Nero to demo H.264 encoder at Computex 2004 [Archive]

bobololo

29th May 2004, 01:03

Originally posted by CruNcher
I dont know how much i can say how far it concerns my NDA (am i under any ?) but i think it's ok if i say that it's continusly being worked on to improve the quality off the encoder and also the decoder part of the Codec :)
but i think bobololo can give you a better update here of what has changed.

Well, as you could imagine it's very hard to give up the dev on a codec when you know you can still squeeze out some interesting improvements. And that's actually what was done on our mpeg-4 encoder. As we progressed on the H.264 encoder, some of our algorithm research results were back ported to our mpeg-4 encoder which ended to really significant quality boost ! And btw, we're sorry but we did it again ;) we've accelerated the encoding speed...

Regarding H.264, you're all welcome to visit Ahead suite at Computex to check things by yourself ;) And on the way, you may stop at Sigma Designs booth, cool stuff is also awaiting there !

-- bobololo

SeeMoreDigital

29th May 2004, 23:02

I could not help noticing the following: -

Adopted by the DVD Forum as a codec for next generation HD-DVD, and by major Japanese broadcasters for mobile content delivery, H264/AVC is set to have a major impact in the future of video coding and content distribution. Jointly developed by the Video Coding Experts Group (VCEG) of the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) and the MPEG committee of ISO/IEC, H264/AVC has a huge compression efficiency over MPEG-2, while at the same time integrating effortlessly into existing MPEG-4 architectures such as Nero Digital. Has the DVD Forum made an official statement yet?

Sigmatador

30th May 2004, 02:45

does it mean that wmv9 have been definitively forgotten ? (hurray !! )

d'Oursse

30th May 2004, 06:51

@SeeMoreDigital: where have you found that ? On the dvd forum, it is said that there's a possible elimination of one (or more ?) of the video formats at the next steering committee meeting, which has not been held, afaik

SeeMoreDigital

30th May 2004, 11:31

Originally posted by d'Oursse
@SeeMoreDigital: where have you found that ? On the dvd forum, it is said that there's a possible elimination of one (or more ?) of the video formats at the next steering committee meeting, which has not been held, afaik No....

It's in the third paragraph of the 'press release' The Belgain provided a link to on cdfreaks.com

Cheers

d'Oursse

30th May 2004, 12:24

ok, thanks, i've not read it :)

i think that this paragraph enlight just the fact that h264 has been chosen as one of the three video format. I feel more confident in news on dvd forum rather than on cd freaks ;)

regards

SeeMoreDigital

30th May 2004, 12:42

Well it's a very misleading statement. As it's suggesting that the decision has been made/finalized... and not still under 'review'.

Cheers

The Belgain

30th May 2004, 13:44

As far as I know, there are still 3 codecs on the list for inclusion: MPEG2, h.264, and WM9. Can't remember what the full list of audio codecs are, but I remember it definitely includes ac3 (can't remember about DTS, AAC, number of channels, sampling rate, etc...).

does it mean that wmv9 have been definitively forgotten ? (hurray !! )

Perhaps it's a bit premature to be wanting h.264 to come through, when there currently aren't any encoders that produce better quality than current codecs (correct me if I'm wrong), and WM9 is actually rather good on HD stuff (not so great at 2CD rip kind of bitrate). Also, I don't think MPEG2 should necessarily be discarded quite so quickly: it should easily be able to do 3 hour HD films in 30GB (current sattellite transmission of HD material use more like half to 2/3 of this, and are very good quality - head over to www.hdtvmedia.co.uk to check some of these out).

bond

30th May 2004, 13:55

Originally posted by The Belgain
Perhaps it's a bit premature to be wanting h.264 to come through, when there currently aren't any encoders that produce better quality than current codecs (correct me if I'm wrong)well h.264 will definitely be used. you only need to have a look at what companies are sitting and deciding in the dvd forum and than have a look at which the companies are owning patents on h.264

and WM9 is actually rather good on HD stuff (not so great at 2CD rip kind of bitrate).well only because m$ offers some hd encodes in wmv9 it doesnt necessarily mean that it does really good if there are no alternatives to compare it with, or until there are no clip-by-clip comparisons featureing other codecs, like mpeg-4 asp or h.264 too
its like listening only to a wma9 at 128kbps encoded song (and having no possibility to listen to the uncompressed source too) and than saying "it is good at 128kbps", but when you compare it to other formats you see that its beaten to the ground and only atrac3 is worse :D

