is Seeking Faster in MKV

[iwod]

Currently i think seeking Rmvb is slightly slower than AVI.

Would muxing into MKV improve that?

[Sirber]

Yes, IIRC. Seeking RV in MKV is faster. But, muxing RMVB in MKV, you will loose compatibility with RealPlayer.

[Dark-Cracker]

hi,

i don't have really made some tests on the seek speed but i think the "meta seek information"* section is more powerfull than the "index"* section of the rmvb file. so i think the seeking should be a bit more fast.

* : the section in the file used to store the packets info used to increase the seek speed.

++

[iwod]

Originally posted by Sirber
Yes, IIRC. Seeking RV in MKV is faster. But, muxing RMVB in MKV, you will loose compatibility with RealPlayer.

In reality i never played around with MKV much. Simply because i don't like its name. But seeking in rmvb is quite bad if not the worst in all format.

So muxing into MKV i would have to use MPC to play it.........

Looks like something to think about.

[LiFe]

There's actually something fishy about seeking in Real Media.

All my machines take long times to seek RM files. The higher the bitrate the longer it takes. I think it's more the buffering than the seeking.

If you use Media Player Classic using internal RM or DS or whatever it is filters, seeking is very very watchable, but the player skips on very high bitrate, scenes. Switch it to Real filters and it doesn't skip on high bitrate scenes, but it's back to 3 - 4 second seek/buffer times.

For some reason this doesn't seem to happen for everyone (but happens on all my clips!) and Real was unable to reproduce it when I first brought it up.

LiFe.

[Sirber]

I think MPC is by far the best player I've seen so far. I only have it installed :)

[LiFe]

Originally posted by Sirber
I think MPC is by far the best player I've seen so far. I only have it installed :)

It doesn't have WMV's infinite fast forward / rewind feature, which I find invaluable for watching all my TV encodes.

[stephanV]

Originally posted by iwod
So muxing into MKV i would have to use MPC to play it.........


not really, you can play mkv with real in any directshow based player... the matroska splitter in MPC might actually not work with newer MKVs as it is outdated.

[iwod]

Originally posted by LiFe
There's actually something fishy about seeking in Real Media.

All my machines take long times to seek RM files. The higher the bitrate the longer it takes. I think it's more the buffering than the seeking.

If you use Media Player Classic using internal RM or DS or whatever it is filters, seeking is very very watchable, but the player skips on very high bitrate, scenes. Switch it to Real filters and it doesn't skip on high bitrate scenes, but it's back to 3 - 4 second seek/buffer times.

For some reason this doesn't seem to happen for everyone (but happens on all my clips!) and Real was unable to reproduce it when I first brought it up.

LiFe.

You are right. I had this problem for a long time but i always have patience with it. Recently in high bitrate i can no longer stand it.

May be Karl should take a look? As i can reproduce this in all 5 of my machine.

[LiFe]

I tried to give them enough data to replicate it but they couldn't. If oyu have broadband, upload clips that show what's happening.

You might wanna also take a screen shot of what Task Manager graphs show. I found that CPU sat at 0% while RAM usage ramped up massively while Real Player buffered some incredibly large amount of data, then CPU shoots up to 45% and playback starts.

Mine happen mostly on VBR by Q clips, DVD-like frame sizes. Maximum startup latency.

Else I'll have broadband in a month and I'll have the resources to upload clips.

When I was cutting clips previously to see how small I could get away with, there was actualy a vast reduction in seek time when the clip was much shorter.

LiFe.

[iwod]

Originally posted by LiFe
I tried to give them enough data to replicate it but they couldn't. If oyu have broadband, upload clips that show what's happening.

You might wanna also take a screen shot of what Task Manager graphs show. I found that CPU sat at 0% while RAM usage ramped up massively while Real Player buffered some incredibly large amount of data, then CPU shoots up to 45% and playback starts.

Mine happen mostly on VBR by Q clips, DVD-like frame sizes. Maximum startup latency.

