How far off is a complete DVD into container with menus etc?

[Swin]

Hi,

I have been following container development on and off for a while (more off than on really) and I though last year the Matroska team were looking to implement menuing. I have read that this is of course a difficult procedure, but wondered how far off this development actually is?

Will it be possible to put the contents of a DVD into a simple one file container and play it successfully? And of course will there be tools available to rip/recode/mux and menu?

Chris

[pogo stick]

Originally posted by Swin
I have been following container development on and off for a while (more off than on really) and I though last year the Matroska team were looking to implement menuing. I have read that this is of course a difficult procedure, but wondered how far off this development actually is?
ChristianHJW said that maybe menues will be done by Christmas. And Haali said that maybe after New Year. But that's not a contradiction, because Christmas in Russia is in January. And after all they didn't say in what year it will be. Maybe this Christmas, maybe next. ;)
But seriously, I am too looking forward to this and wish them success.
To bad I can not do anything to help, only wait and spread the rumors.
Originally posted by Swin
Will it be possible to put the contents of a DVD into a simple one file container and play it successfully?
It is (and much more) already possible in mp4, but playback support is limited. Only Osmo4 and EnvivioTV can play it.
Look here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?threadid=66583) and here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?threadid=76735).

[ChristianHJW]

We decided to keep quiet about the menue implementation, because we are fed up to get attacked for 'blatant advertising' and working on a 'vapourware project'. robux4, the team leader, decided to leave this place because of the constant attacks and misbehaviour from the mods here.

Those of you who want to be up-to-date about what's going on with menues in mkv and the progress on Haali's splitter are invited to join our IRC channel on irc.corecodec.org #matroska. Bear in mind this is a dev channel, so dont expect too much OT talking there. Sometimes it pretty silent for hours :D ... can be quite boring for those of you who are used to stay in anime channels and the like, but dont say i didnt warn you ;) ....

About this place here, well, the number of new posts, counted over a complete week, says it all IMO. Its sad we are not allowed to talk about non-existant things here, because there are a couple of decisions to be done about how to best implement the menue system, some user input would be nice for us in this respect. Of course, even the crappiest piece of alpha software can be announced in big letters here, if MP4 is the target. Its all about lobbyism in this world, still after 5000 years human culture, isn't it ?

Regards

Christian

[pogo stick]

I must say that I am surprised. :confused: I didn't think that there is some confrontation here. Maybe there are some underwater movements that I do not see, but it doesn't seem like it's heavy sea here. Or I am simply blind. At least compared with some other forums it peaceful place. For example, I can not see people jumping in Matroska threats, screaming stop wasting time and telling how and why they don't like Matroska, which is ordinary things in some other forums. And after all, Doom9 forum is the place where I and many other people learn new things about Matroska and other interesting stuff very day. It will be very sad if Matroska guys will leave forum. At least keep us informed, please.

[LeMoi]

I heard about a tool which is supposed to extract parts of the menus, but it's in french:
http://atlas2.tgv.net/~media-video/forum2/viewtopic.php?t=5750
But i didn't success in extracting the menus, after it extracted 3 GB, i stopped it and saw that it was extracting the whole movie, so I hope someone else will be able to speak about it ^^

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by LeMoi
I heard about a tool which is supposed to extract parts of the menus, but it's in french:
http://atlas2.tgv.net/~media-video/forum2/viewtopic.php?t=5750
But i didn't success in extracting the menus, after it extracted 3 GB, i stopped it and saw that it was extracting the whole movie, so I hope someone else will be able to speak about it ^^

For your information, robux4 is the author of this tool and also the matroska team leader, Toff is one of the main TCMP developers and also a matroska team member.

Sorry it didnt succeed for your DVDs, maybe time to release a new binary from our SVN repository ....