Also, I don't think MPEG2 should necessarily be discarded quite so quickly: it should easily be able to do 3 hour HD films in 30GB (current sattellite transmission of HD material use more like half to 2/3 of this, and are very good quality - head over to www.hdtvmedia.co.uk to check some of these out).mpeg-2 will definitely be supported too as hd-dvd aims at being backwards compatible to normal dvds (that was an advantage of it compared to bluray afaik), therefore all devices will have to support mpeg-2 anyways

the exciting question will be whether wmv9 will stay in or not, m$ tries everything to push it, lets wait and see :)

The Belgain

30th May 2004, 14:02

well only because m$ offers some hd encodes in wmv9 it doesnt necessarily mean that it does really good if there are no alternatives to compare it with, or until there are no clip-by-clip comparisons featureing other codecs, like mpeg-4 asp or h.264 too its like listening only to a wma9 at 128kbps encoded song (and having no possibility to listen to the uncompressed source too) and than saying "it is good at 128kbps", but when you compare it to other formats you see that its beaten to the ground and only atrac3 is worse

Obviously this is true, and I'm not basing my opinions on the MS demo clips. I'm basing it on having grabbed some .ts files (not uncompressed, but the best we can really hope for), and converting them to both WM9 and XviD (720p version of LOTR, to fit on one DVD - so pretty low bitrate for HD to really show up the differences). The WM9 version has better quality (less artifacting, especially banding and problems in backgrounds). I haven't been able to compare to h.264, but I gather that the quality is somewhat lacking at the moment, comared to MPEG4?

bond

30th May 2004, 14:14

Originally posted by The Belgain
I'm basing it on having grabbed some .ts files (not uncompressed, but the best we can really hope for), and converting them to both WM9 and XviD (720p version of LOTR, to fit on one DVD - so pretty low bitrate for HD to really show up the differences). The WM9 version has better quality (less artifacting, especially banding and problems in backgrounds).interesting, did you post some results somewhere? i know hd encoding with xvid was discussed some time ago in the xvid forum, would have been interesting to see how it does compared to wmv9 in the hd area :)

The Belgain

30th May 2004, 16:25

I think I mentioned the results in another thread. If I remember correctly, the reason that there weren't more HD test is that there wasn't enough material available. Now there is starting to be a release group scene for HD video (i.e. HDTV caps coming from the US).

Now I realise that this is technically considered piracy, and as such shouldn't be discussed on these boards, and I respect that. However this seems to be pretty much the only was for anyone outside the US to obtain any HD source material to do any testing on, so maybe it would ok to use some of these films to do tests on? Most of the releases are .ts streams captured digitally, with no re-encoding done (just a Null Pakcet stripper run on them), so they'd be very good sources to use. The de facto standard that's been adopted for non-ts releases is WM9 in avi with ac3 audio incidentally. The link to the release site is www.hdtvmedia.co.uk , it doesn't actually host any files, so I should imagine posting the link here isn't a problem?

There are both 720p and 1080i releases out there, which would make for a good variety of material for testing. Maybe it would be a good idea to add an HD test to the codec shootout now that there is decent material available? (Matrix is there in 1080i ts btw).

I only did fairly limited testing on a few clips, and am by no means a seasoned XviD expert (I mainly do DVDs now), so maybe I chose some suboptimal settings for HD. Also, XviD is significantly faster both encoding and decoding, which is worth taking into account.

CruNcher

1st June 2004, 21:07

@The Belgain thats not quiet right im encoding for along time now very high quality hdtv clips for testing purposes but my problem to share is bandwith :P i can only post pics of that as i have done in the past for example my XviD-riverbednoqpel.avi is 100 mb 250 frames 1920x1080p :P

http://cruncher.mufflastig.com/XviD/samples/riverbed1.png

SeeMoreDigital

1st June 2004, 22:03

Crickey CruNcher,

That's some big image!

How well does the encode play with your spec system?

I've tried some 1920x1080 (1088) XviD encodes but high bitrate stuff tends to stutter without a good spec graphics card.

Cheers

The Belgain

1st June 2004, 22:06

What are your conclusions about XviD vs WM9 vs anything else (including low bitrate MPEG2 maybe?) for HD material?

