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Darrius "Junto" Thompson
13th June 2003, 01:01
Doom9,

I saw your home page post today about that MPEG-4 hardware player you bought and think it really shows why we think its important for hardware manufacturers or consumer electronic manufacturers to work with us (DivX) to ensure that content actually plays back well on devices. Unfortunately there are a few companies who don't seem to understand or care about high quality, stability and performance. It really irritates me that many of these companies are marketing how their devices play DivX or XviD content well and this is just not the case. Because we (DivX) knew this would happen we created our certificaton program to try and prevent companies from trying to confuse and misinform users into believing they are getting a DivX player. We decided we had to make sure these devices work the way they should otherwise users would have a horrible experience. People keep asking why devices haven't come out sooner supporting DivX and this is why, we don't want them to unless it works the way we as users would expect it to! And the good thing is we have quite a few partners very close to full certification. KISS-Technology as a partner is a great example. They understand how important it is to ensure their product performs very well and as they would expect it to if they spent the cash on it. Stayed tuned for quite a few more in the coming months.

A few things on why these companies are experiencing problems. These companies are use to creating cheap MP1\VCD, and MP2 Players that can't deal with data rate spikes you see in DivX from using Variable Bit Rate. They can't afford the memory required to handle this influx of data during peaks (overflows the memory bucket) and this and weak processors are the cause for most of these problems. It's combination of weak hardware and little memory yet they don't seem to care that they are selling these devices emphasizing DivX and XviD playback as a key feature when in fact the experience is horrible. That's why on DivX 5.0.4 we created the new Rate Control Algorithm which has something called VBV (Video Buffer Verifier). This ensures that data can still have spikes but in a way that will not create problems on hardware. VBV defines the memory size. For each hardware manufacturer working with us they must be able to handle content within this VBV range ++. This ensures they can handle the memory. We of course also verify performance (frame rate) and most importantly that quality is acceptable. This is a challenged since even though our partners use the authentic DivX Hardware SDK's we created they still have to build hardware so that it can handle the performance required for playback (fast hardware with enough memory). So regardless of who the partner is we don't allow our name to be used on the box stating DivX Compatible or Certified unless they meet these requirements. Of course companies will say plays DivX or XviD but unless you see our ugly stamp saying certified then I would caution trusting it.

I think many people haven't understood the importance of why we created a DivX Certification program. This is exactly why we did this. We knew this would happen. This ensures that when a DivX user user see's an authentic DivX Certification logo on a product they would know that we in fact certfied the product in being able to handle DivX content. If it doesn't have it then I can't comment on its ability to be a good reliable product. If it can't handle DivX it can't handle XviD or possibly many other flavors of MP4 codecs. It's unfortunate there are companies doing this as I'm sure plenty of people are going to be spending money on devices that can't do what they expected them to do when they payed for them. So please make sure either you get good honest feedback on a product claiming it can playback DivX or XviD and of course if it has our Certification Logo you'll know we spent quite a bit of time with our hardware partners making sure we that this works the way it should.

Damn that was a long post! Sorry this subject has just irrititated me lately seeing all these devices and knowing that they would not work making me feel as if these companies are knowingly taking money from people selling something that doesn't work.

Darrius Thompson
Director R&D DivX

avih
13th June 2003, 05:30
thanks for the post Darrius.

cheers

BlackSun
14th June 2003, 19:21
Basically this is what happened with Sigma Design :o

Doom9
16th June 2003, 17:30
Junto: is there a list of officially certifed players somewhere on your site? I'm sure that would help people make the right choice.
Also, can you tell us a little bit more about what is required to get the certification.
For instance, I was told be an elta employee, that a DivX3 capable firmware would be released as soon as DivX Network certification would be complete. This got me wondering, after all, I don't see DXN having a particular interest in playing anything but their own codecs. I also heard from mecotek that their DivX3 supporting firmware would be out pending a DXN certification.
Also, about your profiles. It looks like the home theater profile only allows for bitrates up to 4mbit. What's the reason behind this? In certain scenes, codecs take 6mbit or more if they can, certainly not a bad thing when the VBR algorithm has been properly implemented. And, the elta appears to play Quantizer2 DivX5 clips with GMC just fine (I obviously had to deactivate any profile to encode using those settings).
Unfortunately it appears that if XviD testing were even less important for manufacturers, and since XviD offers a more complete implementation of the advanced simple profile (multiple b-frames for instance), the full use of those features hardly works. I hope that one day there'll be an industry standard for MP4 standalones because the way it looks now, months after the first device has come out, neither codec is fully supported and there's no date for a firmware that can handle all the advanced simple profile features.

kxy
16th June 2003, 20:04
Any chance that the DivX / XviD capable DVD Players will support XCD(MODE2_FORM2: 2324 bytes) in the future?

Darrius "Junto" Thompson
16th June 2003, 22:58
Great questions. Hopefully I can answer them all adequately.

Originally posted by Doom9
Junto: is there a list of officially certifed players somewhere on your site?

Not yet, but we are working on creating a section for this immediately. Seeing everyone's interest both on our forums and here in the doom9 forums has caused us to accelerate and see the importance of creating a section on our site that lists certfied products.
I'm sure that would help people make the right choice.
Also, can you tell us a little bit more about what is required to get the certification.For instance, I was told be an elta employee, that a DivX3 capable firmware would be released as soon as DivX Network certification would be complete. This got me wondering, after all, I don't see DXN having a particular interest in playing anything but their own codecs. I also heard from mecotek that their DivX3 supporting firmware would be out pending a DXN certification.

We are requiring that for products to be DivX Certified that they have the ability to decode DivX3 since their is so much legacy content in this format. Let me clarify what we have done.
There are 2 levels of requirements for manufacturers working with us. 1. DivX Compatibility and 2. DivX Certification. We plan on requiring everyone to be DivX Certified soon but one of the problems has been the DivX3 compatiblity issue. The 2 Requirements are identical however "Compatiblity" does NOT require the ability to decode DivX3 but DivX Certification does. We created DivX Compatiblity so that we could get devices available to users as soon as possible. DivX3 required quite a bit more work since it is not MP4 so it is technically very challenging and it pushed the timeline substantially for getting DivX\MP4 devices into the hands of DivX users. We decided to create a DivX Compatiblity Requirement so we could certify products that meet a mininum set of requirements minus DivX3 for at least the very near future so there are at least products that can decode DivX4,5 well and at the same time we will move toward ONLY having a "DivX Certfication" of which DivX3 decoding is a requirement.

Also, about your profiles. It looks like the home theater profile only allows for bitrates up to 4mbit. What's the reason behind this? In certain scenes, codecs take 6mbit or more if they can, certainly not a bad thing when the VBR algorithm has been properly implemented.

Very good question. Home Theater profile requires that bitrates with an AVERAGE bitrate of 4000kbps be supported with a max peak bitrate requirement of 10,000kbps for at least a 3 second period. So this is not a problem :) However going back to DivX3 we know there is not a VBR algorithm for DivX3 that implements any type of acceptable buffer model that would well with DivX3 since the peaks can be substantially higher than DivX5 since it does not have video buffer model built into it. As mentioned we built this buffer model into DivX5 so we could ensure high quality playback with hardware requirements that could actually be implemented. So again Home Theater requires you can support 4000kbps with a 10,000kbps max peak for 3 seconds. And as noted on all our certification the only Advanced Simple Profile feature required is B-frames.
And, the elta appears to play Quantizer2 DivX5 clips with GMC just fine (I obviously had to deactivate any profile to encode using those settings).
Unfortunately it appears that if XviD testing were even less important for manufacturers, and since XviD offers a more complete implementation of the advanced simple profile (multiple b-frames for instance), the full use of those features hardly works.

Although GMC is not a requirement it does not mean that some partners will not include suppport for it, however I would bet that GMC will work during decoding for many files using a standard Simple Profile decoder since although you may have GMC turned on it will only be activated in frames where GMC may have a benefit. Many times this will be very few frames if hardly any frames. So we recommend that companies include GMC and Qpel however it is not required since the benefits may not be worth the cost of implementation, especially for Qpel. Qpel is very processor intensive which would require more powerful and thus more expensive hardware to support it even squeezing in GMC adds of course more cost. So we have to make sure what we require the absolute minimum requirement for high-quality video which can also be realistically implemented into hardware at acceptable prices. All these decisions have been more complex than it may at first seem. (oops just came back to "edit" or add this) We *recommend* our partners not only include GMC and QPel but also Ogg Audio support.

I hope that one day there'll be an industry standard for MP4 standalones because the way it looks now, months after the first device has come out, neither codec is fully supported and there's no date for a firmware that can handle all the advanced simple profile features.
Yes I really hope there will be a true standard. It's always interesting in what features are proposed into a standardized codec and what features actually create an improvement in quality that is worth the additional complexity and thus cost in hardware. You would think that more thought would go into this but there is that complex landscape of companies wanting *their* certain features\patents included in a codec. Also I wonder how much thought went into using MP4 for real full resolution full frame rate video when it was created. If much thought wasn't placed on real movie type of video maybe less emphasis was placed on these things. And if you look at MP4 you can see full res, full frame rate, >300Kbps video wasn't emphasized. I need to list at least one example of the pains we see daily in trying to get DivX devices with good support on the market.

One good example of some of this oversite is the MP4 file format. It sounds great and could be great. Try implementing it in hardware :) So as many of you know it is based off of QT. The MP4 file format keeps all of it's important timing data in one location\chunk, etc.. at the beginning of a file and must be indexed to achieve proper audio\video\data synch. A movie a few megs could have a couple hundered kbytes of index date. AVI although old, has simple interleaving which does not require this. So imagine having a 2 hour movie in the MP4 file format and trying to support it in a DVD\DivX type of player. What happens is for proper synch you have to keep all this index data stored in memory during playback PLUS have enough memory to handle playback (video data). The index data alone can be > 8MB and then you add in what is needed for video playback, menus, etc.. and you have a device that is going to be expensive to build because of a large memory requirement. So for the near future there is a cost problem of even building consumer devices at reasonable costs that support everything that is required for the mp4 standard. Many seem to be moving very slow and not necessarrilly thinking of the big picture which includes cost of implementation not including licensing cost and not also thinking about what users need\want at a minimum. Sorry such a long description I just wanted to list *one* example of how complex this has been and how it is not just a basic technology issue we have to try and overcome. This is just ONE example. Damn this has been tiring.... yet fun.

We've tried our best to push things foward more rapidly so that good products are available soon which are *useable* rather than wait for what could be forever before we see good technology put to use. So as you can see we could only wish there was a standard that everyone could agree upon and that not only seems to work well but can actually be implemented in software and devices at acceptable price points with latest technologies.

Anyways we're at least doing one thing.... we're helping to push technology foward given all the roadblocks we've had to work with our partners and the DivX community to help overcome :) There are some great people out there trying to make good things happen. When I say "we" I also mean the hardocore video enthusiast out there also pushing us and others to make things happen.

Hope this helps.


Darrius Thompson
Director R&D DivX

Doom9
17th June 2003, 07:52
about QPel and GMC: some would argue that first offering those features, then making them optional in the profiles introduced with 5.04 is a step backward and does not take care of the existing userbase of those features. While theoretically I'm inclined to agree that those features don't do much good, at least in the GMC case, QPel in XviD isn't so bad anymore - it's more a matter of getting used to a different look.
Also, what about XviD? Theoretically a decoder should be able to handle both, but since XviD's implementation is more complete (multiple b frames for instance - I've just verified yesterday that using 2-3 b-frames can lead to slight jerkyness in some cases whereas 1 b-frame, as in divx5, works just fine in my standalone). What does your certification require towards that end? How many consecutive b-frames have to be supported?

And while we're at the subject, do you do any testing for GMC and QPel support? And if you're in the market for a player that does it all (full MPEG-4 advanced simple profiles support, full DivX3 support), what kind of logo does he have to look for? I suppose DivX home theatre profile isn't enough since that only covers DivX5 with 1 b-frame.

Last but not least, the KISS player seems to be having problems with DivX3 clips in some instances.. is it DivX certified?

snooty
17th June 2003, 17:05
I don't think the Kiss fully deserves certification at present. It plays all DivX content in the wrong aspect ratio and 3.11 playback is flawed (dropped frames and awful sound).

Darrius "Junto" Thompson
17th June 2003, 17:23
Originally posted by Doom9
about QPel and GMC: some would argue that first offering those features, then making them optional in the profiles introduced with 5.04 is a step backward and does not take care of the existing userbase of those features. While theoretically I'm inclined to agree that those features don't do much good, at least in the GMC case, QPel in XviD isn't so bad anymore - it's more a matter of getting used to a different look.

I agree it's unfortunate GMC and Qpel will receive very little support for the near future. Adding these features to hardware unfortunately is to expensive for manufacturers right now and there are very few hardware solutions that can handle these features, especially Qpel, and those that are availabe are definitely not within a price range anyone would find acceptable. Yes Qpel can offer improvements but again it goes back to the cost of supporting it in hardware vs the benefits. Even in software Qpel adds quite a bit of computation. When porting and designing for hardware it gets much worse. Also these are not just DivX products these are our partners products with our endorsement that the product meets a minimum set of requirements. They can decide to support even less than we recommend and not get certification or they can decide to also support GMC and Qpel as we have recommended along with other features. If a full implementation of GMC and Qpel were required and supported I would imagine you would be waiting a minimum of a year before ever seeing support and even then the device would be quite expensive. When processors become available I do hope these features will be supported as it only adds value to the product.

Also, what about XviD? Theoretically a decoder should be able to handle both, but since XviD's implementation is more complete (multiple b frames for instance - I've just verified yesterday that using 2-3 b-frames can lead to slight jerkyness in some cases whereas 1 b-frame, as in divx5, works just fine in my standalone). What does your certification require towards that end? How many consecutive b-frames have to be supported?

Certification does require support for B-frames. However support more than 1 B-frame has not been explicity stated and so then is not a minimum requirement. We were just recently looking at support for multiple b frames and what we have found is a very similar issue.... more complexity when in hardware. There may have to be substantial optimization for some hardware along with different memory requirements for referencing additional b-frames. It's interesting since I would have expected that when vendors built their generic MP4 decoders this would have been taken into consideration. Anyways, support for multiple b-frames is currently not required but we are investigating support. Did you try multiple b-frames on the Kiss Player? Or has anyone else? I would expect it to almost always work but depending on hardware exhibit the "jerkiness" you mentioned due to memory and indexing of frames in hardware. So *currently* 1-Bframe must be supported however that doesn't mean a manufacturer might not explicity support more than 1 properly.