[celtic_druid]

http://celticdruid.no-ip.com/xvid/misc/DvdMenuXtractor.7z

[Shinigami-Sama]

do you have an other non-irc chat?
my isp blocked 90% of "p2p" programs
mirc will not connect
and i use "p2p"
for acquiring variuos freewares and game clients
I like to support the sw companys that bring the good stuffs out and not leech off of them
I LOATH leechers...
If it were up to me 90% of the sw priRATs would die a brutaly gory public death...
fitting of my sn
it's japanese fyi...
so irc is out of the question :(
you site doesn't seemed to get updated very often so thats why I'm asking

[Atamido]

The mailing lists are actively patroled. You can initiate discussions there if you like. While some of the team use different forms of chat privately (MSN, Y!, AOL, Jab, etc) team "chat" only occurs in IRC. If you like, you could try to find a proxy to use for IRC.

[Shinigami-Sama]

mailing list eh?
might try that
and I tried the proxy and everything
my ip read the headers of the "p2P"s and blocks them as it sees fit
-.-'
I think I'll try the list...

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by Shingami-Sama my ip read the headers of the "p2P"s and blocks them as it sees fit
... IRC ( Internet Relay Chat ) has absolutely nothing to do with P2P, means file sharing ( mostly illegal ). You normally connect to an external IRC server using port 6667, and those ports are maybe blocked by your admin.

There are nice programs like httport and htthost ( google for them ) which will allow you to tunnel through your proxy by using a secure SSL connection using a standard port like 80 or 8080 ( this port must be open, else you could surf the internet ), and by using this tunnel you can do anything you like with the outside world, irrespective of what ports have been blocked by your admin.

Those external servers you use to connect with your tunnel are normally offered as a service and do cost money, but some allow free access with very limited badnwidth. As IRC needs close to 0 bandwidth, it will work perfect to connect to outside IRC servers which are listening on port 6667.

Hope this helps

Christian

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by pogo stick
...It is (and much more) already possible in mp4, but playback support is limited. Only Osmo4 and EnvivioTV can play it.
Look here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?threadid=66583) and here (http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?threadid=76735). How true... The menu system works well in MP4 but it's a great shame there are not more software players able to support the feature.

Sadly the new MP4 capable stand-alone "hardware" players (using Sigma EM8620L chip-set), can't display the menu system either.... bummer!

Personally. One of my favourite ideas would be to have tools and players that would allow us to de-mux the Mpeg2 stream out of a VOB container and replace it with an Mpeg4 stream... now that would be cool ;)


Cheers

[Shinigami-Sama]

Originally posted by ChristianHJW
... IRC ( Internet Relay Chat ) has absolutely nothing to do with P2P, means file sharing ( mostly illegal )


Yeah right there "file sharing" my isp doesn't like that idea I've tried everything I can think of to get mirc to connect but it doesn;t seem to work...
the httphost thing sounds interesting
and I am the admin...
my isp blocks irc for some retarded reason...

anyways
for mp4 menue
I find it hard to belive that the hw manufactorers are having a hard time keeping up to whats happening...
Its not that hard for their devolpment team to look here every other day is it?

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Shingami-Sama
...I find it hard to belive that the hw manufactorers are having a hard time keeping up to whats happening...
Its not that hard for their devolpment team to look here every other day is it? You would like to think this would be the case... so would I.

I had a chat with Keith Jack (Sigma Development) asking him why 6Ch analogue audio outputs (for 6Ch AAC and WMA audio) were not added "as standard" to their EM8620L Networked DVD Player Development Kit... And he replied: -Although I originally spec'd 5.1, until now, there has been no requests for it. We are now focused on implementing the more advanced audio codecs.If the "development kit" manufacturers can't be more pro-active, insisting to their buyers that certain features are "non negotiable", we will end up having all manner of half-assed players!


Cheers

[Shinigami-Sama]

Although I originally spec'd 5.1, until now, there has been no requests for it. We are now focused on implementing the more advanced audio codecs.

umm whats more/just as advanced then aac?
these guys are total retards omg...
they need a reality check big time...
or slap with a cold fish...