To be honest though, I think WM9 is the most sensible format to encode to for this if people aren't keeping the original .ts file, because it should be possible to convert without re-encoding, into an HD-DVD compliant disc, which isn't the case for XviD.

Are any of the h.264 codecs usable for anything other than testing at the moment? Is there a decoder which could do realtime 720p (or ideally 1080p) decoding on, say, a 3 GHz PC?

SeeMoreDigital

1st June 2004, 22:18

Originally posted by The Belgain
What are your conclusions about XviD vs WM9 vs anything else (including low bitrate MPEG2 maybe?) for HD material?Personally I would not use WMV9 however good it is/was and as for low bitrate Mpeg2... no way... better to use low bitrate Mpeg1.

Originally posted by The Belgain
To be honest though, I think WM9 is the most sensible format to encode to for this if people aren't keeping the original .ts file, because it should be possible to convert without re-encoding, into an HD-DVD compliant disc, which isn't the case for XviD.Erh!

Cheers

Tommy Carrot

1st June 2004, 22:18

Originally posted by The Belgain
Are any of the h.264 codecs usable for anything other than testing at the moment? Is there a decoder which could do realtime 720p (or ideally 1080p) decoding on, say, a 3 GHz PC?
Well, i can play back almost perfectly a 720p encode on my athlon 1700+. A little stuttering here or there, but anyway, the system requirement is apparently not that horrible as it had been believed previously.

SeeMoreDigital

1st June 2004, 22:31

Originally posted by The Belgain
Are any of the h.264 codecs usable for anything other than testing at the moment? Is there a decoder which could do realtime 720p (or ideally 1080p) decoding on, say, a 3 GHz PC? Why ideally 1080p??

There's no such thing broadcast. So there's nothing to capture!

Cheers

CruNcher

1st June 2004, 22:55

this clip plays with it´s 85 mbit @ arround 11 fps here on my p4 1.8 clocked with 2.1 ghz it plays @ arround 17 fps (libavcodec)

thegeby

2nd June 2004, 01:39

To be honest though, I think WM9 is the most sensible format to encode to for this if people aren't keeping the original .ts file, because it should be possible to convert without re-encoding, into an HD-DVD compliant disc, which isn't the case for XviD.

Well, H.264 is the frontrunner for becoming the European HDTV standard. EBU is miffed about licencing costs but apart from that, they seem to like the technology. I recommend their website. Look under "technical".

Lobuz

2nd June 2004, 06:14

The Belgain

2nd June 2004, 12:55

Tommy Carrot: do you mean you can decode h.264 on an XP1700+? Or do you mean WM9? I really thought h.264 requirements were much higher than this, but I haven't been following it lately. Are any of the implementations producing better quality than XviD/WM9 yet? Which is the best one so far?

The latest ffdshow builds decode h.264, right? As does VLC I believe. I may have to encode a test clip to see then...

bond

2nd June 2004, 13:16

Originally posted by The Belgain
Are any of the implementations producing better quality than XviD/WM9 yet? Which is the best one so far?from my tests x264 is very good (and fast) already, but still cant keep up quality-wise with xvid in the samples i tested (tough the difference is not that big), x264 also doesnt support 2pass atm

I really thought h.264 requirements were much higher than this, but I haven't been following it lately.i think this heavily depends on how tuned the implementations are

The latest ffdshow builds decode h.264, right? As does VLC I believe. I may have to encode a test clip to see then...vlc and ffdshow make both use of the h.264 function added by fenrir to ffmpeg afaik, still it seems to have some quality issues

Tommy Carrot

2nd June 2004, 13:50

Originally posted by The Belgain
Tommy Carrot: do you mean you can decode h.264 on an XP1700+? Or do you mean WM9?

I meant h.264, decoded with ffdshow. Although i used 1 reference frame and disabled the loopfilter, which lowers the playback requirement somewhat, but still, it shows that h.264 doesn't need that monster CPU as we formerly thought. And i think the h.264 part of ffdshow is not even optimized that much, the playback speed will improve even more.

JohnV

4th June 2004, 13:57

Originally posted by The Belgain
It seems that Nero will be demoing their H.264 encoder, as well as their AAC encoder with parametric stereo, at Computex. This seems to indicate that the release probably isn't too far off now. Should be interesting...

http://www.cdfreaks.com/news/9783 I think they are demoing their fast h.264 decoder there like the news says, not the encoder yet.

