Some quick easy questions I can't answer in faq searches...

[creedo]

I lied, it turns out there are 10 long questions. lol.
I hope people will answer anyway.

1. It looks like you can embed fonts for mkv subtitles. Is there a way to extract a font you like and save it to your fonts folder?

(1b. not a video question, but why isn't automatic font downloading used with html/xml/whatever, so that people can see web pages in the fonts we want? The font files are tiny and if it can be done with movies, it can be done with websites, right?)

2. Is there much filesize difference between an h264-encoded avi and an h264 mp4/mkv (assuming same audio)?

2b. Any filesize difference for mkv vs. mp4? I know there are lots of features to compare and argue about between these 2 formats, but I just want to make movies w/ 1 audio and 1 video track at the smallest possible filesize. So which should I be using?

3. Is there some easy guide explaining all those options in the ffdshow encoder configuration (especially with h264)? I barely understand quantization, motion estimation, b-frames, etc. Is there a plain english guide that goes through every little option and says like "this is the fastest motion precision estimation" or "uncheck this if you want to speed up encoding a bit" or "this checkbox should only be used in some situations"..?

3b. I have for example billiards movies where the camera is still and large sections of the video never change, what advanced settings I can tweak to take advantage of this?

4. I sorta understand audio sampling rate, and bitrate, what's my goal when trying to make the best 'just ok, nothing special' sound with good compression? I don't mean codec, I just mean sample rate + bitrate settings. Is it important to make the Hz the same as the input audio, should I reduce it to save on filesize or just leave it alone? It seems like virtualdub has problems with converting some rates to other rates, like they have to be multiples of the source's sample rate. Why is that? Is there a rate that's always pretty safe to choose?

5. Speaking of Vdub, why doesn't VirtualdubMod handle audio encoding? It seems dumb that I have to use original virtualdub for audio encoding, when I can use Mod for everything else. If it handled audio, there'd be no reason to ever use the original.

6. I saw a simple line of AVIsynth script can allow VdubMod to open and encode any file I want, like an mp4 (something like ffdshow source = mymovie.mp4) How does this work? And if it's that simple to open any playable movie in Vdubmod, why doesn't it just automatically let you do it without writing an avs script? Or am I worrying about a program that nobody uses anymore?

7. Speaking of that, lately I've been using Super. Sometimes it seems nice cuz it's simple, works almost every time where other programs give me errors or crash. Other times it seems kinda ghetto, like some of the programming is weak (check out the download page, or the failed update box, or the way options dialogues cause it to jump all over the screen). What do y'all think of it?

8. It sounds like people still use the ancient Graphedit... is there a special reason why? Can it do anything other programs can't?

9. Is there any good video codec that is NOT free (or is hard to get)? I know h264 is pretty much the best and is free, I was just curious about the newest wmv, or vp7, or real video codecs. And if I can get these and try them, can they all be put into mkv/mp4's?

10. Why is the DVD standard having all videos split into 1 GB vobs, don't DVD players play 1 large VOB just fine? And is the audio_TS folder really necessary, since it seems like it can just work with everything in the video_TS folder?

10b. Is there a way I can set media player classic to automatically play the next vob in sequence so that if I download a DVD, I can watch it smoothly without burning to a disc? I know I can queue the vobs in a playlist, but it stops for a second and loads the vob. I want it to handle the dvd files on my computer the same way it handles a real DVD, preloading the next vob so that I can't detect when one vob ended and the next started.

