

[Sergey A. Sablin]

It appears that Mainconcept delivers a High mode profiles to 20 Mbit/s
it is just default settings - you can set it either more or less.
Just a small question:
-I knew High profiles (4: 2: 2 and 4: 4: 4) but what represents High profiles 10. ?
High 10p adds to High profile feature of coding up to 10 bits per color component.

PS can you point me to the documents in which you read quality comparison you are talking about?

[IgorC]

Sergey A. Sablin
Do you plan avs support?

[guada2]

Hello Sergey A. Sablin,

Look at this address:
HTTP:// www. 01net. COM / pdf / EIH200411110578031. pdf

NOTE: Afflicted, it is in French.

[acidsex]

Am I the only one that fell out of my chair laughing at the price MC is asking for this encoder? $499? Dude, I understand recouping development costs and all, but isnt that sticking it to the consumer just a little bit especially when there are much more affordable programs (Nero Recode) that arguably offer the best H.264 AVC implementation at the moment.

Just because you slap a sticker on your PR calling it the "best encoder money can buy" does not make it so.

Seriosuly, can someone from MC actually with a straight face and clear concious explain why such a high price tag for something that based on V1, produced sub par results.

[Sergey A. Sablin]

Sergey A. Sablin
Do you plan avs support?
yes, sure.

NOTE: Afflicted, it is in French.
well, I don't see any pdf document there even in french :(

Am I the only one that fell out of my chair laughing at the price MC is asking for this encoder? $499? Dude, I understand recouping development costs and all, but isnt that sticking it to the consumer just a little bit especially when there are much more affordable programs (Nero Recode) that arguably offer the best H.264 AVC implementation at the moment.
ok, so why do you so worry about the price if you are apriori sure that this encoder is poorer than another encoder you know?

Just because you slap a sticker on your PR calling it the "best encoder money can buy" does not make it so.
this also doesn't make it worse than it is.

Seriosuly, can someone from MC actually with a straight face and clear concious explain why such a high price tag for something that based on V1, produced sub par results.
V2 was rewritten from scratch, so this something isn't based on V1.

Anyway you can try it for free and only after that you can make a dicision if it is worth such money or not.

[bond]

guys, cool down

this "the best encoder" message is poorly marketing, what else? we should be used to that already, its not like other companies dont do this nonsense marketing tactic. it seems there is no other way on the net to attract attention...

about the price: a high price normally indicates high quality. lots of people will think that the tool is a highly professional tool just because of the price, so it indeed makes sense to charge a high price even for a not so professional tool, if you target high price paying customers (what eg nero doesnt do)


so all in all we on doom9 should try to bring the truth to the surface and test the plain quality of the encoder only, cause thats the only real way to force mainconcept 1) to increase the quality of their tool if people know that the quality isnt good (i dont say that its that way atm) 2) lower the price

[IgorC]

Well price is interesting of course :)
But Mainconcept v2 H.264 is really good one. Quality is comparable to x264 and it's very fast.

[Sergey A. Sablin]

But Mainconcept v2 H.264 is really good one. Quality is comparable to x264 and it's very fast.
Thanks Igor,
you can also try to use multislice encoding which of course is multithreaded and speed increases by my estimation about 1.6-1.7 times.
As far as I remember the application should use number of slice equal to 0 to automatic detection of the number of CPUs and sets number of slices equal to CPU count.

[Gusto]

bond, notice that in a broadcast world there is also a great deamand for good quality offline encoders (e.g. for VOD systems), which can deliver both CBR and VBR streams, and also make use of Main Profile in greater extent (MBAFF mostly). And as I recall e.g. x264 doesn't manage to fill in the "good quality" request for CBR encodes (not mentioning lack of MBAFF/interlacing), along with many others commercial implementations out there. Ateme and Mainconcept seem to be doing the best job in those kind of applications, although the last one should introduce more tools in the future.

Anyway IMO the pricing isn't really that big deal for professional who want to have a good quality+rich set of tools.

[fight2win]

does mainconcept v2 h.264 encoder support dvd to mp4 encoding?

[JoeBG]

Can I use the encoder with commandlines? Are there any settings possible?

[guada2]

Sergey A. Sablin,

It is strange. But.... You are right.
Try to make as follows:

You open GOOGLE, and you do a copy/glue to the following address in his window.
http://www.01net.com/Pdf/EIH200411110578031.pdf
You should not have problem.

[acidsex]

Anyone else having problems getting audio (aac) playback using their demo encoder? Did a test encode and played back in Showtime, and no audio at all. I guess Ill try demux the mp4and see what it contains.

HP didnt work for me either. No playback either audio or video and brought my machine to a major crawl (using Ateme's HP decoder)

[Sergey A. Sablin]

does mainconcept v2 h.264 encoder support dvd to mp4 encoding?
not yet. It will be available in next release I hope.

You open GOOGLE, and you do a copy/glue to the following address in his window.
http://www.01net.com/Pdf/EIH200411110578031.pdf
You should not have problem.
thanks! it works for me.

Can I use the encoder with commandlines? Are there any settings possible?
no, installation has only GUI encoder.

HP didnt work for me either. No playback either audio or video and brought my machine to a major crawl (using Ateme's HP decoder)
Can you try to playback this movie with MainConcept decoder? Is it works?

[acidsex]

Can you try to playback this movie with MainConcept decoder? Is it works?

I could try if the decoder was included with the install file. I am currently missing the audio and video .ax files. I tried to re-register them with zoomplayer and it could not find them in the search.

So if you could be so to kind as to help with the decoder issue, Id be willing to give it another go. :)

[Sergey A. Sablin]

I could try if the decoder was included with the install file. I am currently missing the audio and video .ax files. I tried to re-register them with zoomplayer and it could not find them in the search.

