DivX 7 With H.264 Support, worth the exitement?

[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.

This is more of a thoughts and musings type post that I hope will spawn some discussion, so I'll start by saying that I'm not a pro or a genius at video encoding and terminology.

DivX 7 is getting ready to come out and I did a bit of research on it, it seems like they're embracing H.264. I expect they'll trademark "DivX HD" or something and try to push the new DivX HD format. We'll begin to see DivX HD Certified players arrive on the market.

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?

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?

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.

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.

Now DivX has an opportunity to revolutionize HD video, but will they? Will they further diversify videos or will they be the driving force .mkv needs?

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. 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.

Maybe you guys know something I don't. Please enlighten me.

Thanks,
-Neil

[Dark Shikari]

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.

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.

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?

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.

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?

MKV is already standardized; the bitstream spec was frozen long ago.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.

Except this time, it already exists; its called x264.

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.

H.264 is a spec, a spec can't be "open source." Perhaps you mean "x264 is an open source implementation"?

[Neillithan]

Wow. Okay you answered pretty much all of my questions and I'm actually shocked to know the answers.

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.

Divx 7 only plays High@4.0? Wow. That's hardly an goal worth the effort. That's like trying to shoot a target with nuke, there's no way to miss.

So, by not being able to play 90% of existing .mkv files, DivX is making a huge mistake. They're going to fool people into thinking .mkv is a DivX extension and sooner or later DivX will be rife with complaints of playback issues. At least, this is what I forsee. I could be wrong.

MKV is already standardized; the bitstream spec was frozen long ago.

By standardizing .mkv, I used the wrong word. What I'm trying to say is, right now .mkv is unpopular, unsupported and pretty much unknown. If you want any kind of real compatability with devices, you have to use .mp4 or .m2ts for Blu Ray players. DivX will finally popularize the .mkv file format but instead of bringing light to it they will bring darkness, at least that is what I gather from your response.

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.

My comment about what compression settings DivX 7 will offer, I was curious if they're offering anything new? Will DivX HD videos offer some kind of superior compression algorithms to churn out every last detail or will they simply add partial AVC playback?

H.264 is a spec, a spec can't be "open source." Perhaps you mean "x264 is an open source implementation"?

I guess when I refer to H.264 being open source, I really mean AVC. AVC is open source, right?

Thanks for your fast response,
-Neil

[Dark Shikari]

Originally Posted by Neillithan

Divx 7 only plays High@4.0? Wow. That's hardly an goal worth the effort. That's like trying to shoot a target with nuke, there's no way to miss.

The reason is that many STB chipsets don't support L4.1, so they're doing it to make support cheaper.

Originally Posted by Neillithan

So, by not being able to play 90% of existing .mkv files, DivX is making a huge mistake. They're going to fool people into thinking .mkv is a DivX extension and sooner or later DivX will be rife with complaints of playback issues. At least, this is what I forsee. I could be wrong.

But you misunderstand their business model. Companies like DivX make money by taking an existing standard, making a somewhat-arbitrary subset of it that doesn't include existing encodes, and promoting it as their own format. See Nero Digital and Quicktime for other cases of this.

Originally Posted by Neillithan

By standardizing .mkv, I used the wrong word. What I'm trying to say is, right now .mkv is unpopular

Unpopular? It is the most widely used container format for HD video on PCs.

Originally Posted by Neillithan

unsupported

The Popcorn Hour will play 1080p MKVs with H.264 video. Its $180.

Originally Posted by Neillithan

My comment about what compression settings DivX 7 will offer, I was curious if they're offering anything new? Will DivX HD videos offer some kind of superior compression algorithms to churn out every last detail or will they simply add partial AVC playback?

No, DivX is not some new format, its H.264. Thus, it can't add any new compression features, and it isn't as if their encoder is really competitive just yet. Odds are everyone will just use x264 to encode for the boxes anyways.

Originally Posted by Neillithan

I guess when I refer to H.264 being open source, I really mean AVC. AVC is open source, right?

H.264 and AVC are literally two names for the same thing. H.264 is a spec. AVC is a spec. A spec cannot be "open source."

