View Full Version : H.264 News from VSS - free AVC decoder and claims to offer realtime encoding
bond
8th April 2004, 11:14
as reported on the new homepage from vanguard (http://www.videosoftinc.com/index.html), they now claim to offer a realtime h.264 encoder (without getting into details tough)
also it cant be tested as their encoder is not available for free (they offer a vfw and qt version)
till now vanguard only offered a vfw version of the reference software (so basically nothing special), i dunno if they now rewrote an own encoder from scratch or only tuned the reference (speed optimisations aso...)
what is available for free is a h.264 decoder filter, which you can get here (http://www.videosoftinc.com/decoders.html)
also they offer new sample clips here (http://www.videosoftinc.com/videoclips.html), in "plz god, forgive us, we dont know what we are doing" AVI!
hell, will the mess we know from mpeg-4 asp now continue with h.264 too? why cant these *** use .mp4 or .mpg as the standard specifies!!! mp4 is license free!!! you *** dont have to pay a cent to use it and we user could enjoy interoperability (on software and future hardware) !!!
Tommy Carrot
8th April 2004, 12:00
I'm always glad to hear about progression in the h.264 front, but what would be even better if a more or less tuned and optimized encoder would be available. We have now a few decoder filter, but still no encoder. Hopefully Nero will soon release their codec.
Bond, i can feel with you, but i do not agree totally. MP4 container is practically useless if no decent encoder app supports it. A universal encoder/editor utility (like virtualdub) offers much greater flexibility and much more options than when every codec has its own encoder utility, like would be in the case of MP4 support. So right now i prefer VFW until there is a general MP4 encoder/editor which can use external codecs (MP4 support in virtualdub would be nice).
bond
8th April 2004, 12:07
Originally posted by Tommy Carrot
MP4 container is practically useless if no decent encoder app supports it. A universal encoder/editor utility (like virtualdub) offers much greater flexibility and much more options than when every codec has its own encoder utility, like would be in the case of MP4 support.yeah, a general encoding tool ala virtualdub, but based not on the crappy vfw (maybe on dshow or something similar) would help saving lots of problems caused by vfw/avi atm
but also you shouldnt forget things like commandline encoders, which could come with nice guis aso (i mean rv9 practically also works that way, and its not that bad at all)
so people arent really _that_ limited to vfw/avi as it might appear on first sight
Doom9
8th April 2004, 12:11
hmm... baseline and main profile? two pass encoding. Maybe now they feel confident enough to let me test it.
bond
8th April 2004, 17:08
there now is a 30days evaluation version available here (http://www.videosoftinc.com/bin/vssh-2_0-win32-eval.exe)
Tommy Carrot
8th April 2004, 18:52
Finally something! Thought their performance claims seem to be exaggerated, because i got 4-5 fps with the fastest setting on my athlon 1700+. Or the codec is heavily optimized to P4.
P0l1m0rph1c
8th April 2004, 19:03
Tommy Carrot: weird. I am encoding here with the best quality setting, encoding 720Ũ576 material, and i'm having ~4fps.
I'm using a Pentium 4 2 Ghz.
Tommy Carrot
8th April 2004, 19:08
With best quality i get about 2-3 fps. The resolution is 720*288.
P0l1m0rph1c
8th April 2004, 19:25
In the same material, with fastest setting, i get ~15 fps. :confused:
ac-chan123
8th April 2004, 19:51
read this (http://www.videosoftinc.com/performance.html) and you know why.
AC-Chan(Rober Vincenz)
BoNz1
8th April 2004, 23:08
Wow, I just encoded a 5 min test using 1 pass best quality. Looks very good IMO. It seems to have some problems with fades and scene changes but all in all looks very good for a first release. At 1000kbps it really has a lot less annoying artifacts than mpeg4 asp does.