[Dark Shikari]

1. It looks like you can embed fonts for mkv subtitles. Is there a way to extract a font you like and save it to your fonts folder?Yes. They're attachments, and should be available when you demux the MKV.
2. Is there much filesize difference between an h264-encoded avi and an h264 mp4/mkv (assuming same audio)?No, the main difference is that H.264 AVIs are inherently broken (since the AVI standard doesn't support B-frames) and therefore may break without warning.
2b. Any filesize difference for mkv vs. mp4? I know there are lots of features to compare and argue about between these 2 formats, but I just want to make movies w/ 1 audio and 1 video track at the smallest possible filesize. So which should I be using?The filesize difference is absolutely negligable.
3. Is there some easy guide explaining all those options in the ffdshow encoder configuration (especially with h264)? I barely understand quantization, motion estimation, b-frames, etc. Is there a plain english guide that goes through every little option and says like "this is the fastest motion precision estimation" or "uncheck this if you want to speed up encoding a bit" or "this checkbox should only be used in some situations"..?This is why you use profiles, like those included with MeGUI, if you don't know what settings to use. They usually achieve a good balance of speed vs quality. If you want more specific advice, hop on #x264dev/#x264 on Freenode and ask away.
3b. I have for example billiards movies where the camera is still and large sections of the video never change, what advanced settings I can tweak to take advantage of this?There is no such advanced setting. x264 is smart enough to handle this itself. If the scenes are extremely long with no camera motion (>>>10 seconds), increasing the keyframe interval can help.
4. I sorta understand audio sampling rate, and bitrate, what's my goal when trying to make the best 'just ok, nothing special' sound with good compression? I don't mean codec, I just mean sample rate + bitrate settings. Is it important to make the Hz the same as the input audio, should I reduce it to save on filesize or just leave it alone? It seems like virtualdub has problems with converting some rates to other rates, like they have to be multiples of the source's sample rate. Why is that? Is there a rate that's always pretty safe to choose?Keep the sample rate the same as the original. Changing sample rates reduces quality.
5. Speaking of Vdub, why doesn't VirtualdubMod handle audio encoding? It seems dumb that I have to use original virtualdub for audio encoding, when I can use Mod for everything else. If it handled audio, there'd be no reason to ever use the original.VirtualDubMod handles audio encoding just fine.
6. I saw a simple line of AVIsynth script can allow VdubMod to open and encode any file I want, like an mp4 (something like ffdshow source = mymovie.mp4) How does this work? And if it's that simple to open any playable movie in Vdubmod, why doesn't it just automatically let you do it without writing an avs script? Or am I worrying about a program that nobody uses anymore?Because VirtualDub uses Video for Windows to open files, which is built for AVI files. An Avisynth script uses a totally different interface--usually DirectShowSource (uses Directshow) or FFMPEGSource (uses FFMPEG, separate plugin).
7. Speaking of that, lately I've been using Super. Sometimes it seems nice cuz it's simple, works almost every time where other programs give me errors or crash. Other times it seems kinda ghetto, like some of the programming is weak (check out the download page, or the failed update box, or the way options dialogues cause it to jump all over the screen). What do y'all think of it?Its bleh.
8. It sounds like people still use the ancient Graphedit... is there a special reason why? Can it do anything other programs can't?It lets you fix graph issues that one encounters when doing fancy stuff with VC-1 raw streams, etc. Especially important when ripping from HD-DVDs.
9. Is there any good video codec that is NOT free (or is hard to get)? I know h264 is pretty much the best and is free, I was just curious about the newest wmv, or vp7, or real video codecs. And if I can get these and try them, can they all be put into mkv/mp4's?H.264 isn't a codec, its a standard. Many codecs abide by that standard. WMV is atrocious by comparison to H.264--its closer in quality to Xvid than H.264, though it is somewhat better than Xvid. VP7 is about 5% worse than H.264, but is completely proprietary and has slower decoding speed, even when compared to FFDshow. RealVideo is crap.
10. Why is the DVD standard having all videos split into 1 GB vobs, don't DVD players play 1 large VOB just fine?Because of the file system, I believe.

[creedo]

Nice concise answers shikari, thanks.

I finally tried right click on the audio stream in the streams list to find the compression options in VdubMod, I guess I assumed it couldn't because a button or menu item didn't exist for it. But right click is easy. I think VdubMod would become really noob-friendly if it had a simple checkbox or dropdown or something in their open dialogue, something that said "open with ffdshow instead of vfw" or even a noob-language translation that said something like "enable opening other formats, if possible". I had the impression all along that it was strictly avi/mpg, didn't know I could edit pretty much every other filetype with it. Maybe most people know that and I'm slow...