And while we're at the subject, do you do any testing for GMC and QPel support? And if you're in the market for a player that does it all (full MPEG-4 advanced simple profiles support, full DivX3 support), what kind of logo does he have to look for? I suppose DivX home theatre profile isn't enough since that only covers DivX5 with 1 b-frame.

When we certify hardware we have a set of test cases and test clips that we push through the hardware for hardware verification\testing. And so yes there is testing for GMC and Qpel especially if these features are implemented. If they are not this becomes a test for how the prdouct will handle these features (error conditions). We currently do not have a logo or program that designates full MP4ASP+DivX3 because of the reasons described above. It may not technically be feasible for a considerable time on a non-pc device within a price range most of us could afford within the consumer price range that can support these features. Yes this sucks but right now it's a limitation of not having hardware that can handle the power needed for all these features.

Last but not least, the KISS player seems to be having problems with DivX3 clips in some instances.. is it DivX certified?

The current KISS player is NOT certfied. There is not a single device that is DivX Certified but there are sure plenty of devices being sold that claim DivX playback. KISS however will likely be certified shortly although I'm not at liberty to give the approximate date for this. They are working very hard to make this happen. We've held our ground on what the minimum requirements are for certfication so several companies have decided they would just create and release mp4 products since they could not meet certification and now we see that many of these products just don't produce a good user experience. So Kiss is DivX Compatible but NOT certified *yet*. We are getting very close to having hardware available for certfication. I"ll be very honest with a timeline I'm about to give you. Although we are working with just about all major chip vendors there is only 1 major chip manufacturer we are working with that has about an 85% probability of meeting certification in August ...Yes only 1 chip in that time frame... but of course many devices can and will license this chip if they succeed for use in their products. These product would hit shelves around end of summer or early fall. If this does not in happen in August then the next date would be Oct/November with improved hardware. Wish us luck on the August Chip! Oh and of course it is possible that other chip vendors will pull a rabbit out of their hat and also have a solution. But for now there is only 1 that I consider having a probability in the timeframe mentioned. Just by hearing this you might start to realize that this is *really* an issue of hardware not being advanced enough to handle what we are requiring as the minimum for certification. We are working with just about every major chip vendor yet only 1 is currently *close* to having a solution although all are working VERY hard toward a certified chip. We could have certainly chose lower requirements but then the products would have been provided a horrible experience.

As soon as devices are certified you can be sure we will be making announcements since it will really be milestone for us after all this time and work. We acually have a meeting today to discuss getting this information on DivX.com as soon as possible along with a section that list products that are certfied. The logo looks very similar to the badges seen on divxnetworks.com. http://www.divxnetworks.com/certified/about.php

One question I have for everyone. Of course we (DivX) will certfify the product to ensure that DivX certfication is met, however there are other features that are also important in a DivX\DVD\XviD player such as Menu's\GUI, Navigation, Audio Support, Network Connectivity, Qpel, GMC and multiple B-frame support. It could be a conflict of interest if we were to do a review that also gives everyone feedback on all these features. It would be best if this feedback came back from a neutral and reliable third party. This type of review may happen on its own or we could help find the right people, site, or company to start doing 3rd party reviews. This is alread somewhat happening via the forums here and at divx.com but not in a manner that makes it easy for eveyrone to quickly see. Thoughts on how this might be approached?

Darrius Thompson
Director R&D DivX

Doom9
17th June 2003, 18:32
however there are other features that are also important in a DivX\DVD\XviD player such as Menu's\GUI, Navigation, Audio Support, Network Connectivity, Qpel, GMC and multiple B-frame support. Well, imho, your certification should include whatever is required for DivX playback. Video without audio isn't so much fun which makes me wonder if there's any audio requirements in the certification. MP3, VBR MP3 and 6ch 448kbit/s AAC should imho be supported on a certified device. And since your codec does Qpel and GMC that's something that you should have a certain interest as well.

as for the rest, this is indeed something that should be handled by a 3rd party, though how exactly I do not know. I have found myself critisizing major websites for their hardware testing because they didn't use the right divx encoding tool, or didn't publish all their parameters (and sometimes their results simply didn't make sense). The community was once working on common speed test sets but that never got anywhere either so I'm not sure if a common test case can be established at all. It takes a strong entity to pull this off and I don't see any that has enough respect where it matters (community and the industry).

Darrius "Junto" Thompson
17th June 2003, 18:59
Originally posted by Doom9
Well, imho, your certification should include whatever is required for DivX playback. Video without audio isn't so much fun which makes me wonder if there's any audio requirements in the certification. MP3, VBR MP3 and 6ch 448kbit/s AAC should imho be supported on a certified device. And since your codec does Qpel and GMC that's something that you should have a certain interest as well.

as for the rest, this is indeed something that should be handled by a 3rd party, though how exactly I do not know. I have found myself critisizing major websites for their hardware testing because they didn't use the right divx encoding tool, or didn't publish all their parameters (and sometimes their results simply didn't make sense). The community was once working on common speed test sets but that never got anywhere either so I'm not sure if a common test case can be established at all. It takes a strong entity to pull this off and I don't see any that has enough respect where it matters (community and the industry).

Sorry I wan't clear enough when mentioning testing audio support. What I meant was review of audio playback ONLY in devices that can also be standalone audio players such as KISS for listening to your music collection. So this is seperate from the audio within a multimedia\video file. We indeed certify for audio video synch and reliability. Currently the minimum requirement for support of audio within a DivX file is CBR and VBR audio with the Max being 320Kbps due to the audio spikes in VBR audio. Ogg is recommeneded. AAC is not required. This then goes back to requiring addditional licensing cost for requiring AAC audio by the manufacturer who will already be paying for other video and audio patents. Ogg does not add to cost in terms of licensing so it manufacturers may be more open to implementing it. This adds up and gets fairly expensive. However if the manufacturer has AAC support then I would imagine they would ensure it works with a video file.

Thanks for the feedback on the review issue. So we will only be able to state if the product is certfied and hopefully there will be a reliable source for a true product review. What if we setup a system\site or payed for someone else to do this that allowed for user feedback\ratings similar to how cnet works?

Darrius

bond
17th June 2003, 19:40
Originally posted by Darrius "Junto" Thompson
We were just recently looking at support for multiple b frames and what we have found is a very similar issue.... more complexity when in hardware.I dont like this argument :p I think any additional feature will cause more "complexity" in hardware! So were to draw the line?

And a standard for both software and hardware developers already exists:
either the standard mpeg-4 advanced simple profile is supported by both software and hardware developers or not!
I think it would be better to push open standards like mpeg-4 to enable competition and support for all standard compliant codecs, which would be the best for most of us :p !
sorry, but i am sceptical about things like inventing new standards like a "divx certification". what about insuring support for xvid or other mpeg-4 standard compliant codecs, which can be better than divx5?

Darrius "Junto" Thompson
17th June 2003, 20:20
Originally posted by bond
I dont like this argument :p I think any additional feature will cause more "complexity" in hardware! So were to draw the line?

This is absolutely the problem and thus the line has been drawn otherwise it could be forever before there are any products available.

And a standard for both software and hardware developers already exists:
either the standard mpeg-4 advanced simple profile is supported by both software and hardware developers or not!
I think it would be better to push open standards like mpeg-4 to enable competition and support for all standard compliant codecs, which would be the best for most of us :p !
sorry, but i am sceptical about things like inventing new standards like a "divx certification". what about insuring support for xvid or other mpeg-4 standard compliant codecs, which can be better than divx5?
Sure, MP4 ASP exists and is a standard but no one can afford to support it or have technology that can support it. MP4 simple profile is good but b-frames adds substantial value and has a low cost for implementation. You have to ask yourself what is the minimum requirement you are willing to live with to have a product within the year vs years. Also remember the decision is not just up to us, there are multiple hardware companies that also have to take a large risk in producing and cost for producing these chips and so there input is absolutely vital and we must agree on solutions. DivX Certification is NOT a standard it's purpose is to easily convey what is supported by the product in regards to DivX and even Xvid video as it exists today.

Would you rather have NO ONE creating any sort of certification so that you might go to the store and buy one device that only support MP4 SP and then another that supports MP4 SP but only at 800kbps, and then another that supports MP4 + Only GMC, and etc...? Look at some devices being sold today.. you'll see in small print that it says DivX\MP4 ASP\Xvid and so you think it's great. You then spend $500 and notice that the small print says MP4 ASP (does not include GMC, Qpel, DivX3, MP4 File Format). This really bothers me that this is happening where consumers are in a way tricked into buying something that might not be what they expected. With certfication you will at least know what to expect.

The hardware is the limitation and so we have to decide what are the best features to squeeze into that hardware. Someone has to try and get everyone on the same page so we can understand what to expect out of these products and what the best features are for the product given the hardware limitations otherwise it will get quite confusing. This is the problem today.

Instead of continuing to go into any more detail here I'm going to spend my time creating an FAQ and Page on DivX.com that should contain all this information and more. This thread has been very useful. Thanks everyone. If there are other open questions please send them to me or post them here and I'll get them added to the site. We will detail exactly what our certification process is on the described page along with many of the questions that have been asked here and of course list the compatible and certified products.


Darrius

Doom9
17th June 2003, 23:48
What if we setup a system\site or payed for someone else to do this that allowed for user feedback\ratings similar to how cnet works?
I'm not familiar with how cnet works but I know the system at vcdhelp.com (now dvdrhelp.com) and there's one problem with it.. reports are not always reliable which is kind of a problem. I was once discussing the possibility of a DVD-R compatibility database with user ratings and we got stuck at the point where it came to verify the reliability of a report. I suppose if you can get a couple of guys who really know what they're doing, and give them the tools they need, that could work out. You can still have multiple opinions that way, and the grassrot comments can be made through a forum.

bobololo
18th June 2003, 01:53
Originally posted by Darrius "Junto" Thompson
The hardware is the limitation and so we have to decide what are the best features to squeeze into that hardware. Someone has to try and get everyone on the same page so we can understand what to expect out of these products and what the best features are for the product given the hardware limitations otherwise it will get quite confusing. This is the problem today.


The hardware cost / limitation compromise you pointed out at several times appears to be a central concern for player manufacturers. I obviously understand that they all try to optimized the cost to the detriment of mpeg-4 advanced tools especially when they don't bring significant efficiency. However there's still a point that remains unclear to me : the price of these devices ! Here in Europe an elta mpg4 costs about €260 (the same price applies to other mp4 capable players). That's damn expensive compared to a xbox (€200) or a low-end minipc (~ €220) that provide all the cpu and memory (1Ghz+ / 128 MB SDRAM) resources required for honestly decoding MPEG-4 ASP (and much more than EM84xx). Moreover I have the opportunity to see the main board of a KiSS player and there're exactly _4_ components, the Sigma Design chip, a flash and two SDRAM chips. So how much does the sigma design chip cost to justify such a contrast ?

-- bobololo.

ps: btw do you plan to fix the qpel chroma rounding in DivX 5.x and comply with N5546 ? ;)

BlackSun
18th June 2003, 08:08
What about Matroska support as well as MP4ff ? You were talking about menus system, matroska will support all of this and even more, is patent free and a system like control track would be very interesting on a set top box player.

n9801904
18th June 2003, 10:26
Originally posted by bobololo
Here in Europe an elta mpg4 costs about €260 (the same price applies to other mp4 capable players). That's damn expensive compared to a xbox (€200) or a low-end minipc (~ €220) that provide all the cpu and memory (1Ghz+ / 128 MB SDRAM) resources required for honestly decoding MPEG-4 ASP (and much more than EM84xx).

Remember that the business model for a games console is somewhat different. MS have been willing to make a massive loss on the hardware since they hope to make up for it by selling / licensing games for it.

I guess some of the cost of the MPEG 4 hardware codecs has to be down to the quantities they must be selling. It costs a heck of a lot to develop a chip. I am sure as time goes on and the market grows that the price will fall.

Very interesting thread. Thanks to Doom9 and Darrius.

zag2me
18th June 2003, 12:10
The current KISS player is NOT certfied. There is not a single device that is DivX Certified but there are sure plenty of devices being sold that claim DivX playback. KISS however will likely be certified shortly although I'm not at liberty to give the approximate date for this.

Hmmm, does the current K|i|s|s HARDWARE meet the specific requirements of the Divx certification program?

The firmware is still at a very early stage and kiss seem to be spending more time creating new models rather than getting the firmware sorted out. 3.11 support is nice but I would like to see a specific set of encoding tests for divx5 (maybe you could release these so we can test them on our own players). Ie proven encoding methods that will have no problems with playback.

zag2me
18th June 2003, 12:18
Some problems that I can see with the kiss players and Divx certification:

1) VBR audio is still not at a stage where you can say it will stay in sync every time. Something to do the number of key frames i think.

2) The search functions still dont work too a high enough standard for every day use. (only timesearch and very unreliable)

3) Divx Aspect ratio's are all over the place.

Three very important features of a playback machine I would think.

Darrius "Junto" Thompson
19th June 2003, 00:32
Originally posted by zag2me
Hmmm, does the current K|i|s|s HARDWARE meet the specific requirements of the Divx certification program?

As mentioned already it currently does NOT meet certification requirements *yet*. You mentioned some of the hiccups in your other message and

3.11 support is nice but I would like to see a specific set of encoding tests for divx5 (maybe you could release these so we can test them on our own players). Ie proven encoding methods that will have no problems with playback.
Coming soon on DivX.com. I"m trying to spend more time on getting all this information into one place so everyone can easily find detailed information on what our testing involves for certifying the final product. This information would include properties\settings of the test clips we use.


Darrius

Darrius "Junto" Thompson
19th June 2003, 00:51
Originally posted by BlackSun
What about Matroska support as well as MP4ff ? You were talking about menus system, matroska will support all of this and even more, is patent free and a system like control track would be very interesting on a set top box player.

The problem is before a consumer electronics manufacturer spends millions of dollars implementing a new technology in a device or hardware platform they must see that a large consumer base exists before the implement a new technology. They won't implement anything unless they see that enough users are already using the technology in large numbers unless they have VERY strong confidence the technology will gain massive adoption. They have to see how it makes them more money worth their expenditure in resources (cash & people) It's good that it may be patent free but the cost of implementation must be easily offset by an increase in sales. Remember that if you move software into hardware it always requires some type of porting or rearchitecture regarless of how portable we think our software is. It must be redesigned and mapped for hardware, it will require additional memory even when not used (even a 100Kb is a big deal), and then it must go through testing. The cost is high so they always require that their is proof that the technology will help them sell more product. If Matroska does well and there are millions supporting it in a few years I'm sure they would be interested.

