PDA

View Full Version : Mediatek 1389DE and Custom Matrices incompatibility


Alxemi
8th March 2004, 15:32
Hi all
Yesterday i had a big surprise with my Mediatek 1389DE based DVD player (Ascomtec 3004), after encoding a movie with Dideeīs 6of9 matrix, no video was played, only audio.
Then i decided to make a test with all the custom matrices that were out there and see which of them works.
Here are the results:

Clean DVD MPEG2 source, served by avisynth with undot(), lumafilter() and lanzcos resize.

XviD Settings:
1Pass q=2
Adaptative quantization ENABLED
Qpel ENABLED
B-VOPS 3 150 100, closed gov
Packed Bitstream DISABLED
Chroma Optimizer ENABLED
B-Frames sensivity 10
MSP 6
VHQ 1
Chroma Motion and Turbo mode ENABLED
And all other settins by default

Encoded using VdubMod 1.5.4.1


1 6of9-hvs.txt
NO PLAYBACK

2 28dayslater.txt
NO PLAYBACK

3 acailaīs.txt NO
NO PLAYBACK

4 andreas 78er
PERFECT PLAYBACK

5 andreas dopplete 99er
NO PLAYBACK

6 andreas einfache 99er
NO PLAYBACK

7 Bulletproof's Heavy Compression Matrix.TXT
NO PLAYBACK

8 Bulletproof's High Quality Matrix.TXT
NO PLAYBACK

9 CG-Animation Matrix.txt
NO PLAYBACK

10 Didéeīs Semi_Insane.txt
PERFECT PLAYBACK --->!!!!!!!!!

11 Didéeīs SixOfNine.txt
NO PLAYBACK

12 Fox Home Entertaiment.txt
NO PLAYBACK

13 hvs-best-picture.txt
PERFECT PLAYBACK

14 hvs-better-picture.txt
PERFECT PLAYBACK

15 hvs-good-picture.txt
PERFECT PLAYBACK

16 Kika Trickfilm High.txt
NO PLAYBACK

17 Low Bitrate Matrix.txt
PERFECT PLAYBACK

18 MPEG.txt
NO PLAYBACK

19 Standard.txt
PERFECT PLAYBACK

20 Ultimate Matrix.txt
NO PLAYBACK

21 Ultra Low Bitrate Matrix.txt
NO PLAYBACK

22 Very Low Bitrate Matrix.txt
NO PLAYBACK

Only a few worked! Big surprise for me. How can it be? Arenīt all custom matrices MPEG4 compliant?? Itīs a problem of the chip? maybe my player firmware? ŋ?ŋ?ŋ?

All clips are available for testing HERE (http://www.alxemi.cjb.net//matrixtest)

Thanks in advance for any feedback you could give me.

Alxemi
8th March 2004, 15:39
Just for Off-Topic info, i can give you the sizes of the files too

1 3.5MB
2 5.4MB
3 3.5MB
4 3.1MB
5 3.1MB
6 3.1MB
7 1.6MB
8 2.5MB
9 2.9MB
10 4.9MB
11 3.8MB
12 5.5MB
13 2.5MB
14 2.4MB
15 2.3MB
16 2.9MB
17 2.5MB
18 2.8NB
19 2.5MB
20 1.8MB
21 2.3MB
22 2.5MB

oddball
8th March 2004, 17:22
I dunno. Anything XviD seems to break playback in recent builds. XviD seems to follow it's own path to DiVX Pro which plays back perfectly (SInce the chip was made to it's spec).