[DigitAl56K]

Originally Posted by Neillithan

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.

...

Will DivX be able to play "all" existing .mkv files?

Not all existing files (in hardware). I think that is impossible to accomplish and you've already recognized the problem:

Originally Posted by Neillithan

Currently, HD movies and videos using the .mkv container usually have no restrictions when it comes to video and audio compression settings.

In this situation it's simply not possible to create an interoperable platform across many device categories unless every manufacturer is willing to quickly move to the most high-end expensive H.264 decoders on the market. As you pointed out, even in that case content encoded at level 5.1 is still going to be a gamble.

What we're trying to achieve is a high quality HD format with an assured playback experience on a very wide range of devices (think DVD players, set top boxes, connected devices, even Mobile devices eventually) with the aim of making available devices at reasonable price points. The goal is not to make every device support every variation of H.264 and it's important to understand that difference. The question we're trying to answer is, "Can we create a very high quality format using the benefits of these new technologies, finding a good balance between the features they offer and device interoperability, all without sacrificing compression too much?". This was also the goal with DivX 6 and prior. As the DivX Certified program launched we faced an uphill battle amongst the technology purists who wanted the most complete MPEG-4 ASP implementations possible, yet if we had gone that route actual hardware would only have been available years later, there would be less choice, it would cross fewer device categories and devices would have been far more expensive slowing the growth of the platform and reducing the value for those adopting the format.

Dark Shikari is correct that our draft profile currently specifies level 4.0 but the subsets/constraints we're choosing are not "somewhat-arbitrary", they're the result of ongoing discussions with our partners to determine what the DivX 7 ecosystem might look like depending on the constraints that we set. As DS mentioned, level 4.0 is one constraint that will lead to content interoperability across the set top box market.

Originally Posted by Neillithan

We've seen Quicktime boast H.264 playback only to support a very limited range of AVC potential.

Apple do not have to worry about interoperability too much. You encode for your iPhone, or your iPod, or your AppleTV. The content doesn't really move beyond that walled environment. All of these devices, btw, support different profiles/levels than one another.

Originally Posted by Neillithan

Now DivX has an opportunity to revolutionize HD video, but will they? Will they further diversify videos or will they be the driving force .mkv needs?

I think we're going to offer very much the same value proposition that we did in previous generations of DivX. As a content creator you always have choices before you and perhaps an over-simplification of the traditional problem comes down to this:

• I have HD video to distribute
• I can encode it using the best possible settings and mainly constrain its use to the desktop, or
• I can lose 1-2% of the best possible efficiency, still have it look absolutely nose-to-screen perfect, but have it work on hundreds, perhaps thousands of devices, no problem.

Is it a big sacrifice to make versus the long-term benefit gained? I'd like to know that a year or two down the road the content I'm investing my time encoding and distributing today is going to be playable anywhere by anyone with no crazy conversion processes involved. I'd like my brother, sister, mother, and friends to be able to go into a store and pick something off the shelf for $100 or less and be able to watch all the files I've sent them in past with no problems.

Originally Posted by leeperry

basically DivX Networks cashed in bigtime on divx3(stolen asf dll from m$), and now they wanna cash in on MKV pirate movies.

DivX wants to create interoperability of content and devices. We want to work with hundreds of manufacturers to do that so that you can move your content between your video camera to your desktop to your DVD player and so on. We want to make sure that the experience you have on these devices is consistently good so that content creators can be assured that their viewership will have a great experience with their media.

Originally Posted by Dark Shikari

But DivX7 doesn't. It only supports SRT and SSA, and furthermore--it only supports completely unformatted subtitles, so its really no better than TTXT.

No, the beta version of DivX Player 7 doesn't support formatting, yet

[Neillithan]

Originally Posted by Dark Shikari

Unpopular? It is the most widely used container format for HD video on PCs.

Allright, I'm not trying to nitpick but are you purposely trying to misunderstand this? You took that quote way out of context. When I said "unpopular", I meant in the device and market world. When you go to Youtube and you try to upload a .mkv file, guess what? No. You can't. Can you put a .mkv file on your Ipod? No. Can you Stream a .mkv file on your Media Center PS3? No. Why? I can think of no other reason than it being unpopular. I feel like I'm hitting a soft spot but am I really far off from the truth? It's going to take years for .mkv to gain traction and it's going to need the help of a huge movement, a movement like DivX 7. Feel free to butcher my words but don't waste your time. I am absolutely right.

