Mainconcept H264Encoder TechPreview

[Selur]

Our H.264 Encoder Preview Version also includes our H.264 Decoder, enabling you to play H.264 files in Windows Media Player and other compatible programs.

see:
http://www.mainconcept.com/h264_encoder.shtml

did anyone test it ?

Cu Selur

[Sirber]

Getting it. It's not VFW since it's 10MB :(

[Selur]

After programm start:
Please note that the encoder has only CBR and is not yet optimized for speed. We will release VBR and speed-tuned versions for Intel and DSP in the next weeks

damn,..

Cu Selur

[Koepi]

c't/heise tested it on a P4 3GHz, 512MB ram.

20 minutes encoding time for a 30 second sample(720 × 480, NTSC). The video gets watermarked with a company logo. And it's an encoding application, no vfw or dshow interface. They do deliver a dshow decoder though.

http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/44488 (german article)

Regards
Koepi

[slavickas]

looks like reference encoder put into nice gui :(
btw how playback such encoded files?

[Sirber]

In the following dialog, enter your name and company name. Depending on your system
configuration, you might also need to choose whether to install the MPEG
Encoder for all users or only yourself. You must also decide whether you want to
install the program as a demo version, which adds a watermark to converted videos,
or the full version. To install the full version you will need to enter your serial number.
Then click Next.Watermark is evil. Don't use that for personnal backup. :devil:

[Selur]

argh,... 20min for 30sec, hopefully their optimisations will also help on Athlon XPs,..

Cu Selur

Ps.: crashes with avs fiels as input :devil:

[MfA]

So they just linked the reference sources into some proprietary app and released it I assume?

[bond]

now thats what i call great news!

downloading...

[communist]

Testclip started for encoding :D

[slavickas]

Originally posted by communist
Testclip started for encoding :D

ok i'll wait one month to see results :rolleyes:

[communist]

First impressions:
- slow :p
- some artifacts during playback
- compression of CG / cartoon stuff looks nice (no color bleeding or visible color res reduction in comparison to DivX / XviD)

[bond]

ok i compared xvid with qpel, trellis, vhq4 and 2 b-frames and the mainconcept encoder with the default settings and main profile using a very small (!) test clip: neo using his mobile in matrix1

imho h.264 brings already pretty good results at a 500kbps bitrate, tough not comparable to xvid sharpness-wise (maybe i should have tried xvid without qpel?)
but imo the quality is strongly fluctuating, meaning it seems to me that sometimes the picture is blurry, than sharp again, than blurry, with lots of blocks in between... (maybe thats a decoding issue?)

all-in-all not bad for a start, and i think there is _a lot of_ room for improvements (imagine how normal mpeg-4 part2 encodes looked like some years ago :D )

[skal]

@bond:

could you upload the resulting h264 bitstream
somewhere? I'd be interested in watching it!

thanks

[bond]

sure :)
grab it here (http://8ung.at/bond/test.zip)

i suggest everyone to compare the two clips with avscompare (via avi- and directshowsource() ) cause that way the described playback problems dont seem to appear
to decode the h.264 you need of course the dshow filters coming with the mainconcept tool

edit: moved to a new download location and included skals .264 elementary stream

[skal]

Thanks Bond

note: i've extracted the h264 bitstream from
the mpg container. So you can feed it directly
into the h264 decoder reference software.
It's here (http://skal.planet-d.net/coding/stream0.264)

(maybe not for long time).

[bond]

great!
how are you able to extract the bitstream?

[skal]

Bond:

how are you able to extract the bitstream?

with a little util of mine i wrote a looong time
ago. Actually, i don't have the sources any more,
but only a precious linux executable.
here is it (http://skal.planet-d.net/coding/mapmpg)
maybe it'll be useful for someone, if it works
on your linux box. Use it with command line like:

mapmpg file.avi -avi -save

and if it doesn't crash, you will have some
file 'streamXXX' dumped.
Also seems to work for MPEG/MOV/etc...
(try 'mapmpg -h')


hope it helps

[skal]

oops...

actually, the '-avi -save' options should come
first, before the file(s) name(s) to parse.

=> 'mapmpg -mpg -save file.mpg'

e.g.

(told you it was an oooold stuff:)

[bond]

nice :)
from what i saw the mainconcept encoder is also able to output pure elementary streams with the .mpv extension...

btw i changed the download location of my samples and added your .264 file

[bond]

hm looking again at the encodes, using a little lower bitrate for xvid more matching the one of h.264 (~450kbps), i have to say h.264 is already very good sharpness-wise, even if comparing to xvid with qpel

[BoNz1]

Hi bond! I am not having as much luck as you with this encoder. I get blocks all over the screen, it is hardly viewable and they aren't usual blocking you might expect it is like strange green blocks all over the screen. Your sample looks good though as it doesn't block as much as mine do and it has lots of detail and is very sharp :). BTW welcome skal! Its good to see you around here :).

[bond]

as i said dont decode in a dshow player (i guess the decoder is buggy)!

if you open the clip in a avisynth script, with directshowsource(), you dont get these blocks (dont ask me why it is different but it is :D )!
also that way it already decodes pretty fast on my poor 866mhz pentium3, i guess its realtime...

[Bulletproof]

I can't get the program to accept my bitrate settings, regardless of what numbers I put it in always says:

Video stream 0 data rate : 1000000 bytes/sec (8000000 bits/sec)
Overhead data rate : 43350 bytes/sec (346800 bits/sec)
Total data rate : 1043350 bytes/sec (8346800 bits/sec)

Anyone know what I might be doing wrong?

EDIT: Its actually using the bitrate I give it but doesnt seem to reflect it in the status box.

[Bulletproof]

I did a quick test with 1mbit bitrate and the video came out pretty blurry, very much like a WMV video.

[bond]

its also blurry here for the first seconds but than it becomes sharper

[skal]

@BoNz1: Hi! yes, i'm around here coz' i'm rather
interested in h264. It's very promising. Anyhow,
there's much more parameters available for tuning
in h264, compared to MPEG4. And not all of them
are equally efficient. It requires a lots of
experiments. Try to play with the reference
software (even if slow)!

bye!

[BoNz1]

Hi skal again, I have been playing around with the reference encoder a lot in the past couple of days. What I have found is that if I turn off CABAC, inloop filtering, RD optimization and set multiple reference frames to 1 I can get approximately 1 fps :). Which is about the same speed I get with MainConcept.