Zhnujm
8th March 2004, 21:35
I already made some tests some time ago:

elta 8883 (Mediatek):
hvsgood - ok
hvsbetter - ok
hvsbest - ok
lowbitrate - ok
verylowbitrate - no picture
ultralowbitrate - no picture
cganimation - no picture

Yamada 6100( ESS):
hvsgood - artefacts
hvsbetter - artefacts
hvsbest - artefacts
lowbitrate - artefacts
verylowbitrate - ok
ultralowbitrate - ok
cganimation - ok

So i dont think its a good idea to use custiom matrices with hardware players at the moment.....

bond
19th April 2004, 11:08
hm interesting results

i am playing around with custom matrices too atm
can anyone with a sigma based player plz check out if/which matrices work! (alxemi still offers his matrices samples for downloading :) )

Originally posted by Alxemi
18 MPEG.txt
NO PLAYBACK
19 Standard.txt
PERFECT PLAYBACKdoes anyone know whether any of these is the standard mpeg matrix?

Only a few worked! Big surprise for me. How can it be? Arenīt all custom matrices MPEG4 compliant?? Itīs a problem of the chip? maybe my player firmware?yeah i also wonder about this
but i dont know enough about how matrices work internally to judge if they really can cause problems on the decoder side (afaik all software decoders seem to handle all custom matrices fine)

gatormac
19th April 2004, 17:16
Originally posted by oddball
I dunno. Anything XviD seems to break playback in recent builds. XviD seems to follow it's own path to DiVX Pro which plays back perfectly (SInce the chip was made to it's spec).

Thank you. I was beginning to think I was the only one who thought that.

With that said I still don't care for Divx.

pelle412
20th April 2004, 06:10
I tried all matrices bundled with XviD RC4 on my LiteOn LVD-2001 and they all play fine without a hitch. I believe the LVD-2001 uses a Sigma 8500 chip.

Encoding options:
XviD defaults,
Single Pass Q2,
NO Packed Bistream


On the negative side with LVD-2001, no seamless ff/rw, and stuttering at bitrates ~ 2.5k and above. Other than that, never had a problem.

Sharro
20th April 2004, 07:39
And good old QPEL ? Plays fine ?

All the best,

Sharro

manono
20th April 2004, 09:21
And Packed Bitstream? Plays fine on yours?

All the best,

manono

pelle412
20th April 2004, 12:18
@Sharro: I never tried QPEL or GMC on the LVD-2001 because alot of people have said the Sigma EM8500 can't handle them.

Sharro
20th April 2004, 12:38
Originally posted by manono
And Packed Bitstream? Plays fine on yours?
...
manono

Nope, but I don't miss it as much as QPEL (and honestly GMC).

Subtitles too...

I just wondered if the QPEL problem was solved... but... the "good old" made it look ironic (I use it a lot). Sorry

@pelle412:

You should try GMC, for what I've read GMC plays fine on Sigma chips.

@everybody:

I would like to have some certainty at the Xvid Max bitrate that each chip can take and if it is somehow quantization matrix related as from the beggining we know that some stops are media related (dvd plays better xvid higher bitrates than cd even though the first file on dvd might have some problems if high bitrate scenes exist in the first 5 minutes of the movie).

All the best.

Keep on testing... Keep on posting...

Sharro

pelle412
20th April 2004, 13:40
@Sharro: GMC is not part of DivX's Home Theater Profile. If one is encoding for future compatibility, do you think DivX's profiles will become more standard than they are today?

I will give it a try and see if I like the results. Thanks..

bond
20th April 2004, 14:04
if you want to use gmc you have to be careful! the current chips only support gmc with 1 warppoint, which is very weak and offered in divx5 for example
xvid on the other side uses gmc with 3warppoints, which is much better, but not supported on standalones

Originally posted by pelle412
@Sharro: GMC is not part of DivX's Home Theater Profile. If one is encoding for future compatibility, do you think DivX's profiles will become more standard than they are today?i think in the contrary: they will loose importance

new mpeg-4 chips, like mediatek and the new sigma chip, handle much more than the home theater profile allows, like qpel for example (qpel helps sharpness a lot!)
basically the official mpeg-4 profiles will lead the way: advanced simple profile @ level 5 (MPEG-4 ASP@L5) is what players will support finally


but lets get back to the topic, this thread is about custom matrices! ;)

Soulhunter
20th April 2004, 21:46
Originally posted by Alxemi
Only a few worked! Big surprise for me. How can it be? Arenīt all custom matrices MPEG4 compliant?? Itīs a problem of the chip? maybe my player firmware? ŋ?ŋ?ŋ? AFAIK Custom matrices should be 100% MPEG4 ASP compliant... :confused:


But IMHO thus player producers dont care much about MPEG4 compliance !!!