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Shingami-Sama
umm whats more/just as advanced then aac?
these guys are total retards omg...
they need a reality check big time...
or slap with a cold fish...
And to make matters worse, David Wolstencroft (aka: LordRPI) from DivX said this about 6Ch AAC: -In the States, I haven't seen that too much, so it might not be thought of a lot. Although, I can see why people would want it... But this sort of comment from a DivX representative is not that strange when you consider nobody at DXN acknowledges the merits of MP4 container or AAC audio!

How short sighted is their line of thinking when it comes to the future of Mpeg4?


Cheers

[Shinigami-Sama]

oh god...
the world is falling apart faster than i thought...
mp4 seems just as good as matroska atm
and not far from ogg<preferance>
when will the moron get out of power and let inteligent people in?

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Shingami-Sama
oh god...
the world is falling apart faster than i thought...
mp4 seems just as good as matroska atm
and not far from ogg<preferance>
when will the moron get out of power and let inteligent people in? There's no doubting the flexibility of the Matroska container. That said the MP4 container is the generic container for Mpeg4 and AAC audio. So when you have organisations such as DivX unwilling to support it (even with MP3 audio)... it's very short sighted.

There are many people (even on this forum) who are dead against the MP4 container... but I'll take it any day, especially as, the subtitles look good, the chapters work well and you can have 2Ch MP3 or 2/6Ch AAC audio streams (or mixture of both).

Hopefully, when Ahead gets round to launching Mpeg4 AVC (in MP4), the doubters will see sense ;)


Cheers

[Shinigami-Sama]

I swaer they have blinders on
I mean how stupid can you get?
*sweatdrops*
I would love to see a hw player with the folowing:
ogg, ogm support,
matroska support,
mp4 supoort
divx/xvid support
mpX support,
mp X, aac, ac3, dobly X, ogg X, mka, wav, midi. what ever else i missed.
with enough flash rom for future updats for more formats
and a fast engough disk drive and prossor to decompress/reasd said media
and maybe user upgrade-able coponatns aka drives, sound ports video ports, network interface.
now I would pay a good $400
if it could do that
given that it could hadle x format above 720xXXX and audio above 192.
and maybe x picture format would a good addtion
but alas that maybe not happen untill the next big format comes out in 10 years

[stephanV]

Originally posted by Shingami-Sama

I would love to see a hw player with the folowing:
ogg, ogm support,
matroska support,
mp4 supoort
divx/xvid support
mpX support,
mp X, aac, ac3, dobly X, ogg X, mka, wav, midi. what ever else i missed.
with enough flash rom for future updats for more formats
and a fast engough disk drive and prossor to decompress/reasd said media
and maybe user upgrade-able coponatns aka drives, sound ports video ports, network interface.
now I would pay a good $400
if it could do that
given that it could hadle x format above 720xXXX and audio above 192.
and maybe x picture format would a good addtion

I believe that is called a "PC". :p

You cannot expect a HW manufacturor to add every feature you can think off. I think we should be very happy if we ever get complete MP4 support.

umm whats more/just as advanced then aac?
Vorbis is at least just as good...

Hopefully, when Ahead gets round to launching Mpeg4 AVC (in MP4), the doubters will see sense
Doesnt Ahead release their own certification on players? There goes that dream then.

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by Shingami-Sama
I would love to see a hw player with the folowing:
ogg, ogm support,
matroska support,
mp4 supoort
divx/xvid support
mpX support,
mp X, aac, ac3, dobly X, ogg X, mka, wav, midi. what ever else i missed.
with enough flash rom for future updats for more formats
and a fast engough disk drive and prossor to decompress/reasd said media
and maybe user upgrade-able coponatns aka drives, sound ports video ports, network interface.
now I would pay a good $400
if it could do that
given that it could hadle x format above 720xXXX and audio above 192.
and maybe x picture format would a good addtion
but alas that maybe not happen untill the next big format comes out in 10 years

Wrong. I have all of that already, see here : http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=71863 .
Slowly bus steadily its getting better and more usable. My thermal problems are more or less completely gone, and i finally found a player that will play all my recorded MPEGs just fine ( guess what : good old PowerDVD ;) ). I got the new TV with S-VGA in and now the picture quality is simply marvellous, with unrivalled sharpness and truely HDTV capable ( 1280 x 960 ).



Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
[B]There's no doubting the flexibility of the Matroska container. That said the MP4 container is the generic container for Mpeg4 and AAC audio. So when you have organisations such as DivX unwilling to support it (even with MP3 audio)... it's very short sighted.

You forget that DivXN already announced some months ago that they will leave the MPEG4 route, and create their own standard, similar to what Real Networks have done years ago with Realvideo. This will include a container format of their own, dont aks me what they are planning to do about audio.

I know that DivX N do have a couple of very good developers, but i honestly believe they completely underestimate what they are trying to do.

There were voices on their own forums, giving them advice to think about building DivX 6 based on matroska, which is basically a clever idea, but i replied that IMO they will never do this because of marketing reasons. Maybe they will change their mind once we get working menues out ;) ....

There are many people (even on this forum) who are dead against the MP4 container... but I'll take it any day, especially as, the subtitles look good, the chapters work well and you can have 2Ch MP3 or 2/6Ch AAC audio streams (or mixture of both).
Hopefully, when Ahead gets round to launching Mpeg4 AVC (in MP4), the doubters will see sense ;) .. Cheers

AVC will be the final kick-off for the MP4 container, i am quite sure about this. Of course, only until some moron starts making a AVC.vcm codec, and people fall back to using Virtualdub ;) .... :p :D ....

[Shinigami-Sama]

One problem with that player you showed
it's $1200!!!!!!!!!
i could buy a 2nd hand pc that could play everything for bout $300 maybe $400
that said
bring on the new mp4 avc thingy
I dare ya:D I personaly prefer ogg/ogm over matroska atm but matorska i slowly gaining my respect <had problems geting them to play on first enconter were omg played fine>
and i don't feel like paying $1200 for prety much a unitasker when I could get the pc ang use for word/exel w/e
for less than that

[bond]

Originally posted by stephanV
Vorbis is at least just as good...as rjamorims latest listening test showed vorbis is clearly better than aac at 128kbps, which itself is clearly better than wma9, which itself is clearly worse than even mp3 at 128kbps
(note that i am talking about the best codec for each format here)

Doesnt Ahead release their own certification on players?it has been said so yes (afaik sigma and ess chips firmwares will add support for it) if its true what i have read

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by bond
as rjamorims latest listening test showed vorbis is clearly better than aac at 128kbps, which itself is clearly better than wma9, which itself is clearly worse than even mp3 at 128kbps
(note that i am talking about the best codec for each format here) I presume you're referring to this test: -

http://www.rjamorim.com/test/multiformat128/presentation.html

Or is there a more recent test?


Cheers

[bond]

Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
I presume you're referring to this test: -indeed

Or is there a more recent test?nope, but to my knowledge none of the codecs were updated seriously qualitywise in that bitrate range since the test

[ChristianHJW]

Originally posted by Shingami-Sama
One problem with that player you showed it's $1200!!!!!!!!!
i could buy a 2nd hand pc that could play everything for bout $300 maybe $400 and i don't feel like paying $1200 for prety much a unitasker when I could get the pc ang use for word/exel w/e for less than that

This 'player' is a PC, and it cost roughly 500,- ¤ new

MSI barebone Mega 260,- ¤
AMD XP-M 1900 CPU 80,- ¤
512 MB DDR-RAM 60,- ¤
DVD-drive 50,- ¤
HDD 60 GB 50,- ¤

Total : 500,- ¤

If you want to watch TV also, you need a DVB-S card ( sat ) or a conventional TV tuner card. This will add another 30 - 60,- ¤ to that, but a HDD sat receiver will cost a lot more and not play your DVDs/AVI/MKV/Ogg files ;) .....

You see, no 1.200 US$ :) !

[Shinigami-Sama]

If you noticed the price was in pounds
and I;m Canadian and converted to CDN$ not USD$
that said
I can pick up a used comp with all that and more <excpet the sat> for about $600
much better than the $1200 that "thing" would cost me
but I was talking about a stand alone anyways
I don't how it's that hard to get a s-a to play all that
I mean it only takes what 700mhz to decompress this stuff?
so It's notthat much of a sterch is it?

