mpegable AVC

[CruNcher]

Especially, the in-loop filtering of AVC enhances the subjective quality compared to MPEG-1/2/4.

wahh Inloop the evilness what i saw so far in a H264 codec with a Rate Controll (Videosoft) is that they lose vs XviDs RC especialy with inloop on and high motion scenes, you can see how the backgrounds and all the details washing out and for me that looks more disgusting then any blocking in a fast sequence wich you wont really realize at all.

[mpegable]

There is a little patch for mpegable AVC on Win98 machines. You can download it from http://www.mpegable.com/download.

In addition to the actual installation file, you must download the file 'davc.inf' and install it (click right on file and chose 'Install'). This script does the neccessary entries in system.ini.

[unmei]

An internal version already works with different YUV formats (YUY2, IYUV, YV12, UYVY). Does anybody has an idea what other formats might be important?

For me as "normal avisynth user", it seems YV12 is all i need.

What i would check back in your situation is who uses I420, i always thought this were simply a "re-packed YV12" (different storing order) and i have never explicitely seen a file using it, but it could be it were used on Real or Quicktime based systems in which case it were quite important ..but i really don't know, this is just a feeling this colorspace could be used somewhere i do not usually go

[bond]

mpegable, can you plz give us some more information on the used settings in your avc codec, like loopfiltering is enabled always, what is the exact difference between very slow, medium, fast encoding speed (only motion search?), what is rection time aso...

also it never harms if you give the user the possibility to configure your codec, like en/disabling loopfiltering aso...

thanks

Originally posted by unmei
For me as "normal avisynth user", it seems YV12 is all i need.

yes, most people here will use yv12 streams (from dvd) as input, which avisynth is able to pass as yv12 too

Originally posted by kilg0r3
for me it only works with rgb input (full processing mode)

with rgb input (add converttorgb at the end of the avs script) it also works in fast recompress

Originally posted by mpegable
There is a little patch for mpegable AVC on Win98 machines. You can download it from http://www.mpegable.com/download.

thanks a lot!

edit: i did some first tests with it and noticed the same behaviour as with mainconcepts implementation:
the first few frames are totally blurred and ugly, only after a while they seem to look ok

[Tommy Carrot]

Perhaps i'm alone with this, but i would find a constant quantizer option very useful.

[Teegedeck]

I'm afraid you're wrong; it wouldn't be useful, it would make it usable.

[mpegable]

Thank you all for the input. There is an updated version of mpegable AVC available from www.mpegable.com. The new version supports different YUV formats including YV12, IYUV, YUY2 and UYVY.

There will be some more updates in the near future before we release a 1.0. They will include automatic I-frame insertion, more options for the codec configuration as well as quality and performance improvements. :-)

One more remark also to the first results of PSNR measurements. Since the reference software does not support bitrate control (at least nobody knows if and when it really works) it is difficult to ensure equal test conditions. To make a fair comparison you can either make a longer test with full PSNR curves, or - to test only at a certain bitrate - you should first encode the sequence with the reference software configuring a certain quant step. Then determine the bitrate needed by the reference sofware, and configure the mpegable AVC accordingly.

Using the tempete sequence, the difference between mpegable AVC (slowest mode) and the reference software (base profile) should be around 0.5db. This is at least true with the version 0.8 of mpegable AVC when the input color format is YV12 (no RGB).

[chilledoutuk]

I have tried encoding with fast recompress video mode in Vdubmod but all i get is a garbled picture with yv12 sources. If i connvert the video in avisynth to YUY2 then fast recompress works fine however as you know this is not ideal.

[Shinobu]

Just an idea, could you add a smp implementation in your codec ? I'm running on dual cpu only ^^.

i've tried this codec, it's a good base for future good codec.

i think it need:
+1-pass quantitzer mode
+2-pass mode
+inloop configuration (and desactivation)
+...


++

[mpegable]

hi shinobu, thanks for your input.

We plan to add multi-processor support to the codec but this will probaly take until end of the year.

+ constant quantizer mode: will be part of the next release
+ work in progress: not yet sure when it is finished
+ inloop configuration: it seems that a optional inloop filter is what some people like...

In general we do not want to make a codec only for video coding experts but for all users. To many configuration settings may be puzzleing. We need good mixture ...

[bond]

Originally posted by mpegable
In general we do not want to make a codec only for video coding experts but for all users. To many configuration settings may be puzzleing. We need good mixture ...

provide an option called "experts mode", if someone activates it all the advanced options get displayed
if not activated (the default setting) your "for all users" gui gets displayed

[Shinobu]

"provide an option called "experts mode", if someone activates it all the advanced options get displayed
if not activated (the default setting) your "for all users" gui gets displayed"

+1


++

[unmei]

well this is not actually a poll, but i'd also vote for the advanced settings panel as i like to play with this kind of things.

Maybe you should do it in a way that as soon as you use the normal panel again it restores the default values because else you will have people who tried something in the advanced part only once and forget about, then only use the nomal part and have special settings without knowing for a long time - i'm thinking about xvid here where people sometimes still have overflow and curve compression settings they set a year ago (=completely outdated).

[bond]

seems version 0.10 of the mpegable mpeg-4 avc/h.264 encoder has been released some days ago

hopefully they have considered our "experts mode" request

enjoy

[Shinobu]

Quality based mode is aivable ^^, i'm gona test (this week end if i got some time).

++

[bond]

is anyone able to decode h.264 .avi files created with x264 (mencoder/ffdshow) in vfw with the mpegable avc vfw implementation?

i tried it with files created with mencoder in vdm with no success (the DAVC fourcc is needed for the mpegable vfw decoder)
the dicas vfw decoder even crashes when the stream doesnt use b-vops, cabac, loop and 4x4mv

i always get the message:

Error decompressing video frame 2:

a codec specific error occurred. (error code 1)

[DeathTheSheep]

Ah, indeed, the x264 seems to have added some efficiency/compression code that renders it non-decodeable with older implementations of AVC decoding software. I have the same problem, but in VDUB mod. Just get the ffdshow vfw decoder set up, and it doesn't matter whether or not the DAVC decoder functions.

Cheers, baa

[bond]

ffdshow now also offers vfw decoders? seems i missed something

just to put emphasis on it again: i tested _very_ basic x264 streams (no cabac, aso, as described above) in .avi with mpegable (to be sure that not advanced technologies cause the problems), still it didnt handle it

[DeathTheSheep]

Woah. Wierd. Happens here too. I wonder if DAVC vfw looks for a "fingerprint" of its native encoding? I've heard about some sort of vfw protection for a while now, just never saw it happen. Perhaps this is an example of "vfw fingerprint checking." Perhaps mpegable only wanted its decoder to decode its own stream for testing purposes (in version .10). However, I've only noticed this after the installation of Nero...

'Spose I'll look into it.

Cheers, baa

[DeathTheSheep]

bond, oh yeah, I forgot to say... Um, yeah, vfw decoders. Ain't I the observant little snake? Or should I say... SHEEP? BWAHAHAHAHA BAAAAHAHAHAHAA baaa. (Or maybe I'm just stupid and out of it) Ok, here goes: