Am I going nuts?

[crahak]

It seems to me like everybody (but me) are all going crazy over all those new codecs and containers :confused: I mean especially the AAC/HE AAC codecs and the MP4 and matroska containers.

I still use good old avi container, along with either ac3 or mp3 sound and I'm still quite happy with it. (I use both divx 5.11b2 and xvid keopi) Sound wise, (HE) AAC looks kind of nice, but you need a sound card with analog outputs (AAC isn't decoded by home theater receiver over spdif... :( ) so at least, the AAC 5.1 is out of the question of lots of people. Container wise, I encode lots of stuff in any aspect ratio (I even encode anamorphic and set aspect ratio back with zoomplayer) including hdtv captures and I still see nothing wrong with the avi container. Widely supported and mainly, the movie plays fine when you come to watch it :) Any big reasons to switch over to mp4 or matroska containers?

It feels like I'm gonna be the last guy left on earth that sticks to the "good old" avi with mp3/ac3 type of rips... What am I missing???

[Justinus]

I'm confused about your info. You said AAC can't be decoded by home theatre receiver and you used Zoom Player to play back your movies. So, which hardware you're using to play back? Stand alone player or PC?

If you intend to play your movies on stand alone players, better use DVD-Video, DivX or XviD. If PC, you can use any format.

About Matroska, its advantage is to allow easier editing process. Also, it's more flexible to join between non-standard formats together in a way you like. I use DivX + AAC in my Matroska movie :)

[DevilsChild]

I really like using Ogg Vorbis to maximize the video bitrate. Surprised more people don't use it.

[crahak]

I said AAC can't be decoded by home theater over spdif (like DD or DTS do). AAC has to be decoded by PC. For 2 channel AAC, no biggie, but for 5.1 channel, you need a sound card with 6 analog outs.

I use my HTPC to play back everything. (I also have a set top DVD player but I don't use it much...)

As for ogg vorbis (or ogm format) it's one of the things I like to avoid, but again, that's personnal preference. As for maximizing video... I pretty much never go below 192kbps for sound (very rareky 160), and video wise, I'd rather add CDs than settle for lower quality.

[KpeX]

If you use high audio bitrates, then yes, there's not much reason to be excited about new audio formats, MP3 is quite efficient above 160k. However movie soundtracks compress quite well, and the lower bitrate you can use for audio and still have high quality is the more quality you can put into video. The point is with new codecs you don't have to sacrifice quality to use low audio bitrates.

I have seen several recent home theater receivers that can decode AAC. However I haven't heard of how well it works and I don't know of any way of passing AAC over s/pdif. Usually one of the main reason for using new container formats is to correctly support new codecs.

AVI doesn't correctly support MPEG-4, it is a hack to put MPEG-4 into AVI, as is putting VBR MP3 into AVI. Ironically new formats (OGM, MKV) use the same hack, not because they must, but because correct storage has not been implemented yet. There is much discussion on this subject around the forum. However with the new 3ivx muxer native MP4 files can be made in the MP4 container. To me it's easier to have a player automatically resize to the exact aspect ratio rather than setting it manually.

There are still plenty of people using MP3 + AVI, but methods are old and well known, so not much discussion is needed.

Many of us on this forum are new format geeks and love testing new features and techniques and formats :D.

[crahak]

That pretty much covers everything :) It's very true that avi/(mp3/ac3) doesn't need to be discussed much anymore.

Thanks :)

[Stux]

Another reason to use MP4 is that it should have the lowest overhead of any of the new formats (quite substantially in our tests)

Well muxed MP4 is more efficient than AVI, MKV or OGM

MOV has a lower overhead still (header compression), but that's beside the point :)

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by Stux
Another reason to use MP4 is that it should have the lowest overhead of any of the new formats (quite substantially in our tests)

Well muxed MP4 is more efficient than AVI, MKV or OGM

MOV has a lower overhead still (header compression), but that's beside the point :)

It all sounds good. But I had nothing but troubles using graphedit and your muxing filter to put MPEG4 content in MP4. It actually was muxing at a speed less than 1:1. In other words it took longer to mux than it did to play. And then the filter seemed to lock at the end and never terminate. :| Not to mention all the ffmpeg playback weirdness. ;)

Besides the abillity to propperly support VBR audio there are other reasons to use formats other than AVI. For those of us that rip and encode anime subtitles are a must. Dubs are awfull. When using AVI as your destination the only way to reliably use subtitles is to store them as a separate file or burn them in the video. So if you loose or misplace that file then all you have is a movie in a language you can't fully understand and no subtitles. Where as OGM to an extent and Matroska even more support the subs being muxed in the file itself along with chapter information etc. Matroska goes further by allowing the muxing of covers and liner notes as well.

Oh and Kpex. Matroska does not use the hack. It is a hack against the limitations of VFW. Strictly speaking AVI written by directshow should be able to support propper MPEG4 streams. It just could not support things like VFR that MP4, Matroska, and even ASF can do.

