FAQ suggestions?

[benwaggoner]

So, I've been asked to become a mod here at Doom9, and I've accepted.

Part of being a mod is creating and maintaining FAQs for the particular sections.

Expanding the WMV/VC-1 FAQ information is an obvious first step for me. But I wanted to open up a discussion about what people would like to see in there, or other FAQs that would be useful to have.

Any thoughts?

[Dark Shikari]

It would be nice to have an unbiased, solely factual technical explanation of the various features of video standards. Examples would be to list the block/subpartition types supported by VC-1 and H.264 and other standards, along with DCT sizes, deblocking methods, and various other specific features. It would not discuss the advantages or disadvantages of such features, but rather simply make them known so that we have a reference to point people to if they're looking for more specific details.

[fibbingbear]

When I'm searching for information and I look in a FAQ, the thing that's most important to me is:

Why would I want to use this particular codec over any other one? What advantages does it have? Why use it over H.264/Xvid/etc.? On what types of material is it superior, and what types is it inferior?



I don't think I see that question answered in the current FAQ ;-)

I think it'd be nice if an FAQ could emphasize the strengths of the particular codec and provide some visual clips as well (either as screenshots or small movies).

[Dark Shikari]

Why would I want to use this particular codec over any other one? What advantages does it have? Why use it over H.264/Xvid/etc.? On what types of material is it superior, and what types is it inferior?This kind of question, however, leaves an FAQ wide open for codec propagandizing using whatever rigged tests one wants.

[fibbingbear]

You raise a good point Dark_Shikari... but the general gist of what I'm going for still stands :) Maybe there could be some sort of set of agreed upon clips for the different codecs, and each one tries to get the best quality / file size for it with the codec? I know there are the doom9 shootouts, but that hasn't happened in a while.

[nm]

You mean like Sagittaire's challenges:
http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=114928

That HD challenge has been brewing for a while and Ben is coming up with a nice test video (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?t=135938) for comparing the encoders.

[bond]

It would be nice to have an unbiased, solely factual technical explanation of the various features of video standards. Examples would be to list the block/subpartition types supported by VC-1 and H.264 and other standards, along with DCT sizes, deblocking methods, and various other specific features. It would not discuss the advantages or disadvantages of such features, but rather simply make them known so that we have a reference to point people to if they're looking for more specific details.hm, like the one i added to the avc information thread?

http://img485.imageshack.us/img485/166/compchart2fana8.png

ben, feel free to use it also in the vc1 faq. if you want to add/change something just give me a shout

[Dark Shikari]

There's other information that can go in there too, like the type of interpolation used for hpel/qpel, etc, etc. And doesn't VC-1 have 4x8 in addition to 8x4?

[M10]

Although it might be slightly beyond the scope of the FAQ itself, I have been looking for more detailed and practical explanations of how to use codec options, specifically including adaptive deadzone and dquant. Compared to other codecs, there seems to be less readily available information about the tradeoffs of each option for VC-1.

Thanks!

[benwaggoner]

hm, like the one i added to the avc information thread?

ben, feel free to use it also in the vc1 faq. if you want to add/change something just give me a shout
Yeah, that looks like a great start.

One obvious expansion would be to cover the various profiles for all the codecs, not just H.264.

It'd be good to have a completely informational, non-controversial set of data like that we can refer to.

Wikipedia's stuff isn't bad here, actually.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_H.264_and_VC-1
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VC-1

[obieobieobie]

Congrats on the promotion, Ben! :)

[Ytterbium]

I'd like to see some sugested values for encoding diffrent sources and what to set the VC1 regkey's to.

[akupenguin]

There's other information that can go in there too, like the type of interpolation used for hpel/qpel, etc, etc. And doesn't VC-1 have 4x8 in addition to 8x4?
Of course. H.264 does too, and that isn't in the table either. Because the row is titled "size", not "shape". 8x4 is the same as 4x8 in all except a few contexts (the one exception I can think of is mpeg2 interlace, which has 16x8 but not 8x16 blocks)