Else I'll have broadband in a month and I'll have the resources to upload clips.

When I was cutting clips previously to see how small I could get away with, there was actualy a vast reduction in seek time when the clip was much shorter.

LiFe.

Um........ may be in a month time. I have broadband. But the best thing is that we both test the same clips. I have free webspace and bandwidth of X Gbs. So we can both upload our clipse and test the problem together. Would this be a better idea?

Sorry if the following sounds ugly. But if real really wanted to use another container so that it could finally change the bitstream to further enhance RealVideo. They could always look at MKV. Since it is open source all they have to do is take that and rename to something and open it in Helix community. Although this is forking but we are always looking for improvement in Real ;)

And may be with the help of Real we could push MKV into something.

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by iwod They could always look at MKV. Since it is open source all they have to do is take that and rename to something and open it in Helix community. Although this is forking but we are always looking for improvement in Real ;)
And may be with the help of Real we could push MKV into something.

LOL. I really dont know what the advantage for the community should be in this case, but i am sure you will soon tell us :).

You think we are not powerful enough to make 'something' out of MKV, but Real Networks could ? We'll see. One big legal battle against Apple because of 'harmony' and Real might be history.

Real forking matroska, and make it their standard container ? Well, you should be aware where Real's focus is on ( streaming media ), and that MKV is not at all suitable for that, at least not now.

mkv's great seeking performance isnt any rocket science, i am sure the Real guys could enhance the RMVB specs pretty quickly in this respect, if they really wanted to. Karl to clarify .....

[Sirber]

If Real move to Matroska, it would be awesome! But, by licenses, it's forbiden to mux in another container or to mux Real codecs with other codecs. This will have to change too.

[robUx4]

I'd be more than happy if RealPlayer could play Matroska on all platforms it supports. For the rest, I don't care.

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by Sirber If Real move to Matroska, it would be awesome! ... yeah, but they will never ever do that, lets be realistic about that. They would
- break Real support in all 3rd party players ( at least those without mkv support )
- be depending on an opensource project they dont have any influence in, which is certainly hard to explain to their shareholders
- kind of admit that a free group of developers can create comparable, or even 'better' solutions to what they can do, being professional video developers themselves ( again, dont forget matroska is not really nice for streaming as it is now, while RMVB certainly is - life is a matter of finding the best compromise for your purposes or goals ;) )

And all that for better seeking ? What else would they get ? Dont forget, they are doing this for a living, they have to think very different about this than we can do.

But, by licenses, it's forbiden to mux in another container or to mux Real codecs with other codecs. This will have to change too. ... realistically, this is maybe the only thing that actually COULD change. Once we have TCME working, Karl will certainly be able to make them understand that its a very nice and free solution for editing RMVB files, by transmuxing them into MKV container contemporarily. Again, editing is where MKV has its biggest strength, amongst other advantages such as fast seeking and support for an unrivalled number of different audio and video compression formats.

[iwod]

I knew it.... when i was posting that post your name just pop out in my mind ChristianHJW.

Well those were my wishful thinking. And BTW Rmvb was more intented for offline play. While RM is for streaming.

kind of admit that a free group of developers can create comparable, or even 'better' solutions to what they can do, being professional video developers themselves

Why not. I thought free group developer are generally better. Because there thinking are always bound to the STUPID marketing department. Or the world has other thinking in their mind?

Honestly the best thing is that they support RV10 in MKV. Although currently their liscense forbid us to do so but i don't see anyone stopping me doing it. :D

[Sirber]

RM and RMVB are the same. the "VB" only incidate VBR content.

*****, my dislexy goes up with the beer count... :(

[iwod]

Originally posted by Sirber
RM and RMVB are the same. the "VB" only incidate VBR content.

*****, my dislexy goes up with the beer count... :(

Exactly... that is why I said RMVB more or less = offline uses becuase of it VBR nature.

[Sirber]

hum... yeah. sorry :D