Your last roadblock would unfortunately be having Open Sourced code. Yepp it can be an issue. Sorry it's true. I've had to deal with myself more than once! They have to be absolutley sure that your software is patent free. If a patent attorney has not verified this they won't just take your word for this and will fear that if they use your technology that they will infringe on patents. They aren't usually willing to take this risk. So some validation must happen that you are in true patent free by a source they approve of. Sure this happens in a closed source model however it's also a perception issue. The number 1 question asked will be... how do you know that one of your contributors didn't take code from where they work or use to work and contribute it to your project. They are scared because they perceive that you have no idea who that person might be. Anyways, OSS is incredibly great at pushing technology rapidly foward since knowledge propogates quickly, unfortunately once you try and get it into any major commercial endeavor that require major commercial partners there are some roadblocks you have to overcome which is definitely possible. So the first step is make them come to you by creating a great product or technology that demonstrates in can increase sales and these roadblocks are a *little* easier to overcome.

Darrius Thompson
Director R&D DivX
Author of messages that are way to long but hopefully useful :)

bond
19th June 2003, 03:11
Originally posted by Darrius "Junto" Thompson
The problem is before a consumer electronics manufacturer spends millions of dollars implementing a new technology in a device or hardware platform they must see that a large consumer base exists before the implement a new technology. They won't implement anything unless they see that enough users are already using the technology in large numbers unless they have VERY strong confidence the technology will gain massive adoption.so to keep away users from using advanced features like qpel or gmc isnt really the right way to create a large consumer base...
its like a vicious circle: consumers wont use these features because manufacturers dont support them (divx5 profiles) and manufacturers dont support them because consumers doesnt use them
but hey, wake up everybody could gain better quality with these features (although they are only usefull if they are fully functional but programmers wont tune the features because nobody use them ;) )

Charbax2
19th June 2003, 16:26
I own the Archos JBMM 20. It was once displayed on the divx.com frontpage as the "First DivX consumer electronics". That dates to August 2002.

Though the ArchosJBMM20 still only playsback DivX 4 or 5 at 352x288@25fps or 352x240@30fps.

Sending an email to DXN, I was told the DSC21 and the hardware inside the ArchosJBMM20 probably could be pushed to attain better resolution and framerate for both decoding and encoding (because the Archos can also record 320x240@12fps!). Though no firmware upgrade yet has improved any new resolutions nor DivX3-support on ArchosJBMM20.


Today Archos releases a new generation of portable DivX players. The ArchosAV140 and ArchosAV340. With supposedly the Texas Instruments DSC25 inside. Now it is said the ArchosAV340 can playback up to 640x304@30fps (http://www.hotmp3gear.com/av300review.htm). Though on Archos.com it says 640x272@25fps and 352x288@30fps (http://www.archos.com/products/prw_500542_specs.html). All still onlyu DivX4/5 and still no DivX3.


This current limitation kind of hurts me cause over a year ago, I started reading on http://www.divxnetworks.com/press/pr_detail.php?pr_id=26 that the Texas Instruments DSC25 should be able to playback "full-motion, high-quality video". And after emailing DXN I was told that probably means at least DVD-resolution and actually even more than DVD-resolution.



So. When I invest 600 dollars in a portable DivX player, I would hope for it to playback at least 640x480@25fps and DivX3/4/5.


What I miss is some reliable information source that can inform me of what to expect from the different available processors. A reliable source that could inform me if I have any hope one day see a higher resolution support on ArchosJBMM20 or ArchosAV340 through better firmware updates.


And then I see on Texas Instruments website there is a new processor called DM310: http://focus.ti.com/docs/apps/catalog/general/applications.jhtml?templateId=1010&path=templatedata/cm/general/data/vidimg_digstillcam_tisol_dm310proc

And now that processor is said to do "MPEG-4 video decode at VGA resolution (640 × 480)" and "achieve real-time MPEG-1 and MPEG-4 video encode at CIF resolution (352 × 288)".


So please, one reliable source, inform me if Archos has any good reason releasing the AV340 today, if they shouldn't instead have waited a few weeks or a month and integrate a faster processor into their big-LCD Mpeg-4 portable player/recorders.


I definately miss an awesome independant DivX-hardware reviewing and information website. With latest clever news and reliable estimation of which hardware on the market is COOOL and which is a CAPITALIST-VAPOR-CRAP.

ChristianHJW
19th June 2003, 18:25
Hi,

i better apologize in advance for posting here, but please allow me to make some comments about matroska support in hardware devices :



Originally posted by Darrius "Junto" Thompson The cost is high so they always require that their is proof that the technology will help them sell more product. If Matroska does well and there are millions supporting it in a few years I'm sure they would be interested.

1. Currently a lot of time and work has to be invested to make hardware devices read and play DivX/XviD AVI files. This will change significantly if next generation's hardware devices will be out, as already announced by all major Japanese hardware manaufacturer's, as those will have firmwares based on a Linux version like µC-Linux that is used for SIGMA's EM 8500 already. This will open the door for custom and tailor made firmwares offering a lot of new possibilitites, the incredible speed it took KiSS to add Ogg Vorbis audio playback to the DP 450 is a good example for that.

2. I am very realistic about matroska support in earlier devices like the DP 450, its not going to happen. I honestly believed they would run into major problems with handling VBR MP3 in AVI files, and considered matroska as an alternative to them to handle service requests with out-of-sync audio better ( in my idea KiSS and others could have offered a AVI2MKV tool to their customers, and these files would have played in perfect sync then ). The fact they didnt even reply to me this time was a clear sign that the REAL problem for them was the missing DivX3 support, and not VBR3 MP3 sync problems. And as -h couldnt finish his DivX3 to MPEG4 ISO conversion tool before he got 'trapped' by a lovely girl, there was no chance for a DivX3/AVI to MPEG4ISO/MKV/mode2 tool also .... :( . As Junto says, maybe if matroska gets real widespread support due to its advanced editing/subtitles capabilities ( SSA/ASS/USF ) they will think of adding MKV support to their devices. But maybe by that time the first full µC-Linux devices with open firmware will come to market ;) ...


Your last roadblock would unfortunately be having Open Sourced code. Yepp it can be an issue. Sorry it's true. I've had to deal with myself more than once! They have to be absolutley sure that your software is patent free. If a patent attorney has not verified this they won't just take your word for this and will fear that if they use your technology that they will infringe on patents. They aren't usually willing to take this risk.

matroska's framework ( EBML ) is based on XML ;) .. anybody trying to prove to us we are violating his patents would have to face a pretty hard time doing so .... :D ....

Atamido
19th June 2003, 18:39
Personally I am a little more optimistic about hardware Matroska playback. Because in most cases you are still decoding the same content, being able to parse it from a Matroska file is relatively simple.

It just comes down to widespread use. If there is a need, they will support it. Gabest was able to create his own parser from scratch in a couple of days, so I am sure they could pull it off the same type of thing relatively easy. (Especially with two example filters)

outlyer
19th June 2003, 19:01
Originally posted by ChristianHJW
2. I am very realistic about matroska support in earlier devices like the DP 450, its not going to happen. I honestly believed they would run into major problems with handling VBR MP3 in AVI files, and considered matroska as an alternative to them to handle service requests with out-of-sync audio better ( in my idea KiSS and others could have offered a AVI2MKV tool to their customers, and these files would have played in perfect sync then ).
The idea behind a hardware player is to be able to play your files with the least of work, it's totally counter-productive as a company to say to your costumers they've to transmux their files to play them, so it's way more sensible (again, from a business perspective) invest in workarounds to play in sync those files.

@Pamel:
I'm also optimistic but Matroska parsing is not _that_ easy, and you should now this :devil: Current hardware players are really low on power compared to a full-fledged computer. Of course, the day they want to implement Matroska reading, players will be more powerful.

@Junto:
As I see it you're leaving a lot users aside with your emphasis on hardware player compatibility, I can understand your interests in it, but it would be way nicer to implement some more advanced features in the codec and left users decide if they want the file playable in standalone players (you could pop some bloody red dialog to make newbies understand it :P). Now to make this decision we switch to XviD, I've been using DivX for ages, but after seeing the quality that XviD's alphas with advanced settings give I'm using it for my rips.

Anyway, as said before, I understand your choice and your market focus.

Doom9
19th June 2003, 22:24
chris: current players are already based on an embedded linux.. just look at the firmware. But no company will release their firmeware as open source, so the number of users is the only factor that matters. And here we're talking about real numbers, not a few dozen Ks like with tools that we tend to use around here. If 1000 of 50'000 VDubMod users care about Matroska, that is enough for integration. But 1000 out of millions, that's something else entirely, especially when that functionality does cost real money. I'd even go as far to say that it would be foolish to even think about such things while devices don't even fully support all codec features.

@junto: I believe that if you had a certification for all advanced simple profile features it would encourage manufacturers to try and push the envelope. Their customers will see that all devices do not qualify for the best certification, and start asking questions. That will put some pressure on manufacturers to differentiate from their competition and try to create a device that gets the "super certification" which can then be used as a selling argument.

Darrius "Junto" Thompson
20th June 2003, 01:45
Originally posted by Doom9
@junto: I believe that if you had a certification for all advanced simple profile features it would encourage manufacturers to try and push the envelope. Their customers will see that all devices do not qualify for the best certification, and start asking questions. That will put some pressure on manufacturers to differentiate from their competition and try to create a device that gets the "super certification" which can then be used as a selling argument.

Yeah I thought exactly the same thing. The problem is again pricing\availability of the hardware. And they are already pushing the envelope just with MP4 SP. I know it sounds as if it should be simple but it really isn't. They aren't just building MP4 they are adding on top of DVD software already occupying space. Many chip companies found out late in the game that their latest and greatest chips didn't have the horsepower they thought was needed for MP4 after they built them so they have had to go back and improve,
modify, etc.. their hardware. That's how hard it's been and this is not uncommon. If there is product differentiation where a product has support for full MP4 ASP and cost >$500 vs one that has SP + B and cost $250 the difference in this one feature may not be worth it to them. This is not our call to make. We just state the minimum for DivX Cert and provide the technology to allow them to meet the minimum plus ASP and more and then verify the quality of the device according to certfication with rigid testing. The risk a company will take over the market because of full ASP support is likely to be low to them and they'll go for volume with the right price point. P.S. I of course could be completey wrong. As hardware does become available we should re-examine having a "Super Certfication". That's an excellent idea.

Let's than assume there is one manufacturer willing to spend the money on full MP4 ASP Compliance. Iwould expect the device would cost a MINIMUM of $500 US Dollars but likely cost much more that this if they were to do this today. Certainly it's possible that 1 company can do MP4ASP soon but IMHO it won't push other companies into also supporting MP4 ASP unless that product demonstrates volume at that $500 pricepoint that would give them better volume\revenue when compared to a $250 device. If they can build a product just with MP4SP for half the price, with less risk, and make more money with higher volume they certainly will. Of course many of us could just let these companies know how important we think these features are but we the technophiles in this forum, although we are considered important, will only amount to very little loss in
volume for them if we don't buy these devices vs the millions of general consumers who know nothing about the intricacies of video technology who will buy these devices and they know this. Ask random people off the street if they like Qpel and see if they look at you funny. We're just a pimple on an elephants ass :)

Darrius

ChristianHJW
20th June 2003, 06:21
Originally posted by outlyer @Pamel: I'm also optimistic but Matroska parsing is not _that_ easy, and you should now this :devil: Current hardware players are really low on power compared to a full-fledged computer. Of course, the day they want to implement Matroska reading, players will be more powerful.

Programmable devices, when being constructed for some specific purposes, can sometimes easily outperform even the fastest CPU on the market, just look at DSP's. They are extremely powerful for the specific purpose of crashing huge amounts of data using some form of algorithms ( digital signal processing ). The problem we have here is that the decoder chips of the devices have to care about stream processing also, while in the first instance they should normally concentrate on the decoding ( iDCT, etc. ).

I am convinced next series of devices will have separate chips to care about stream handling, menues, etc, and there will be other chips doing the decoding only. If this architecture is realized, those units wont have a problem parsing matroska files, as they will be built for the specific purpose of shifting data, using big buffers, etc. ( they need this for MP4 also, matroska is only a little bit more complex than MP4, think of MP4 atoms ).

We'll see ;) ...

fccHandler
20th June 2003, 08:28
Originally posted by ChristianHJW
think of MP4 atoms
Boy that makes me mad; it's the second time I've seen that mentioned in these forums. For the record, "atoms" are purely a QuickTime construct (they're not too different from "LIST" chunks in AVIs), and they are not part of the MPEG spec. I hate the idea that people are beginning to equate QuickTime MP4 with MPEG-4. Aaargh!

...
Sorry guys, just had to get that off my chest... ;)

bobololo
20th June 2003, 09:56
Originally posted by fccHandler
Boy that makes me mad; it's the second time I've seen that mentioned in these forums. For the record, "atoms" are purely a QuickTime construct (they're not too different from "LIST" chunks in AVIs), and they are not part of the MPEG spec. I hate the idea that people are beginning to equate QuickTime MP4 with MPEG-4. Aaargh!

I'm not sure to well understand what you mean but AFAIK, the MPEG-4 system part (14496-1) defines the mp4 file format that is strongly based on QuickTime mov format.

-- bobololo.

fccHandler
20th June 2003, 17:24
I'll try to explain. There is a new file format going around called MP4, and there is (in my belief) a common misconception that these are MPEG-4 files. From what I've seen, they are simply .mov files containing a video stream with the "mp4v" FOURCC. I suppose this is some (proprietary?) QT variant of MPEG-4, however other "compliant" MPEG-4 decoders (like DivX and XviD) won't decode the content. I'm questioning to what extent the "mp4v" stream is really MPEG-4 compliant.

My copy of 14496-1 doesn't mention the word "atom" anywhere, and the syntax it describes doesn't look anything like a QuickTime .mov. Do you have a link to more info? How does MP4 == MPEG-4? I'd like to understand where the "misconception" is coming from.

Sorry again for being way off topic. This MP4 thing has been bugging me for some time...

Darrius "Junto" Thompson
20th June 2003, 19:51
Originally posted by fccHandler
I'll try to explain. There is a new file format going around called MP4, and there is (in my belief) a common misconception that these are MPEG-4 files. From what I've seen, they are simply .mov files containing a video stream with the "mp4v" FOURCC. I suppose this is some (proprietary?) QT variant of MPEG-4, however other "compliant" MPEG-4 decoders (like DivX and XviD) won't decode the content. I'm questioning to what extent the "mp4v" stream is really MPEG-4 compliant.