Sagittaire
8th April 2004, 23:13
Best quality (H264 with bframe) doesn't work for me ... :confused:
Good quality work very well and quality is here ... ;-)
CruNcher
8th April 2004, 23:22
ok first test showed and im only going todo a subjective test for now, that it can't compete (for now) at fast and normal vs XviD ASP Extra_Details @ 1977 kb/s only my personal opinion.
Good i have to say ehhmmm i can't see a difference
it missed the target bitratea little in all modes tough.
Best doesnt work for me (closes @ the end of the 1pass)
@ac-chan123 is it possible to use reference software configuration files, is that what the use advanced configuration files checkbox is for ?
Tommy Carrot
8th April 2004, 23:25
I made a test with 2-pass best quality setting. The quality is quite good, but i cannot do a direct codec comparison with xvid, because the bitrate distribution clearly favors the low motion scenes (even with 2-pass), so the quality is not constant.
But something is not right here, because 'live encoding' option is barely 2x faster than slowest option, although it should be much faster. Anyone else experienced this behavior, or something is borked here?
CruNcher
8th April 2004, 23:50
@Tommy Carrot
5x times faster for me p4 1.8 ghz 640x352
also it looks like their is a memory leak somewhere the 2 time now that 1pass best closed vdubmod without a crash @ encoding
actually best doesn't work @ all it just closes vdubmod in 1pass @ the end hmmm.
here are my settings
cpu feature flags = MMX SSE SSE2
*** rate control: qp I=25 P=28 B=30 [10 45]
------------------------------------------------------- active settings
sym_mode = 1
intra_pred = 0
interlace_mode = 0
direct_mode = 1
poc_type = 0
calc_snr = 0
high_compression_mode = 125
profile_idc = 77
cabac.init_method = 0
cabac.model_num = 0
prep.denoise_level = 0
rc.type = 1
rc.bframes = 1
rc.keyframes = 250
rc.framerate = 300000
rc.reaction = 10
rc.kbps = 1977
rc.qp_intra = 30
rc.qp_inter_p = 32
rc.qp_inter_b = 34
rc.qp_modulation = 0
rc.scene_detect = 50
rc.vbr.auto_qp = 1
rc.vbr.qp_min = 10
rc.vbr.qp_max = 45
rc.vbr.pass = 1
rc.vbr.log_file = "E:\vssh-dualpass.log"
rc.cbr.delay_ms = 1000
me.pel_resolution = 2
me.refine_qpel = 0
me.use_original = 0
me.sad_type = 1
me.subdiv = 63
me.refinement_depth = 100
me.range = 16
me.max_refs = 2
me.use_idr_long_term = 0
slice.mode = 0
slice.param = 0
slice.fmo_type = 0
deblock.flag = 0
deblock.disable = 0
deblock.alpha_c0 = 0
deblock.beta_c0 = 0
-------------------------------------------------------
ac-chan123
8th April 2004, 23:59
i donīt know if VSSīs h.264 can use the conf file of the reference implentation of h.264. the link was only about the profile and there speed.
AC-Chan(Robert Vincenz)
Milkman Dan
9th April 2004, 02:59
I'm getting 20-27fps in the good quality mode on a 608x240 clip. I'm using an overclocked P4 @ 3.5GHz, memory in dual channel at 200MHz.
Divx in the same machine and clip gives 75fps.
Selur
9th April 2004, 15:27
cool did anyone try if e.g. ffdshow and/or the moonlight h264 decoder can also handle vss h264 encoded files ?
Cu Selur
Ps.: not at home (so can't test myself atm.)
CiNcH
9th April 2004, 18:11
Does anybody by chance know how multipass encoding in VSoft's H.264 codec works internally resp. what the numbers in the multipass log mean?
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 9
6 8 6 15 13 21 40 96
171 90 77 67 113 95 64 79
58 56 41 8 7 0 0 0
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
0 0 0 0
751187 348475 126341
557 547 36
Doom9
9th April 2004, 18:26
is it just me or has the decoder download mysteriously disappeared?
