MainConcept H.264 Encoder 1.0 Final Released!

[peteag]

In my opinion - it's worse! it crashes again again and again.

Pity 1.0!

http://www.mainconcept.com/h264_encoder.shtml

[bond]

interesting

btw i think that release is coming too soon to be using the moonlight/elecard encoder i assume (mainconcept bought elecard recently)

edit: btw i posted an open issue list with mc's encoder some time ago here

[peteag]

I've tested this version some minutes ago.

- program chrashes when "räumlicher bereich" is more than 150 etc.
- maximum reference-frames of 99 in 5.1 causes chrashes
- the quality is extremely poor
- playback is jittering

Poor 1.0!

[CruNcher]

What does Smart Rendering do ?

[bond]

Originally posted by CruNcher
What does Smart Rendering do ?

it renders smartly!

i need some sleep

[madoka]

Originally posted by CruNcher
What does Smart Rendering do ?

Really, I gotta try this!

Ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch, ouch...

[Yong]

it crashed silently when i open avisynth script...

[SeeMoreDigital]

Who is going to spend $499 on this, when there are more cost effective and even free H.264 encoders out there?


Cheers

[bob0r]

Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
Who is going to spend $499 on this, when there are more cost effective and even free H.264 encoders out there?


Cheers

Rich idiots?

[bond]

ok here my findings:

- avc baseline and main profile is supported (levels are also setable)
- raw and mpg PS/TS output is supported
- encoding is not that slow imho: ~4fps on a p3 866mhz with b-frames, cabac, loop, which means its a lot faster than previous versions
- nice, not always to be expected thingies: reordered p-frames (but no b-references), hadamard, ar signalling, rdo
- to be expected but not support thingies: 2pass
- encoding always crashes at the end when using more than 1 reference frames, which leads to that the frames from the end are missing in the output stream (with 1 ref all frames are there)
- also it sometimes crashes when i try to go to the advanced codec options (it seems to happen if i run the same encode a second time after a crash without (wanting to) changing anything except the advanced settings)

- via the reorder delay value you can influence the number of used b-frames in a row, eg
- setting the delay to 1 will disable b-frames, even if the gui doesnt show it
- a delay of 2 uses 1 b-frames in a row, a delay of 3 two b-frames, delay4 uses 3 b-frames aso...
- the two settings max IDR interval and reorde delay are not setable independantly it seems, changing one will also change the other setting automatically
- eg idr interval is setable maximal to 99. using a that high value (which would make sense imho), leads to the strange result (as it forces delay to be set to 11 for example) of 10 b-frames in a row there doesnt seem to be a way to change this
- no adaptive placement of b-frames
- the encoder tells me that max 1 reference frame is not allowed in main profile. in baseline its setable to 1
- access unit delimiter is always used with mpg PS output, even if disabled in the gui
- TS output seems to have been fixed since the last release (the streams get now signalled as avc), but produces a very huge overhead (especially with b-frames: a 200kb video stream results in a 5mb TS file )
- their decoder seems to have problems handling reordered p-frames combined with max 1 reference frame (with more reference frames it works)
- the decoder seems to handle other .mpg files (eg from moonlight) fine too (but always adds a watermark)

[bond]

Who is going to spend $499 on this, when there are more cost effective and even free H.264 encoders out there?

thats a joke indeed
i mean if you want a fully integrated commercial solution you can buy nero for much less and get a far better codec

the next thing is that you have to pay 499€ or 499$, i mean what type of joke is this? an exchange rate of 1:1 for €/$? 499$ are 384€ atm...

seems mainconcept totally relies on their name when selling stuff...

Originally posted by bond
- eg idr interval is setable maximal to 99. using a that high value (which would make sense imho), leads to the strange result (as it forces delay to be set to 11 for example) of 10 b-frames in a row there doesnt seem to be a way to change this

hm this doesnt seem to be the case always, sometimes its possible to set the idr interval to 99, but still use a low delay setting

[peteag]

But: It's not 1st April. Hm. So they wanna say me, that they were working on this program for almost 2 years and what is coming out? This encoder is more worse than Videosofts. It crashes as often as the previous betas and the quality hasn't realy improved since them. And what do you wan't with an encoder which chrashes more than you can encode? This only can be a joke!

Sorry, but no clear thinking person of a firm for encodings would pay money for this. What do they want to reach with this?

[bond]

i heavily tested it and it only crashed in two situations here, with only one being really bad, as i described already...

[video]

even sorenson is the same. i've dl-ed the latest trial, and one encoding is finished form 9 attempt, however i ended up a not playable garbage. so we have options: ateme(nero) or x264, possibly moonlight - but i never tried.

[peteag]

The only pitys are the two years of development and the waiting people for that. I've expected a real BEAT from mainconcept (2 times better quality than ateme's a.s.o.) and a realy improvement since the latest beta but I claim they just worked for their other products and now just called the beta2 just 1.0 final, except some ui-changes.

It seems that mainconcept will rename this product into something different like multimedia-encoder or something. Because the mpeg-encoder is fully included in that release and the h.264-algorithms "should be" in a very early development-stage - and they need to improved!

2.0 - Please come!

[bond]

peteag, have you been sent by a competitor of mainconcept to badmouth their products?

the encoder and decoder is definitely not that bad as you try to tell...
the only real problem i saw was that the encoding aborts shortly before the stream ends, so you have a few frames less in the output, the rest works pretty fine

[peteag]

The realy bad is selling a product for 500€/$ which isn't as half as good as a freeware proggie (x.264) or a extremely cheaper product (nero). And all that by a company which is very popular for their codec-products ...

@ bond: This problem wasn't happen to me. But lot more different ones. Is there any guy who doesn't have the major-problem: 4-TIMES-WORSER-QUALITY-THAN-X264?

Please send aswers and solutions

[video]

Originally posted by bond
the only real problem i saw was that the encoding aborts shortly before the stream ends, so you have a few frames less in the output, the rest works pretty fine

That's a serious problem from the product what is sold for $500 i think. How would you feel abot a windows xp release you have bought what is BSOD-ing just before you reach desktop?

[akupenguin]

Originally posted by bond
- nice, not always to be expected thingies: reordered p-frames

What's the point? I know you've previously showed me clips that were encoded with reordered P-frames, but what does it add? You get all of the drawbacks of B-frames without the compression gains.

- the encoder tells me that max 1 reference frame is not allowed in main profile. in baseline its setable to 1

They probably use the same definition of number of refs as in JM: That 2 refs = 1 forward and 1 backward in B-frames, and with 1 ref B-frames would be equivalent to reordered P.

[bond]

Originally posted by akupenguin
What's the point? I know you've previously showed me clips that were encoded with reordered P-frames, but what does it add? You get all of the drawbacks of B-frames without the compression gains.

bleh, its a nice feature to play around with, thats enough for me...

They probably use the same definition of number of refs as in JM: That 2 refs = 1 forward and 1 backward in B-frames, and with 1 ref B-frames would be equivalent to reordered P.

the encoder also doesnt allow 1 ref when b-frames are disabled in main profile