My copy of 14496-1 doesn't mention the word "atom" anywhere, and the syntax it describes doesn't look anything like a QuickTime .mov. Do you have a link to more info? How does MP4 == MPEG-4? I'd like to understand where the "misconception" is coming from.

Sorry again for being way off topic. This MP4 thing has been bugging me for some time...

bobololo is correct. The MP4 file format is based off of QuickTime and it certainly is mentioned within the spec as so. And Atoms are a key part of this. It is 14496-1:2000 and not 1999. It is in section 12 and 13 all over the place. In MP4 a meta data structure (object) is called an Atom in QT terminology. These .mp4 files are certainly MP4 files. In .mp4 files the atoms define the meta data structure of the file. As per the spec the meta-data is contained within the meta-data wrapper (the movie atom) the media data is contained either in the same file, within the media-data(atom)s, or in other files. The media data is composed of access units; the media data objects, or media data files, may contain other unreferenced information. Oh and of course it doesn't playback with XviD or DivX. DivX and XviD ONLY decode the frames after they are demuxed from the file format. Decoding is a separate function from parsing. Neither of us distribute an MP4 file format demuxer. If we did it would work. So when someone says a video file is MP4 you must clarify if they mean just the video stream or the entire file to include file format. In AVI the DivX video stream is certainly MP4 but the AVI file format does not make it a fully compliant when the file format is taken into consideration. Ok don't expect me to answer this type of question often since this info can be found on plenty of places on the internet. MANY! However it's Friday and I'm ready for the weekend. Here is what came up in Google from Apples site:

http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/quicktime/qtdevdocs/whatsnew.htm
7/13/2000 -- A new version of the QuickTime File Format is available in PDF format. This is a major update and revision, including documentation of new QuickTime atom types and many new code samples. This is the version of the QuickTime File Format which is incorporated in the MPEG4 specification.


Darrius "Junto" Thompson
Director R&D DivX

fccHandler
20th June 2003, 20:37
Thank you Darrius for taking the time to reply in such detail. Seems I'm stuck with an old version of 14496-1 after all.

Originally posted by Darrius "Junto" Thompson
Oh and of course it doesn't playback with XviD or DivX. DivX and XviD ONLY decode the frames after they are demuxed from the file format. Decoding is a separate function from parsing. Neither of us distribute an MP4 file format demuxer. If we did it would work.
Well, I tried something like that a while back. Essentially what I did was I used GraphEdit to attach the outputs of the "QuickTime Movie Parser" filter to the "AVI Mux" filter, to see if I could remux the movie data into an AVI container. That method does work with older common codecs like Cinepak, and it kinda seemed to work in this case. The AVI showed the correct "mp4v" FOURCC from the QT file, but I couldn't get it decoded by DivX or XviD after trying all the common AVI MPEG-4 FOURCCs I could think of. (IIRC even QuickTime wouldn't play it back.)

I'd love to hear any comments you might have about that, since you obviously know a great deal more about the subject than I do. But I already feel bad that I've dragged your thread off topic, and anyway it is Friday! Enjoy your weekend. :D

outlyer
20th June 2003, 20:55
Originally posted by fccHandler
Well, I tried something like that a while back. Essentially what I did was I used GraphEdit to attach the outputs of the "QuickTime Movie Parser" filter to the "AVI Mux" filter, to see if I could remux the movie data into an AVI container. That method does work with older common codecs like Cinepak, and it kinda seemed to work in this case. The AVI showed the correct "mp4v" FOURCC from the QT file, but I couldn't get it decoded by DivX or XviD after trying all the common AVI MPEG-4 FOURCCs I could think of. (IIRC even QuickTime wouldn't play it back.)
I also tried what you did some time ago (before QuickTime had an MPEG4 codec) and never tried again, I can't help here.

Anyway I've been writing some code to transmux from mp4/mov (as said, almost identical) to avi. A file using QuickTime's MPEG4 codec once transmuxed is perfectly playable by both XviD and DivX.

fccHandler
20th June 2003, 21:03
Originally posted by outlyer
A file using QuickTime's MPEG4 codec once transmuxed is perfectly playable by both XviD and DivX.
Wow! You mean you've actually done this with your code?

outlyer
20th June 2003, 21:08
Yes, and almost all of what is needed is part of mpeg4ip ;)

fccHandler
20th June 2003, 21:29
Thanks for that tip; I'll check it out. And thanks to everyone for setting me straight. I'm not mad anymore and I've learned a lot today. I'll leave your thread now (I've got a lot of catching up to do apparently...) ;)

Doom9
20th June 2003, 22:17
If they can build a product just with MP4SP for half the price, with less risk, and make more money with higher volume they certainly will. Of course many of us could just let these companies know how important we think these features are but we the technophiles in this forum, although we are considered important, will only amount to very little loss in
volume for them if we don't buy these devices vs the millions of general consumers who know nothing about the intricacies of video technology who will buy these devices and they know this. Ask random people off the street if they like Qpel and see if they look at you funny. We're just a pimple on an elephants ass
Of course they don't know, but then they download a movie off kazaa they cannot play on their $250 standalone and then another one, and after the 3rd one the device goes back to the store and they'll get an XBox with a modchip or a DVD recorder for their PC ;) People don't have to know about QPel, they just need a clip they can't play to realize something is wrong. And since you're already testing what happens with GMC and QPel clips it wouldn't require additional effort for the super certification.

I don't think I overestimate the importance of this community on the large scale, but then again, right now those devices are only sold to people who know what they're doing. If early adopters tell others to hold out, they most certainly will (I got my whole circle of friends to get a DVD player within half a years time, they'd still be using VHS if I told them DVD sucks... none of them is very tech savy), and the ones that just pick up a player because they know they can get DivX from their friends or off kazaa will sooner or later run into those files that will make them return their player because a regular player only costs half the money, but does what its supposed to with all the discs it's supposed to play. I guess I shall make it an objective to push the proliferation of QPel to put additional pressure on device manufacturers so that they get their act straight and release products that actually do what they're supposed to do. I was pretty pissed when I could only play one out of 13 movies I tried out the first day I got my player. And I knew what I was getting myself into.. if I hadn't, the player would've gone back the very same day.

Darrius "Junto" Thompson
20th June 2003, 22:55
Originally posted by Doom9
Of course they don't know, but then they download a movie off kazaa they cannot play on their $250 standalone and then another one, and after the 3rd one the device goes back to the store and they'll get an XBox with a modchip or a DVD recorder for their PC ;) People don't have to know about QPel, they just need a clip they can't play to realize something is wrong. And since you're already testing what happens with GMC and QPel clips it wouldn't require additional effort for the super certification.
You are right, the experience will be horrible if there are enough users that have content using Qpel or GMC and a newbie has no idea their file has this feature and the product just doesn't work. The additional effort on testing is already done it's the lack of hardware that exists so again we'll have to wait unless we can convince someone to build a high-end device with these features. Let's give it yet another try. Your right, if I find that a small percentage of my files can't play then I'm going to be very irritated if I expected them to playback. Support will happen just not any time soon though. But the newbie is going to have it worse because they won't know a thing about the file and why it won't work. That's why we create the DivX Profiles to help alert the user of what features will and will not work with devices.
What percentage of files would you guess use GMC and Qpel? As you mentioned once they are on the market they will also want to find a way to differentiate themselves and by saying they can support all features they likely will. What would Super Certfication require? Keep in mind a hardware company must also see the value of this since it would take some time and be priced at the high end. MP4ASP Full Res, Full Frame Rate, MP3 Audio, AAC, ... and? Anyways this is why we have DivX Profiles it ensures playback.

Darrius

Jordan "L0g05" Greenhall
21st June 2003, 00:30
Hey guys, I've been sitting next to Darrius watching him type in all of these long posts and had to jump in on this discussion. I've actually been up to the elbows in this excrement - so I'm sensitive to all of the thoughts that have been brought-up on the board.

Let me set-out our thinking. First-off, we've been working with the chipset companies and the CE OEMs for more than 1.5 years now to get this stuff out there. They were all going to go to market with MPEG-4 Simple Profile - we held firm on full ASP for a long time (and suffered great pain at their hands as a result) - but at the end it turned out that getting Qpel and GMC onto DVD chips was just a non-starter. The cost of silicon was way too much and no-one was going to be able to do it. So we looked at the bang-for-the buck of GMC and Qpel, the amount of content actually created with these tools and pulled the plug on requiring support for those features.

For X-mas of 2003, a DVD chipset costs about $6. This leads to about a $45 bill of materials for a DVD player and this is why you can buy a low-end DVD player for about $50 (i.e., they are sold at zero margin and this *doesn't* include license fees to the DVD forum that cost about $20 a piece). Right now a chipset that can support Qpel would be about $40. Each dollar in a chip = $4 - $5 in a player, so you are increasing the BOM by about $160. This leads to a >$200 DVD player out the gate - and that doesn't include full GMC for which it appears nothing short of a Pentium can do the job. So to include Qpel would require a $250 price point - just to get to zero margin and no-one will sell a DVD player at that high a price to get no margin (i.e., the cheap ones are loss leaders). Realistically the price point of a player with that kind of a chip would be in the >$400 range.

Flip the economics around. The chip guys sell to the box guys - and it costs $1 million dollars just to run a fab cycle (and that doesn't include the cost of the silicon, chip design, QA, etc. So they don't make a chip unless it will move *lots* of units. The bigger the chip guy, the larger the number of units they want to sell before they even think about a feature. So if a chip guy is thinking about adding a feature (say, DivX) to their chip, they have to think about how much more expensive it will make their chip and compare that to how much more a CE box maker would be willing to pay. Qpel is *big* on-chip. So a Qpel-enabled chip will cost more than a non-Qpel chip. Will the box maker be willing to pay that much more for it? The answer appears to be a firm - no. We tried, and pretty much everyone shot it down. Heck, we are *still* fighting with major OEMs who want to dumb-down the existing Certified requirements

Our goal is to get players out to people for a reasonable price - you should be able to see DivX Certified players on the market before Xmas at below <$200 - maybe even below $150. Network-connected players (which rule, by the way) might come in below $250. That meant convincing DVD chipset makers (who are extremely conservative, do one chip every 1.5 years and do the *absolute minimum* to sell into the market) to support DivX. And that meant dropping Qpel and GMC.

Some things to think about: even if we had been able to include Qpel and GMC, there still would have been a reasonably large % of DivX and XviD content that wouldn't have played on these devices.

They don't support ADPCM audio - and certainly not "DivX Audio". Which flavor of Qpel did you use (at last count there are three - and it isn't easy to handle all three in hardware). Bad AVI encodes or SMR 3.11 spikes into the 10 Mbps ranges are going to break even the most robust silicon. And to the extent that XviD forays outside the MPEG-4 specification . . . all bets are off.

So, the bottom line is that there is going to be some level of background noise of files that just won't play on a "CE" device. Qpel and GMC will fall into that noise - and the cost/benefit cuts against those features.

You can certainly get players that will play almost everything. I would recommend a 1.5 Ghz PC running Linux. A modded Xbox is also good (I hear). But for the bajillions of people who are looking for CE (and don't own a soldering iron) - I hope that DivX Certified will make them very happy.

Jeez - "super certified". There are a couple of chip companies who are targeting Qpel and they have been hitting me on just this issue. This is incredibly tough. Is the addition of what ultimately is a minor feature enough to justify a completely new profile (and all of the consumer-education that would require)? You also have to take into account testing. We have people dedicated full time to testing players that are looking to be "Certified" to ensure that they can do what they say they can do. "Super Certified" means an expanded test profile.

I guess here is the question: how much more would you pay for Qpel?

Interestingly on the audio side, it is all over the freaking board. Some guys support Ogg, AAC and the whole list. Others bite your head off if you even mention supporting another audio standard. What you have to know is that it is a bitch to get this stuff into firmware and tested for CE players and the chip guys absolutely hate supporting anything they don't have to (and in the case of AAC, they really hate paying the additional $$ required for the license). Believe me, I'd love to switch to either OGG or AAC - but then you'd be in even a bigger quagmire. At least every DVD player can play MP3 these days.

Doom9
21st June 2003, 11:33
To come up with an idea what a full ASP certification would include I'd first have to know what the existing certifications involve... but basically everything that is in the advances simple profile (maybe I should try to get a copy of the standard document one day just to get a full overview of what's there).. GMC, QPel and multiple b-frames.

As for the price point, I paid $370 for the elta player, which is more than I've spend for a CE device in a long long time. Okay, the store was somewhat overpriced but still.. that is an expensive player. In fact I believe they only had like one or two players that were more expensive (and that didn't play divx). Looking around, some of the announced DivX capable players in Europe are available for 200€ and that's considered a bargain.

What is the difference in price between chips that support QPel and those that don't, for instance the Sigma 85xx versus the 86xx series? In any case, some chips are available, it's merely a question of using them instead of the cheaper flavor.

"Super Certified" means an expanded test profile. according to Junto I thought GMC and QPel was already being tested so the extra effort would be trivial.

I guess here is the question: how much more would you pay for Qpel?for QPel alone probably not that much, but for the capability to play ALL DivX and XviD files that could be worth a sizeable premium.

I don't know how many clips use the advanced simple profiles features. I know that when you're doing XviD 2 b-frames is standard and with QPel getting pretty good I think we'll see much QPel clips in the future. You're more interested in DivX.. there I can only say that in my guides I've always suggested the use of GMC, but not QPel. I thought you had a poll on divx.com about the use of the asp features once, what was the result of it? Also, I just had a quick look in your DivX hardware forum, and I saw a lot of "can't play this can't play that" which isn't very encouraging.

BTW, XBox modding doesn't require any soldering skills anymore, there's modchips that you can just plug in. If it weren't for the 2 GB ISO limitation and the noise I'd have gotten myself a dedicated XboX as DivX player a long time ago.
Last but not least, at least my player has XviD written all over it which will be yet another noisance when people try out those clips and find they don't work either. I'll have to talk to the XviD developers to know what they think about that.

shlezman
22nd June 2003, 13:51
"Super Certified" = divx certified

Its unfair that DXN take advantage of their popularity to get into a "new" market such as certification. MPEG4 defines profiles and levels, and DXN takes advantage in a "hole" of the spec to define their own mid-profiles, which can be called also "Super Certified" Simple Profile.

Hopefully some HW company will release an SDK for their "video playing dedicated machine" and the OSC (Open software community) will take it from there (just like with xvid). Or even better ...

Maybe DXN can collaborate with the community and reconstruct their relation by forming and "Open Certification Programs" that will supply tools and a common firmware development environment for such devices. Or even better ...