It's just sad that DivX 7 is going to pollute exist .mkvs. Right now, .mkv is an untapped area in the market world. .mkv has the reputation of supporting the latest and greatest and now DivX 7 comes along trying to put DivX "stamp" on MKV files. DivX has the driving force to put .mkv on the map, it's just sad they're doing so in a way that will pollute .mkv files everywhere. DivX should invent a new extension and call it .dmkv (d for divx) yet still have general support for .mkv files, that way people can easily discern DivX videos from .mkv. It would be the equivalent of using the .divx extension when it's clearly a relabeled .avi.

The Popcorn Hour will play 1080p MKVs with H.264 video. Its $180.

When I went looking for a media server capable of playing H.264 .mkv files, I found Popcorn hour. When I took a closer look, I realized it only played Level 4.1 (I believe) .mkv files. That's the problem with the world of HD right now. There are so many blu ray players and media extenders boasting playback of H.264, but the truth is, they don't play everything. Am I asking for too much? I think not.

Here is how I see things. I see hardware makers deliberately choosing an arbitrary level of AVC to purposely break playback of existing video files so that you will in turn, reencode your videos in their "supposedly" superior format. This is my idle speculation but I believe it's a unspoken business practice in the video world. Everyone, everywhere is doing it. Streaming video flash sites claim superior video quality, but yet they will reencode your videos even if they're already in an acceptable format. Why?

As the DivX Certified program launched we faced an uphill battle amongst the technology purists who wanted the most complete MPEG-4 ASP implementations possible, yet if we had gone that route actual hardware would only have been available years later, there would be less choice, it would cross fewer device categories and devices would have been far more expensive slowing the growth of the platform and reducing the value for those adopting the format.

DivX infers it's impossible for them to support the full range of benefits of of todays new popular video format. Impossible or Hard? How about this theory. They deliberately choose a low spec just to keep us in the dark for many years to come.

CoreAVC plays all AVC videos. I have yet to find a video unplayable by CoreAVC. It really does make the perfect HTPC and it doesn't require 8 CPU multithreading to work.

I can go on and on but the truth is, I'm right if you just try to look past the obvious and let your own speculation take over. DivX isn't going to revolutionize anything now. They did it with DivX but DivX HD is just going to be some low spec of AVC. By opting for .mkv they're going to pollute existing videos.

-Neil

[leeperry]

Originally Posted by Neillithan

My question, is it really worth the excitement?

well, for ppl who wanna watch pirate MKV's on standalone player, I guess so.

it's been discussed here with a guy from the DivX team :
http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showt...0#post15026100

basically DivX Networks cashed in bigtime on divx3(stolen asf dll from m$), and now they wanna cash in on MKV pirate movies.

it's a great business scheme, from the mind of a genius obviously

now they need all the pirates to betatest their software for free, so they can sell licences to hw manufacturers...for tons of cash

[Sharktooth]

leeperry... even in that thread it's you and only you speculating divx wanna make cash from pirate movie...
still mkv is a uber-robust, uber-versatile and open... to sum it up, the smartest container format around.
mp4 practically supports only TTXT subs (an almost unused subtitle format), while MKV supports basically everything... and that's true for other kind of streams too...
also h.264 was a natural evolution of MPEG4 ASP...
also most pirate MKVs are not DivX compliant (as it has been already said, DivX 7 compatible devices can play only level 4.0 h.264 streams, while most scene rips are unrestricted, 5.1 or 4.1...) so, that said, your speculation is completely unnecessary and untrue.

[Dark Shikari]

Originally Posted by Sharktooth

while MKV supports basically everything

But DivX7 doesn't. It only supports SRT and SSA, and furthermore--it only supports completely unformatted subtitles, so its really no better than TTXT.

[dukey]

i agree with pretty much everything DigitalAl56k says ..
and level 4.0 high profile is ..