SeeMoreDigital
9th April 2004, 18:48
Originally posted by Doom9
is it just me or has the decoder download mysteriously disappeared? I looked for it an hour or so ago and could not find it either :(
Cheers
CruNcher
9th April 2004, 22:03
@Doom9 & SeeMoreDigital
they changed to a "first register then download" method
http://www.videosoftinc.com/register.php?redirect=/evaluation.html
SeeMoreDigital
9th April 2004, 22:29
Originally posted by CruNcher
@Doom9 & SeeMoreDigital
they changed to a "first register then download" method
http://www.videosoftinc.com/register.php?redirect=/evaluation.html I...... thank you!
Doom9
9th April 2004, 22:40
they changed to a "first register then download" methodWell.. behind that signup page you still get the same donwload options - clips and the encoder evaluation, but no playback filter only download.
plonk420
10th April 2004, 09:46
anyone know if and where it plants # of encodes information? ^_^
edit: is it under the whereabouts of VSS?
Tommy Carrot
10th April 2004, 12:00
I've made a few tests, and i find it kind of strange that 'good quality' setting gives usally a noticably better result than 'best quality',especially at low bitrates, although its almost twice faster.
The high bitrate performance is not really impressive, i guess because the in-loop filtering. Anyone knows a way to disable it?
Sagittaire
10th April 2004, 12:04
Best quality use bframe and Quant for Bframe is too high for me ...
SeeMoreDigital
10th April 2004, 13:56
Originally posted by Tommy Carrot
I've made a few tests, and i find it kind of strange that 'good quality' setting gives usally a noticably better result than 'best quality',especially at low bitrates, although its almost twice faster.
The high bitrate performance is not really impressive, i guess because the in-loop filtering. Anyone knows a way to disable it? Were these 1 or 2 pass encodes?
Originally posted by Sagittaire
Best quality use bframe and Quant for Bframe is too high for me... Are you sure? I've just finished generating some 720x576 2pass video only streams using 'Best Quality' And when I ran the encodes through Sigma's AVIcheck, there was no mention of B-VOP's being in the stream!
Cheers
Tommy Carrot
10th April 2004, 14:04
Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
Were these 1 or 2 pass encodes?
2-pass.
Best quality uses b-frames indeed, the virtualdub encoding diagram clearly shows it.
SeeMoreDigital
10th April 2004, 14:23
Originally posted by Tommy Carrot
2-pass.
Best quality uses b-frames indeed, the virtualdub encoding diagram clearly shows it. Thanks for the confirmation!
When using DVD image pixel frame sizes, I've been unable to generate encodes below 855kbps (Gspot) despite setting the encoder to 200kbps!
I'm trying some encodes using the 'fast' setting, to see if it makes any difference.
Cheers
CruNcher
10th April 2004, 16:05
@ Tommy Carrot try playbacking it with a older mplayer version that hasn't inloop filtering support works here :)
sym_mode = 1
intra_pred = 0
interlace_mode = 0
direct_mode = 1
poc_type = 0
calc_snr = 0
high_compression_mode = 125
profile_idc = 77
cabac.init_method = 0
cabac.model_num = 0
prep.denoise_level = 0
rc.type = 1
rc.bframes = 1
rc.keyframes = 250
rc.framerate = 300000
rc.reaction = 10
rc.kbps = 1977
rc.qp_intra = 30
rc.qp_inter_p = 32
rc.qp_inter_b = 34
rc.qp_modulation = 0
rc.scene_detect = 50
rc.vbr.auto_qp = 1
rc.vbr.qp_min = 10
rc.vbr.qp_max = 45
rc.vbr.pass = 1
rc.vbr.log_file = "E:\vssh-dualpass.log"
rc.cbr.delay_ms = 1000
me.pel_resolution = 2
me.refine_qpel = 0
me.use_original = 0
me.sad_type = 1
me.subdiv = 63
me.refinement_depth = 100
me.range = 16
me.max_refs = 2
me.use_idr_long_term = 0
slice.mode = 0
slice.param = 0
slice.fmo_type = 0
deblock.flag = 0
deblock.disable = 0
deblock.alpha_c0 = 0
deblock.beta_c0 = 0
you can't change that much here some settings are bound to the profile_idc = profile level setting for example b-frames only work with profile_idc = 77 see h264 documents and will couse crashes for example with profile_idc = 66
@Sagittaire
you can change b-frames quantization here should not cause any crashes
rc.qp_inter_b = 34 but dont forget h264 quants don't scale exactly like mpeg-4 also a lower quantization max then rc.vbr.qp_max = 45 could achive the results you want.