The OSC can do that by itself.

Reading back my post, makes mw wonder ... did I have too much coffee today :confused:

CruNcher
22nd June 2003, 15:46
@shlezman

i agree what DXN is trying now is ridiculous for me it looks like they try to get a wider support and for the moment they only get this from Sigma, to move sooner or later to DivX 6 which will not be based anymore on the Mpeg4 standard what Gej said at the Cebit on the SAD both. For me it is unbeliveable that DXN at the moment has the power in the Mpeg4 Industry Forum to actually reform the standard that where set along time ago and this was Mp4 + ACC and nothing else sorry Darrius "Junto" Thompson that i can't share your opinion about how you see the manufactures of standalone players sure it's right that they will first support things which are cheaper but in first place what the customer want's is the most important and i can't belive that the customer want's it your way and i think other Mpeg4 Industry Forum Members as Ahead/Ateme will show you that this can also be achived without this "DivX Certified campaign"


Maybe DXN can collaborate with the community and reconstruct their relation by forming and "Open Certification Programs" that will supply tools and a common firmware development environment for such devices. Or even better ...


i think thats what the M4IF was created for which also DXN/Sigma are members of


The MPEG-4 Industry Forum is a not-for-profit organization with the following goal:

To further the adoption of the MPEG-4 Standard, by establishing MPEG-4 as an accepted and widely used standard among application developers, service providers, content creators and end users.


so if you want to bring it to the "end user" do it the right way in cooperation with the other forum members or do your own thing and leave thats my opinion.

shlezman
22nd June 2003, 16:38
a few cups of cofffeeeee later ...

@ CruNcher
(there are members only in "egged" - Israeli joke)

Being a member means you paid a few bucks, that's about all. You can be a member and fight the group ... that's called buisness. No one can kick you out as long as you pay.

As for the MP4IF its an excelent organization with a small problem called politics. That's why (I'm only guessing) the "standard" dosnt support MP3 and OGG and many other great stuff. DXN are fully aware of that (being members) and they also know that the amazing amount of video content that already exists in "their" format will never fall into the standard's boudaries, that's why DXN make their own certifications, cause no one else will certify MPEG4 SP with B frames and MP3 audio packed in an AVI but everyone wants it. Thats unfair that DXN will get royalties (paied by consumers) for boxes that carry a nice "Divx-Inside" sticker, when all they actually done was printing that sticker.

If DXN had certified boxes that play Divx 6 (as you said), then I'd say go for it, you earned the sticker (and the royalties that come along with it), but after all we are talking MPEG4 not some propriatry codec.

Doom9
22nd June 2003, 17:23
@cruncher: I believe you're barking up the wrong tree here. DivX certified means just that.. it doesn't mean "supporting MPEG-4 level xyz profile abc". It's their right to certify hardware that supports their implementation. Right now I don't know how the certification works so I rather no comment on it, yet they don't claim that they're certifying any generic MPEG-4 compatibility.

To my knowledge, the MPEG-4 standard does not contain any delivery mechanisms. For DVD you have the DVD forum which has defined how a DVD should look like and how it should be played. In order to put a DVD logo on your DVD player, your player must adhere to a standard that goes way beyond an MPEG-2 level and profile. Just to give you an example: There's different audio formats (MP2, PCM, AC3, DTS), there's the definition of the VOB files, their size and how they are to be put on a disc, there's the filesystem of the disc, etc. etc. Now as I said I might be mistaken on this but I haven't found any similar standard for MPEG-4 delivery on CD/DVD media. Thus, everybody is cooking his own soup so to speak. Right now there's chaos when it comes to storing MPEG-4 video. Take XviD as an example. It pretty much implements MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Profile. But that's just the video part. Now there are people storing it together with AC3 or MP3 sound in an AVI container, there's the OGM crowd that can additionally use Ogg Vorbis audio and put this in an OGM container where we still don't know if it will be thrown overboard by the xiph.org people, then there's Matroska where the specs are firm but the implementations aren't complete yet. And to make this even better, there's a couple of subtitle formats and no definition how you should put a container on a disc. There's the standard ISO format, then there's XCD, but you could also use UDF. Bottom line, what ends up on your CDs or DVDs is pretty chaotic. The industry has failed to see the importance of creating such a standard and DXNs certification program seems to be the first real effort in that area. Of course it would be preferable to have a standard backed by the MPEG4IF but if that doesn't exist what can you do?

BTW, there are some reasons why MP4 and AAC haven't taken off. One is licensing, another is the lack of tools and yet another is that MP4 isn't a format designed for editing. But history has shown us that people creating their own videos need a lot of editing facilities so they won't use a format that's basically a dead end and needs to be demuxed first when you want to perform any editing. I also believe that in the end the AAC only clause has to be dropped because at least when it comes to standalones it makes no sense. Any DVD playing standalone must be capable of handling AC3, and most devices also do MP3, plus there is a lot of existing content that does not use AAC.

Darrius "Junto" Thompson
23rd June 2003, 15:53
Originally posted by Doom9
according to Junto I thought GMC and QPel was already being tested so the extra effort would be trivial.

Yes the testing could be done if the features could be implemented. Still these 2 features would not be trivial to implement and there are a few issues to try and solve. There seems to be 3 versions of Qpel floating around. Which one do you implement? The first MP4 DSP's may have based their code around the first versions of the Momusys reference code, then there are those who used their interpretation of the MP4 spec for Qpel until then again there was a change were Qpel was modified in the Spec. So there are multiple Qpel solutions that exist and that will still have to be solved.

Darrius

shlezman
23rd June 2003, 16:36
@junto

I thought you certify Divx codec, so why do you care so much about what xvid or any other codec implements, that's the job of MP4IF, isnt it ?

Jordan "L0g05" Greenhall
23rd June 2003, 17:32
M4IF doesn't do "certification" they do interoperability testing. They also don't set MPEG-4 profiles- the MPEG committee does that. M4IF is simply an association of companies in (or interested in) the MPEG-4 arena. They could certainly choose to create a Certification process - but, so far, they haven't.

Doom9's issues about DVD players with "XviD" all over them - that don't actually play XviD - is precisely the problem. Our DivX Certification program is a reaction to the market - not an attempt to create anything.

The sad fact is that there really aren't any standards of quality or performance around MPEG-4 right now. A DVD player can claim "MPEG-4" if they can support QCIF Simple Profile at 50 Kbps. Worse - because of the way that the market works, there will be many DVD players that have XviD on them - very few of which will even be able to play 15% of XviD content.

Because we control the DivX name - and have some stake in ensuring that people get a good experience when they buy something that has the DivX name on it - we wanted to make darn sure that DVD players that say "DivX" on them are at least able to perform up to some guaranteed level of quality and interoperability.

The DivX Certification requirements include a lot of elements that aren't even talked about at all within MPEG-4. We have bitrate requirements, visual quality requirements, A/V synch requirements, etc., The goal is simply to Certify that the players are good.

THis is actually why and how XviD fits into DivX Certification as well. Since a DivX Certified player will be high performance - it will defacto handle XviD at least reasonably well. Since there are differences between DivX and XviD - and since we aren't physically testing against XviD - there are no guarantees here.

W/r/t OSD Certification. This can certainly be valuable. But it won't be easy. Try convincing DVD and other CE makers to change their devices to suit *your* demands. It aint easy.

Jordan "L0g05" Greenhall
23rd June 2003, 17:45
Hey Doom - here is some more background on DivX Certification and the issue of "Super Certification".

The existing DVD players (e.g., the Elta) are completely incapable of supporting Qpel at a hardware level. This player is made on a $18 chip. If one wanted to hold-out for full ASP then the economics call for a $600 (or more) player today (like the first generation MP3 jukeboxes) and getting into the $300 price range with the next generation of chips. I can't see any reason why DivX Certified players couldn't get into the <$100 range in 2004.

For XviD support, the issue is really complicated. The problem is consistency and forward-compatibility. The CE guys won't include something in their device unless they know the device will play content for years to come. That means that we had to lock-in our tools and features to a certain set and have to keep those constant for the lifetime of DivX 5. Multiple B-frames is a good example. We didn't have them when we handed the "gold" DivX decoder to the chip guys. Adding them now would require a substantial re-engineering of the physical hardware. There is no way that the chip guys will do that.

Because XviD is OSS, there is no way to create any consistency in what XviD content will look like. As a consequence, you will get two things:

1. Companies that claim XviD but really can't play much XviD content

2. Companies that have premium brands and want to deliver a good consumer experience - who won't claim XviD compatibility.

Our decision to not include Qpel and GMC was based on four factors:

1. Requiring Qpel and GMC would increase the cost of the chips (according to the chip guys)
2. Requiring Qpel and GMC would push-back availability until after 2003.
3. There is little DivX content encoded using these features (exact numbers are very hard to get - but we estimate less than 5% of new content encoded and less than 1% of all content).
4. The features don't add much value.

Admittedly, this was a very hard choice. We included Qpel and GMC in the codec in the first place because we thought they were worth having. But compared to the silicion trade-off . . .

Note. You have to distinguish between the DivX 1-point GMC and a full GMC implementation. Full GMC is a bear on the chipset side and I don't know of any chip currently or planned for the next 18 months that will be able to support it.

Some more info:

1. Typical Chip design timeframe - 12 - 18 months
2. Typical time to integrate a new chipset design into a hardware design - 6 months
3. When does a hardware design need to be made before it will be adopted for OEM product-line - July.

So, if you don't have a chip available and ready by January of a given year, you won't get it into OEM products that year. There are very specific (and very tight) windows in this cycle and if you miss a window . . .

So the choice was "DivX Certifed" (without GMC and QPel) this year at <$200 or "DivX Certified" (with GMC and Qpel) *next* year at >$200.

J

Doom9
26th June 2003, 22:36
can we have the full specs of what a divx certification involves? What are the bitrate, resolutions and stream constraints and are there any others?

Darrius "Junto" Thompson
26th June 2003, 23:30
Originally posted by Doom9
can we have the full specs of what a divx certification involves? What are the bitrate, resolutions and stream constraints and are there any others?

Doom9,

We are planning on having this information along with FAQ's up on DivX.com in about a week. I'll ping everyone on the forums once it is up. I'll send you and a few others the information we intend on posting prior to pushing it out on DivX.com for your review and feedback. Check your PM and email in a few days.

Darrius

Jordan "L0g05" Greenhall
27th June 2003, 02:36
Lets get Doom and whoever here wants to help an early copy so that we can make sure that we have all the questions answered.

j

manono
27th June 2003, 04:52
Hi-

Lets get Doom and whoever here wants to help an early copy

Me (please).

thevidgod
28th June 2003, 16:15
THe truth is your manuver in the set top players was a smart choice.
imagine dvds with divx contenets you could hacve probaly about 2 hours of better than dvd qaulity video.......... imagine blue-ray dvds..........................

But the problem is set tops will die out within 5 years the computr will probaly be converted into a all-in-one system with gaming internet email and telivision. You need to prepare yourself for online pay per view technology where youy are not very strong. there are still very few pay per view movies. you need to focus your efforts on the movie studios so they contract you to encode there movies for VOD because if you dont you will be left in the dust. everyone else; real, microsoft, quicktime are focusing there efforts on that. but yo useem to be not concerned about it?

may i ask why?

CruNcher
28th June 2003, 23:44
@ thevidgod

they concentrating on XXX VODS its also a great profitable market and the studios don't expect much only that the billing system is working correctly :rolleyes:

Doom9
29th June 2003, 00:51
@thevidgod: I have my doubts about VOD especiallly in circles that I hang out in, yet DXN has their own DRM system ready for potential customers. Though, the best DRM won't help if you don't have a good codec to go with it so DXN is developing both.

shlezman
29th June 2003, 09:09
Originally posted by Jordan "L0g05" Greenhall
Lets get Doom and whoever here wants to help an early copy so that we can make sure that we have all the questions answered.

j

Please do

@doom9
I couldnt agree with you more, the problem of DXN today is M$ and the H.264 (in the very near future), I believe that Real are out of the game of broadband VOD. The quality of Divx codec is *great* but outdated, today's video coding technology can offer much more then Divx (5). DRM will *NEVER* work and all major movie studios will eventually understand that (and maybe start makeing good movies ... but that is off topic).

About DXN trying to make a buck from certifications, I think it's great but I'm not sure that they can assure us (customers) the "user experience" (how I hate this phrase) that we expect.

Darrius "Junto" Thompson
9th July 2003, 16:59
A first version of the DivX Certfication FAQ is up. I'm sure the Q&A will bring up even more questions so please send them my way so we can post them.


http://www.divx.com/divxcertified/

Back for an edit.... forgot to mention we have finally as of yesterday given one of our chip partners, ESS, full DivX Certfication.

http://www.divxnetworks.com/press/pr_detail.php?pr_id=66

Darrrius Thompson
Director R&D DivX

bond
9th July 2003, 17:18
at least you have the courage to say that you dont want to achieve xvid support with your certification

zag2me
9th July 2003, 17:21
A very informative faq, I learnt alot from it. The certification program looks like a very good idea. Its a shame about GMC and Qpel confusing the issue to the basic end user though.

Any news on the kiss players getting "compatible" or "certified" yet?

Darrius "Junto" Thompson
9th July 2003, 19:46
Originally posted by bond
at least you have the courage to say that you dont want to achieve xvid support with your certification

Let's be clear. XviD support is not required however we recommend it be supported. We cannot enforce that Chip manufacturers be 100% compliant to XviD releases. However, instead we are working with XviD so that a user can use a DivX Profile within XviD to help ensure compliance, but it would be rather hard to tell a chip manufacturer they MUST support another codec, it is much easier if we work together with XviD to make sure the codec just works.

Darrius

manono
9th July 2003, 23:46
Hi Junto-

I find this question and response a bit disingenuous and self-serving:

There are products without the DivX Certified logo that imply they support DivX. Can these products playback DivX content?