[Paazabel]

I don't know if any of you are keeping an eye on a company called Prismiq, but they seem to have an interesting idea. Instead of building a whole PC, they use a big DSP to process the video.

Upside - Cheap. The box is less than $200 from NewEgg and is highly user "tweakable."
Downside - Proprietary. Each new codec the box must support has to be ported for the DSP.

Their next version is something to watch, though I probably shouldn't say more ...

[Shinigami-Sama]

could you post/pm a lick to that corp site?
sounds interesting
a good idea but the dsp would need to quite powerfull for a dsp..
I would figure they;d need a few cards for decoding with the support of upgradeing the code in the card
aka an mpeg2 card with 30megs of free space for new codec that can me load with a newwork connection :)
and a digi audoi out
and then the dsp
thats how I would do anyways

[Paazabel]

They are still on their first version, which was "limited" in what they supported. For instance, if you browse the OFFICIAL site, http://www.prismiq.com you will notice that there is no mention of multicast support. However, if you look at the USER community, http://www.prismiq.org you will find that it was built into the box -- they just didn't advertise the support.

They are working on the next version, which I think will be very interesting. Like TiVo, but using your PC hard drive for storage. Using a DSP in this way is a very interesting method, and if they can make it work over the long term, I think we will see the type of box Shingami-Sama is looking for -- cheap, flexible, supports lots of codecs and outputs. I would say the third version would most likely support HD ...

Another route you could go is http://usa.asus.com/products/desktop/digimatrix/overview.htm ... it has an SiS chipset, but is otherwise a great concept.

[Shinigami-Sama]

hmm
looks interesting
seems like a glorified pc remote atm though...
could pick one of those up for a bout $100-$150 Cdn
butthis is only ver1.0 so i hope it'll get better
so good that it will support ogm. mkv. mp4, ect with full menus and everything<when they come up of course> :)

[Yusaku]

Originally posted by bond
as rjamorims latest listening test showed vorbis is clearly better than aac at 128kbps, which itself is clearly better than wma9, which itself is clearly worse than even mp3 at 128kbps
(note that i am talking about the best codec for each format here)

That is true, as long as we're talking about stereo codecs. Even then there's a clear gap between Vorbis+AAC and the rest - and given their history, I'd say AAC still has some tweaking potential to catch up, whereas Vorbis is probably on the top now.

When you take into account more than two channel audio (which I would kinda like to see for new movies), there is just one winner. Vorbis on 6 channels is probably even worse than AC3 (no tests, but my impression), because every one of three stereo pairs are coded nicely, but that's it.

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Yusaku
.... I'd say AAC still has some tweaking potential to catch up, whereas Vorbis is probably on the top now. Agreed :)

I think I've asked this question before but can anybody confirm how Nero's AAC codec generates it's VBR audio streams. Is it by using 1 pass or 2 "full" passes?

Given its speed it only appears to be 1pass!


Cheers

[Shinigami-Sama]

I've found that nero is just realy good with mp4
I mean it says "the fastest mp4 encoder/codec" I'm para phraese btw
mp4 is just nero;s spectlity

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Shingami-Sama
....mp4 is just nero;s spectlity Nero's Recode2 is probably "the" most advanced MP4 encoding application at the moment.

There are others, such as Sorenson Squeeze 4.0, but it costs a hell of lot more than Recode2!

That said. With the correct tools, it's possible to mux any Mpeg4 video stream with AAC or MP3 audio in the MP4 container.


Cheers

[Shinigami-Sama]

Originally posted by Yusaku
When you take into account more than two channel audio (which I would kinda like to see for new movies), there is just one winner. Vorbis on 6 channels is probably even worse than AC3 (no tests, but my impression), because every one of three stereo pairs are coded nicely, but that's it. [/B]
also Vorbis still has to impilment channel coupling, although that might not hapen for a while because of theora :)
but still
and aac is slowly getting better :)