Quote:
Originally Posted by Neillithan
For the record, I will be using the terms "H.264" and "AVC" interchangeably. When you read either of those words, assume that I'm referring to the same thing no matter how politically incorrect I am. I honestly don't care how poorly I misuse them.
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You're allowed to use those interchangeably. We won't complain until you start using H.264 and x264 interchangeably or something silly like that.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Neillithan
My question, is it really worth the excitement? From what I can gather, they are going to be using the .mkv (matroska) container, which IMO is a great thing. However, this poses a problem with existing videos already using the .mkv container.Currently, HD movies and videos using the .mkv container usually have no restrictions when it comes to video and audio compression settings. To my knowledge, .mkv files come in 2 flavors of AVC: High@L4.1 and High@L5.1. L4.1 is playable on all blu ray players assuming you change the container to something that plays nices with Blu Ray players. L5.1 is a gamble. Depending on the compression settings used, the video will either play or not play. Will DivX be able to play "all" existing .mkv files?
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No, it won't play any of them, because it requires Level 4.0, not Level 4.1. Now, if a specific implementation of the DivX spec in a player doesn't actually check the header and simply tries to play it anyways, odds are many encodes will work, but since the spec doesn't say to do so, there's no guarantee it'll work on anything.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Neillithan
For DivX to be standardizing the .mkv container seems like quite an undertaking, or is it a massive mistake? Are they just introducing more complications?
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MKV is already standardized; the bitstream spec was frozen long ago.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Neillithan
It may be too soon to tell what compression settings "exactly" DivX 7 supports, but I'm not getting my hopes up. We've seen Quicktime boast H.264 playback only to support a very limited range of AVC potential.
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H.264 High Profile Level 4.0, max 3 B-frames, any resolution 1920x1080 or below that's mod8 (note: interlaced resolutions are limited to a few specific values, progressive are not). Framerates 23.976, 24, 25, 29.97, and 30 are allowed. None of this is final, nor complete.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Neillithan
Real Bloat player (I believe) is jumping ship to H.264, but who knows what proprietary methods they're employing to get their grubby little hands in our wallets.
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No, they're using RV30/40, which are proprietary ripoffs of early H.264 drafts (which, mind you, are so ugly they make H.264 look like a clean spec).
Quote:
Originally Posted by Neillithan
It's not like there is going to be an XviD HD offspring of DivX HD. I don't think they want to open source their code this time around.
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Except this time, it already exists; its called x264.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Neillithan
Funny thing though, considering H.264 is already open source, how do they seriously expect to compete? By embracing H.264, it seems more like admitting defeat.
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H.264 is a spec, a spec can't be "open source." Perhaps you mean "x264 is an open source implementation"?