If the product is not DivX Certified or DivX Compatible, the products probably will not work.
Please don't get me wrong. I'm happy that your company has stepped forward to insure a better viewing experience for us all in the future. But I know of no standalone DVD/MPEG4 player that flat out won't play DivX/XviD. And it would be pretty stupid for a manufacturer to claim DivX playback, if it won't play them at all. I don't think he'd sell too many units. If it were I, I think I'd reword the answer to read something like:
If the product is not DivX Certified or DivX Compatible, the product may not work to your full satisfaction.
And on a related note, has any thought been given to insuring support for external subtitles? That's one of my main irritations with my player (Bravo D1), that none of my non-English movies with SSA subs can be played with the subs. But then the manufacturer didn't promise external sub support, but it is a necessary requirement for the future, in my opinion.

dTb
10th July 2003, 03:23
Originally posted by Darrius "Junto" Thompson
.... forgot to mention we have finally as of yesterday given one of our chip partners, ESS, full DivX Certfication.

http://www.divxnetworks.com/press/pr_detail.php?pr_id=66


This is great news Junto, hopefully it's not long before we see players using these chips.:D

I echo what manano has said somewhat, I think subtitles are very important and any device I buy will need to support them.

shlezman
10th July 2003, 07:12
Are the certified player required (by DXN) to have a DRM system (of any kind) in them ? for VOD for example

Doom9
10th July 2003, 07:53
@junto: the requirements for divx4/5 have been clearly outlined, but what about divx3? 1 /2 CDs is rather vague...

Darrius "Junto" Thompson
10th July 2003, 15:45
Originally posted by manono
Hi Junto-

I find this question and response a bit disingenuous and self-serving:


Please don't get me wrong. I'm happy that your company has stepped forward to insure a better viewing experience for us all in the future. But I know of no standalone DVD/MPEG4 player that flat out won't play DivX/XviD. And it would be pretty stupid for a manufacturer to claim DivX playback, if it won't play them at all. I don't think he'd sell too many units. If it were I, I think I'd reword the answer to read something like:

And on a related note, has any thought been given to insuring support for external subtitles? That's one of my main irritations with my player (Bravo D1), that none of my non-English movies with SSA subs can be played with the subs. But then the manufacturer didn't promise external sub support, but it is a necessary requirement for the future, in my opinion.

Thanks. I agree, I"ll blame that bad answer on someone else :) It will be changed shortly using the answer you suggested.

Subtitle support will be up to the manufacturer, however we have found a very good way to handle subtitles so that implementation or support in hardware should be simple. This is currently in development and will be given to our partners as soon as it is ready. We created a specification for using subtitles within an AVI file where they can be turned on or off and included within the AVI rather than outside the AVI. We will provide the tools to create these subtitles so they can be used with devices that implement this specification and we will provide tools that should allow you to easily convert your subtitles to this specification in the event the manufacturer does not support another subtitle format such as SSA subs. The best way to get most of these features in is for us to all email or keep doing forum posts and hope they read them and tell them what everyone would like to see and why the feature is worth their time for implementation.

Thanks again for your suggestion.

Darrius

Darrius "Junto" Thompson
10th July 2003, 16:00
Originally posted by Doom9
@junto: the requirements for divx4/5 have been clearly outlined, but what about divx3? 1 /2 CDs is rather vague...

Yeah you're right, this is vague. I'll make sure we add more to this. Since DivX 3.11 added a little more complexity we ensured
that certfication covered at least 95% of the content created in DivX 3.11. The minimum requirment is decoding of 3.11 content at 640x480 @ 24 fps with MP3 audio. We also included certfication clips at 720x480 @ 30fps but the minimum is 640x480 since the majority of the content in 3.11 is this size or less.

Thanks. I'll get this in the FAQ.

Darrius "Junto" Thompson
10th July 2003, 16:07
Originally posted by shlezman
Are the certified player required (by DXN) to have a DRM system (of any kind) in them ? for VOD for example

Yes we do. For certification we require implementation of our DRM. There are very few major CE manufacturers that will implement support for a new video technology unless DRM is also included. Our DRM system has been used quite successfuly now with over a few hundred thousand transactions, is easy for end users to use, and of course we ensured hardware implementation would be possible. I'll get ask that more details be published about this in the FAQ.

Thanks everyone for the additional questions we missed. What else?

Darrius "Junto" Thompson
Director of R&D DivX

Doom9
10th July 2003, 16:55
What else?allowable DivX3 parameters.. I suppose low motion / fast motion is no issue because that was really the came codec, but what about max/min bitrates, keyframe intervals/spacing.
I think SBC actually comes in handy for you because it has a bitrate cap which was often used to create DivX3 content.

BTW.. what does "95% of the content" stand for? If I take the TDX rules as a reference, the 1 CD cutoff is around 2h. Are 95% of all movies really shorter than 2h?

Though I guess I'm not the only one being a little disappointed about the half-hearted DivX3 support. I tend to think that at least until the release of DivX5, DivX3 was the most used codec.

Darrius "Junto" Thompson
10th July 2003, 17:55
Originally posted by Doom9
allowable DivX3 parameters.. I suppose low motion / fast motion is no issue because that was really the came codec, but what about max/min bitrates, keyframe intervals/spacing.
I think SBC actually comes in handy for you because it has a bitrate cap which was often used to create DivX3 content.

BTW.. what does "95% of the content" stand for? If I take the TDX rules as a reference, the 1 CD cutoff is around 2h. Are 95% of all movies really shorter than 2h?

Though I guess I'm not the only one being a little disappointed about the half-hearted DivX3 support. I tend to think that at least until the release of DivX5, DivX3 was the most used codec.

Low vs Fast Motion should have not affect as long at birate is kept wihtin the boundaries. The average and peak bitrates allowed for DivX 3.11 Certfication are lower as we had to make a compromise to support as much DivX 3.11 content as possible while making it possible to even support and make sure manufacturers supported it. DivX 4\5\MP4 are supported in Silicon as DivX 3 is much more complex and expensive to implement in a chip so much some of this support has to be handled in software. It was hard enough just educating and convincing others how important it was to support 3.11 and I'm happy we reached a compromise that enabled 3.11 support to happen.

The chart on the certfication faq says: Note: For DivX 3.11 content at Home Theater Profile, the required average bitrate is 1000 kbps, and the required maximum peak bitrate is 4000 kbps.

Sorry I didn't understand your question about the 1CD cutoff. You can have 2 CD's, it really doesn't matter as long as bitrate compliance is met. The 95% measurement was our "research" in looking at the properties of many, many, many files random people and groups created and when decoded our success rate was 95% for these files and the 5% that failed were due to the bitrate requirement not being met, however failure does not necessarrilly mean the file did not decode. It means that it does not playback at full frame rate flawlessly like we would like it to... instead it would have some "jerkiness, stuttering or momentary freeze" which we consider a failure within the 5%. Maybe the NFO should also list the Peak Bitrate with the files created using the TDX rules since it indicate the likeliness of a flawless playaback on hardware?

Darrius

Soulhunter
21st July 2003, 20:30
Darrius "Junto" Thompson;
> "If they can build a product just with MP4SP for half the price, with less risk, and make more money with higher volume they certainly will" <

Jordan "L0g05" Greenhall;
> "Will the box maker be willing to pay that much more for it? The answer appears to be a firm - no" <


Yap! Not much people want to spend 500$ or more for an player... But how much people want to spend 5000 or 10000 bugs? Near like none?! Still there ARE companys that build HighEnd DVD-Players in this priceclass! So, why not make players with MP4 ASP, AAC, Matroska etc. support ???

Just some thoughts...


Bye

Yusaku
22nd July 2003, 05:51
Originally posted by Soulhunter
- But, how much people want to spend 5000 or 10000 bugs ???

- Near like none...!!!

- But there ARE some HighEnd DVD-Players in this priceclass out there...!!!

Unfortunately, if you take this $10.000 player apart, you'll most likely find a $10 central CPU with a (relatively) cheap digital electronics; and all the expensiveness of the system will be spent on actual audio/video quality on their analog sides, and maybe the optical drive (and IMO most will be spent on nice polished logo on front...). Plus, none of the quality freaks that can afford these will be interested in recompressed contents, which is what 99.9% of MPEG-4 files are now.

The reason of course being the price of a new chip and R&D goes to milions of dollars, while you can expect to sell some 500 pieces of $10 000 priced DVD player.

Honestly, how many people on this board would buy $10k DVD player? I know for sure I would not be one of them.

I think I read something on these lines in some interview with the McLaren F1 DVD player developers (I think it goes for something like $40 000?); they were "very unhappy" about the fact that they have absolutely no control over actual media decoding - you can do just so much with PGAs.

--- ontopic:

What I still cannot understand is why the $500 level DVD players cannot just take 1GHz one-chip processor, 64MB flash/128MB RAM and a video encoder. I believe such chip combo could be done under $100 easily - and the R&D costs of recompiling mplayer should not be so high (the release of GPL infected code is tough - but since it'll be limited to your hardware, it is not such a pain...) All in all, you end up with the manufacturing price of <$200 per unit - going for $350+ street price.

Soulhunter
23rd July 2003, 16:42
> "Honestly, how many people on this board would buy $10k DVD player? I know for sure I would not be one of them." <

Yap! Won't buy $10k player too...(max. 1000$ for me) But what I mean is that maybe "ONE or TWO" companys could build a more exp. player with more Chip-Power and seperat A/V processing (Avi+VBR-MP3) Btw, whats with the HighDef. profile of DivX? Any player out there that could play it yet?

Some of this companys that are disigning this HQ players have no "nice polished logo on front" ! Not much people know this companys, because most people have not the $ to buy thier stuff... I'm not talking of well known companys like "Sony" etc. I was talking about companys like http://www.proceedaudio.com/ Ok, probably they sell 10 times less than the other companys, but their stuff also cost 10 times more...

And if a player would support all kinds of Input (high resolution, high bitrate n' nearly all formats) I would pay more than 500$ for this. And I know a'lot ppl that would pay 500$ or more for an HQ-Player as well !!!

Bye

zag2me
23rd July 2003, 16:46
Well the Sigma chip in the kiss players is incapable of playing the "Home Theatre" profile for Divx content. I think anything over 3000 kbs is just too much for the chip. Another limitation is the size of files that can be read, this is currently a 2gb limit so "high definition" divx content is still along way off.

Soulhunter
24th July 2003, 13:05
"I think anything over 3000 kbs is just too much for the chip"
- Yes, thats it! If such a standalone-player is not able to do the same things that my PC can do (high-res./ high-bitrates), I feel no need to buy a standalone...

"Another limitation is the size of files that can be read, this is currently a 2gb limit so "high definition" divx content is still along way off"
- Is there any reason why not to cut your encode in 2or3 pieces (smaller than 2GB) before you burn them on DVD-R ???

zag2me
24th July 2003, 14:27
Originally posted by Soulhunter

"Another limitation is the size of files that can be read, this is currently a 2gb limit so "high definition" divx content is still along way off"
- Is there any reason why not to cut your encode in 2or3 pieces (smaller than 2GB) before you burn them on DVD-R ???

Yes you can split the movie up, but who wants to watch a movie in 3 seperate parts?

DVDHack
25th July 2003, 04:06
I have a KiSS player 450 model and after 7 months with it now I can conclude that it is a piece of crap. The company is short in all areas except excuses.

It does not play mpeg4 up to 2GB, I have complained several times to KiSS about an issue I have with a file that's 1.8GB. Their only response is that they'll fix it in the future. I still have issues with pausing, searching etc. Proper MP3 support toi months to iron out. This is a piece of HW not SW and they should get it to work before marketing - its been out now for over a year and still there are problems.

I have gone through a stack of BIOS releases to fix things, they don't respond to your enquiries and the player does not do what they claim it will. The player is very expensive for the grief it causes the owner. If KiSS responded to emails with real information they might keep die hards engaged but they are utterly hopeless.

I suggest that anyone looking to purchase this unit should look at purchasing an Xbox instead - it plays everything the KiSS does and more (Oh, and you can play games too). If you still want a KiSS send me a PM if your're in Auatralia - its going cheap.

Charbax2
25th July 2003, 05:07
The Archos AV300
http://www.archos.com/products/prw_500521_specs.html
playsback DivX Simple Profile at up to 640x480 and 30fps according to this review at ExtremeTech
http://www.extremetech.com/article2/0,3973,1202660,00.asp

It is supposed to kind of support b-frames but no CMG nor Qpel of course.. It is supposed to have a Texas Instruments DSC25 DSP processor inside. So it's nice, portable and 500$.


And this Chineese company is supposed to come with another portable DivX player:
http://www.iavias.com/eng/whatsnew.htm
as it says "Play DivXtm Movies". on nice 6,5inch screen for 3 houres but it's bigger and heavier than the Archos AV340. BUt supposedly same 500$ kind of price according to
http://www.coolmacintosh.com/macworldreport071703.html



And so, RCA and Intel/Microsoft are comming with portable Mpeg4 players. They are all using Texas Instruments or Xcale processors. Sony is using their own processor in their crappy but cool looking new Clié thing that playsback mpeg4 at only 116x86 resolution (or something like that).


So, why can't someone make a perfect set-top-box, that handles all formats through Open Source development, emulates all consoles, connectes to all internets and uses all the best peer-to-peer networks? Sell that thing for less than 200$ too. Basing the processing powers on a Texas Instruments DM310 (http://www.ti.com/dm310), Intel xScale or Samsungs S3C2440
http://www.samsung.com/Products/Semiconductor/News/SystemLSI/SystemLSI_20030721_0000007669.htm


I just figured if a little french company can make Simple Profile 640x480 resolution DivX work in the pocket, that someone should be able to make a box that playsback 100% of all the illegal movies to download on the internet..


So DivX cares about DivX decoder chips, but is there also DivX encoding chips comming? So the set-top-box comming for christmas would be an Open DivX Tivo with network/internet features and OS that makes VOD, p2p and meaningfull Live Entertainment possible?

The Archos AV340 with Texas Instruments DSC25 encodes DivX at 320x240 at 25 frames per second. And TI is said to have newer faster processors. Maybe even 352x288 resolution 1-pass real-time encoding would be acceptable?

Soulhunter
26th July 2003, 21:22
@zag2me
"Yes you can split the movie up, but who wants to watch a movie in 3 seperate parts?"
- Are the VOB's on a DVD not splittet...? But they play fine without that you notice this... So why is it not possible with MPEG4 ??? Because the chips have not enough power to play it this way ? Thats what I talked about...! MORE CHIP-POWER (with higher costs for such a player...)
Would be nice !!! ;)

@Charbax2
"So, why can't someone make a perfect set-top-box..."
- Buy an small Desktop-PC with DVD-ROM, TV-Out/VGA-converter 5.1Soundcard etc. Now place it like a VCR/Amp in your A/V-Rack...! Easy Hmm? :D


Bye

Doom9
20th November 2003, 22:36
@darrius: with the imminent release of the elta 8883 MP4, I think the subject of a super certification should be on the table again...

SeeMoreDigital
21st November 2003, 00:21
Agreed!