--
I'll try asking x264 stuff on irc if they won't mind 12129312 noob questions... if nobody's made a tutorial explaining each of those options, maybe I'll make one after I understand them better... I get the feeling there are lots of people who bump into those advanced options, then shrug because they don't get them and just encode with default settings (which, since x264 is pretty smart, seem to be fine always anyway).

Thanks again for clearing some of these things I've always been curious about.

[foxyshadis]

(1b. not a video question, but why isn't automatic font downloading used with html/xml/whatever, so that people can see web pages in the fonts we want? The font files are tiny and if it can be done with movies, it can be done with websites, right?)

since shikari answered all the rest, I'll answer the off-topic one :p http://home.tiscali.nl/developerscorner/fdc-varia/font-embedding.htm

[Dark Shikari]

I'll try asking x264 stuff on irc if they won't mind 12129312 noob questions... if nobody's made a tutorial explaining each of those options, maybe I'll make one after I understand them better...There are some tutorials explaining the options, but they're not very good IMO.

And I won't mind 10982081 noob questions on IRC :p

[creedo]

I'll be sure to check irc out, and thanks to foxy for the info on font embedding. I did find one page that seems ok for explaining some of the x264 options:

http://www.digital-digest.com/articles/x264_options_page1.html

It sounds like the defaults are all pretty much fine, leaning a little more towards quality instead of speed.

In general, what's the filesize saving on 2-pass vs. 1-pass h264? Is it worth bothering with?

[Dark Shikari]

I'll be sure to check irc out, and thanks to foxy for the info on font embedding. I did find one page that seems ok for explaining some of the x264 options:

http://www.digital-digest.com/articles/x264_options_page1.html

It sounds like the defaults are all pretty much fine, leaning a little more towards quality instead of speed.

In general, what's the filesize saving on 2-pass vs. 1-pass h264? Is it worth bothering with?2-pass ABR compared to 1-pass ABR is a very very clear win for 2-pass ABR, quality and size-wise.

2-pass ABR is roughly equivalent to 1-pass CRF in quality at the same bitrate.

[creedo]

that irc channel's pretty idle >_<

how's constant factor done, is the same same as constant quantizer under the megui modes? Is there any reason one shouldn't check turbo incidentally when choosing those modes?

Is 3 pass worth bothering with if I care about encoding time?
Is like 2fps on a modern computer ridiculously slow when doing multipass... like I've got some option checked that I shouldn't be bothering with?

Very noob question but when it asks if I want to overwrite my 2nd pass file with my 3rd pass file, is there any harm in saying yes (I'm using automated 3 pass)? It stores the useful 2nd pass info somewhere else, right?

oh, one more... is the ability to stream something that's based on the container, or the codec? If I stick an h264 video stream into an mp4 container, can I stream it? If so how?

[Dark Shikari]

that irc channel's pretty idle >_< Not when I'm there.
how's constant factor done, is the same same as constant quantizer under the megui modes? Is there any reason one shouldn't check turbo incidentally when choosing those modes?CQ is NOT CRF. CRF generally gives better overall quality. Avoid using CQ.
Is 3 pass worth bothering with if I care about encoding time?Not worth it generally. You can get better benefit from other options.
Is like 2fps on a modern computer ridiculously slow when doing multipass... like I've got some option checked that I shouldn't be bothering with?What CPU, what commandline, what resolution source?

Very noob question but when it asks if I want to overwrite my 2nd pass file with my 3rd pass file, is there any harm in saying yes (I'm using automated 3 pass)? It stores the useful 2nd pass info somewhere else, right?What its talking about, I think, is that your first pass creates a 2pass file, which the second pass reads. The second pass then creates its own file, overwriting the first. The first file does not need to be kept.

oh, one more... is the ability to stream something that's based on the container, or the codec? If I stick an h264 video stream into an mp4 container, can I stream it? If so how?Most modern containers support streaming, including MKV and MP4. You just need a player that supports it.