So if you could be so to kind as to help with the decoder issue, Id be willing to give it another go. :)

This file implements h.264 decoding via DirectShow - Program Files\MainConcept\H264 Encoder v2\demodsh264.ax
with normal installation it should be registered and it is available at least through graphedit application. Its merit maybe less than merit of another decoders (it has 0x005fffff). In this situation it won't be automatically inserted in the graph and you should insert it by yourself.

[JoeBG]

@ Sergey A. Sablin

Just want to ask for possibililities to use the encoder with commandlines.

[Sergey A. Sablin]

@ Sergey A. Sablin

Just want to ask for possibililities to use the encoder with commandlines.
Dear JoeBG, as I said there is no commandline encoder in the installation package. There is only win32 GUI application.

[acidsex]

After gurther testing, I will agree that mainconcept offers good quality however, I get either the same or better quality from the Ateme encoder and it is far far less cheaper.

If it were a $100US, Id throw some cash on it. With that said, can someone from their marketing explain how they came up with the $499 price tag? For that kind of cash, I would expect MC to exceed Ateme's quality and have the encoder maybe make me breakfast once a week at the very least.

What about those that purchased V1. I dont see an upgrade price for them so do those users have to shell out another $500 for V2? It just doesnt seem very smart business wise to charge such a large amount especially when competitors offer basically the same feature set and quality for a 1/5 (ateme) of the cost or free (x264). Furthermore, wheres the upgrade path for mpegencoder 1.4 users? Seems stupid to expect them to pay $500 to get the same mpeg encoding features they already have only to gain h.264 encoding.

Its a shame too as I do like the basic GUI and the features that can be tweaked. But no way can I see spending a months rent or a car payment on. Rethink the pricing and maybe many of us will reconsider for the future.

BTW: Why not release a time expired demo instead of having that MC logo on my encodes? Just a suggestion on building more good will amongst the community.

[Sergey A. Sablin]

After gurther testing, I will agree that mainconcept offers good quality however, I get either the same or better quality from the Ateme encoder and it is far far less cheaper.

If it were a $100US, Id throw some cash on it. With that said, can someone from their marketing explain how they came up with the $499 price tag? For that kind of cash, I would expect MC to exceed Ateme's quality and have the encoder maybe make me breakfast once a week at the very least.


In near future we plan to release H.264 encoder with reduced functionality that will be far cheaper than this one. However the current version won't make a breakfast anyway :), but will have some additional professional features.

As for logo - we will check the ability for demo version to be time expirienced instead of using watermaking.

[bond]

As for logo - we will check the ability for demo version to be time expirienced instead of using watermaking.actually i have to say i prefer watermarking instead of time limitation

[Sergey A. Sablin]

actually i have to say i prefer watermarking instead of time limitation
Everyone knows that you don't like time limitation ;)
If it will be possible we will try to keep both version on download page.

[IgorC]

One guy provided some interestiing comparison
Harry Potter trailer http://multimediacom.free.fr/Download/

x264 (b333) - 9 218 590 bytes / SIMM 73.70
MainConcept V2 - 9 155 249 bytes / SIMM 74.32

(1pass/2pass):
x264 - 19.6/8.1 fps
Mainconcept -23.6/10.6 fps

x264.exe --pass 2 --bitrate 600 --ref 5 --bframes 3 --b-pyramid --filter -1,-1 --subme 6 --weightb --analyse all --8x8dct --progress --no-psnr

There is no other information about decoders, MC2 settings etc.
I didn't test MC encoder much. Can anydoby checks these SSIM results?

[JoeBG]

In near future we plan to release H.264 encoder with reduced functionality that will be far cheaper than this one.

I would be more interested in commandlines to integrate the encoder into existing programms. I would like to have the commandline functionallity to load an avisynthskript and then encode with a defined profile (its easy to craete these profiles in the encoder, good job).

[CruNcher]

IgorC you don't need to use SSIM you can see the difference between both, we allready talked about it on irc actually Elecard is less blocky but they have a little problem with background noise, it tends to flicker @ low bitrate.

[IgorC]

SDK 5.0 release http://www.elecard.com/

- Improved Rate Control
- High efficient SPM optimization model
- Improved performance

Elecard H.264 is excelent codec considerating the last comparison http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=105763&highlight=elecard
High quality and high speed.

[IgorC]

There were silent and powerfull updates since then.
Actually to get work the last Mainconcept version of High Profile is a little bit headache. I really don't realize finally how I get work it. I tried too many combinations. But summary I installed MC 2.0.15, MPEGProHDv2.0.0 and dlls from the latest Elecard Mobile Converter.

Some things what I´ve noted:
1. The latest Nero encoder HP (Recode2) can't beat it by quality nor speed even when MC hasn't fast first pass yet.
2. It has extremely good quality with extremely good speed. only x264 can beat it with 2 times slower speed by +0.4-0.5 ssim and 5 times slower settings (Megui's Slowest or Insane Profiles ) by approx +0.8 ssim. With the same speed MC performs already better.

I found for me the best tradeoff speed/quality that x264 and Nero couldn't provide untill now (imho and my visual perception :p ):
Main Concept Encoder
High Profile Level 5.0
B-Pictures= 3
Reference Frames= 5
use B-Slices=ON
Search Shape=8x8
Subpixel Mode=Quarter
Deblocking -2:-2

Multi-reference frame ME=fast
Sub Block ME=fast
Rate Distortion Optimization On=fast
Fast Intra Decisions=ON
Fast Inter Decisions=ON

Devs have made a progress in CPU performance optimizations.