In fact I've just made a heartfelt plea, in relation to the subject of DivX and the MP4 container here: -

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&postid=401819#post401819

Cheers

Doom9
21st November 2003, 08:45
I think MP4 still lacks the killer application: an editing application like VirtualDub. Muxing with DShow (3ivx) or mp4UI isn't everybody's bag, and cutting and joining is important. Maybe NeroDigital will come with something, but if not, there's still the lack of such a tool that hampers the format's progress. I do think the format should be supported in hardware, but I can see the evil circle why companies won't put money into it (not enough tools -> not enough people using it, not enough people using it -> tools won't be made -> etc).

LigH
21st November 2003, 09:34
Because it is soooo long ago that the last VirtualDubMod version was released (a quarter year now), and not much could be heard about any plans or success, I woudn't be surprised if such activities took that time... :sly:

bond
21st November 2003, 09:46
Originally posted by Doom9
@darrius: with the imminent release of the elta 8883 MP4, I think the subject of a super certification should be on the table again...woaw it seems this player fully supports advanced simple profile :)

but i dont find anything on their hp about the mp4 container?

unixfs
21st November 2003, 11:06
Originally posted by Darrius "Junto" Thompson
Great questions. Hopefully I can answer them all adequately.


One good example of some of this oversite is the MP4 file format. It sounds great and could be great. Try implementing it in hardware :) So as many of you know it is based off of QT. The MP4 file format keeps all of it's important timing data in one location\chunk, etc.. at the beginning of a file and must be indexed to achieve proper audio\video\data synch. A movie a few megs could have a couple hundered kbytes of index date. AVI although old, has simple interleaving which does not require this. So imagine having a 2 hour movie in the MP4 file format and trying to support it in a DVD\DivX type of player. What happens is for proper synch you have to keep all this index data stored in memory during playback PLUS have enough memory to handle playback (video data). The index data alone can be > 8MB and then you add in what is needed for video playback, menus, etc.. and you have a device that is going to be expensive to build because of a large memory requirement. So for the near future there is a cost problem of even building consumer devices at reasonable costs that support everything that is required for the mp4 standard. Many seem to be moving very slow and not necessarrilly thinking of the big picture which includes cost of implementation not including licensing cost and not also thinking about what users need\want at a minimum. Sorry such a long description I just wanted to list *one* example of how complex this has been and how it is not just a basic technology issue we have to try and overcome. This is just ONE example. Damn this has been tiring.... yet fun.

Darrius Thompson
Director R&D DivX

Hi,
since mpeg4-in-mpeg2 is already standardized (13818-1 appendix 7), why not using it?
I'm thinking of mpeg4 in vob, which is already well established and well working as a container, right? and it doesn't need an index :)

Why using a complex format as Mov when a standalone is supposed to play only audio, video and menus?
Why not reusing all the muxing/authoring code that is working so well for mpeg2 dvds?

Thanks.

SeeMoreDigital
21st November 2003, 12:05
Originally posted by unixfs
Hi,
since mpeg4-in-mpeg2 is already standardized (13818-1 appendix 7), why not using it?
I'm thinking of mpeg4 in vob, which is already well established and well working as a container, right? and it doesn't need an index :)

Why using a complex format as Mov when a standalone is supposed to play only audio, video and menus?
Why not reusing all the muxing/authoring code that is working so well for mpeg2 dvds?

Thanks. This very topic was discussed, just a few weeks ago here: -

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=64012&perpage=20&pagenumber=1

Although Darrius talks about the probability of a 8MB index file being created, when generating a 2 hour long movie encode in an MP4 container. It has not put people off from using it!

I've generated quite a few 'long movie encodes' this way. And I can't say that I've experienced any major problems!

Cheers

bond
21st November 2003, 12:11
Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
Although Darrius talks about the probability of a 8MB index file being created, when generating a 2 hour long movie encode in an MP4 container. It has not put people off from using it!in contrary i noticed that mp4 files are much smaller than the source avis!

Doom9
21st November 2003, 12:42
@LigH: did you find anything in the CVS? I didn't bother looking through all trees, but where I looked, the last changes involved merging with the latest vdub version.. there are separate directories for ogm and matroska but nothing for mp4. That's the great thing about open source projects with CVS access.. you're always in the loop if you just bother to check the source.

SeeMoreDigital
21st November 2003, 12:50
Originally posted by bond
in contrary i noticed that mp4 files are much smaller than the source avis! Personally, I don't know enough about the microscopic inner workings of any codec and container, to be of much help!

So if what you say is correct. What's Darrius going on about!

And even if an 8MB buffer chip is required, it's not like it's gonna break the bank anyway now.

As memory of this size seems to be appearing in all manner of electronic devices. Such as cheap graphics cards, digital cameras, CD/DVD burners and even hard drives!

Cheers

LigH
21st November 2003, 14:16
Originally posted by Doom9
@LigH: did you find anything in the CVS?

I'm not familiar with CVS. I don't have much experience with that technology (although I am a software developer - but not C{++}, therefore I don't read sources often). So I just hope that the VirtualDubMod developers will once tell us about their efforts (or even a new executable release on SourceForge).

Starcraftfreak
21st November 2003, 22:08
Originally posted by Doom9
@cruncher: I believe you're barking up the wrong tree here. DivX certified means just that.. it doesn't mean "supporting MPEG-4 level xyz profile abc". It's their right to certify hardware that supports their implementation. Right now I don't know how the certification works so I rather no comment on it, yet they don't claim that they're certifying any generic MPEG-4 compatibility.

To my knowledge, the MPEG-4 standard does not contain any delivery mechanisms. For DVD you have the DVD forum which has defined how a DVD should look like and how it should be played. In order to put a DVD logo on your DVD player, your player must adhere to a standard that goes way beyond an MPEG-2 level and profile. Just to give you an example: There's different audio formats (MP2, PCM, AC3, DTS), there's the definition of the VOB files, their size and how they are to be put on a disc, there's the filesystem of the disc, etc. etc. Now as I said I might be mistaken on this but I haven't found any similar standard for MPEG-4 delivery on CD/DVD media. Thus, everybody is cooking his own soup so to speak. Right now there's chaos when it comes to storing MPEG-4 video. Take XviD as an example. It pretty much implements MPEG-4 Advanced Simple Profile. But that's just the video part. Now there are people storing it together with AC3 or MP3 sound in an AVI container, there's the OGM crowd that can additionally use Ogg Vorbis audio and put this in an OGM container where we still don't know if it will be thrown overboard by the xiph.org people, then there's Matroska where the specs are firm but the implementations aren't complete yet. And to make this even better, there's a couple of subtitle formats and no definition how you should put a container on a disc. There's the standard ISO format, then there's XCD, but you could also use UDF. Bottom line, what ends up on your CDs or DVDs is pretty chaotic. The industry has failed to see the importance of creating such a standard and DXNs certification program seems to be the first real effort in that area. Of course it would be preferable to have a standard backed by the MPEG4IF but if that doesn't exist what can you do?

BTW, there are some reasons why MP4 and AAC haven't taken off. One is licensing, another is the lack of tools and yet another is that MP4 isn't a format designed for editing. But history has shown us that people creating their own videos need a lot of editing facilities so they won't use a format that's basically a dead end and needs to be demuxed first when you want to perform any editing. I also believe that in the end the AAC only clause has to be dropped because at least when it comes to standalones it makes no sense. Any DVD playing standalone must be capable of handling AC3, and most devices also do MP3, plus there is a lot of existing content that does not use AAC.
So this means that by now there is no solution where we can be sure that it works on a hardware player. Like I make an ISO CD with AVI files that have DivX5 video and MP3 audio, it doesn't work on those players?
I think the hardware players should end up as devices that are similiar to PCs where you can install your own DirectShow filters. On Windows it works pretty good.
But standardized formats that work everywhere would be even better.

Doom9
21st November 2003, 23:54
So this means that by now there is no solution where we can be sure that it works on a hardware player.No, if you select a hardware profile in the DivX5 configuration, your output will be playable on any certified player. But if you don't use those profiles all bets are off. With hardware improving (like the new elta player), you can safely turn on all the available MPEG-4 ASP features, but you don't have any guarantees by the manufacturer or DXN that it will always work.. that's what the certification is for. In time, devices will become powerful enough to handle most content but they'll never be as versatile as a pc, because then they would be a regular PC (with all the problems that involves... just compare the number of times you had to reboot your DVD player and your PC).

Stux
22nd November 2003, 01:06
Originally posted by Starcraftfreak
yet another is that MP4 isn't a format designed for editing

I'm sorry, I have to comment on this.

This is just wrong.

The MP4 format is most certainly designed for editing! It supports multiple track references, and single frame editing.

You can copy any sample (be it audio/video/whatever) from any referenced media and place it in any track at any point at any speed and duration, as many times as you want. No matter what the intra/inter prediction requirements of the sample are.

True there are very few editing tools at this time, and even fewer implementations which support this full power, but that does not mean the MP4 format was not designed for editing. The truth is, the reason the MP4 format was used instead of more traditional muxed stream formats is because of its potential editability!

The MP4 format is also designed for delivery and streaming, but its primary focus is editability.

SeeMoreDigital
22nd November 2003, 02:23
Well, it would seem quite a lot of interesting things are happening, or are about to happen, with regard Mpeg4 video and the MP4 container!

All the new positive information posted in the last couple of days (since Doom9 resurrected this thread) is very refreshing!

However, with everybody seemingly pulling the format in different directions, it's no wonder everything to do with Mpeg4 happens painfully slowly.

Wouldn't it be great if a few companies could get together and grab Mpeg4 by the balls and create some decent encoding, editing, and playback packages!

Starcraftfreak
22nd November 2003, 10:59
Originally posted by Doom9
No, if you select a hardware profile in the DivX5 configuration, your output will be playable on any certified player. But if you don't use those profiles all bets are off. With hardware improving (like the new elta player), you can safely turn on all the available MPEG-4 ASP features, but you don't have any guarantees by the manufacturer or DXN that it will always work.. that's what the certification is for. In time, devices will become powerful enough to handle most content but they'll never be as versatile as a pc, because then they would be a regular PC (with all the problems that involves... just compare the number of times you had to reboot your DVD player and your PC).
I know those profiles (I use Home Theater most of the time). But I worry about supported container formats. Most firms don't provide info on supported container formats. I guess AVI with DivX5 (Home Theater profile) and MP3 CBR audio is a quite save format. I burned some ISO CDs with AVI files on them, which have exactly these formats.
But recently I learned about Ogg Vorbis and it's benefits over MP3 (better quality on lower bitrates), so I'd like to use Ogg Vorbis audio. I guess Ogg Vorbis is not so save when it comes to compatibility. I also read your standardized test thread. I welcome such actions as I am looking forward to buy a really good standalone DVD Player/Recorder.

Doom9
22nd November 2003, 13:39
the DivX certification process is actually described here somewhere (or at divx.com).. if I recall correctly, they test AVI with VBR/CBR MP3 and AC3, but no alternative containers. I doubt DXN would ever create a certification for OGM or Matroska.. your only chance is MP4 if it can achieve widespread use (but not before that.. you've seen how things work with the whole certification thing). But if any player manufacturer supports alternative containers, you can be sure that they'll properly advertise the fact because they can use it to differentiate their product from others. For instance, I know that elta still means to support OGM and subtitles, even for their existing players. Other manufacturers like KISS also have a certain interest in alternative containers... but we'll see how that turns out.

Starcraftfreak
22nd November 2003, 20:31
You are right, the info on their certification program is here: http://www.divx.com/divxcertified/
BTW, there is also info on the maximum peak rates (which you didn't know). But it doesn't say anything about AC3 audio. It says that the DivX certification requires CBR/VBR MP3 audio with DivX video.

ChristianHJW
5th December 2003, 13:18
Originally posted by LigH Because it is soooo long ago that the last VirtualDubMod version was released (a quarter year now), and not much could be heard about any plans or success, I woudn't be surprised if such activities took that time... :sly:

According to Cyrius, he wont do it. Main reason for this is that MP4, very much like native matroska files, can be VFR also, and you wont normally know that from looking at the headers.

VirtualdubMod, as you all know, is heavily based on Virtualdub and thus can only handle CFR files. Most matroska files today are done in our VfW compatibility mode, and are thus CFR also, thats why they can be handled, same is of course valid for OGM.

Supporting MP4 correctly on VdubMod, same as MKV native files, is simply impossible, thats why Cyrius probably decided to stay away from that. However, he started about one year ago on a complete new app, which is timestamp based and VFR capable, but due to the many changes Avery was doing for Virtualdub he was more than busy with keeping VdubMod up-to-date with those, so the new tool didnt move forward. He designed a nice plugin structure for it already, allowing MP4 plugins as well as native MKV plugins for possible output formats ;) ....

ChristianHJW
5th December 2003, 13:23
Originally posted by Doom9 I doubt DXN would ever create a certification for OGM or Matroska.. .. LOL ! You bet they wouldnt ;) .... but this is also not necessary, because we will have our own 'certification' program, called 'matroska hardware profiles' .
For instance, I know that elta still means to support OGM and subtitles, even for their existing players. Other manufacturers like KISS also have a certain interest in alternative containers... but we'll see how that turns out. ... the company we are working with has received the sources for both the new matroska C playback library and the MPC SV7 decoder sources, but i recently get no feedback from them at all, very unfortunately. They promised to send a test unit with an alpha MPC SV7 support my way a couple of weeks ago, but i havent received one yet.
It seems they are very very busy fixing existing bugs in their admittedly extremely powerful and feature rich units, so they dont have the necessary development manpower to implement matroska support.

What you all have to understand in this respect, are the following considerations :

1. matroska container, as of today, is mainly used to combine either RealVideo9 or XviD/DivX with new audio compression formats like AAC or Vorbis. There are certainly also a lot of file using AC3, but i dont think there are many with MP3 audio. Now, all current hardware units dont have th necessary processing power to decode a 720 * xxx MPEG4 ASP video and a Vorbis or AAC audio track, at least this is valid for the SIGMA EM 8500 and 8550 chips. So there is no big point for them to support matroska now, as only XviD/DivX + AC3 files could be played, or maybe even Xvid/DivX + MPC SV7.5 ( soon ), but those are not enough to justify the investment to have a developer implementing matroska support, and to maintain the code, and the latter are not even existing yet.
However, with the next generation of EM 8605 or 8615 based units, things will change, especially because above mentioned manufacturer seems to have found a unique way to add even more processing power in a very effective way. This will make

- RV9 + AAC
- XviD + HE-AAC ( maybe even 5.1 HE-AAC )
- RV9/XviD + 5.1 Vorbis

decoding with 30 fps possible, and with decent resolutions, and then the support for matroska will be of a much bigger interest to them then this is the case now !