[foxyshadis]

Depends on what you mean by streaming, of course; the vast majority of what's called streaming is technically progressive downloading, which works in any container as long as it's not totally broken (like an avi that isn't interleaved). Real streaming offers you things like multiple bitrates, automatic seamless switching, error resilience, or two-way interaction, that requires specialized servers and clients, but most applications don't need all that.

[creedo]

I'm back... shikari, you were there but afk I guess.
So, in for example megui, how do I achieve crf?
About the 2fps: it was 720p on an Intel 3.06 ghz with 2GB of ram.
Now that the job's done I can't get the commandline out of megui. But I tried recreating the same settings and it looks like it went like this:
--pass 2 --bitrate 1000 --stats ".stats" --ref 8 --mixed-refs --bframes 16 --b-pyramid --b-rdo --bime --weightb --direct auto --filter 1,1 --subme 6 --trellis 1 --analyse p8x8,b8x8,i4x4,i8x8 --8x8dct --me umh --merange 12 --threads auto --thread-input --progress --no-psnr --no-ssim --output "output" "input"

As always thanks for answering this stuff. Thanks also for the streaming info foxy. I had the impression that avi's and most other formats didn't store frames sequentially (I'd think the encoding and compression would rearrange them? Like it might be more efficient for the next frame to reference something in the future that you haven't downloaded yet?).. .I guess not though.

[Dark Shikari]

I'm back... shikari, you were there but afk I guess.
So, in for example megui, how do I achieve crf?Its one of the ratecontrol options.

About the 2fps: it was 720p on an Intel 3.06 ghz with 2GB of ram.
Sounds like a Pentium 4--those are pretty crappy at x264 encoding.

Now that the job's done I can't get the commandline out of megui. But I tried recreating the same settings and it looks like it went like this:
--pass 2 --bitrate 1000 --stats ".stats" --ref 8 --mixed-refs --bframes 16 --b-pyramid --b-rdo --bime --weightb --direct auto --filter 1,1 --subme 6 --trellis 1 --analyse p8x8,b8x8,i4x4,i8x8 --8x8dct --me umh --merange 12 --threads auto --thread-input --progress --no-psnr --no-ssim --output "output" "input" For faster speed, disable b-rdo and lower refs to 4 or 5.
As always thanks for answering this stuff. Thanks also for the streaming info foxy. I had the impression that avi's and most other formats didn't store frames sequentially (I'd think the encoding and compression would rearrange them? Like it might be more efficient for the next frame to reference something in the future that you haven't downloaded yet?).. .I guess not though.That is the case with B-frames, but AVI wasn't designed to do that, so ugly hacks are necessary to put the frames in out of order.

[foxyshadis]

If you have a 1-frame buffer, you're hosed anyway, the slightest delay and you skip all over. You need at least half a second and should have 3-5, the physical storage arrangement makes no difference in that case.

AVI can be used for streaming if you absolutely must use it, stage6 uses it, but you'd be better off with mp4, mov, or flv, or even mkv if you get to control the player.

[creedo]

thanks for answers.

So, another one I can't find with google: The other day I was recording something that was being streamed through a flash video player, and I saw the urls it was streaming from, and one of them was rtmp and the other was "yrtmp" protocol. I know about rtmp but what's yrtmp? Also I noticed the url seemed to be ending in a directory rather than file, it was basically rtmp:blah.com/blah/ and then nothing after the trailing slash. Doesn't the movie need to have a filename, or is the program just failing to catch it?

Also, I searched and it seems like you can't encode to ac3 in any flavor of virtualdub. Is that info still true or is it outdated info?

One more thing, is ivr still not convertable? All that I can find is that you're forced to use realplayer software to burn it as an svcd, then rip the svcd. I guess you can just screencap it? If I have to screencap and I want to ensure I don't miss any frames with the fastest possible encoder, what's the best encoder to use?