[Stux]

Originally posted by Neo Neko
And then the filter seemed to lock at the end and never terminate. :| Not to mention all the ffmpeg playback weirdness. ;)

Are you sure it locked? There is a large pause at the end of muxing as the filter "optimizes" the mp4 bitstream. GraphEdit appears to lock during this stage. It should be approximately equal to the time to read/write the file again.

Regarding the slow muxing speed, we'll be looking into this

Regarding ffmpeg weirdness, I assume you mean ffdshow, I don't think ffdshow is prepared to properly decode all the MP4 cases, and needs to be updated

[shitowax]

There is a common mistake performed especially when muxing mp3 with our mp4 muxer : don't forget to check and uncheck the "use clock" item in the "Graph" menu (by default it's unchecked, but graphedit will use it when you press the "run" button ... bug in GraphEdit ;)).
When you remux .mp3 file using the mpeg-1 splitter, it will use the playback speed (yes 1X !!!) by default if you don't use this small hack ... Our muxer is REALLY fast, its speed is only limited by HDD access or by other filters ... ;)

I would be interested by details about "all the ffmpeg playback weirdness" ...

Originally posted by Neo Neko
It all sounds good. But I had nothing but troubles using graphedit and your muxing filter to put MPEG4 content in MP4. It actually was muxing at a speed less than 1:1. In other words it took longer to mux than it did to play. And then the filter seemed to lock at the end and never terminate. :| Not to mention all the ffmpeg playback weirdness. ;)

Besides the abillity to propperly support VBR audio there are other reasons to use formats other than AVI. For those of us that rip and encode anime subtitles are a must. Dubs are awfull. When using AVI as your destination the only way to reliably use subtitles is to store them as a separate file or burn them in the video. So if you loose or misplace that file then all you have is a movie in a language you can't fully understand and no subtitles. Where as OGM to an extent and Matroska even more support the subs being muxed in the file itself along with chapter information etc. Matroska goes further by allowing the muxing of covers and liner notes as well.

Oh and Kpex. Matroska does not use the hack. It is a hack against the limitations of VFW. Strictly speaking AVI written by directshow should be able to support propper MPEG4 streams. It just could not support things like VFR that MP4, Matroska, and even ASF can do.

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by Stux
Are you sure it locked? There is a large pause at the end of muxing as the filter "optimizes" the mp4 bitstream. GraphEdit appears to lock during this stage. It should be approximately equal to the time to read/write the file again.

Hmmmmmm. Well that is good to know. So does 2 hours sound about right for a 4min clip? I stopped the process at that point. It was also only on the one file so it does not count as a comprehensive test.

Originally posted by Stux
Regarding the slow muxing speed, we'll be looking into this

That would be most excelent. ;)

Originally posted by Stux
Regarding ffmpeg weirdness, I assume you mean ffdshow, I don't think ffdshow is prepared to properly decode all the MP4 cases, and needs to be updated

Nope. I'd say ffdshow if I meant ffdshow. I am talking honest to god straight ffmpeg. Seeing as 3 out of 4 of my active boxes run Linux/BSD that gives me lots of systems that are perfect for ffmpeg and it's native MP4 output. Though ffmpeg puts things in MP4 I am not sure are allowed. Like AC3 for instance??

[shitowax]

I just looked at ffmpeg's current cvs, I doubt they are able to put correctly AC3 into .mp4 (because there is currently no way):

{ CODEC_ID_AC3, MKTAG('m', 's', 0x20, 0x00) }, /* Dolby AC-3 */
This is the the usual way, Apple stores .wav into .mov : they use "ms" + the wave tag, so 0x2000 for AC3 and 0x0055 for mp3 ...

Nothing that ISO compliant. I guess there is a weakness in their frontend because in theorie, they harcode mp4v video and AAC audio for .mp4 ...

The demux part don't support VFR as well, so, it seems totally understandable that they cannot decode our stream correctly ...

Originally posted by Neo Neko
I am talking honest to god straight ffmpeg. Seeing as 3 out of 4 of my active boxes run Linux/BSD that gives me lots of systems that are perfect for ffmpeg and it's native MP4 output. Though ffmpeg puts things in MP4 I am not sure are allowed. Like AC3 for instance??

[KpeX]

@Neo

I was just referring to the fact that AFAIK there is still no way to make 'native' MPEG-4 Matroska files.

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by Stux Well muxed MP4 is more efficient than AVI, MKV or OGM .... i'd be interested to see numbers here, cant be much IMHO :) .
When doing the comparison, dont forget to use mkvmerge ver. 0.7.0 or newer, because of the new lacing system being introduced with it, saving a lot of space not only for Vorbis but also for AAC ....

[Neo Neko]

@shitowax
ffmpeg can decode your MP4 just fine so long as the codecs required are there. Mplayer through libavcodec plays them fine and so does ffdshow. The trick is playing content made via ffmpeg/ffvfw in MP4 via 3ivx splitters it seems. But rather than talking more I think I will produce a set of clips that I can submit to demo this. ;)