1920x1080 30 fps at 25mbit !
Hardly poor specifications by any means.
BBC HD broadcasts at 1440x1080 at 16mbit .. and looks amazing.

[Neillithan]

Yes.



Go ahead, butcher me to death.

[Guest]

Where did that come from, please? I don't see it in the AVC spec. The latest actual AVC spec shows 50Mbps max for 4.1 (Table A-1 – Level limits).

Did you follow my point about the memory footprint?

Nobody wants to butcher anyone. We are seekers after truth here.

[Milvus]

Originally Posted by neuron2

Where did that come from, please? I don't see it in the AVC spec. The latest actual AVC spec shows 50Mbps max for 4.1 (Table A-1 – Level limits).

Did you follow my point about the memory footprint?

Nobody wants to butcher anyone. We are seekers after truth here.

Seems like a wikipedia screenshot...

2 problems :

- Wikipedia is not the officiel spec, they can be errors. It's just a good introduction at much.
- >50Mbps apply to High 10, High 4:2:2 and High 4:4:4 Predictive Profiles. Probably not the kind of videos you can find outside a professional workflow, as intermediate formats...

[CruNcher]

Originally Posted by Doom9

The Popcornhour 100 is $179. At Black Friday, we'll have a Blu-ray player for $128.
My first DivX capable player cost me $300 back in the day.

And somehow I don't see the $50 DVD player play DivX7 in the near future...seeing how things developed on the DivX5 front, I find it much more likely that prices will move along the lines of Blu-ray prices and thus I'm asking if it makes sense to try and establish another hardware category that's just below the
already established standard. Does it really make sense for hardware makers to produce two chip lines instead of one, where they have the chance to put the 4.1 chip in millions of devices even today? And from a user perspective, you're repeating history with potential buyers invariably falling into the not compatible or not quite compatible trap. Anyone remember GMC? And that wasn't a particularly important feature to begin with. I feel eerily reminded of the discussion when the DivX certification was first created - only then, the argument about chip cost had more merit as we didn't have a up and coming disc format paving the way for 2 years.

And last time I checked my ISP's website, I could actually have a 50mbit connection. Granted, it's expensive as hell, but there are quite a few places where a 100mbit connection for a reasonable amount of money. And just because the bandwidth isn't there shouldn't mean the hardware shouldn't be able to decode something.. streaming isn't the only way to deliver content (back when the first DivX capable players came out it took me hours upon hours to download 700MB..).

And subsidized? You're talking about the PS3, right? Because the rest of it, the Blu camp is having us pay through the nose now they've done away with the cheap competition.

Imho the Situation with AVC isn't as comparable anymore as the Situation we had back then when DivX became successful there is basicly no such a widespread DSP support currently from Asia (which was the reason we had cheap solutions available and DivX became successful @ all).
ASP was basically a in the Wild thing AVC is much better kept under wrap (by the circles behind it) and protected to secure Licensing @ all costs (also a reason of course Hollywood accepted it). So even with DivX going that way now i wouldn't expect cheap solutions as we saw back in ASP days anytime soon also with the NAFTA in mind

The idea of creating our own Community based Standard seems much much more ideal to me, though it would need alot of work but im sure it's doable and im also sure so far that Hardware Developers would support it widely and even if they don't with all the possibilities of General Purpose Chips (like widespread GPUs) we could do acceleration independent of DSP logic (though it still has to be seen how fast that really is as neither Nvidia/ATI Decoding are GPU based but DSP logic itself inside of the GPU) .
People should never forget without us DivX Networks/Inc wouldn't be there where it is today.

[Neillithan]

L5.1 and L4.1 is my way of discerning 2 different complexities of video encoding. Whether or not it's a practical reality is not my concern. It's the fact that existing hardware refuses to display any kind of picture if the video doesn't conform to the limitations set by the hardware player. Right now hardware players simply blacklist any kind of video that is L4.2 and greater rather than attempting to play them. My PC plays all videos regardless of complexities, resolutions and bitrates. That's why I can never jump ship to a media extender or a Media Center device. They're simply too limited.