They only care about DivX compliance... :devil:


One more reason for me to use a HTPC and no standalone !!!


Bye

manono
21st April 2004, 04:36
Hi Sharro-

the "good old" made it look ironic (I use it a lot). Sorry

Nah, no reason to apologize. But I did think you were needling the owners of standalones with Sigma Designs chipsets (like me), so I thought I'd needle you back. No harm done. :) All of the chipsets have their own problems. None is perfect. What about the owners of standalones with the ESS chipsets that don't even play their videos with proper AR? But as far as I know, the Sigma Designs chipsets play videos with Packed Bitstream (mine does), and all the custom matrices that I've tried. And pelle412 confirms that they play others that I haven't tried yet. However, when testing out that kickass Fox Networks Matrix with a B&W movie, from time to time I'd see some translucent greenish stuff on the screen.

And I also very much wish for some kind of subtitle support.

I believe the bitrate problem isn't so much with the max bitrate, but with a bitrate spike. That is, I have some videos with an average bitrate of over 3000 which play fine. I have one with an average of over 7000 which doesn't play at all-it stops a few frames into it. But I have a bunch with average bitrate of less than 1500 which play fine for the most part. But when they come to a particularly complex scene (screen filled with water, or leaves blowing-whole screen in motion) then it freezes temporarily until the action slows down. It doesn't bother me much, but my wife hates for that to happen. If it slowly builds the bitrate, it seems to be OK, but if I get a sudden jump in bitrate, like at a scene change, that's when the problems begin. But if I get a DVD Burner and put the avis on a DVD-R, then I believe the problem goes away because of the higher bitrates that DVD can handle. I think I remember reading that around here. Someone correct me if I'm wrong.

Alxemi
21st April 2004, 07:35
the Sigma Designs chipsets play videos with Packed Bitstream
With more than one consecutive bframe?

manono
21st April 2004, 15:46
Hi-

I don't use Packed Bitstream myself, and the few I have with Packed Bitstream have either 0 or 1 B-Frame. So, just for you, Alxemi, I made a short avi using Packed Bitstream and 2 B-Frames, tested it out, and it played fine. This is using the Bravo D1 (http://www.vinc.us/product.asp?id=31&PID=21) with the first generation Sigma Designs chipset.

pelle412
21st April 2004, 20:52
@manono: The problem does not go away with DVD-R. I don't believe it has anything to do with the media at all. To handle for example reading at a birate of 8000 kbit/s you only need a 8X CD drive (8X = 8*150kb/s = 1200 kb/s = 9600 kbit/s).

Alxemi
21st April 2004, 21:11
So, just for you, Alxemi, I made a short avi using Packed Bitstream and 2 B-Frames
Thank you very much!! :)
Iīm really surprised with these results; Mediatek chip, which itīs suposed to be the next-generation chip, cannot handle neither more than 1 bframe with PB nor Custom matrices, and Sigma chip CAN, even when itīs supposed to decode DivX and DivX only uses 1 bframe.
Anyway the scene will turn interesting when DivX 6 will appear, with support (as far as i heard) to custom matrices and more than 1 bframe. (I hope they will donīt sell it as a great innovation :D)

Zhnujm
21st April 2004, 21:13
Until now all players i tried work much better at high bitrates from dvd. Even ESS based players wich have already a lower bitrate limit.
Reading AVI files seems to be more difficult than MPEG, i had a player that could play minidvds up to 6MBit, but fails to play a 4MBit AVI file from CD.
From DVD there was no problem.
For example, my elta 8883 (Mediatek) is very bad a reading high bitrates from cd (even worse than the ESS based i had before), from dvd it works perfect up to 10MBit.