SeeMoreDigital
10th April 2004, 16:31
Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
When using DVD image pixel frame sizes, I've been unable to generate encodes below 855kbps (Gspot) despite setting the encoder to 200kbps! Sorted! It seems the VSS codec does not like the bitrate being changed on the second pass only. You have to generate both fist and second passess at the same set bitrate... nevermind.
Still, the encodes don't look too bad!
Cheers
evilr00t
10th April 2004, 17:22
Anyone have the playback filter only download?
I've got the old version of their codec; anyone mind running comparisons?
Old link nuked.
ac-chan123
10th April 2004, 17:33
This not the old H.264 Codec by VSS. Itīs an own Codec by VSS. The old h.264 Codec can allready downloaded at there old Hompage http://www.vsofts.com/codec/h264.html.( as VfW and commandline Version)
AC-Chan(Robert Vincenz)
evilr00t
10th April 2004, 21:37
Originally posted by ac-chan123
This not the old H.264 Codec by VSS. Itīs an own Codec by VSS. The old h.264 Codec can allready downloaded at there old Hompage http://www.vsofts.com/codec/h264.html.( as VfW and commandline Version)
AC-Chan(Robert Vincenz)
Yeah, I know, but I want a quality comparison between the old and the new from someone who knows how to do one.
The old version (VSSH264Codec10beta.exe) can't be downloaded anymore on their site (I mean, I can't find it anymore)
It doesn't have a timebomb, and doesn't have twopass or B-frame support (http://www.vsofts.com/codec/images/vssh264-settings.gif)
(which reportedly sucks on the new version)
http://www.vsofts.com/codec/h264.html brings up the info on their old codec (calling it their "final version"). Then, if you click on the "download" link, it goes to http://www.videosoftinc.com/downloads.html =D
ac-chan123
10th April 2004, 22:01
i have yesterday downloaded the last(prefinal) version. So i can send the last Version befor final or upload it somewehre.
AC-Chan(Robert Vincenz)
Joe Fenton
10th April 2004, 22:15
I downloaded their 720x480 at 1350 kbps sample. I think XviD does a far better job. Maybe it's just a bad encode, but don't you usually put your BEST examples up for people to try out? This clip would NOT induce me to use their codecs.
Tommy Carrot
10th April 2004, 23:07
Actually it's not that bad, just the in-loop filtering destroys the fine details at high bitrates, so that would be great if there would be a possibility to disable it. And i miss constant quality option or something similar to xvid's curve compression.
At low bitrates, it's definitely better than mpeg4, and imo better than realvideo too.
Bulletproof
11th April 2004, 19:48
Originally posted by Tommy Carrot
At low bitrates, it's definitely better than mpeg4, and imo better than realvideo too.
What about VP6?
GolovachLena
11th April 2004, 20:54
Originally posted by Bulletproof
What about VP6?
IMHO, it almost matches the quality that VP6 gives, but at considerably lower bitrates. And even the clearness of the resulting movie is a bit better than that of VP6.
But the codec isn't much stable, i have repeating crashes while playing or simple navigating the movie.
Andrey
12th April 2004, 14:00
Hmm.
Seems that .h264 is a technology worth to try...
Q for those who visited CeBit:
Does anybody see or hear about h264 encoders there ?
If h264 is chosen as codec for the upcoming new standart replacing DVD, consumer software encoders should appear soon...