2. RealVideo 9 looks great, but requires a lot more decoding power than MPEG4 ASP. However, matroska users seem to love RV9, and this is even more valid for MKV files appearing more and more on p2p, and with higher availabilities ( = spread ).
This is a clear trend that can be seen, so for a hardware manufacturer wanting to support matroska more or less completely its almost a necessity to have a close look at RV9 also, porting the programming effort ( although its obviously well possible ) to support matroska including RV9 onto a completely different level.

3. The biggest advantage of matroska compared to other containers, IMHO, is its very good subtitle support, especially for different text subtitles. While SRT is supported fine already on most better MPEG4 standalone player, when loaded from external files, its becoming very clear that supporting SSA/ASS is a big nono, again because of processing power and library size contraints.
I am stating this for the first time publically now, but one of the major interest factors in matroska from the side of the hardware manufacturers, is obviously that there is a good way to display USF subs inside matroska without the need to have a XML library in the firmware, and the fact that USF will support most of the SSA features that are being used today ( not all ), so that a transmuxing tool for AVIs with external SSA subs into a single MKV file with USF subs is well possible, and will open a new potential user circle for them, making it worthwhile to invest the money for matroska support :) ...

SeeMoreDigital
5th December 2003, 14:01
I see what the problem is now!

I was under the misapprehension that all DVD/Mpeg4 standalones could recognise the MP4 container.

It was not until earlier this week that I discovered, this not to be the case!

How very short sighted of player manufacturers not to include this option. Especially Sigma, who alone with Kiss, got the ball rolling in the first place. And who strangely include MP4 container compliance with their Xcard!

Cheers

ChristianHJW
5th December 2003, 14:31
Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital How very short sighted of player manufacturers not to include this option. Especially Sigma, who alone with Kiss, got the ball rolling in the first place. And who strangely include MP4 container compliance with their Xcard!

You have to understand that

- there is no sense in supporting MP4 for them currently, as there are hardly any working and spec compliant MP4 files out in the wild. This may change soon, because of
* 3ivX MP4 muxer
* Nero Digital
* new AAC audio encoders

- MP4 support makes only sense if AAC audio is supported also as its the standard audio compresison format in MP4 container, and as stated many many many times before, most current decoder chips are not capable of decoding a decent resolution MPEG4 ASP video in combination with an AAC audio stream !!

- your X-card doesnt know shit what a container is, its the driver software coming with it that does the demuxing of the raw video MPEG4 ES stream and passing it to the decoder card, all the card itself is doing is decoding the video frames, thats all

Clearer now ?

bond
5th December 2003, 14:44
Originally posted by ChristianHJW
- there is no sense in supporting MP4 for them currently, as there are hardly any working and spec compliant MP4 files out in the wild.the only non spec compliant mp4 files i can think of, which could maybe be out there in a remarkable number, are the ones created from divx5, but this shouldnt be a big problem for the hardware manufacturers as they already support the divx5 hacks

- MP4 support makes only sense if AAC audio is supported also as its the standard audio compresison format in MP4 containermp3 is also possible in mp4 and as good as all hardware players support mp3 decoding already :D

and as stated many many many times before, most current decoder chips are not capable of decoding a decent resolution MPEG4 ASP video in combination with an AAC audio stream !!before i believe you this you will have to show me a hardware dvd/divx player that supports aac decoding already ;)
i dont think that aac decoding needs more power than wma, ac3 or mp3, which is already possible, for example

and the new mediatek is already very strong, maybe some old chips wouldnt handle that, but they wont handle "decent resolution mpeg-4 asp" anyways

SeeMoreDigital
5th December 2003, 14:50
Originally posted by ChristianHJW
You have to understand that

- there is no sense in supporting MP4 for them currently, as there are hardly any working and spec compliant MP4 files out in the wild. This may change soon, because of
* 3ivX MP4 muxer
* Nero Digital
* new AAC audio encoders

- MP4 support makes only sense if AAC audio is supported also as its the standard audio compresison format in MP4 container, and as stated many many many times before, [b]most current decoder chips are not capable of decoding a decent resolution MPEG4 ASP video in combination with an AAC audio stream !! Some of what you have said may be true, but this can be seen as an... "chicken and egg" situation!

If hardware players supported the MP4 container from the start. Who knows, we may have had applications able to create such files months ago.

This is what confused me. I just assummed that all standalones supported the MP4 container (like my Xcard) and as a result kept submitting posts on the forum asking "where are all the MP4 container making applications"!

As for Mpeg4 ASP. Great, it's finally here!

However I've generated many 720x480/576 anamorphic Mpeg4/AAC MP4 container encodes and all are perfectly watchable via my Xcard even without ASP!

Cheers

EDIT: Originally posted by ChristianHJW
your X-card doesnt know shit what a container is, its the driver software coming with it that does the demuxing of the raw video MPEG4 ES stream and passing it to the decoder card, all the card itself is doing is decoding the video frames, thats all

Clearer now ? No. The card decodes both the video and audio streams. I know this for a fact as I can remove the sound card from my PC and the AAC audio still can be heard!

And I've just done it again. TO CONFIRM!

Zhnujm
5th December 2003, 15:39
Originally posted by ChristianHJW

- your X-card doesnt know shit what a container is, its the driver software coming with it that does the demuxing of the raw video MPEG4 ES stream and passing it to the decoder card, all the card itself is doing is decoding the video frames, thats all

Clearer now ?

btw, it seems to me that the EM8485 can decode AAC in hardware...

ChristianHJW
5th December 2003, 16:24
Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital As I can remove the soundcard from my PC and still obtain AAC audio! ... so you have your speakers connected to the X-card instead of your soundcard ? Or do you have 2 pairs of speakers ? or will sound come from the TV speakers in this case ?

SeeMoreDigital
5th December 2003, 16:27
Originally posted by ChristianHJW
... so you have your speakers connected to the X-card instead of your soundcard ? Or do you have 2 pairs of speakers ? or will sound come from the TV speakers in this case ? I don't use the sound card at all. All the audio comes from the Xcard's digital output which is connected to my DSS amp!

Cheers

ChristianHJW
5th December 2003, 16:30
Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital Some of what you have said may be true, but this can be seen as an... "chicken and egg" situation!
I was not validating the present situation, nor trying to give any kind of recommendations to hardware players not to support MP4, i was just reporting what i was told from one of them why they arent supporting it officially in their units.

ChristianHJW
5th December 2003, 16:35
Originally posted by Zhnujm btw, it seems to me that the EM8485 can decode AAC in hardware... ... i admittedly had no idea it has an AAC decoder built in, but still i am pretty convinced the MP4 parsing is done by the software driver, and then the raw MPEG4 video and AAC audio blocks are passed to the decoder chips .... if i was the engineer designing the unit, thats how i had done it, as its much much simpler and easier to update then with parsing the MP4 or AVIs in hardware ;) ...

SeeMoreDigital
5th December 2003, 16:41
Originally posted by ChristianHJW
I was not validating the present situation, nor trying to give any kind of recommendations to hardware players not to support MP4, i was just reporting what i was told from one of them why they arent supporting it officially in their units. Personally, I can't see any logical reason why all the DVD/Mpeg4 standalone player manufacturers are not supporting the MP4 container, right now.

And as the MP4 container can do pretty much everything that the VOB container can do (and more). I think it's fair to say we've lost at least a years worth of developement with regard to MP4 applications!

Not having MP4 container in every stanalone, may have even helped you guys out!

Cheers

ChristianHJW
5th December 2003, 16:50
Originally posted by bond the only non spec compliant mp4 files i can think of, which could maybe be out there in a remarkable number, are the ones created from divx5, but this shouldnt be a big problem for the hardware manufacturers as they already support the divx5 hacks ... lol !! I didnt say that most MP4 files existing are not spec compliant, i said that there are simply not enough spec compliant MP4 files out there for the manufacturers to justify MP4 support ;) .....
mp3 is also possible in mp4 and as good as all hardware players support mp3 decoding already :D ... yes, MP3 is possible according to MPEG4 specs, but everybody will use AVI for MPEG4 + MP3, so whats the point in doing that :D ? And do you see any MP4 files out in the wild, containing DivX + MP3 ? I dont ....
before i believe you this you will have to show me a hardware dvd/divx player that supports aac decoding already ;) .. it was done according to my contacts, and it works fine thanks to libfaad2, but they dont add it ( yet ) because the demand is not there, and licensing costs are not trivial ( although acceptable ).
i dont think that aac decoding needs more power than wma, ac3 or mp3, which is already possible, for example .. it does, again according to my contacts. He told me clearly that MPEG4 at decent resolutions, plus LC-AAC is not possible at least in the EM 85xx chips .... of course, i have no idea about the ESS or Mediatek chipsets.
and the new mediatek is already very strong, maybe some old chips wouldnt handle that, but they wont handle "decent resolution mpeg-4 asp" anyways ... yeah, i hope AAC audio decoding and MP4 parsing will be offered soon, because if players cant support that, how can we even think they might be able to handle matroska's most used features like RV9 + Vorbis ever ....

SeeMoreDigital
5th December 2003, 17:08
Well you can't blame the first Mpeg4 chipset manufacturer (Sigma) for not including MP4 capability!

So who is to blame. You could argue that Kiss were at fault. Maybe if they had included it with their first standalones, other manufacturers would have followed suit.

So, if this is the case. What frightened them away from MP4. Surely not AAC licensing!

Cheers

EDIT: Like I said before. It's a chicken and egg situation!

bond
5th December 2003, 17:24
SeeMoreDigital:
Originally posted by ChristianHJW
I didnt say that most MP4 files existing are not spec compliant, i said that there are simply not enough spec compliant MP4 files out there for the manufacturers to justify MP4 support
...
the demand is not there, and licensing costs are not trivial ( although acceptable ).these are important reasons of course and the reasons why it isnt implemented till now


.. it does, again according to my contacts. He told me clearly that MPEG4 at decent resolutions, plus LC-AAC is not possible at least in the EM 85xx chips .... of course, i have no idea about the ESS or Mediatek chipsets.tell them their player is outdated :D

... yeah, i hope AAC audio decoding and MP4 parsing will be offered soon, because if players cant support that, how can we even think they might be able to handle matroska's most used features like RV9 + Vorbis ever ....lets hope so :)
i think we are atm only at the beginning of a new hardware player generation...

SeeMoreDigital
5th December 2003, 17:40
Originally posted by ChristianHJW
... it does, again according to my contacts. He told me clearly that MPEG4 at decent resolutions, plus LC-AAC is not possible at least in the EM 85xx chips .... of course, i have no idea about the ESS or Mediatek chipsets... My experience is totally different!

I've generated 2pass VBR 720x576 encodes and 1pass CBR at up to 6000kbps with LC-AAC audio at 64kbps and above.

All play flawlessly!

So it begs the question. How high does your contact want to go with 'decent resolutions???

Cheers

SimonSez07
28th September 2004, 21:24
what player are you using to play these full-res video + lc-aac files? i have been encoding lately to divx5 + (nero) aac in (3ivx) mp4 container and i am not able to find any hardware players that will play these movies. i use b-frames (no gmc or qpel) and sometimes lc or he aac audio. is there a player that will play this because i would buy it. (also interested in ogg vorbis audio playback (in ogm) and 2ch ac3 mixed into avi)

SeeMoreDigital
28th September 2004, 23:29
Hi

I use a Sigma Xcard (as stated in my sig), it's a PCI card that can be installed into a PC, which is able to decode Mpeg4 with AAC audio in MP4, totally in hardware.

Admittedly it's not a stand-alone player. Currently the only stand-alone players that are known to spin Mpeg4 in MP4 are ones fitted with certain types of ESS chip-sets. However, they can't decode AAC audio (at the moment only MP3.

There are forum members with "tricked-up" Xboxes that can also play Mpeg4/AAC in MP4...


Cheers

SimonSez07
29th September 2004, 00:18
thanks for the info. i have heard about using an xbox like you mentioned. ive been trying to get xbox media center to work on my brothers chipped xbox for some time now but no luck. anyways there are xbox forums for such things. but its good to know that some people have successfully played mp4 with aac on it.

thanks

walker373
4th February 2005, 06:38
I would just like to thank each and every one of you for posting on this thread, i have learnt so much so fast :)

I'm new to hardware players and am planning to purchase one for my parents (i'll be providing the content)

It's good to find a place to get the background and possible issues and a look at the future from those in the know.

Keep it up guys and good luck in your endevours

chuna
8th February 2005, 05:30
There is an interesting thread on DivX here: http://forums.eyo.com.au/showthread.php?t=74527

Would like to get some comments from Darrius "Junto" Thompson on the whole process and why some players get certification but yet are not fully compliant with the DivX certification.

I also got an answer from one of the manufacturers in China that most MPEG 4 players dont have enough memory for the DivX certification and at the same time also apply all the DVD playback specs as defined by the DVD forum. So usually what they do is get the DivX certification and then use the DVD playback firmware rather than the DivX certified firmware as bigger companies cant afford not to follow the DVD playback specs due to their affiliation with the DVD forum. This probably explains why in the thread I posted above where some of the DivX certified players dont play the full DivX specs.

Hopefully we can get clarification from the folks at DivX.

LordRPI
9th February 2005, 07:42
Actually, chuna, all DivX Certified players do meet our requirements. It was before my time at DivX when this was decided, but manufacturers insisted that we would use one subtitle format which we developed but wasn't out in the open. So .sub and .srt subtitles are not required for certification.

You can find out more about the subtitles here: http://labs.divx.com/archives/000051.html


Sorry for any confusion. If you would like me to get you in touch with anybody at DivX, let me know and I'll point you to the right person.

chuna
9th February 2005, 09:45
Originally posted by LordRPI
Actually, chuna, all DivX Certified players do meet our requirements. It was before my time at DivX when this was decided, but manufacturers insisted that we would use one subtitle format which we developed but wasn't out in the open. So .sub and .srt subtitles are not required for certification.

You can find out more about the subtitles here: http://labs.divx.com/archives/000051.html


Sorry for any confusion. If you would like me to get you in touch with anybody at DivX, let me know and I'll point you to the right person.

Lord RPI then you have a lot of checking to do as there are a few that are "DivX certified" which do not meet your requirements thats currently shipping.

LordRPI
9th February 2005, 17:51
If you can enlighten me to a few, that would be great.

chuna
11th February 2005, 02:52
Lord RPI,

These 2 models: The LG DF8900P and the Pioneer DV-676A, why are they not listed on your web site as DivX certified but yet the product claims to be? And these 2 products have been out for a while.