Transfering from Divx SBC > H.264

[Dot50Cal]

I've recently decided that with the advent of Hd resolution gaming Ill be changing codes and re-encoding the source material for my back catalog of videos. Previously I was using Divx 3.11 SBC through nandub with great results.

I was entertaining the possibility of using Quicktime 7's implimentation, but would that be a nono? Are all these 264's really that different? :scared: I was under the impression that the codec being using in Bluray and HD-DVD was the same as what Quicktime was offering but apparently Im mistaken? It seems like the best one to go with would be X264.

Virtual Dub doesnt seem to play well with x264, so could anyone recommend a good app to edit and encode?

[woah!]

everyone will tell you x264 is about as good as it gets in the avc arena. but as long as you give quicktime enough bitrate then it will do better than divx sbc for sure.

[Dot50Cal]

I've been experimenting a bit, and I noticed Quicktime H.246 files have a really screwed up contrast ratio. Also it looks like the quicktime implimentation smooths things out too much. Heres a quick example of what I mean:

Quicktime H.264:
http://img209.imageshack.us/img209/5865/hfs3.jpg

x.264:
http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/8145/xrd9.jpg

[bond]

quicktime and x264 (not x.264) both offer a h.264 compliant encoder (h.264 is also supported on hddvd/bluray)

quicktime is pretty good imho for the h264 tools it uses, still x264 makes use of more tools and therefore is able to offer better quality imho, but you need to test this yourself obviously (which you already did...)

[Blue_MiSfit]

Quicktime is decent, but x264 is faster, better and free :)

bluray and hd-dvd both support MPEG-4 AVC (H.264), but I think lots of them are still using MPEG-2. Not sure on that last bit.

You can theoretically generate streams using either quicktime or x264 that would be playable on a standalone hd-dvd or bluray player, but I dont think anybody has the exact stream requirements yet. Not that I've seen anyway.

If you're going back to re-encode everything, try using MeGUI. It has a great toolchain, and gets you away from yucky AVI and its dreadful overhead / VBR-phobia. You also get automated setup, h.264 for video, and nero AAC for the audio (or the raw AC3 of course).

~MiSfit

[Dot50Cal]

Oh great, MeGUI works with frameserving so this should be really easy to work with :) Thanks for all the help guys! Hopefully I can work out the settings on this properly. This is really flying now! 40FPS! Oh! Queing..So nice XD!

Stupid question: Is there a nice guide available like the Doom9 guide for Divx SBC? A lot of these settings are really foreign to me heh.

For the Nero audio, would a person playing this back require a seperate codec for that? I've been using Mp3 for audio and its been serving me well. I dont really see a need to change it unless Nero audio doesnt require another codec (which im sure it probably does).

Edit:

I've been experimenting a bit and well, honestly Im not sure what to think. A recent file I encoded at 3000 bitrate with x264 doesnt really look much better than a divx SBC at the same bitrate (both ended up about a meg apart in size). Heres some caps, any idea what I might be doing wrong? I do see what some were speaking about how the eye gets tricked into thinking the details are lost with x264 but if you look at the lossless it stays more true to the source. Excuse the divx logo, its not really mission critical that it gets removed for the capture anyway.

Lossless:
http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/551/losslessts8.png

x264:
http://img205.imageshack.us/img205/7924/x264fn4.png

Divx SBC:
http://img53.imageshack.us/img53/204/divxnk8.png

Another question I have, is there anyway to figure out the bitrate of a .mov h.264 file? I have the Silent Hill 1080P trailer here and it has amazing quality. I'd like to use it as a refrence point for HD content. Anyone know how?

[foxyshadis]

Divx SBC? You can't be talking about the hacked divx 3.11, since it has the Divx 5/6 logo. Do you just mean DivX 6 options panel? There are a lot of threads on it in the divx forum.

AAC does require an audio codec, but anyone with ffdshow, mplayer, or mpc will already have it.

Bitrate: Mediainfo.

At 3Mbps, you can usually turn some of the advanced features of AVC, to get faster encoding times and depending on which, faster decoding. But xvid and divx both excel at that bitrate, the difference is that you should be able to use a lower AVC bitrate for essentially the same quality (tweaking inloop settings will probably make the strongest percieved quality differences, for the blurring vs blocking tradeoff), especially with slower profiles.

[Dot50Cal]

I am talking about the hacked 3.11, It was encoded with that through Nandub but playback was being taken over by 5x. I was sloppy in getting those shots through media player classic.

Are there any inherent advantages from using AAC over say a 128bit MP3? Keep in mind this will be for internet usage, so high quality audio isnt really required. 2 channels will suffice. The only reason Id choose to change from MP3 is if I can get a better compression/quality ratio.

I havent really gotten into the advanced settings simply because I dont know what any of them do. If you could perhaps link me to a guide I would be most appreciative.

And of course thanks for your help thus far and nice avatar, Yomi :)

[foxyshadis]

I see. Heh, you'd be better off with xvid, either via megui or vdub, it will be faster (unless you use the slowest options) and higher and more even quality; SBC isn't really capable of a lot of what current encoders can do. You might even match SBC's quality with xvid at 1.5M or less. It's not terribly user-friendly, but you can check out the preset thread (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?p=841263#post841263) for advice. The attached profiles are meant to be added to megui's profiles folder (you'll probably end up wanting the 58% profile). Megui's tooltips don't extend to xvid yet, but guides like this (http://www.divx-digest.com/articles/xvid_setup.html) explain the options (laid out differently in megui). Just remember that most hardware players can't decode qpel or gmc, so watch out for those options.

Divx 5 is also decent, though newer 6.2+ versions are better (speed & quality). Either way, you'll probably only get mild quality increases vs. 3.11 at such a high bitrate, you just wouldn't have to waste nearly so much space or time with newer codecs.

At 128? As long as you're using lame 3.97 or higher, not really, but below that aac starts sounding a whole lot better. It sounds noticeably better than older versions of lame and every other mp3 encoder.

[Dot50Cal]

Well I've already decided to go with a more modern codec. This was because I'll be serving up 720P and 1080P videos soon which'll take up a hell of a lot of space and arent really suited for xvid or divx. I first got into H.264 through Quicktime because I purchased a new streaming server. While serving up content for that it got me reading up on H.264 and subsequently, X264.

Given that HD-DVD and Bluray will both be using this and already HD trailers are using it it seems like a good choice ;)

The 3000 bitrate was just a test, I doubt itll be that high. Im still trying to find whats best for my content.

At 2500 bitrate x264 does considerably better than if you used Quicktime to encode the same bitrate using H.264. So thats just more points to using x264 for me :) :

http://img223.imageshack.us/img223/656/qtleoneg2.png

http://img115.imageshack.us/img115/5930/xleonnu7.png

Im still not clear on what exactly x264 is. The most I've been able to come up with is its a modified version of the H.264 codec, but is it modified enough to make it non-compliant with the standard?

[Blue_MiSfit]

H.264 is another term for MPEG-4 AVC. It is a standard, not a codec. Apple's H.264 codec, Nero/Ateme's H.264 codec, and x264 are all implimentations of that standard.

This is the same way that XviD, and DivX are both implimentations of vanilla MPEG-4.

Note that x264 can do "H.264 high profile" in the same way that newer vanilla MPEG-4 encoders like XviD or DivX can do "mpeg-4 advanced simple profile (ASP)".

Apple's H.264 codec cannot do high profile. As a result, x264 is generally more effecient because of the additional motion prediction etc... that comes with High Profile.

Ateme (who writes the codecs in Nero Recode) has a high profile H.264 codec (which this forum community helped beta test), but it has yet to be included in Nero Recode.

There's a little overview of the differences, and nomenclature :)

Also...
:search:
:readfaq:
:D

BTW, reiterating briefly, you wont see much difference in these codecs at ~3000, but with x264 I can frequently get under 1500k looking very good (For full D1 FILM content), with a bit of careful preprocessing.

~MiSfit