Offtopic:
Lena Golovach - I like your nick... :D
bond
12th April 2004, 17:19
Originally posted by Andrey
Does anybody see or hear about h264 encoders there ?afaik vss, mainconcept and ahead are going to present their h.264 stuff there
dunno about other companies like envivio aso...
Andrey
12th April 2004, 19:50
:(
Ok. Thanks for the info, anyway !
At least, Ahead is going to produce something rather usable I hope...
GolovachLena
12th April 2004, 20:34
Originally posted by Andrey
Does anybody see or hear about h264 encoders there ?
I'm using VSofts H264 codec v 2.0.2.1. It's trial for 30 days but decoder stated as free. Don't know what it will be because I'm using it only for 4 days :)
Anyways, i'm very pleased by results, quality is nearly awesome. Sometimes it's hard to predict correct bitrate, though. General formulae for Divx/Xvid doesn't seem to be working. In some cases i had to decrease calculated bitrate upto 15-20% to achieve desired file size.
Selur
12th April 2004, 21:34
did anyone figure out how to use the advanced settings and which advanced settings there are ?
alexcyn posted over url=http://forum.vsofts.com/viewtopic.php?t=74]here[/url] that one could disable the inloop-filtering by using deblock.disable = 1 in a config file.
I assumed if I write a txt file with deblock.disable = 1 in it and load it, it should do the job. It didn't. Okay it disables inloop filtering, but it seems liek it's disabling all other advanced options too, since when I loaded an empty text file the same effect occurred.
Cu Selur
Tommy Carrot
12th April 2004, 21:51
Cruncher posted a config file earlier in this thread, i'm assuming it contains all the important settings. A full description would be very useful though (especially how can i override the rate control to accept constant quantizers :)).
CruNcher
12th April 2004, 23:29
@Tommy Carrot
rc.type = 0
should do the trick
Tommy Carrot
13th April 2004, 00:26
Thanks man!
BTW, to disable the in-loop filtering, both
deblock.flag
deblock.disable
must be set to 1. In my opinion the high bitrate (>1 Mbps) quality will be much better this way.
Selur
13th April 2004, 06:29
thx, I'll look into it
but isn't it strange that an empty text file is also disabling the settings?
Cu Selur
BoNz1
13th April 2004, 06:55
BTW ffdshow will play back h264 now use CruNcher's ffdshow build from today ;).
Selur
13th April 2004, 07:02
since it seems that one needs to set all the settings if one wants to use the 'advanced mode', could e.g. cruNcher post a link to a description of the available settings?
I'm able to figure out some of them by myself, but some of them are still a mystery to me. ;)
Cu Selur
Andrey
13th April 2004, 16:18
>>GolovachLena: Anyways, i'm very pleased by results, quality is nearly awesome. Sometimes it's hard to predict correct bitrate,...
Heh. It is my IMHO, of course, but if something gives unpredicable results it is not usable :D
Only as a test, demo, development version and so on...
BTW, explanations for adv settings will help a lot, really.
Tommy Carrot
13th April 2004, 17:02
I've made some high bitrate tests with disabled in-loop filter. Although the image is not so smooth and clean, it's amazingly more detailed, clearly beats xvid (and any other codec i know) in this regard. And this codec is not even really tuned for quality, so there are huge room for improvements.
CruNcher
13th April 2004, 17:37
@Tommy Carrot
agree :)
GolovachLena
13th April 2004, 21:11
Originally posted by Andrey
It is my IMHO, of course, but if something gives unpredicable results it is not usable :D
This is merely the question of expirience, imho. I've figured out that lowering bitrate by some magic value is useful in this way, and now i'm getting less troubles with under/overshoot. Will see...