Anyway, latest news is that Sigma Designs will support Nero Digital in hardware:
http://cbs.marketwatch.com/tools/quotes/newsarticle.asp?guid=%7B79CB4204-E399-410A-99FE-A3FCA11805F7%7D&siteid=mktw&dist=nbs&symb=

SeeMoreDigital

4th June 2004, 14:15

A nice bit of news. Thanks JohnV.

Cheers

bond

4th June 2004, 19:15

Originally posted by JohnV
Anyway, latest news is that Sigma Designs will support Nero Digital in hardware:
http://cbs.marketwatch.com/tools/quotes/newsarticle.asp?guid=%7B79CB4204-E399-410A-99FE-A3FCA11805F7%7D&siteid=mktw&dist=nbs&symb=finally the official proove that we will see .mp4 support on hardware players :)

SeeMoreDigital

4th June 2004, 19:22

Shame JohnV's link now goes to a 'sign-up-for-some-crap' page!

Has anybody saved a copy?

Cheers

bobololo

4th June 2004, 20:16

Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
Shame JohnV's link now goes to a 'sign-up-for-some-crap' page!

Has anybody saved a copy?

Cheers

It is also available here :

http://www.ahead.de/en/632219481658784.html

-- bobololo

Lobuz

6th June 2004, 03:38

I have just tested one of those sample .ts files at 1920x1088 with latest WinDVD and it takes only 70% of 2GHz AthlonXP. Couldn't get it to play flowlessy with MPC(even with InterVideo filters).

Hmm.. Small correction. It looks like WinDVD is using small trick to render that 1920x1088 clip so fast. It is rendering only half of the video lines with 1920x544 res with correct AR(960x544).

Maybe that could be possible with MPEG4 codecs like xvid, x264 too? Instead of slideshow on slower machines just a little lower resolution.

Regards
Lobuz

LostMP4

12th June 2004, 23:14

Nero to demo H.264 encoder at Computex 2004 <--- topic

Has something been showed?

pogo stick

2nd July 2004, 08:02

So Computex is over almost month ago.
Has anyone been there and seen something from Ahead?

LostMP4

2nd July 2004, 09:49

Let's wait for the next version of Nero Suite... it should be downloadable by the end of this week (according to Ahead site)

Hoping for the "Extended Profile" (H264) spoilered by the Ateme site Nero Digital Info pdf

bond

2nd July 2004, 10:02

extended profile will be a quality enhancement for their mpeg-4 asp codec

LostMP4

2nd July 2004, 10:13

Originally posted by bond
extended profile will be a quality enhancement for their mpeg-4 asp codec

http://www.ateme.com/products/nero.php
Look at the bottom of the page, under the references, there is a Nero Digital datasheet (pdf version)

It's almost a month old but says New! H264 in Extended Quality Profile

SeeMoreDigital

2nd July 2004, 10:38

I've got a freshly formatted and re-installed WinXP PC (with full updates) which is waiting specially for Nero's new version.

By all accounts, just installing Nero's software should be all that's needed to achieve full Mpeg4 and AAC audio playback via WMP9 (and of course other directshow media players if installed). But sadly this was not the case with Nero's previous release (ie: NVE v2.1.2.12, Recode2 v2.0.0.18, ShowTime v1.5.0.26 and Nero Burning ROM V6.3.1.15).

I don't know what you guys think but I was rather surprised that Nero overlooked such a basic error!

Cheers

bond

2nd July 2004, 11:01

Originally posted by LostMP4
http://www.ateme.com/products/nero.php
Look at the bottom of the page, under the references, there is a Nero Digital datasheet (pdf version)

It's almost a month old but says New! H264 in Extended Quality Profileok, no matter how they call their stuff, the nero h.264 codec will not come soon

before they release their h.264 codec, there will be an enhancement for their mpeg-4 asp codec available

LostMP4

2nd July 2004, 11:11

Originally posted by bond
ok, no matter how they call their stuff, the nero h.264 codec will not come soon

before they release their h.264 codec, there will be an enhancement for their mpeg-4 asp codec available

Why not both? :(

bond

2nd July 2004, 11:21

Originally posted by LostMP4
Why not both? :( because it a f*ing damn hard work to write a new codec from scratch, tune it qualitywise and also not to forget tune it speedwise (also you shouldnt forget all the other stuff placed around the codec)
i would say if we are lucky it may come this year, but i wouldnt bet money on this ;)