Also standalones cannot use high speed drives because of the noise.
Of coure i cannot say if this or that file will play from dvd, but its worth a try.


@Alxemi:
The elta 8882 with Sigma chip that i had before could play Packet Bitstream perfect, but failed to play the files if Packet Bitstream was disabled :rolleyes:
I think its all a matter of firmware and even more - if someone is interested to change it.

Leak
21st April 2004, 23:12
Originally posted by Alxemi
Mediatek chip, which itīs suposed to be the next-generation chip, cannot handle neither more than 1 bframe with PB nor Custom matrices, and Sigma chip CAN, even when itīs supposed to decode DivX and DivX only uses 1 bframe.

Packed bitstream is nothing short of an ugly hack to solve a problem with B-frames with _some_ decoders (like the Sigma chip; if it weren't an ugly hack the fact that packed bitstream is used would have a flag somewhere in the stream's headers and not some in-band signalling through some codec id string), but since the MediaTek chip doesn't have a problem with multiple B-frames without the hack why would you even want to use it? :confused:

np: Aphex Twin - On (28 Mix) (On Remixes)

gatormac
22nd April 2004, 03:30
Does anyone have specs for each individual chip and what their bitrate limitations are? I've read several times in these forums that ESS based standalones can't handle bitrate as well as other players, but at the same time I read that other players are having trouble when bitrates meet or exceed 2.5, 3, and 4Mbps. I have what I believe to be an ESS based player (Philips DVP642) and have encoded up to 4Mbps with no problems. The problem comes with bitrate spikes which Manono mentioned. I can have a clip at 1Mbps have problems....when I open the clip in DRFanalyzer I will find that their will be spots (usually at scene changes or panning close ups of textured items like bushes, trees or hay) that spike 5 times over the average frame size. When I go back and re-encode setting a lower quantizer for that particular scene it of course plays back fine....even at 4Mbps. I haven't tried any higher than that. Most of my encodes are between 2-3Mbps with no problem.....I think ESS has gotten a bad rap and haven't heard anything better about any other chip to this point.

I've heard that MPEG4 ASP is supposed to support up to 8Mbps. If the same chip can read MPEG2 at 8-10Mbps, why would it have problems meeting the MPEG4 specs?

Alxemi
22nd April 2004, 07:22
For example, my elta 8883 (Mediatek) is very bad a reading high bitrates from cd (even worse than the ESS based i had before), from dvd it works perfect up to 10MBit.
The same happens here with my ascomtec (nearly a clon of the elta), and i found that it was not a problem of the chip but the CD/DVD reader. A high bitrate XviD in a CDR has problems but the same clip in a DVD has not. I think it could be the readerīs speed that cannot reach the rpms needed for read the information from a CD. It needs more RPMs from CD because the information isnīt as compressed as in a DVD (compressed thinking in space terms) and it need to spin faster to read te same amount of information.
So check it out, i can bet it will happen the same with the elta.

Sharro
22nd April 2004, 11:11
Originally posted by Alxemi
Thank you very much!! :)
...Mediatek chip ... cannot handle ... Custom matrices

I think that the big cruncher thread on MT1389DE and the tests here confirm the opposite.

My experience with Ascomtec 3004 (MT1389DE) and custom matrices is only with HVS-best and HVS-better at 720x528 avg bitrate 2000Kbps, all other settings default except Trellis and Chroma Optimizer and packed bitstream which is off. They all play flawlessly (DVD -/+ R TDK media) except if I have very fast motion scenes on the first file and in the first 5 minutes of the movie.

Just sharing my 5 cents.