Someone else, less informed than my uninformed self will simply ask, "Why doesn't the video play? It doesn't play." They don't know why but I at least have an inkling as to what the reason may be. Dark Shikari and yourself would have me believe I shouldn't question the nature of things unless I have a degree in rocket science.

Screw that.

[Guest]

Originally Posted by Neillithan

Whether or not it's a practical reality is not my concern.

Well, Neil, you're not a CEO of a hardware box manufacturer trying to make products that can be sold at a profit.

My PC plays all videos regardless of complexities, resolutions and bitrates.

Such a machine costs hundreds to thousands of dollars. It is simply not a viable idea to think you can sell standalone devices at such a price.

Dark Shikari and yourself would have me believe I shouldn't question the nature of things unless I have a degree in rocket science.

It's not rocket science. There's no way affordable standalones and set-top boxes could be made to support 5.1. You can ask anybody knowledgeable in the field. I work for a semiconductor maker that sells into this industry. I know what is viable from a HW perspective. You are welcome to refute this with some facts.

Screw that.

That will do wonders for your reputation.

[Leak]

Originally Posted by neuron2

It's not rocket science. There's no way affordable standalones and set-top boxes could be made to support 5.1. You can ask anybody knowledgeable in the field. I work for a semiconductor maker that sells into this industry. I know what is viable from a HW perspective. You are welcome to refute this with some facts.

I'm going out on a limb here - but shouldn't it be possible to use one of the lowest end current-gen ATI (or nVidia) GPUs to manufacture something like that?

Radeon HD 4350 cards (which come with ATI's UVD2 engine) start at 35 EUR around here, and that's the price for the GPU, video RAM and the board...

[Neillithan]

Originally Posted by Leak

I'm going out on a limb here - but shouldn't it be possible to use one of the lowest end current-gen ATI (or nVidia) GPUs to manufacture something like that?

Radeon HD 4350 cards (which come with ATI's UVD2 engine) start at 35 EUR around here, and that's the price for the GPU, video RAM and the board...

Well, they're right in the sense that Level 5.1 has the potential to bring any current system to its knees. To prove his point, Dark Shikari posted a 10 second video at some absurd resolution like 3840x2160@50fps with a bitrate of 96 megabits per second. Apparently, 5.1 is supposed to be outrageously high quality requiring a super computer from the future, but most people who use L5.1 don't encode their videos near the magnitude of that complexity. L5.1 should be playable and for the videos that go beyond sane compression and HD setting, it doesn't matter.

My PC has a dual core 3ghz AMD, 4gigs of ram and an 8800 GTX OC and it has no trouble playing 1920x1080@60fps. For a PS3 or an Xbox 360, I'd assume their H.264 playback to be on par with my PC, yet they only support L4.1 videos. Why? There is no reason for the limitation.

[DrNein]

What advantage would 5.1 capabability offer over 4.1 for consumer videos? It seems it is not necessarily better for the purpose and we should not conclude we are missing something because a higher spec is available -especially if it unnecessarily raised costs.

[STaRGaZeR]

Originally Posted by Neillithan

To prove his point, Dark Shikari posted a 10 second video at some absurd resolution like 3840x2160@50fps with a bitrate of 96 megabits per second. Apparently, 5.1 is supposed to be outrageously high quality requiring a super computer from the future, but most people who use L5.1 don't encode their videos near the magnitude of that complexity. L5.1 should be playable and for the videos that go beyond sane compression and HD setting, it doesn't matter.

I think you still don't understand how this works. If a player is labeled as L4.1 compliant, it has to be able to play all compliant L4.1 videos. Therefore, if you want a player labeled as L5.1 compliant, it has to be able to play all compliant L5.1 videos. You fail to understand that the video DS posted is L5.1 compliant, so if you want validated L5.1 support in your player of choice it has to be able to play it. That is why it is not viable. The problem comes when people use an insane (and useless) number of reference frames for their encodes. Everything else is compliant with L3.x or L4.x, but because of the ref frames you'd need L5.1 to fully support it.

However, Blu-ray being L4.1, I don't know why DivX is restricted to L4. Also I'd have been nice that Blu-ray supported L4.2, allowing 1080p60 and 1080p50.