Advantages from X264

[Penecho]

Hi, i encode all my things in Xvid. Now i want to know, what advantages X264 would have??

I do mainly DVD --> Xvid
DVB-S --> Xvid

Would X264 have any advantages for me?? When would there be Advantages??



Cu

[Sharktooth]

h.264 has a big advantage over MPEG4-ASP in compression efficiency and consequently on quality at a predefined filesize.
:search: and read the comparisons to learn more.

[LoRd_MuldeR]

In short the advantage is:
better quality at same size -or- smaller file at same quality

H.264 playback on PC is no problem thanks to MPlayer and ffdshow.
But your stand-alone DVD-Player won't be able to play it though...

Once I did some encodes with x264, I never went back to MPEG4-ASP :D

[Penecho]

Ok, one last question, before i start to dive in the matter ;)

how long does a conversation take, compared to Xvid 2-pass?? longer/shorter??


Cu

[ilovejedd]

2-pass h264? Much longer... IIRC, from one of my videos:
encoding time of 1-pass h264 = encoding time of 2-pass xvid

[LoRd_MuldeR]

Encoding time depends a lot on the settings you choose.
Best try out yourself on your system....

[shon3i]

aslo faster settings in X264 gives better quality than XviD Slow settings

[ilovejedd]

Encoding time depends a lot on the settings you choose.
Best try out yourself on your system....

True. Depends on the encoder, too. For both my H264 and XviD encodes, I didn't use any "advanced features". So basically, no QPEL, no GMC, no CABAC, etc. Also, I used ffmpeg to encode both.

XviDffmpeg -y -i "input.vob" -bitexact -vcodec xvid -s 320x240 -r 29.97 -b 512 -passlogfile "log" -pass 1 -acodec aac -ac 1 -ar 24000 -ab 32 -f psp "output.mp4"
ffmpeg -y -i "input.vob" -bitexact -vcodec xvid -s 320x240 -r 29.97 -b 512 -passlogfile "log" -pass 2 -acodec aac -ac 1 -ar 24000 -ab 32 -f psp "output.mp4"H264ffmpeg -y -i "input.vob" -bitexact -vcodec h264 -coder 1 -bufsize 128 -g 250 -s 320x240 -r 29.97 -b 512 -acodec aac -ac 1 -ar 48000 -ab 32 -f psp "output.mp4"

The 1-pass H264 still looked better than 2-pass XviD. Too bad there aren't a lot of hardware players that can handle H264 content. Oh well, I'm just happy my PSP can play them. And when I buy a couple of PS3s... :sly: I figure the PS3s will be cheaper and sleeker looking than if I build my own HTPC. It can already run Linux. It won't be long before you can use it as a media center PC with streaming support. Now, I just need to build a file server to hold all my media. :D

[Romario]

Still, x264 has some space for further speed-ups? Look how Elecard Beta is fast.

[ilovejedd]

With the advent of faster processors, encoding time is becoming less of an issue. Besides, you can always leave you machine encoding overnight. The only thing still going for MPEG4 ASP codecs is SAP support.

For internet content, it seems H264 is becoming more widely adopted, especially for hi-def videos. I'm guessing we should get a couple of SAPs with H264 support some time soon.

[chilledoutuk]

faster processors are always being released but at the moment encoding x264 1920x1080 is very slow even on new computers.