All the best,

Sharro
AKA Xvid Tribalist Fan

bond
22nd April 2004, 11:43
Originally posted by Alxemi
Anyway the scene will turn interesting when DivX 6 will appear, with support (as far as i heard) to custom matrices and more than 1 bframe. (I hope they will donīt sell it as a great innovation :D)that will not be divx6 but divx5.2
divx6 will most likely be some proprieatary fud

Zhnujm
22nd April 2004, 15:48
@gatormac:
I would also like to see some official specs of these chips.
From my own tests a can say that the ess chip (not the very first one wich was used in only a few players and was never divx certified) supports the divx home theater profile wich is 4MBit average with spikes up to 10MBit for a few seconds, but nothing more.
So i think your encodings come very close to this limit.
I never had problems with that with my 2cd encodes.

The players with Sigma and Mediatek chipset that i tried can play files up to 10MBit average so theres much more room for bitrate spikes and longer fast moving scenes.
Of course this is only possible if the files are played from dvd.

gatormac
22nd April 2004, 18:12
Originally posted by Zhnujm
@gatormac:
I would also like to see some official specs of these chips.
From my own tests a can say that the ess chip (not the very first one wich was used in only a few players and was never divx certified) supports the divx home theater profile wich is 4MBit average with spikes up to 10MBit for a few seconds, but nothing more.
So i think your encodings come very close to this limit.
I never had problems with that with my 2cd encodes.

The players with Sigma and Mediatek chipset that i tried can play files up to 10MBit average so theres much more room for bitrate spikes and longer fast moving scenes.
Of course this is only possible if the files are played from dvd.

I would love to have a player that could handle 10Mbps. 99% of what I encode doesn't need it, but that 1% is such a hassle for a perfectionist....I would love to be able to set an encode and forget it, but I have to do a test run at a quant of 2 to check for bitrate spikes, then re-encode adjusting for those high bitrate spike scenes.

Hopefully MPEG4 players will be more common here in the states by the end of the year....with the better chipsets.

Alxemi
22nd April 2004, 19:54
I think that the big cruncher thread on MT1389DE and the tests here confirm the opposite.
:confused: Where did you exactly get that information? The tests I did didnīt show that and i couldnīt find any information on cruncherīs thread about Custom Matrices.

My experience with Ascomtec 3004 (MT1389DE) and custom matrices is only with HVS-best and HVS-better
Then your results confirms the tests here, HVS works, others do not. :)

CruNcher
23rd April 2004, 23:18
Alxemi
he means the main MT1389 thread it clearly states of what the Chip is capable in the matrix field as it came out all other matrix weren't taken into account because imho they are useless and no real gain can be get from them sorry to say but i wont talk about that in another thread because it's funny to see people making their own matrices ;)

Zhnujm
29th April 2004, 19:26
Custom Matrices seem to work now with the latest Mediatek firmware.

bond
29th April 2004, 19:50
hm ffmpeg updated libav with custom matrices fixes and suddenly the firmwares work too... :D

Alxemi
9th May 2004, 20:45
Custom Matrices seem to work now with the latest Mediatek firmware.

Yes, but not all of them. Iīve done my test again and all the matrices plays right except:
28 days later -->horrible playback, blocks, strange colors, etc
andreas dopplete 99er -->bad playback, blocks here and there...
Bulletproffīs Heavy Compression Matrix -->ok/bad playback. Maybve is the way itīs supposed to be ŋ?
6of9 -->bad playback
Fox Home Entertaiment -->bad playback

hm ffmpeg updated libav with custom matrices fixes and suddenly the firmwares work too...
That is MORE than suspicius, remember KISS stealing... maybe ffmpeg people should be informed.

Alxemi
9th May 2004, 20:53
he means the main MT1389 thread it clearly states of what the Chip is capable in the matrix field as it came out all other matrix weren't taken into account because imho they are useless and no real gain can be get from them sorry to say but i wont talk about that in another thread because it's funny to see people making their own matrices

Iīve been searching the thread and Im a little lost... all other matrices except HVS?

manono
10th May 2004, 01:53
Hi-

I think he means all the other matrices except for the standard H.263/MPEG. All the Custom Matrix threads are in the XviD Forum.