APF_Gandalf
13th April 2004, 22:11
Originally posted by Doom9
Well.. behind that signup page you still get the same donwload options - clips and the encoder evaluation, but no playback filter only download.
http://www.videosoftinc.com/pub/
why do they hide it? If they don't want it to be downloaded, they should remove it ;)
CruNcher
13th April 2004, 22:35
http://www.videosoftinc.com/pub/user_manual-2_0.pdf
page 8 description of the advanced options :)
Selur
13th April 2004, 22:46
thx ;)
Cu Selur
slavickas
14th April 2004, 18:03
for those who prefer ffdshow for decoding, newer libavcodec.dll with cabac support (libavcodec newest checkout), still crash on b frames
http://merkys.ktu.lt/~vitslav/belekas/
CruNcher
14th April 2004, 20:27
you should check your build it crashes with cabac here (gray picture)
Encoder= Reference Encoder 7.6
Cabac = Cabac fixed
slavickas
14th April 2004, 21:17
Originally posted by CruNcher
you should check your build it crashes with cabac here (gray picture)
Encoder= Reference Encoder 7.6
Cabac = Cabac fixed
SORRY haven't tested much
i tried it with vss codec "good quality" mode with small res it works ok, but at higher _sometimes_ there problems :( , maybe coz i leaved some lines unchanged (was unable to compile):
original
*(uint64_t*)(p + 3*stride)= size==4 ? val*uint64_t_C(0x0100000001) : val*uint64_t_C(0x0101010101010101);
in ffmpeg cvs
*(uint64_t*)(p + 3*stride)= size==4 ? val*0x0100000001ULL : val*0x0101010101010101ULL;
plonk420
16th April 2004, 08:40
30 day trial my ass... installed on the 10th, did a few encodes and watched them, and it just expired today. is the decoder tied to # of encodes? i got one playback today, but no more...
@GolovachLena: *this* encoder, at least, gives me strange flickering artifacts, whereas VP6 just stays nice and mushy (i encoded at waaaay too low a bitrate)
Musaran
20th April 2004, 03:20
Greetings @All
I could not find the H264 codec trial anywhere on their website...
But I found it there (1.0 beta 2, 1.6 Mb):
http://www.codec-download.com/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=10
The Direct Show decoder is separate (4.1 Mb :confused: ) :
http://www.videosoftinc.com/decoders.html
I haven't yet goten to try these downloads.
Edit: 1.0/2.0 ? Ooops, is this an old version ?
Tommy Carrot
20th April 2004, 12:31
The 1.0 beta 2 codec is more than 1 year old. The new codec is much more advanced, i don't know why did they remove it from their site, perhaps they reconsidered their policy to make the codec available for the masses.
billou2k
30th April 2004, 11:10
Yes I sent them an email and they replied that they only provide evaluation version for companies at the moment,
and that evaluation version for consumers will be available in a couple of weeks.
chilledoutuk
9th May 2004, 02:42
erm i would like to evaluate but the codec is no longer vailable for download could someone please put the codec online so that i and others can download it much appreciated.
also has anyone tried the mainconcept h.264 offering?
TIA
IgorC
10th May 2004, 03:16
If your email support atachments of 5-6 mb išll send you this trial version
chilledoutuk
10th May 2004, 14:31
igorc i have pm'ed you my e-mail address thank you for offering to send me the trial.
unmei
10th May 2004, 18:36
i know this is going to sound like ranty cheese, but it's just something i wanted to say aloud once :)
I did some tests with the old (was it 1.0 rc2?) encoder from VSS and also with the new version. While the new version runs 60+ times faster on my comp it also provided clearly lower quality. I admit i did not treak the settings much, just what was needed to get it to encode 640x480 and a very low bitrate. I also encoded xvid, wmv9 and vp6.2 clip to about the same size and resolution.
I'm looking forward to the possibilities the AVC tools offers to encoders being implemented in a more and more intelligent way ..much like it was soo exciting to see xvid's quality improve incredibly from build to build for some time (about a year ago).
BUT in my experience the h.264 encoders we see today are interesting to see where it starts out, but the results i get are clearly inferior quality to xvid (or vp6.2 at low bitrates) - not by a tiny bit, by a huge chunk. This should not be read as i were against or diappointed by h.264, it just means i have a hard time understanding how people can put it on a line with the codecs that are matured _today_.
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